One, three, four, six, two, four, eight, seven, seven, nine, nine, one, three, zero, one, seven, one, five, eight, five, nine, two, one, three, one, two, six, two, six, six, seven, nine, nine, one, four, six, five, eight, eight, six, five, six, four, one, two, five, three, two, one, five, eight, seven, eight, two. After calling, you'll enter the meeting ID number, which is nine, four, zero, six, six, five, nine, eight, two, eight, one. And when prompted for participation ID, please press pound. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there's a delay in streaming, so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. Call in at the beginning of the item you are wanting to comment on. When it is time for public comment, press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak during public comment, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you've commented on your item of interest. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Byers? She's not unmuted. Oh. Councilmember Byers? Here. Matthews? Here. Brown? Boulder? Here. Here. Did we hear Brown? Okay. Can you not hear me? Watkins? Can't hear you. Vice Mayor Meyers? Who is that? Sandy? And it's Mayor Meyers. We can't hear you. Vice Mayor Meyers? I can't hear her. Mayor Cummings? To speak on this item, we'll move over to the public comment. Looks like there are two members of the public. And so we'll start with public comment. The members of the public, three, nine, seven, nine, we're trying to camp here. Maybe. No. I'm not muted. Pardon me, Mayor. May I take advantage of the low to announce that the potential litigation item relates to a threat of law litigation under the California Voting Rights Act by the appointment of Gabriella Joseph. That will be the second closed session. Is it possible that you can now hear me? We can hear you. Please mark me as present. Thank you. I can't hear the person calling in from three, nine, seven, nine. That's me. That's me. That's Donna. Okay. Seeing no other members of the public wishing to speak at this time, we'll move into closed session. The session of the April 28, 2020 meeting of the city council. A few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting. And we'll like also like to apologize for being a little bit late today. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming from the city's website, city of Santa Cruz dot com. All council members including myself are participating in this meeting remotely. And I want to thank the public for staying at home to view today city council meetings. You wish to comment on agenda items 1420 with the exception of item 15 instructions are on your screen as follows. Call one of the following numbers. The first number you dial is busy. Continue to the next number until you get through. You can call in at 1-669-900-9128-1346-248-7799-1301-715-8592. 1-312-621-646-656-41253-215-8782. Into the meeting ID number 940-6659-8281. And when prompted for a participant ID and press down. You may be able to mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there's a delay in streaming so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. Call in at the beginning of the item you are wanting to comment on. When it is time for public comment, press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak to our public comment, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. You may hang up once you have commented on your item of interest. To speak to another item, two things may occur. If the number of calls... I apologize, I'll wait and exceed the capacity. You will be disconnected and you will need to call back closer to when the item you wish to comment on will be heard. Or you will be placed back in the queue and should you press star 9 to raise your hand when you wish to comment on the new item. You may also send an email to cityclerk at cityofsantacuse.com. Your comment will be shared with the council members as they are received and you will be entered into public record. Now it would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you mayor. Council member is Byers. Here. Matthews. Is that me? Yes. I didn't understand you. Yes, here. Brown. Here. Boulder. Present. Watkins. Here. Vice Mayor Myers. Here. And Mayor Cummings. The land upon which we gather is the unseeded territory of the Waswas speaking UP tribe. The Alamutin tribal band comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taking to Mission Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast is today working hard to restore the traditional stewardship practices on these lands and from historic trauma. And if the clerk could please lead us from the Pledge of Allegiance. To the United States of America. And to the Republic. My nation. Under God. Individible. Individible. And Justice. And Justice. Brown. To begin with our first presentation. I'd like to also acknowledge the celebration of Ramadan, observed by Muslims worldwide. As a month of fasting, prayer, reflection and community. Ramadan goes from April 23rd to May 23rd, 2020. And I encourage members of our community to join our Muslim community as we reflect on our community during these typical times and observing the Ramadan presentations. Quarterly update on the resilient coast plan. I'll turn that over to Tiffany Wise West sustainability and climate action manager. I'm Tiffany Wise West, the sustainability and climate action manager for the city of Santa Cruz. I'm here today to update you on something different than when I was before you two weeks ago talking about a mission reduction.  I do want to mention that it is the first annual global adaptation month and as part of the city's commitment to adaptation, we've committed to completing these two projects that I will share with you our progress on today as well as secure funding for a next step resilience project called out in our adaptation plan. This quarterly update is required by our grant making agencies and I would like to remind you that the resilient coast initiative broadly is our opportunity to develop the community's vision for a climate resilient future coastline. So how are we going to manage our coastline in the future in the face of climate change? Why are we doing these projects? We know that there are potential issues to coastal access on our coastline with erosion and so forth. We know that our coastline is relied upon for tourism and recreation and those are highly valued in our community. We also have West Cliff Drive and our bimodal bike path that are part of the transportation assets along our coastline that will likely need to be adapted. We also have sensitive ecosystems notably monarch butterflies as well as other terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems across our coastline that need to be considered in any planning. Of course we have all kinds of coastal infrastructure from armoring to pipelines to structures and we have some existing policy that likely will be updated as a result of these projects that pertain to management of the coast. Of course here in Santa Cruz we also have to be mindful of our strong sense of place and cultural identity which is also incorporated into these projects and I want to emphasize that we have been striving to really center equity in these projects and I'll share with you a little about that in a moment. So in addressing these various topics we are trying to create an inclusive conversation to develop this community vision that has an eye out towards the end of the century 2100 is our time horizon and again to achieve a resilient and equitable coastline. Again resilient coast is comprised of two projects the West Cliff Drive adaptation and management plan as well as a beaches focused project to develop local coastal program policies related to sea level rise that support beach and public access protection. These projects are aligned in their timeline and they have a very similar but not exact scope of work so it really made sense for us to couple these together. These projects began really in earnest about a year ago. We are advised on these projects through a technical advisory committee made up of 17 members of our community including the mayor and both and the vice mayor are on that tack and we as you will see later on there are a number of other groups that we are consulting with on this project. We also have an internal kind of core team working together from various departments on this project. So the unique approach that we are utilizing that we feel is a very smart approach is using what is called adaptation pathways. So because of the uncertainty of when sea level rise related and climate change related coastal impacts will really accelerate instead we make choices or initiate projects between short and long term strategies through the use of triggers. So getting away from saying in your 2050 we are going to put up a specific seawall instead we say okay perhaps there is a physical trigger that allows us to know the right time to begin planning and installing that seawall and you can see here a number of different triggers that we are considering among others and we really want to have measurable triggers so that we do have that signal as to when to initiate a next step project. And what that looks like over time are this is an example visualization of an adaptation pathway for sea bright beach. So this is just one example. We are developing many different pathways for each of the four beaches sea bright main cowl and natural bridges as well as the west cliff pocket bridges as well as four distinct segments along west cliff drive. So we will be developing different adaptation pathways that prioritize different coastal management goals before we get into the process of actually identifying our preferred pathways. So starting on the upper left hand corner you see that our existing strategy we have a wide beach we have a little bit of revetment or armoring and some sand retention that comes from the west harbour jetty. We can continue in that mode until we hit some kind of specific trigger such as a specific beach width or height and from there we might transition into say a living shoreline kind of application or treatment. For example we could enhance the existing natural dune I'm sorry constructed dune that is already there with native planning to provide a little bit more buffering on coastal storm activity and forces. And then another beach width trigger could cause us perhaps to reconfigure our jetty to capture more sand transport and build our beach up and there could be some trigger at some point in time whether it's beach width or repetitive loss or something else that may cause us to look at okay where might we need to relocate say the first lane of roadway or the lateral sidewalk above the seabright beach and that would be a retreat concept so this kind of shows you how we are beginning to present these adaptation pathways. So in order to inform these pathways of course our two consultants we have a great local consultant team that are working on both projects with different lead consultants. They are of course providing their professional expertise but we are also trying to educate and conduct outreach with our community to understand their preferences and I will kind of connect this all together for you in a future slide. The first two rows of this extensive outreach has been completed already and you can see it's pretty extensive ranging from focus groups to intersect surveys on West Cliff Drive that will feed into the cost benefit analysis interviews in our frontline communities of the beach flats and lower ocean area where we are gaining some really interesting insights that actually transcend beyond adaptation and sea level rise. We also successfully completed an open house on March 5th right before the COVID shutdown started. We had 105 people in attendance that was a very well attended meeting for us. Of course the virtual reality application phase one of that has concluded in the library and we are working on phase two which will roll out in a mobile phone application and we are also looking forward to how can we adapt in person meetings into say virtual open house environments. We also have been meeting one on one with historically underrepresented groups in the community. Everything from people of color to LGBTQ to people experiencing homelessness and so forth and really have gained some very unique insights that are being integrated into the deliverables for these projects. On that note I think we will go ahead and talk about equity in this initiative. These are really some reflections on how this iterative and experimental kind of practice is going in centering equity. I really could do an entire talk on all that we are doing on equity but you know from the get go we really have tried to intentionally spend time with frontline community leaders and historically underrepresented groups trying to build trust and I feel like we have made some progress in that regard and really worked with particularly our beach flats leaders in designing our meetings and outreach techniques. We also have leveraged academic partnerships to bring more capacity to this project to really focus long-term frontline communities. We are collaborating with Dr. Stanza Rampini at San Jose State University on the one-on-one interviews and we will be continuing that work and we are also partnering with the UCSC Coastal Science and Policy Grad Program and have several projects related to equity going on right now. As I mentioned we have been meeting with historically underrepresented groups and we will be following up with them and I just want to mention internal to the city related to health and all policies some of these implementation actions are also really helping us to bring equity front and center not only in the Resilient Coast Initiative but to be widen and you'll see that there are a few items that I mentioned below. So how does all of this fit together and I'm not going to read through this but I do want to give a sense of how the data that we are collecting flows into the outputs and the deliverables on the project from the very beginning starting to collect information about the uses, the way people use the coastline and value the coastline that allowed us to really go into setting some goals for coastal management that we drafted with the Coastal Commission and prioritized with some of our teams in order to understand what goals are priorities as we are thinking about tradeoffs between some of these strategies. From there we have determined set of strategies to analyze both in the short, medium and long term and start to begin to discuss what do those triggers look like that allow transition between the strategies and that's kind of where we are at this point. We are now moving into the adaptation pathway recommendations that will be developed that will be informed by more in-depth feasibility analyses across benefit analysis and more feedback and then that really gets us to if you look to the right this vision that I started off the presentation with and really that vision will be articulated in the West Cliff Drive Adaptation and Management Plan and the local coastal program amendment that will be coming to council by the end of the year for adoption and then submitted to the coastal commission after that to make it through their process. I should say that in addition to the other groups that I've mentioned we're working very closely with the coastal commission state parks and the boardwalk as really key stakeholders in these projects to make sure we are all aligned so that when we get to the end of these projects we're all on the same page. So in addition to the existing conditions and future vulnerability assessment that was submitted last year, the end of last year you can see behind these two colored blocks one of the outputs from that which shows high hazard areas and so forth and all of that information is summarized in the documents that are at thesanacruze.com forward slash resilience coast and there's a document box there. We did just receive our second set of deliverables from our consultants yesterday so you will see that that website has been updated with our adaptation strategy and pathway evaluation as well as a social vulnerability actually a socially vulnerable population impact assessment which really I think is very unique in connecting the insights we've gained from our historically underserved and underrepresented folks into a planning document like this there's a lot of interest from the state on this particular piece and projects as a whole I should say. The next set of deliverables then that are due at the end of June will be three sets of adaptation pathways for each of these stretches of our coastline, the four beaches I mentioned and the four zones along Westcliff and then of course the virtual reality phase two will also be out by June 30th of this year and with that I'm happy to take any questions that you might have. Thank you. Thanks Tiffany. Are there any council members who have questions for Tiffany Wise? Council Member Brown? Yeah I don't have any questions I just wanted to say thank you Tiffany for all of your work and to your team for working you know doing all of this outreach and really being very deliberate about how we take input from the community and in particular low income folks and potentially affected areas of the town and you know just and thank you for presenting it to us in this really really clear understandable way. I definitely appreciate that there's so much work that's gone into kind of behind the scenes to get us to something that we can kind of understand and know how we're moving forward. So just thank you again for and keep up the good work. Thank you Council Member Brown. Oh we have a couple of buyers and then Vice Mayor Morales. What's that? What's that? I'm trying to. Okay Tiffany, you know all this going on that I think is with our coast and of course I think West Cliff drive with the the same place and all the tours coming over and all the work I mean somehow is there something new that you're thinking whoa we haven't looked at that angle that may cause you to just take a deep breath and look at something else anyway the impact right but I'm just curious if all that's going on has juggled you at all or brought up something. Thank you for that question Council Member Byers. So one interesting aspect of West Cliff Drive is that we're required by the grant making agency to look at going potentially to one lane on West Cliff Drive and to evaluate where might that make sense, does that make sense I think you know our small planning team has really thought about with the COVID you know that could potentially be you know a test for one lane in the future if we would decide you know at some point to do that to enable more space along West Cliff as people are utilizing that space that's one way we thought about the COVID kind of taking it as an opportunity as a test I'm not sure with timing you know whether that's going to happen or not but that's really the extent to which we've kind of reshifted our thinking otherwise I just do think that the project is very timely with respect to how the space is allocated how we utilize space and how we ensure that our community's priorities are maintained going forward Thank you You're welcome Officer Mayor Myers yeah I just wanted to just just quick remark I'm lucky enough to serve on the technical advisory committee of this effort and I just wanted to compliment Tiffany and all the staff working on this it's really been a really interesting process and I think that we're doing something that I don't know that any really other city in the state is doing right now with regards to the scope and the breadth of how we're taking this analysis on and looking at both the social benefits but also some of the environmental benefits and conditions and really forecasting putting ourselves out 50 years and so it's been a really interesting process I want to just compliment Tiffany both of the consultant teams are working with have been excellent and a lot of other city staff and people from the community are involved in the technical advisory committee it's been a very good experience and so I just want to compliment compliment the process and the ground-breaking effort this will be when it's all done Thank you Vice Mayor Myers I just wanted to compliment the process and Tiffany as well and just really also highlight how important it is to build trust and to have an inclusive process that's really looking at equity and we know that with climate change all hotels and inequities can be announced and to be prepared and engaged and wanting to move in a direction that's more equitable I think it's also really noteworthy so thank you for your exceptional work and I'll take up much more time but great job Thank you Council Member I now do have a question I was going to bring this up on a later item around the shelter in place extension but since Council Member Myers brought it up I thought I'd ask Tiffany do you in terms of this question about the because I actually think I've been thinking about this too the opportunity of kind of testing partial closure on Westcliffe and I know some other cities have done this to try to create more space for people to be active we've seen the challenges with people kind of bunched up together on Westcliffe and so I guess the question that I have then if you also see this as a possible opportunity do you have any recommendations about how we could move that forward operationally your thoughts but then what the Council might do to try to encourage that or move us forward Thank you for that question Council Member Brown I would like to defer to Claire Globley this question I know that the possibility of one lane being used for pedestrian and and or bike traffic has been discussed previously but Claire would know best where that's going and what the best way to integrate into that conversation might be so I'll let Claire speak Good afternoon Council Claire Globley I'm a transportation planner and I've been working with Tiffany on this project and then in addition to that since COVID started having a lot of conversations with our transportation partners and our public health partners related to this question which keeps coming up should be closed one lane on Westcliffe in response to so many people being there and we've seen other communities doing it but one of the key tenants that other communities have done when they have closed streets is that they have done them on miles and miles of streets throughout entire communities rather than just in one location which then serves to encourage more people coming to that similar spot so at this time closing one lane on Westcliffe our thoughts are that that would bring more people there as a destination location rather than supporting the public health directives which are to exercise in your neighborhood please do continue getting outside walking and biking close to home and so continuing to have the parking spaces closed at this time and continuing to really encourage people to stay close to home rather than traveling for recreation or exercise is what we're planning to continue at this point we're anticipating having more guidance come out from public health in the coming days as we approach May and looking what we saw this weekend with so many people coming to town I would be really happy to see that ascent to encouraging larger and larger groups of people to come to a location that we would endorse for more active activities I'd really rather encourage people to stay in their neighborhoods and exercise close to home although I'm looking forward to this project examining long-term in a planned non-pandemic environment how we would look at Westcliffe. Thanks Claire. Thank you. I'd just like to say thank you for all the hard work that you've been doing and I think that given that this month we've had the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and that we're moving ahead so we're at the forefront of making sure that we are ready as we continue to face these impacts of climate change I'm glad that we're making progress that we're planning ahead in the long run we're going to be better off for everything that we're doing now so thanks you for all the work that you're doing. Yes, absolutely thank you Mayor and if I might say on that note just to end a study from last year indicated from the Institute of Building Sciences that for every $1 spent on hazard mitigation planning that saves $6 in future disaster costs so I think that's very purple with your final comments there Mayor thank you. Moving on, a few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website cityoffantries.com If you wish to comment on agenda item today instructions are provided on the screen we'll provide these instructions throughout the meeting whenever we move into an agenda we'll be open for public comment. Calls from comment is heard only on items council is taking action on and not on regular updates and reports. Items that will be open for public comment today are the numbers items 4 and 20 on our agenda with the exception of item 15 since council is not taking action on that item today. I'd like to ask the council members are there any statements of disqualification today if you have a statement of disqualification just like to ask that you please press the blue button to raise your hand saying none. I'd like to ask the clerk to announce any additions or deletions. We have done. This is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on items that are not currently on the agenda. Oral communications will occur immediately following agenda item number 20. If you wish to make a comment during oral communications please call in towards the end of item 20. I'd like to call on the city attorney to provide a report on closed session. Mayor Cummings members of the city council this afternoon the city council convened remotely at 11.30 a.m. for a closed session to discuss the following items. Item A was a council for the conference with legal counsel on liability claims the claim of Sentinel insurance company limited for WUN property management LLC. Item B was a conference with labor negotiators involving the following bargaining groups in which the council received a report from its chief negotiator Lisa Murphy. These were the groups that were discussed. Police officers association firefighter IAFF local 1716. Fire management association police management association OE3 mid manager and supervisor employees IAF FIU local 521 and unrepresented employee Berkeley the council received a report from the city attorney's office with regard to the matter of pending litigation entitled California et al. versus the state of Texas et al. This is a lawsuit in which the state of Texas and other states are challenging the constitutionality of the affordable care act taken by Congress in 2017 to eliminate the visual mandate associated with that council by unanimous vote directed the city attorney's office to join in an amicus brief being prepared by county of Santa Clara and the city of Chicago and to be filed in the United States Supreme Court in the early part of May and lastly there was one item of significant exposure to litigation which the council received a report from the city attorney's office on a notice of intention to file suit under the California voting rights act that was brought on behalf of a registered voter in the city of Santa Cruz to claim alleges that an analysis of the city's at-large system of city council elections shows a pattern of racially polarized voting that results in the abridgment of Latino voting rights in the city. Good afternoon. The council voted unanimously to direct the city attorney to enter into settlement negotiations with the claimant's attorney and to return out a future meeting with the resolution of intention to transition to district-based elections for the November 2022 general election and that is all I have to report for you today. Thank you very much. City managers to report and provide updates on city events and business items. Thank you Mayor. I will provide a report and cover three areas today related to the COVID-19 pandemic response. First, beaches and the expected revised and extended shelter in place order. Then police enforcement and public safety considerations and that chief mills will present on that. And then third, homelessness the homelessness response will have Susie O'Hara and Brooke Newman who will present. And then I'll introduce Brooke before the presentation as well who's our new employee. So I'll start with the beaches and the expected shelter in order that will be revised and extended. So as you all know, despite efforts to increase public awareness and additional staffing to ensure compliance with the shelter in place order and the social and physical distancing regulations, we did have a large number of visitors to our beaches, particularly visitors from out of the area and a lot of concern expressed around that. And as a result we are expecting revised and extended shelter in place order from health officer Gail Newell that will include significant more restrictions for beach access as well as potentially our restrictions to focus use on active recreation including for example the prohibition of beach chairs coolers umbrellas that sort of thing. We don't know what they will be yet but expect that the new order will be issued by the end of this week. We are the different agencies are providing input into the process but ultimately the health officer will make a decision and that order will be issued as I noted likely by the end of this week. We are communicating like I said communicating and coordinating closely with the county the city of capitol and state parks so that we can implement the new order in a way that is consistent to the extent possible across the county and so that we don't also impact each other negatively. Another area of concern that was raised this weekend in particular was the hotel and vacation rentals where visitors appear to have used these facilities inconsistent or in violation of the shelter in place order so in response we will be increasing we will be sending out notices to all of our hotels motels and vacation rentals informing the regulations and enforcing as appropriate as well and just wanted to point out that as a reminder members of the public if you'd like to receive the latest information on city services as well as the COVID-19 response to please visit the city's website at www.cityofscanacruz.com backslash coronavirus so we update the website on a regular basis with any of the changes that occur and that's a good place to get information on all these changes so with that I'll now turn it over to Chief Mills who will present on the public safety considerations. Good afternoon mayor and council members thank you for this opportunity to give you some information about what's currently going on I think Laura is going to bring up some slides that we can go through just to give you some update and you can go ahead and forward please one of the concerns what would calls for service look like but at this point since the COVID crisis started we are running essentially the same amount of calls for service as before there was a slight decline initially but overall you can see that it has now gone back up and we are running exactly what we were in the past okay go ahead and forward please we've had 374 calls regarding ordinance violations this was as a 422 and 26 of those calls required officers to wear universal protection which means to going to all suited up with goggles and masks and gloves and so forth our personnel we've issued 213 citations for violation of the stay in place orders 21 of those individuals lived elsewhere 98 in addition to that probably lived elsewhere but that information was not available we've also done a great deal of education as you can see thousands of warnings by our police officers, CSOs and rangers and our volunteers who have done an amazing job and then we've also had social media and then regular media that has reached into the millions I cannot say that it has had an educational piece on those from other places at this point but we can evaluate that next one please Mr. Mayor about sexual violence and domestic violence and mental health calls during this time as you can see our sexual assaults are actually down quite a bit next slide our domestic violent calls have been fluctuating you can see the timelines between last year and this year they're up a little bit this year however it has flattened out toward the end of the month and has gone back down although we are seeing some cases that are very troubling and concerning we're paying attention to that in our investigative section our burglaries initially started off then going up towards the right part of the slide you can see variations over time however they have gone back down where commercial burglaries however are still taking place and our officers have now reached almost 10 people in custody for these burglaries thank you next slide investigations are at a normal level and then suicide calls are actually fewer than we have had in the past we're not really sure why that is but we'll continue to watch it although we do understand that calls to suicide hotlines are actually up other places so we'll see if we can get more data on that and I think that's the last one so certainly if you have any questions I would take them we are continuing to put staff out on west cliff as well as the beaches to make sure that people are complying with the rules as best we can there are a lot of people out there thank you are there any questions for the police chiefs at this point in time chief I have one question I was wondering if we can speak to how the city has been making efforts to increase not only the police but other forms of patrols we adjusted our staffing model from a 410 plan to a 312 plan which means that we can put additional officers on the field out in the field around the clock and that gives us extra bodies to go out there and police in addition to that we have paid some overtime to rangers and CSOs especially in the high traffic areas such as west cliff and the beach to make sure that people are being educated warned and cited when appropriate and so we feel like we have a pretty good handle on that portion of it I also might add that this last weekend for instance the park and rec department all had employees out there in green vests educating people talking to people and doing everything we can to make sure that people understand what's expected by the public health officer to see executive director for the city manager great and then this question for the city manager do we also have lifeguards currently working on the beaches or is that something that might be happening in the future yes we had them this weekend I believe we had also on the the jet skis out enforcing actually Jason might be able to I think he's on the line I'm there Jason I do so yes we do have lifeguards in service but we're not following the traditional model of putting lifeguards in towers one I don't want to send a message that we're open for business to have more people come and also I don't want to expose them to everyone walking up to their towers but we do have a reactive rescue force on the beach and vehicles and we do have PWCs in the water we use them for making contact prior to the closure over Easter weekend with surfers that were in the water and we're making educational contacts and we are available for medical calls and for water rescue calls but it's not the traditional deployment that we've done in the past great thank you I think it's just really important for members of the public to know that the city is taking this extremely seriously and we've increased everything from rangers, CSOs parts employees in a lifeguard trying to engage and educate with members of our community so I very much appreciate that I will turn it over to Vice Mayor Myers followed by Council Member Brown and then Council Member Boulder Thank you Chief Mills for this report I just want to pass on some comments I've received from the community they're continuous I think to be some confusion on enforcement and approaches in individual situations so to the extent that we can utilize our public media, social media those kinds of things for people to really understand if they're contacted what's expected of them why they would be contacted and when remedies are going to be inspected so whether that's a citation or just asking them to move off the beach and stop the activity I think there's, I've gotten reports of uneven approaches from people either experiencing it or viewing how we're approaching it I compliment all of our staff on this monumental situation that you're faced with to try to really manage this but to the extent that we can potentially just keep using the social media and other aspects to really communicate with our public and other public communities and other organizations for either visitors if they are here but also for local people I think it would be very helpful and hopefully we can get into a rhythm with behaviors and expectations moving ahead and I think that will obviously help our community get large so thank you for your efforts I really appreciate the breakdown of information that you provided and want to thank you for and everybody on the in the SCPD for responding nimbly and you know effectively I think to the current environment and so I wanted to ask you though because call for service being ready doesn't necessarily tell us or get out the energy and the time that's extended for the you know calls I mean the nature of those calls might be different or you know so I'm just wondering that's the first question is there anything else that you could say to help us understand what's going on for you all this is kind of a question about labor practices so like the burden on you know beat officers versus others and then I also was wondering if you have any thoughts on the mental health being down by that amount that was interesting to me to see and so those are my questions thanks the burn is exactly the same on our beat officers and Rangers those who are out there handling stuff they are still dealing with many of the same problems as before but I don't see that as a whole lot different I think the the same type of crimes are taking place we're still doing de-escalation we're still dealing with people who have severe mental health problems but on the other portion of your question of you know mental health holds I think there are a couple reasons for that one is aren't quite as many people out and about to observe people acting out and having significant mental health issues but when we see our calls for people in crisis who are threatening suicide or down that also is an interesting thing to me maybe families are more available and I'm just speculating I have no idea for sure but we were taking a look at and trying to figure out why that would be down that far that is certainly something we need to take a look at Council Member Golder thank you for the information and I realize that nobody in this meeting has control ultimately over what decision about the beaches is county public health but that being said I encourage members of the public to reach out to her with their issues I know my inbox has been flooded with concerns one way or another about this and from the perspective of that schools are closed kids are home cooped up and I think for the physical and mental health of the community it's important to keep people active and being able to recreate in whatever way at the beaches and so just keeping that in mind that for our community it's really important and so one thought was has there been any press release directly I know there's been social media stuff but like an exact press release just for like Bay Area and like Santa Clara County news outlets stating stay in your county this kind of information because I think that could have an impact and you know things on the fines and fees and all sorts of things too you're asking me a question I think I got the gist of it has there been press releases and yes there have been press releases I I was thinking specifically though targeting like other cities not our city like Bay Area cities maybe Ralph yes Tony Elliot has been working with Park and Rec directors from other cities from state parks and other counties as well and we did issue a press release related towards residents outside of our county residents who have been visiting our beaches and stuff and we also did a few interviews with TV stations in those cities as well letting them know of the closures that are parking lots and just informing them that now is not really the time to visit our community especially with the shelter in place orders and that we did have officers out there citing individuals for not following shelter in place orders and all that stuff so yes communication has gone out to areas outside of our area for them that we didn't want visitors at this time on Saturday did an interview with K-R-O-M in San Francisco letting them know the same message an article has been published in Orange County about making plans to come to Santa Cruz and Supervisor Coonerty and myself we wrote a letter to that publication asking them that for right now let me please pull that down to not encourage folks to start making some of the plans while we still have the shelter in place order in effect and earlier in the month there was around the time when we had the Easter closures there was a public service announcement from myself Supervisor Leopold and the Mayor of Capitola to not come here during that time and it sounds like that might be getting reworked so we can release that and have that ongoing really encouraging people to not come to our community and to continue sheltering in place and Chief Middlesbrough to introduce Brooke and then turn it over to Suzy and Brooke who will do an update on the homelessness response so as you know we recently hired Brooke Newman as City's first homelessness response manager Brooke started on April 6 and has really gotten into the COVID-19 response very quickly playing a critical role at both the city and county level in planning and I'm sorry putting into implementing the county's Incident Command System planned for the homelessness response which is evolving and changing so she's very involved in that role and with Brooke's experience managing the downtown streets team sitting on City's community advisory committee on homelessness, the cash committee and also just serving on many local committees on the area of homelessness our expectation is that Brooke and her work with city staff and our partners at the county and with service providers and other stakeholders in the community will make an immediate impact for the city and the region now as we deal with the pandemic we will have to confront and work on for some time to come so with that we're very happy to have Brooke on board and to have that additional resource and focus and effort and I'll turn it over to Susie now and Brooke, thank you Thank you so much Martin and it's my pleasure to also introduce and congratulate Brooke on this assignment it's obviously quite a relief to me to have additional team members in the city manager's office that are focused on homelessness so good afternoon Mayor Cummings and council members, I'm going to share my screen and Brooke and I are going to walk through some slides around COVID related response to homelessness some of this information is going to be reshared from the last time I made a presentation at council and then we do also have new information to share with you all so let me share my screen hopefully everybody can see that okay so as I mentioned some of these slides are a bit of a review from the last time that I presented but I did want to talk about really the overarching policy guidance that the county is using through their incident command system which is technically called the shelter and care doc and has been called through the media and through press releases and out in the community through engagement the regional homelessness task force on COVID so as we have considered what elements to put together in response to COVID-19 and considering transition potential of the virus within the homeless population we really have looked at overarching policy guidance that's been provided at a national level in addition to the CDC guidance that has been updated several times over the last few weeks the national alliance to end homelessness created a report that they disseminated on March 23rd which obviously talks about what best practices should local municipalities consider as they try to minimize spread of the virus protect health and the health system infrastructure from a potential outbreak within the homeless community minimize economic impacts across the community and then also obviously care for the entire community both housed and unhoused alike that plan was built in concert with the other organizations that you see the logos here the national health care for homeless council national association for community health centers and the united health care community in states as a review I wanted to quickly go over again the structure for homelessness response within the COVID-19 pandemic the lead agency being the county of Santa Cruz through the homelessness task force which is managed through the human services department at the county each jurisdiction city jurisdiction within the county supports that work with both the city of Watsonville and the city of Santa Cruz having members of their city managers office sit on the policy committee for that task force across the spectrum of supportive services that the county is providing are include showing up are and supporting our existing shelters especially congregate shelters that have had high density sleeping arrangements those have all been those congregate settings have all been minimized and we have moved folks from the Salvation Army for instance shelters in both north and south county and the poly loft into new shelter capacity to ensure that social distancing can be achieved in addition to that providing distributed safety net services such as food and creating new pop opportunities from sheltered individuals to engage with the system of care and shelters thank you council members it's been an honor to serve the city and to start at this time has been quite the education so as many of you probably know the county of Santa Cruz is taking the lead on acquiring the different types of shelters that we need for people experiencing homelessness with the referrals that Susie mentioned in terms of decongesting and decompressing the shelters that were in place and the county has been taking folks experiencing homelessness that have been potentially diagnosed or exposed to COVID-19 highly medically vulnerable or over the age of 65 or have other underlying conditions is defined by the CDC into the isolation and quarantine shelters which are in a variety of hotels throughout the city and also the county service providers have been making those referrals they have also we have also worked on expanding congregate shelter so making sure that there is space for the people who are already served there but we have additional capacity now in places such as the veterans hall and a barracks tent up at the armory so we are able to serve more folks and then we are also doing work to ensure that folks who are unsheltered in encampments can safely socially distance while they are out there and provide them with the resources they need to stay safe outside discussing some of these that we have been working on in conjunction with the county and service providers throughout this time period Susie would you like to start? So per the national alliance to homelessness guidelines set forth in their document there are the six particular areas that they are recommending for local jurisdictions both city and counties to focus on as concrete action steps those include reorganizing and redeploying existing shelter which we have locally moved forward with and additional sites will be identified by the county moving forward lifting any ordinance and require 24-7 shelters so every shelter within our regional system has moved that was not 24-7 has now moved to 24-7 operations we are currently providing day services for folks at the Laurel street shelter at the armory rather than having those folks go out into the community during the day for instance and I think of the 16 shelter providers within the county all 16 have gone to 24-7 operations to ensure those that are receiving services can safely shelter in place at those locations we have created additional capacity to safely house people at risk while supporting the local hotel and motel service industries as Brooke mentioned this the county has contracted with now two hotels within the city of Santa Cruz they are looking towards finalizing a lease agreement on a third hotel those hotels will be exclusively used for it's called IQV isolated, quarantined and vulnerable populations those include obviously folks that are either COVID positive or under investigation for potential exposure symptomatic as well as those that are 65 and older and or medically vulnerable one hotel with a bed capacity of 27 is currently in operation with another hotel opening up tomorrow somewhat of a soft launch and we are moving folks around to ensure that we have enough capacity should there be a surge of COVID positive individuals in the unhoused population that we have the ability to move folks into additional rooms as we bring them online on that note there have been no reported and verified cases of COVID-19 within our homeless population we have a few folks that have been tested that have come back negative there are a few folks in the IQV shelter that's currently open now are awaiting test results but nobody within our current homeless population has tested positive yet with regard to the COVID-19 spread in addition to that obviously I mentioned this already following protocols for quarantining individuals that is happening through the hotel rooms expand medical respite care again these hotel rooms are really a medical response and so anybody who does not require hospitalization is provided medical attention at these hotels and then working with housing providers to plan on transition for individuals into supportive housing obviously that is a big part of demobilization and recovery and those supportive services will be part of the COVID related shelter system that we are putting in place with the county right now and as we work through funding and other considerations those supportive services will come online as staffing and other resource requirements are further realized Brooke I'm realizing I went through all of those and we were talking to the tag team I'm sorry anything else you want to add with that? No I'm happy to dive into the next slide Okay I'll advance Okay so just to give you all an outline of some of the additional work we've been doing with the county and a variety of service providers we have been doing outreach and engagement with the unsheltered community members you may have heard of this we call them Hauses that's the homeless outreach service site we have two locations currently in the city of Santa Cruz there are one or two potentially down in Watsonville and we're hoping to bring three more online here in Santa Cruz the purpose of these outreach sites is to make sure we are providing resources to those who don't necessarily feel comfortable going into shelter we want to ensure they have the ability to safely socially distance that they have water that they have food that they have supplies we have medical staff going out to see people and teams that just go out into the neighborhood these sites are located to perform outreach it's also meant to ensure that folks aren't traveling throughout the community and risking their own health and potentially the health of others we've additionally deployed new hygiene resources porta-potties and hand washing stations throughout the community locations for these can be found on the city of Santa Cruz website on the COVID-19 page there is a legend at the bottom of the map that allows people to see the times that these resources are open which ones are 24-7 and available to all we keep iterating constantly it says it's created but we're just as we move forward day by day changes working with the unhoused service providers county physicians we're just trying to engage with as many folks as possible one of the most exciting things that's happened is we have a streamlined shelter referral process now so this is a way for people to get referred into the expanded shelter programs so there's a phone number people can call it's rather small here but it's<PHONE_NUMBER> person will be assessed for their needs their vulnerability and triage there's also an email address which is quite lengthy COVID-19 homeless response at sanacruzcounty.us we've also worked with the county to help create a new temporary workforce so the city staff initially was helping to recruit and interview disaster service workers for the county we reached out to a variety of service providers including the homeless garden project housing matters, families at Rebley, Polly Loft, Paige Smith etc and we're able to recruit many folks with lived experience to become employed as hosts and shift supervisors at the variety of shelters that have been operationalized all together we've created new service provider guidance and I think we're calling it PPM instead of PPE because of the grade equipment but there's training and all sorts of guidance available for all the new staffing and those who are managing the new sites and additionally a new transitional age shelter program has been operationalized as well other considerations that I wanted to briefly touch on with the council are food not bombs, budget and funding and encampment management so as I know that there have been a number of emails that have come through to the city council email box with regard to the executive orders that the council will be considering later what I did want to comment on this with regard to food not bombs operation is that the city by virtue of trying to ensure that social distancing is maintained per the county health officers orders around food distribution has been working in earnest to ensure that food not bombs operation is safe and healthy for those that are receiving this important and critical service during our crisis during this incident. We provided food not bombs with an opportunity to have a permit at the bench lands where we know that there is potential for expansion and additional social distancing measures provided hygiene resources sanitation resources as well as platforms for the operation to be off the grass. In addition to that because the permit was issued we allowed for food not bombs to also operate in the event of rain in the river street garage unfortunately even with our best efforts Keith McHenry and food not bombs has decided to not comply with the location requirements of the permit and now we're operating from the Laurel front street parking lots and we are really working with the county environmental health and others to determine the best path forward to ensure that food resources are out in the community for those that are unsheltered but within the city's jurisdiction we are not allowing for large social gatherings that do not comply with the shelter in place order and the social distancing guidelines that are required during this time it has been challenging to say the least food not bombs is somewhat in compliance and somewhat not so what we really are trying to do is bolster alternative food options within the community and are working in partnership with the Santa Cruz City Schools on providing food for folks that are unsheltered in addition to that Brooke is working with the EOC and ICS structure to ensure that a food program within the unsheltered community that is not currently sheltered does have access to these important resources and I know has been in contact with a few organizations that may or coming has been working with for the last several weeks so I wanted to provide that update on food not bombs in addition to that budget and funding are obviously going to be a huge consideration for each and going forward and especially as the city and other local jurisdictions and quite frankly the entire state and world are going to be hit so hard with the budget implications and revenue implications associated with this pandemic the good news is is that Governor Newsom has worked very diligently on creating stimulus and other reimbursement opportunities for municipalities and local continuum of cares to engage with and under his new legislation and executive order there is potential for significant FEMA reimbursement but it does require cash flow and it requires a local funding source on the ground now in order for us to make some of these big budgetary considerations and really put the fiscal resources towards the program that we need right now I think we have upwards of 600 people sheltered which is obviously quite a bit more than what we had pre-COVID and the budget projections moving into the next several months that the county is really focused on are on the order of $67 million but with much of that hopefully potentially being reimbursed for FEMA and with other federal and state stimulus funding so as we know and get more information on that in the coming weeks we will be providing additional information and obviously Martina and Cheryl will be sharing that with the council moving forward and lastly but not least encampment management as I just wanted to share with the council members our continued need to manage encampments within the COVID response with CDC's guidelines around not disrupting encampments the challenge with that particular recommendation was there was little consideration of management encampments within the context of ensuring that one social distancing is taking place two hygiene resources are available and three if encampments are a significant health risk due to density and proximity to other areas of high utilization for the community we have to make sure that those risks are minimized to the extent possible so at areas like Coral streets at the bench lands with RVs on the far west side we are working with the county very closely to create opportunities to restructure those locations to create additional order and management to ensure social distancing providing additional hygiene resources and engaging through outreach to ensure that those folks that are sheltering in place outside in the community especially in our urban interface are doing so in a way that does not increase the risk of disease transmission within the encampment itself and within the community as we have more information on that we will be sharing that through the city manager as well and that concludes Brooks and my presentation and happy to have any questions if the mayor would like to proceed in that way Sure, are there any well thank you for that very well that end up presentation and I just like to say for the members of the community the vice mayor and myself have been working on the two by two very closely with county supervisors and the staff between the county and the city to ensure that we are able to bring on resources as quickly as possible there are challenges when it comes to trying to bring these resources online but we've been doing and the staff has been doing a really fantastic job of trying to get these resources online as quickly as possible so thank you, Brooks and Susie for all the hard work you're doing and Brooks welcome to the city as well. We're over to council members if anyone has any questions and I see council member Brown has their hand up I'll turn it over to you I thank you for the update and all of your good work and welcome, Brooke I'm glad to have you on board so that was a lot and it sounds like you've been you've been working overtime I imagine as many people have in this challenge challenging time I just have a couple of questions in relation to your presentation just to clarify a few things so in a couple of them I'm just going to get over so we can move along so in terms of the for hygiene facilities so hand washing and port-a-potty is it possible for us to get an updated list I know it's come up and we've had list distributed in various forms but I imagine it's changed so I'm just wondering if we could get a list it would be helpful for me to share with people when they bring it up to me and constituents yeah happy to do that council member brown the most updated map is on the city's website but we will share a link with you on that oh that's okay if it's there it's already there I'll go grab it thank you and the other question I had is related to food not bomb so you know I have heard a lot about this issue and you know I'm trying to find a way a beneficial way they do feed a lot of people I understand that one of the issues with the compliance that you raised Susie was not complying with the sites that are attached to permits have been some issues around the social distancing the six foot requirement which seem to I mean I'm not there every day I don't know if all the rules and shelter in place but I have seen some images and passed by and it looks like they are in compliance there so what are the are there any other issues that are of concern related to the compliance you mentioned environmental health so if you could just talk about that a little bit yeah and I wish I had the permit in front of me but sadly I do not but we worked with Marilyn Underwood who's the director of county health and her team to establish what quite frankly would be the expectations for any food distribution within the community with the overarching philosophy that we are really intending and this is the city and county and public health officer alike to not be permitting and or inviting any type of congregate social whether it's food distribution or not situation so with regard to the conditions that food not bombed is not in compliance with I think it really gets down to the nitty gritty that's within the permit in addition to the social distancing requirements food handling requirements who does that level of sanitation I mean it really does get down to are there is there sneeze protection thing you know is the area covered who is handling food how you know what is the congregation look around look like around where food is being handed out does the does the operation include additional congregate activities which food not bombs is doing in addition is passing out clothes and obviously other very needed things but it does lead to a high level congregation in a very small area and so what we've asked food not bombs to do is to transition to a take away model we offered him or I offered Keith a few weeks ago resources to do that and have ordered those or those are at the city city office right now so take away materials so you know it really does get to the specific conditions that were laid out by county environmental health that we included in the permit and deciding is obviously quite critical we've also had a lot of concerns from folks staff and and members alike of the bank that's directly adjacent to food not bombs current operation really having a challenge with kind of navigating through congregation of individuals as they are seeking business support in particular during this time at the bank so with that all being said obviously very complicated nuanced answer and it's not just as simple as the six foot rule thank you I appreciate that it's very complex and shifting all the time but I did want to raise it I just wanted to raise it because we've had a lot of messaging about it and I like to know kind of as much as I can thank you you're welcome for your presentation and Brooke that you're here working with us now the city bringing a lot of your experience and knowledge to this issue I just had just more of a very basic comment I appreciated in your first slide sort of the guiding policy and the guiding technical guidance that you guys are utilizing to develop our response and I think it's really important for our community to understand on that first slide the set of expertise that you're seeking through various national agencies and organizations and I think if there's one thing I've sort of learned over the last six weeks in communicating with our fellow elected leaders over at the county as well as the county staff is the professional approach and the the true intent to acknowledge the difficulty of people experiencing homeless and keeping them safe during not only this emergency but in general and I think we in a sense learned a lot by being forced into the situation and I think utilizing those technical guidance documents is a really refreshing thing to see from our service providers in terms of really looking at what are other what is going on nationally what are the coming out of both medical as well as emergency personnel as well as experts on homelessness nationally so I just I know it's sort of a little bit out of need at because of the situation we're in because of the COVID-19 situation but I just want to compliment both our internal team at the city as well as our county partners on the level of just the level of professionalism that everyone is approaching this with and I've been very impressed and I appreciate folks taking the time to really seek out all that national guidance so that we can make hopefully not just immediate impact but hopefully actually resetting and essentially upping our game here in Santa Cruz and really understanding how to approach this serious problem that we have here so I just want to say appreciate that and I feel very happy with the way that our city and county staff are working on this as well as I certainly think we will be seeing some true benefits to the folks who are in time of need right now so thank you everybody. Thank you Vice Mayor. Welcome to the comments that have been made welcome Brooke and thank you for the presentation I just wanted to share with you that a woman who I work with had volunteered for a shift actually at the transition age youth shelter and was sharing how one of the participants had felt safe and finally felt safe and cared for and I think I just really want to highlight how important it is to really look at these sub-populations these vulnerable populations and all the wonderful things that are really changing in a positive way for their lives especially our transition age youth who are either transitioning out of foster care or just don't have those safety nets that some of us are so privileged to have one of the questions that I have and I apologize I had to step away for a second but do we have or how is the county looking at the like to employ those folks to help be the folks that are going to oversee some of those shifts so that they can get some money in their pockets how is that looking? So it's looking very very positive and there is a call out for anybody who is interested in looking into employment at the county during this time in the shelters both the motel hotel IQV shelters as well as the congregate shelters that we're opening up I think we have interviewed and Brooke we had a slide on this just yesterday and I should have included it because the numbers are really unbelievable I think we've engaged with over 150 people and I think they've hired about 70 people thus far for both shifts supervisors and shelter hosts those positions as Brooke mentioned we started the recruitment here at the city because we had been hiring temp workers to help at the armory for a number of weeks and then did just recently a couple weeks ago transition that all the way to the county so they're doing all the recruitment as well as hiring and all of the onboarding and training those extra help disaster service workers are obviously temp workers for the county the wage is in concert with their clerical one and two classification and I think what we've seen is just a tremendous amount of interest in this time a lot of folks are obviously searching for additional employment to do that and we expect that there's going to be a surge of need potentially in the hundreds of employees so any information that people would like we can add that job recruitment announcement to the city's website and share that moving forward if that's of interest to the council I know a lot of folks are looking for opportunities during this time and so with any way we can get that length sent to council members it would be really helpful for people to know if we're looking for employment or we want to help ways that they can get involved so very much appreciate that I'm going to try to make it quick and synthesize it into one but I was just wondering if you could speak to some of the challenges with getting shelters online we're pulling on we're getting hotels up and running and some folks have said we're not doing enough so I think it might be helpful for folks in the community to have the process for getting hotels online and staffing and what it really takes to get something going sure absolutely and Brooke please do chime in on this as well so as soon as the shelter in place order was set by the public health officer it was really clear that there was a recommendation for local governing bodies both at the city and the county level to work within the context of our current shelter environment to assess and resource and shelter as many folks that meet a certain vulnerability index as quickly as we can though that process from a public health perspective is focused on a few different outcomes one is to reduce the risk of transmission within the homeless population but of particular interest is to ensure those that have medical vulnerabilities or that are exposed or diagnosed with COVID have the potential to shelter in place in a safe location that has provided medical care at some level the overarching philosophy being that in any population in the community if there is an outbreak particularly amongst our most vulnerable that could very much overwhelm our local hospital and medical care system so as the state and federal government were figuring out how to best serve those with these medical vulnerabilities we move forward with the project room key initiative those hotels are reserved for those with either positive COVID under investigation or medically vulnerable over 65 and that is what project room key is focused on so knowing that the county move forward with immediately engaging with hotels on ensuring that we had bed capacity especially if we had a surge of COVID positive within the homeless community in addition to that there has been direction from our local public health officer to ensure that we have enough beds to support folks that have other pre-existing conditions so co-morbidities with respiratory illness diabetes etc and those beds are being operationalized as we speak but to your point mayor the potential of having a bed and obtaining bed space especially at a hotel is just one piece of the puzzle ensuring that those that are served through the system of care have medical attention have opportunities for detox quite frankly in an isolated environment medically supported detox for instance have all the resources to shelter in place especially in isolation and quarantine so when you think about what are of us that are at liberty to go to take care of our essential services that is incredibly difficult when you are unhoused and so putting all of the resources together to ensure that people have access to laundry, staff food, water smokes, weed you name it we've considered it the ability to bring their pets it's a monumental effort and it needs to be safe and it needs to be fully all of those things need to be considered completely as you know many cities jumped into a high congregate setting shelter environment quite frankly without all of that important staffing planning and resource planning to the detriment of the health of the individuals in the congregate settings and to staff we saw that in San Francisco and other locations across the U.S. that is not something that this community wants to see and so we are taking really careful steps to make sure that folks that are engaged with the system are doing that we are making sure that their needs are met and that the safety of everybody is at the most level of consideration and just to add to that additionally in staffing I've been quite impressed by the candidates that we've received but we also want to make sure that these are people who are interested in the actual position of providing care and service to this population not simply folks who are just looking for a job so that is an additional consideration that does take time and we want to ensure that we have service to these clients given that we don't have these cases of COVID popping up in our homeless population that we've been really diligent to try to ensure that those people are safe and also as we're moving forward making sure that the shelters we're providing are also safe and secure so thank you all for all your work and keep up the good work thank you mayor and council thank you so I'll turn it back over to any further updates or reports no that was it thank you very much thank you to call on the clerk to provide any updates to the calendar no updates our agenda is council membership in city groups and outside agencies this is the time for council members to report out on any actions external boards committees and joint power authority meetings additionally if there's any work that council members have been doing related to COVID-19 this is also an opportunity for you to report out for future meetings please come prepared to provide an update on any meetings or actions that occur last council meeting so that the council and public can be informed so I'll just go down the list and I know that for two of our council members we're actually appointing them to committees today so there's no expectation on any report outs but I'll ask as well if those council members have anything to report out as it relates to COVID-19 so maybe I'll start with council members do you have anything to report out at this time I don't have anything to report out thank you council member Watkins I am unfortunately was not able to make the farmers market board meeting the most recent one but I know there's been some changes and I think some were noted in the newspaper this morning so I advise folks to sort of track how they can access quality local vegetables and fruits right now as well as other products safely and then just sort of briefly want to share that the county office of education has a dedicated COVID-19 website available for families and parents sort of trying to navigate how to how to just adjust to homeschooling as well as other types of tips available for those who are seeking some resources in the community I know 2-1-1 is really trying to be out there and beef up all their resources so if you're a non-profit provider I think if you can go ensure that 2-1-1 has the most current information about your service so that they're able to make proper referrals and just also want to share that those as we're starting to see more of our workforce come online we know that a lot of folks are going to be meeting child care and the county office the child development resource center is a free resource in the state that our county has that you pick up the phone you can call and you can tell them where you live and what you're looking for and you'll have somebody who will call you back and help you find a licensed quality child care provider so I advise folks who are looking for child care to use that free resource as I know you'll be needing it in order to come back to work and so I think that's about it for now to share I'd say Council Member Matthews A few things Donna Myers and I sit on the metro board and we had a board meeting recently it's all about COVID directly and indirectly we did because of the impact of COVID-19 we did adopt a declaration of fiscal emergency which will put us in a position for future aid the budget is being severely impacted I think most of you know that ridership is plummeted and which is an immediate cut in revenue but also tax revenue will be down fares are down so we did adopt tentative budgets operating and capital budgets understanding they will go through major changes as this unfolds into the future most of this past month for the metro system was just dealing with operational changes because of the budget implications and other operational considerations to protect both the riders and the drivers the routes were cut back distancing and course on and limits the passengers on buses it's really pervasive there were almost daily changes to the protocols and the regulations dropped a lot so that's dealing with COVID goes operationally and physically that's what the metro had to do and it's certainly not over in terms of the revenue committee as you all know we were back in the day looking at say possible increases in the KOT and that is clearly on hold that will be coming to you at the next meeting but I did work with and so part of this is what was done committee and partly related to committee work worked with economic development and to get out a notice to just letting them know we anticipate that that discussion will be officially put on hold and to be reiterating our desire to work with them and of course are suffering all over the country and I will say that our economic development department is working with the Santa Cruz county and communicating with the California their national trends and we have to deal with them at the local level and they have understood also I would say the restrictions the public health restrictions they put forth have been helpful on that downtown mansion corporation has been involved in the project that was initiated using the improvement consultants to combine the assessment districts and move forward with a property based improvement district there is hope that that can move forward it's in a state of I would say work capacity and fiscal considerations that are pretty significant but I have been working with downtown with the DMC with economic development and DPA representatives on that issue the library financing authority because it also depends on sales tax revenue has had some drops in revenue in recent quarter but visions further significant drops in the future and that will affect library operations so those are the main ones that I sit on Councilmember Brown do you have any committees to report on or COVID related items to report on yeah just really quickly I'll just say in case anybody was wondering I doubt you were but at the regional transportation commission we were moving ahead on budget adoption for this coming fiscal year and it probably comes as no surprise that we have very little to go on in terms of what might happen with our budget for this year obviously transportation project which range from work on the highway to local roads to the planning process for alternatives for the use of the rail line and kind of everything transit related transportation related is the budget is quite up in the air we rely on gas tax and sales tax major portion of that budget so we I'll just say we decided to move forward with what we had and on the budget and think about reevaluating that in the months to come it was a really daunting conversation part of the reason I want to mention it it was just really really daunting to think about all of the ways that these impacts are going to be seen kind of longer term and the work that we're going to have to do to move forward under these new conditions so that was one of my the cannabis committee Matt we actually reviewed and will be coming to the council some program changes that will kind of respond to the industry's concerns the cannabis industry concerns but also maintain the goals that we put forward when we initially adopted the guidelines and licensing requirements so that will be coming I think the second meeting in May oh I just wanted to give one other update on age friendly communities because I've been talking about this and saying coming soon for quite a while now I wanted to report that at our last meeting last week we had a discussion about the role of local governments the county and so that is kind of not on hold but we're working through some issues and I'll send a more detailed written update about that and how I think we should proceed in the future and I think that's all for now thank you do you have any, obviously you're not on any committees yet but I'm going to put you on those today but do you have anything to report out that might be COVID related you've been talking with community members about you're meeting by the way no other than I'm really doing a lot of work with housing matters I've been on that board for years and it is as we all know a most difficult time but the whole idea is to support the staff because they are on the front line and anyway we had a board meeting and that was really what we're trying to do as a board member and that still runs the day-to-day operation no, that's all thank you do you have anything to report out on? I think Council Member Matthews covered my two main committees, the downtown management corporation that I sit on the board and Metro the cows working group has not convened I believe we're going to be convening sometime next month so we'll be looking to report out some of the some of the successes on water quality with regards to our beach which we hope someday people can come back to in a healthy way and also just kind of external or other activities I have been participating with the mayor and Supervisor Coonerty and Archie Bernal in regular calls with our state and federally elected leaders including Congressman Panetta and Assembly Member Stone specifically we continue also to do outreach with our business sector through various conference calls collecting folks together to find out a little more about specific impacts we've been in touch with our community Stan and Cruz County Community Foundation Executive Director assessing impacts to nonprofits so just a lot of work with trying to understand the impacts of the community and try to get people connected and looking forward to developing more strategies for recovery as we move forward through this so that's my report. Thank you Thanks I'll just add guys myself have been working really closely with our other elected officials and we've been really working closely with many folks in our community the different sectors to ensure that people have the resources that they need and we hear their concerns and that we're able to communicate those concerns with our state and local representatives or state and federal representatives as far as committees and commissions to the majority the committees that I stand on a lot of those meetings have canceled and so just given the staff time and or the fact that at the beginning of the month everything kind of came to a grinding halt so some of those meetings like the Association of Monterey Community Governments and LACCO it sounds like those meetings are going to start ramping up again in the near future I will however report out that the Monterey Bay Community Power met on April 13 and the policy board adopted a resolution to defer Monterey Bay Community Power charges by 50% in May and June for all customers to assist with the financial burden that COVID-19 has inflicted on Central Coast communities, residents and businesses so those charges are going to be cut in half for the months of May and June to help customers and that was the unanimous vote in addition to that just to reflect on some other meetings I was able to meet with the Mexican Consulate and share information with them about how we're supporting our immigrant communities and throughout the COVID-19 process Vice Mayor and myself also met with representatives from the California Department Association the California Santa Cruz County Realtors Main Street Realtors was happening with the housing market and the rental communities a lot to pay their rent in April most of these associations reported out that about 90% of residential tenants were able to pay their rents but folks were concerned about what would be happening as we move into May and we start to see that people haven't been working the stimulus checks were something that came through in April but we're not expecting in May and so many folks are concerned with moving forward how the rental tenants would be able to pay their rents where there was a lot of concern was with commercial tenants everyone reported out that pretty much only a very small percentage of commercial businesses were able to pay their rents during the month of April and so moving forward that is a growing concern the California Department Association we as we continue to discuss what options could be done for tenants and I'll also mention that I did meet with some tenant advocates before this meeting to kind of get a sense of what tenants wanted to share during this meeting and the California Department Association expressed that the supporting of bills that would provide up to 80% of monthly rent that a tenant would owe for up to 3 months provided that landlords and participants in the program would agree to not increase rent on the unit for the specified period they would not charge late fees for part for past due rent paid for by the program and that they would not pursue any remaining rents for the month that were covered by the program and so that was a meeting that was held as I mentioned before Vice Mayor Myers and myself and we reached out to Councilmember Brown who is part of the Board of Housing Committee and we're going to be reviewing the language of that as it's developed so that we can see how it would affect our community while other components of that bill are there and understand whether or not we would be writing a letter of support and so that may be something that we will bring to council after we have an opportunity to review that bill. In addition to that I've been on weekly calls with the League of California Cities and we've been having weekly meetings with the county health officer, the health service agency director, the county administrative officer, the sheriff and the mayors from the Board of Cities so that we're able to kind of express how our communities are being impacted individually and understand what decisions are being made for COVID-19 is impacting the county and so I've been sending updates to the Councilmembers but I'm going to be sending weekly updates either in the form of a PDF or a webinar to share this information with the community and I'd just like to let folks know that we're preparing a flyer but we are anticipating this Friday that I'll be leading a webinar at 4pm just to provide the community with some updates on how we're progressing over time and give the community an additional opportunity to ask questions on how we're responding to COVID-19 and that's all I wanted to report on. Are you going to share about how people can access your webinar for Friday? As we speak and we're hoping to have that link up and as we're out actually do you want to speak to that? Right now it is scheduled for Friday at 4pm we are transitioning the licenses for webinars from one staff member to another and we didn't want to do that before the Council meeting and mess the settings up for this meeting so immediately after this meeting we'll have the directions available for the community and we'll be sharing it out there. We are limited to 500 so hopefully we do reach that max but if we do reach that maximum it will be recorded and will be available to the public after the meeting. Now is the time to call in comment on items number 4 to 14 instructions should be on your screen and please remember to mute your streaming device to raise your hand and listen for the cue saying that you have been unmuted. We'll be active on in one motion unless an item is pulled by Council member for further discussion. Are there any Council members who would like to pull any items onto this agenda? Hearing none. I just wanted to speak to item number 6. Sure. I think this will be a time to speak to that. I just really wanted to highlight it in that for those who weren't on the Council or following this this is for the interest of those who are working hang on just a second I'm trying to transition my to the online version. So this is the resolution urging the California state legislator and the governor to immediately overturn SB 872 which took place in the city of Santa Cruz. The city of Santa Cruz actually made the decision to place this item to place this measure on our ballot and within that timeframe that the state took action which then led us as a Council to have to rescind that decision unfortunately. I think this will be a time to speak to item number 6. I think this will be a time to rescind that decision unfortunately. I just really wanted to highlight that other communities that have passed these types of measures have used the funds to support those who are experiencing food inequities and food hunger at this time and also an additional element that thank you Councilor Matthews for pointing out and sugar sweeten beverages contribute to a lot of the underlying health impacts that we're seeing having a more responsible response to the COVID crisis. So, just sort of wanting to highlight that and thank the Council hopefully in advance for wanting to move forward with this resolution. And I'd just like to say as well thank you Councilmember Watkins for bringing this forward. I think it's really important that local jurisdictions have control over sugar sweeten beverages and whether or not we want to tax those items because we should be in control of the health of our community. So, I want to thank you for bringing that forward as well. We have Councilmember Myers and then Councilmember Brown. I hear that no one had pulled any other irons. I was just going to offer a motion to pass that to approve the consent agenda. Prior to approving we're going to open up to public comment but I'll come back to you after public comment. Thank you. I just wanted to follow Member Watkins statements and Mayor Cummings about this item. Thank you for bringing it forward. Just to say we were not only are we unique in that we had voted to place us on the ballot but with each other we cast that vote while the average industry had succeeded in getting the legislature to adopt this. So they put a tremendous amount of pressure on the state legislature and I think that I'm really glad to see that we're doing this to kind of push back and I think it'll be interesting to see how this plays out of the state but I'm hopeful that we'll get there. I will turn it over to the members of the public.  We will then acknowledge you so you can comment on the items on our consent agenda. See if people want to. All right. Seeing none I'll bring it back to council for action and deliberation. I'll turn it back over to Vice Mayor Myers seconded by Council Member Watkins and I'd like to ask the clerk to please call a roll call. Thank you Mayor. Council Member Byers. Here. Yes. Okay. Matthews. Boulder. Vice Mayor Myers and Mayor Cummings. This is the HUD 2020-2021 action plan and the 2020-2025 consolidation plan implementation on this item. We close the phone until May 12. So we will revisit that item on our May 12 agenda. This is general business. We begin this afternoon with agenda item number 16. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item that you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and then return to council for deliberation and action. If you're interested in commenting on item number 16 which is for publication and ordinance amending section 3.08 .030 and 3.08 .00 of an adding section 3.08 .091 to the Santa Cruz minutes to establish regulations for the use, award and evaluation of best value project delivery methods for construction projects. Please press star 9 on your phone to raise your hands after the questions have been made from council. And when it's your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you've been un-muted. And so I'll turn this over to Kevin Crosley, senior professional engineer and Melissa Capping, management analyst. Good afternoon, Mayor Cummings, council members. This is Rose Mary-Minard. I'm going to just do a really quick introduction and then Kevin is going to give you a brief presentation. The council took action in October last year to put a charter amendment item on the agenda to allow for what's called best value procurement of contractual and design services for capital projects. And that item was on the March 3rd election ballot and it passed with an 81% vote. So one of the things that the measure directed us to do was in the event that it was passed to bring back the implementing language and ordinance to the council for your action. So this is a presentation to bring that information forward and now I'm going to turn it over to Kevin Crosley for his, for the presentation. I suspect what's going on is we're working on trying to figure out how to get the presentation to advance there in moments. Let's go into speaker mode Kevin or presentation mode. Bonnie, can you help to give direction about how to get the presentation to advance? Bonnie, why don't we take a quick break while we try to figure out these technical difficulties? I couldn't get to my unmute button because she's here on the screen. Can you go to the slide show and then from beginning? We can't hear him. Kevin, are you unmuted? Here we go. Kevin, are you unmuted? Yes. This is Laura. Go into the PowerPoint and go to slide show. Up at this part, Kevin. Right here. Slide show. And then click on setup slide show. Kevin, can you hear Laura? His volume is a different issue. He's called in as an attendee, not as a panelist. He is a panelist. Do you want Melissa? Do you want me to try to do that? Yes, please. Okay. Can someone make me the presenter? That's Melissa, right? Yes, this is Melissa. I got an error saying that Kevin has to stop the screen share if he wants me to start doing it. One of those things we didn't practice, right? Yeah. Hey, Rose, Mary, are you going to be giving the presentation? Like speaking? Melissa can give it. Okay, because if somebody wants to put it in the M drive, I can share it from chambers. Can you see my screen now? It should be on screen share now. Can you see the presentation? Yes. Can you see the project delivery methods now? Well, thank you for your patience while we work this out. I appreciate it. So when we talk about best value project delivery methods, this is kind of a good visual that shows you how the contracts work. The traditional contract, the owner would be the city and we contract separately with the designer and a contractor. You can kind of see that gap is not a contractual relationship between the designer and contractor. So when we're talking about best value project delivery methods, we're talking about contracts where people are contracted together in ways where they work together. So some examples of those are the construction manager at risk design build contracts and samples of those. So let's move on. So some of the benefits of best value. These are the benefits that we've experienced or agencies have experienced throughout California. You're talking about reduced project costs, expedited schedules and then you have the innovative solutions and also improved quality and owner satisfaction with the projects overall. So that's why they're called best value. So just to kind of explain why we're doing this now instead of years ago. Right now we have several large technically complex projects on the near horizon. We're looking at innovative solutions that accomplish these projects. We're looking to get some real-time information to make better decisions and these collaborative contract relationships will help us to better coordinate efforts on these really complex projects. So I want to put in the horizon and the near horizon in June 2020 we're actually going to be coming back to you to talk about our first progressive design build contract that we would like to seek your approval on. So we're going to talk about this for a couple major investment plans for a lot of treatment plans. So that's exciting for us. So I wanted to talk a little bit why we did measure W which Rosemary referred to at the beginning of the introduction of this and that is because California public contract code does allow cities to do best value contracting that allows projects that are only over a million dollars for building or buildings. And so it specifically excludes street projects and water infrastructure projects. So measure W was written to give us the flexibility to use these best value procurement methods for any project size and scope. Let's see. So this is what measure W looked like. You can see the new language and here specifically says that we will be establishing by ordinance the regulations for the award use and evaluation of these contracts. So that is why we're here. We created that ordinance for review and here are some of the highlights. Basically a council approval prior to using best value. So we will be coming to you prior to the current with the award of the contract to seek your approval on using this type of contracting. Now we are going to be using a competitive proposal process to evaluate and award these contracts. So we'll still be using competitive process out there and we're using the competitive the competitive process that's already outlined in the Unicode. So we're not creating anything crazy and new. We're going to be using the competitive process. One thing we did in this year is we defined eligibility a little bit better with design build teams. Sometimes those team members can have worked on previous projects for the city. So we wanted to clarify how and when people that have been working on projects before how they can work with us on future design build projects. That's kind of like some of the highlights of the ordinance. And then some of the existing things that we care about as a city all those things will be included in these new best-selling contracts. We'll still be including the language in there about the apprentice and local hire requirements. We will still be using prevailing wage requirements. These type of contracting are accepted by all the state and federal grant funding entities. So we're not doing anything that is new and crazy. They all accept this type of contracting and you can do this type of contracting with project labor agreements. So let's open it up for questions. Thank you for that presentation. I'll bring it back to council. Is there any council member who has any questions on this item at this time? Seeing none the list of numbers phone numbers you can call in on your screen.  When it's your time to speak you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. That's a few minutes. Members of the public who are calling in on this item I'll bring it back to council member Matthews. Thank you Will. Yes I'm live. Thank you Rosemarie for bringing this to us. Back in the fall and the timing is obviously so important. Look what we approved on our consent agenda. A couple of major public works projects and I think five big water projects. So obviously this promises to hold really great benefits for us going into the future. So thank you. It's one of those things that looks spectacularly un-sexy going into the election. We want this value. Obviously it means a lot. It has broad support out in the community. Casting with 81% is amazing. People tell us 20% of people will vote no on anything. So that's about as close as you get to unanimous. Anyway thank you for all the technical work that went into it. It'll pay off. So with that I'll just go ahead and move the first meeting. I'll just go back to the second. We have a second item. Council Member Mathews seconded by Council member Watkins and then Vice Mayor Myers I saw you had to hand it up. No I was going to second it but I'll bring it back down. Good row Shambu. At this time I'll turn it over to the clerk to do a little call on item. Council Member Buyers. Thank you for your support. Appreciate it. And I just like to add to Mary, but really it was so many people in your department. I know you have really good work on this. So that's good. All of you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for bringing this emergency declaration and connection with COVID-19 pandemic by 60 days and ratifying. Mayor Cummings, sorry. Is there a way we could take a quick break? Yeah, well, we took a five minute break, and then we'll come back at what would take. Thank you. She's not back on. I'm wondering if she might be having some trouble. Justin, you're muted again. Justin, you're muted. I was going to see if we could check people's audio real quick. Donna, can you just check your audio? Can you hear me? Worse than before. Maybe try using your phone, because it comes in and out. Okay. Captain, can we check your audio? Yeah, can you hear me? Martín? Yeah, I'm here. Oh, the other martini. Oh, okay, I'm on again. Justin, this is Laura. I called in via my daughter's cell phone as a participant, and it worked. So I think it's working on the participant's side. Okay, great. I think what we'll do when we get to oral communications is that we can allow people to speak maybe on consent, and then any item on consent, and then the items. Yeah, so an item number 16, and then if no one wants to speak on that, we can then move into oral communications, and that way people can have an opportunity to weigh in on those if they want to. Mayor, it would be helpful if they would specify if they're speaking on a specific item, as opposed to oral communication. Maybe what we could do is start with, if they want to speak to any item on oral communication and identify that item, then we move on to item 16, and then we move on to oral communications. That sounds like it would work. I'm here. So now I think Sandy, are you there? I'm here. Can you hear me now?  Oh yeah, yeah, thank you. I think you keep going. Just let me know if I'm in. I think we're good. So we let the public know we had some technical difficulties. Apparently, the calling numbers have requested a password, and folks weren't able to comment on earlier items. And so what we'll do is before, after we get through all of our general business prior to our communications, we will allow members of the public who wanted to comment on anything on consent to identify the item on the consent agenda, should they wish to comment on it. They'll have two minutes to comment on that item. Additionally, there's members of the public who wanted to comment on item number 16 will provide time for members of the public to comment on that item. And then we will continue to move on with oral communications. So we apologize for the technical difficulties, but we hope that if you still would like to weigh in on items that have been heard earlier in the day that you would have the time to express yourself prior to oral communications. So on to our next item, general item of business, item number 17. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council who then take public comment and then return to council for action and deliberation. Item number 17, some members of the public are aware is a resolution extending the emergency declaration in connection with COVID-19 pandemic by 60 days and ratifying and confirming the director of emergency services, executive orders and OS 2020-1 through 2020-6. And I'll turn it over to our city attorney, Tony Kandadi for the presentation. Thank you, Mayor Cummings. Good afternoon and good afternoon members of the city council and the deaf and public schools. This afternoon, I am for you is a resolution extending the declaration of emergency in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. And ratifying a series of executive orders issued by the city manager acting in his capacity as director of emergency services in connection with the same topic. As you will recall, the council did adopt its initial declaration of a local health emergency on March 10th. This is a follow-up to a statewide declaration of emergency issued by Governor Newsom on March 4th and a declaration of a county-wide health emergency by County Health Officer Gail Newell on March 6th. Under the California law, when the council adopts an emergency declaration of this sort, it's only temporary in nature. And so what the law requires is that as soon as the emergency situation has been resolved, that the council rescind the emergency declaration. And in any event, if it does not do so, then it's required to take up the item again within 60 days of the initial declaration or the emergency declaration will expire. Now, what the emergency declaration, other than just to make the public aware of a crisis situation, what it does is a number of things. First, it's a requirement for public agencies in the area to cooperate and provide mutual aid and assistance in dealing with the emergency. You might have seen information about city staff being deployed at county health homeless facilities and whatnot, and that is pursuant to the declaration of emergency. Different agencies that require assistance are able to reach out and either provide or receive assistance from their other local agencies. The declaration also gives the city the opportunity to seek and obtain reimbursement for the cost of responding to the emergency declaration. Either through the state of California when there's a statewide emergency or through the federal emergency management agency for a national emergency. And so this declaration is one of the things that we need to do in order to potentially qualify for reimbursement of some of the expenditures that the city is incurring, responding to this crisis. The emergency declaration does is it empowers the city manager acting as your designated emergency services director to summarily abate any emergency or nuisance conditions that exist that are impacted by the emergency. And it issue rules and regulations on matters that are reasonably related to the protection of life and property as affected by the emergency. And so one of the things that we've all seen and spend time reading and trying to understand and digest are the theories of public health officer borders that have been issued by the county public health officer. And under our system, the county public health officer also serves as the public health officer for the city. Unlike the unincorporated areas of the county where the sheriff's department in cooperation with the health officer and enforcing those declarations and those orders. The city is called upon to enforce the health officers, shelter in place orders and other emergency orders that are issued in connection with the crisis. And so working with the police department and the director of emergency services, several actions have been undertaken to implement the emergency. And the first was in shortly after the declaration of emergency was an order number 2020-01 that ordered summary nuisance abatement of a large unsanctioned encampment adjacent to the post office with author of temporary alternative shelter to the occupants. And this was done in observation of a number of factors that were directly affected by the shelter in place were including proximity, public gatherings, requirements and that sort of thing. The second summary nuisance abatement of a food distribution service and sort of a rally or social gathering at the city's town clock at North Pacific Avenue on Water Street and the city manager issued this directive to provide an alternative means of providing food services of that sort that respect the shelter in place and social distancing requirements. You heard about that from Midohera earlier this afternoon. The third was an order was ordering a temporary suspension of personnel rules while the emergency regulations remain in effect. And this wasn't really just a wholesale suspension of personnel rules that are really more related to the ability to make some emergency personnel decisions to bring on board staff on a shortened basis to respond to the emergency situation. The fourth was establishing basic safety rules and permit requirements for individuals and organizations engaging in outdoor food service operations. And the intent was to set up parameters to ensure that these food service operations which are which are very important to the homeless population in Santa Cruz but are also done in a way that is safe and sanitary. The fifth is ordering all persons in the city of Santa Cruz to adhere to all lawful orders from the county and the state of California relating to COVID-19. And this is really intended to give the city staff the enforcement tools necessary to ensure that these very important safety rules are implemented throughout the community in a way that protects public health and safety and reduces the risk of spread of COVID-19 virus. And the last was number 2020-06 establishing a temporary limit of 15% on commissions charged by third party food delivery companies to support Santa Cruz restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic. And I've heard questions about what commissions by food delivery services has to do with responding to a public health emergency. But if you compare some of the actions that have been taken by the federal government and the state government with respect to court deadlines, with respect to providing financial relief to businesses, to various actions that have been taken, they're not all specifically related to the spread of COVID-19. They're also intended to address some of the economic fallout of this crisis and of the response to pollution, which is before you would merely ratify the actions that have been taken. It's not the council not taking the specific action. It's merely just ratifying these actions that have already been taken by the director of emergency services and extending the declaration of emergency for 60 days or until the council decides to declare an end to the emergency. My guess, just given everything that we know, is that we'll be back in front of you with a modified resolution to further extend the declaration of emergency in 60 days, but hopefully on less stringent terms in terms of the sheltering in place orders and whatnot. And I'm happy to respond to any questions or comments from council members. Thank you for that presentation. Are there any questions from council members at this time on the item that's before us? Seeing none, if members of the public are interested in commenting on item number 16, which is, sorry, my apologies, item number 17, which is a resolution extending the emergency declaration in conjunction with COVID-19. There should be numbers on your screen that you can call in on. After you've called in, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak, you will hear the announcement that you have been unmuted and your timer will be set to two minutes. We have a number of cars on the line and so we're going to begin unmuting folks now. Yeah, I just have a quick question if I could before you do that. Thank you, Tony, for the clear overview of the recommendation that's being made today. I do have, so I have two questions. One, I'm just wondering, because we've received a lot of obviously common, all different from all different perspectives about how to proceed here. So I just want to ask you if you could just by in terms of what we're being asked to do today. This is not, is this, is there anything that's changing in terms of the authority of the emergency services manager emergency declaration versus the one that we've had in effect? Is there anything that's changing because I think there's been some confusion in the community about us extending our, you know, extending our authority or the city manager's office authority in some way. So just wanted to ask you to comment on that. No, the authority of the city manager as emergency services director is the municipal code. The declaration of the emergency does give the city manager tools that would not be available in the absence of such an emergency. But they have to be narrowly focused on addressing some of the conditions in of the emergency that's not even a fully unrelated topic. And so, and so what this is really doing is just following the requirements of the code to bring these emergency declarations to the attention of the council for comments and for for and the code specifically says for confirmation. But it's really just to acknowledge that the actions have been taken. And I suppose it would be possible for the council to direct the emergency services director to modify or to send more and more of these. But it's really just to make sure that there's a public process of reviewing and. So I just just want just to clarify to make sure it's clear. The, so that because there's two parts, there's the, you know, kind of post facto operation of the actions that have been taken but the extension of the order is not, is it providing additional tools or additional. Yeah, okay, that's what I thought I wanted to make sure that was here. The real critical, the real critical thing here, frankly, is that the agency that the city is extending considerable resources responding to this crisis and we're really documenting those carefully and keeping track of them. The fire chief is participating in this meeting and having that emergency declaration place is in place is one of the necessary aspects that we need in order to ensure the maximum extent possible that we have the opportunity to seek reimbursement of these costs. That's the primary. But again, as the code indicates, if the emergency service director issues. Emergency rules or regulations and the code requires that they be presented to the. Council for the consummation as the earliest practical opportunity. Thank you. The city manager. Okay, I was just going to add that it merely extends the time frame. It doesn't really change any of the authorities or anything around us. It's just the time frame. Also, just for clarification for the public, the items that have been the, the executive orders, those have already taken, I just wanted to be clear to the public, maybe you can confirm this, but those are already into place and so we're not taking new actions at this time. These are all actions that previously taking place and all we're doing currently is ratifying and confirming the actions that have been taken place in the past. That is exactly right. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments from members of the council? Seeing none. I'll turn it over to the public for public comment. With the exception of Robert Norris from pop members of the public, what two minutes to speak on this item. And as I mentioned before, the numbers on your screen, please dial one of those. If a number is busy, please try to try the next numbers that you can call in and star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. And as I mentioned before, the exception of Robert Norris from pop, you will have two minutes to speak on this item. 3173 you are online. Thank you. It's just Peter goblum calling in. And I urge you to not ratify or confirm orders one, two and four. And please take your duty seriously. You're not here to rubber stamp the city manager's orders. You're here as our elected representatives to make sure that he's doing what he's doing is proper and legal and authorized. And those orders are not authorized for a simple reason. They rely entirely on his statements that he has the authority to conduct a summary nuisance abatement under municipal code 2.2, 0.2, 0.8, 0. That's his authority for one, two and four. 2.2, 0.8, 0 does not allow him to do this refers only to abatement of buildings that are damaged just came out of the earthquake. The section read whenever in the judgment of the director, it appears that a public nuisance exists in on or near any building. He may summarily order that the building be vacated, barricaded, repaired or demolished. That's it. That's the only kind of summary misses abatement he can order. And it's very important because this summary means he doesn't have to get a court to order it, which is normally the process. But please look at that carefully. You can pull it up on your screens. Look at the statute that he relies on for his authority. The authority is not there. And even if you think he has some other authority, but he relied on that one, if you rely on something else, if you rely on something else, I still urge you not to confirm or ratify those three orders as a message to the city attorney and the city manager to be more open and transparent and not to suggest that he has the powers under the statute, which he does not have. It's crucial because he's given so much wide power authority under the statutes. It really has to be reined in by you or elected representative. Thank you. Hi, this is Garrett Phillip. Hey, I congratulate the city manager for fine work and I generally endorse this agenda item. These orders and extended emergency seems very reasonable. But missing on the agenda are specific actions to restart even one iota of the economy and admission that it's time to change policy course based on new information on risk fatality that comes out every day. I don't think we should just be a puppet for the county health authority. There might be things that, you know, are special to Santa Cruz and I hope we can allow for that. And I'm so worried about the item number five there. But anyway, this current government emergency economic annihilation is based on this review. In great opinions that first said no big deal, then millions are going to die based on nothing. It's a pure fear of the unknown.  Covid's 10 times more deadly than the flu. And increasingly all we find is that's falsehood. The plan is no one ever should get infected at any cost. Isolation quarantine until the vaccine is available, turn the economy on and off based on health care capacity. This is madness going forward and may become the biggest policy mistake in my lifetime, including Vietnam and Iraq. This is a health emergency, but only for the minority of the vulnerable. 97% of the Covid hospital admissions are for 50 year olds and older and critical cases generally have underlying core mobility conditions. We are not New York City or Italy. Our median age is 29, not 36 like over the hill. We are healthier and the 18 patients, the mere 18 patients and two deaths in the county prove it. It's not that we shelter better. We cannot afford the economic on off switch. The government cannot admit its blanket policy needs a local adjustment and there are not essential workers and not essential. There are also at risk workers unhealthy over 50 and not at risk, healthy under 50 who statistically won't find this under any conditions, any words to the flu at 2017. Alright, next speaker. Hi, this is Robert Norris of Huff. I think you if you are going to pass this and I tend to agree with Peter Gelblum earlier, you know, can you hear me? I pause you for one sec. I just want to make sure that given that it's Robert Norris from Huff that we make sure that he has the four minutes that he required. I got it. Authority, if you're going to be passing this resolution narrow it to 30 days.  And the authority that is expanded and it is expanded contrary to what the city attorney and the city manager said, because of item 18, which you haven't come up to yet, which massively deputizes scores and scores of city employees to act as police officers, sort of many cops. Now, the California Emergency Services Act expiring May 9th authorizes the city to do a number of things to more effectively respond to COVID-19. So what was the first order that the acting all powerful city manager did? Did he place port-a-potties next to existing encampments to provide safer, more sanitary conditions for that vulnerable population? No, he's repeatedly refused to do this and forwarded private attempts to do so and the Pam has now been placed and I thank you for that. I thank the city for doing that. However, for a long time last year that remained undone and maybe set the stage for people are spreading this or not. COVID positive folks in the homeless population as is claimed. Now the COVID-19 crisis also manager has violated. He'd encouraged the shelter in place by disrupting, ejecting and forcing the movement. That was Bernal's action through the police of a relatively safe encampment on the sidewalk next to the post office relocating him to a fenced off area without food, water or safe distancing. That was Bernal's first order, 2021. His second order was to block survival food and services distribution center set up at the town clock by Food Not Bombs, the homeless union and off to provide the 24-hour services that Bernal chose not to open. Some homeless people slept nearby but all these areas have been fenced off at the town clock the post office scope park and elsewhere again by the order, which essentially removed an accessible site. His fourth order was again directed at Food Not Bombs, which he has apparently a particular passion for getting rid of to force it away from its more accessible location at the town clock driven to essentially the soggy, unsound ground health of its clients. Food Not Bombs moved without a permit without permission to its location at Laurel and front streets. What now serves scores of people from one to six p.m. daily using safe distancing and sanitary equipment protections. Food Not Bombs is effective. Assistance of those outside is embarrassed the city unwilling to provide the necessary motel rooms in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County and at least 14 other counties. According to Governor Newsom, it's opened up for the vulnerable. Instead, Bernal and this council continue to fund and facilitate congregate shelters that heighten the risk of COVID-19 transmission while insisting that house folks shut themselves indoors on penalty of a $1,000 fine. We need a directive to the city manager, the police chief and his newly designated mini cops that they follow the CDC guidelines for a ending the sweeps against the community activity by homeless advocates. And of course, we should add that to any passage of this. Thank you. All right, next speaker. My name is James Ewing Whitman. You know, I wanted to comment on what the woman talked about in the 510 30 years and where Santa Cruz is going, but I couldn't. I wanted to comment about what Andy Mills said, but I couldn't. But the only thing I can say right now is that this whole thing is madness and different mass extinctions with the earth's biosphere. And that's never talked about with the city of Santa Cruz like it's like it's its own biosphere. So I just feel really kind of frustrated that it when I when I witness is madness. But on a different note before I leave, this might be madness. Well, but somebody gave me a very nice compliment today. They said you channel God's voice. So my name is James Ewing Whitman and I write a lot of stuff on Facebook. No, it's positive. But obviously that might have been so thank you very much for your time. And I'm looking forward to when the council can actually meet. And I think that this that, you know, at least the businesses can be the county and the state through the federal government because this isn't what our constitution was was designed for at all. So thank you very much. Are there any other members of the public would like to speak to us on this item? If so, please call one of the numbers that is on your screen and press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And with your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement and the time will be set to two minutes. Seeing no further members of the public who'd like to speak to this item and I'll bring it back to council for actions. And I see a hand up by council vice mayor Myers. Yeah, I'm ready to move the item, but I'm happy to continue to have discussion with the remaining remaining council members. But I'm happy to make a motion when when the time is ready. Thank you. Thank you, mayor. I was just seeing is maybe Mr. Kandadi wanted to speak to some of the legal questions that were brought up in regards to the search of the. I guess I would like to respond to the comment about the authority to primarily base a building. I think if you look at the whole team of chapter 220, it doesn't just speak to the abatement of dangerous buildings. It also gives the emergency services director the authority to make an issue rules and regulations on matters reasonably related to the protection of life and property. And I think it's very effective by such emergency to change vital to fly the equipment. Another prop and other properties are lacking in the protection of life and property of people require emergency services with any city officer employees. There is no necessary personnel and material in any of any city department or agency and execute on his or her ordinary powers of the city officer and special powers conferred by by the municipal code and by any statute of agreement or other lawful authority. And so, not only was the city manager as a director of emergency services implementing the authority under chapter 220, but he was also implementing the county health officers shelter in place order and state distancing regulations in a manner that, you know, looking at it as a cooperative asset between