Okay if everyone can turn on your cameras we are ready to begin. Happy to good afternoon and welcome the 2 30 p.m. session of the February 22nd 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. I would like to ask the clerk please call roll. Mayor come to member of spellentary Johnson. Here. Here. Mayor Watson. Here. Mayor Burger. President. Thank you. Our first item on the agenda is a parking for hope presentation and I'd like to invite Heather Perez, program director of hope services to turn on the key. Oh great there you are and there's hi everybody. Thank you for joining being here today. Something I'd like to read and then I'll give you an opportunity to say anything you'd like to say. Very well.  Your crews have helped to keep our downtown sidewalks and streets clean and welcoming for 23 years now. Each holiday season our parking for hope program in partnership with the downtown association donates all of the funds collected from our downtown parking meters over eight days in December. Hope service. This is in support of and the station for all that they do. Today we have with us hope service. Hope service director Heather Perez. Hope services employment coordinator David Bronte and the downtown crew members Mark, Eric Rembore, Andres Gofield and Anthony Van Tim. Did I forget anyone? I'm pleased to virtually present you all with a check from our eighth annual parking for hope program in the amount of $50,000, $982, $15,982. Total amount collected for hope services over eight years is $200, $18,000. Grateful for your important work and hope that this donation will help it to continue. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The manager from hopes for hope services and I just want to say we all services want to think of me and the Santa Cruz for the parking for hope fundraiser. It keeps five of our participants working in their community. And this contribution helps our program running and employees, our participants to continue to be beautiful. And you know, it means a lot to them, part of their community and working in their community. So thank you so much. So Heather, thank you. Thank you, everyone. This is also a presentation, the presentation from Santa Cruz mountains trails volunteers. And I'd like to invite Emma Ustaz, the trails program manager and Santa Cruz mountains trails sports ship. Am I here with us? He's not here with us yet. Okay, I don't see Emma either. We can come back to this item if need be. Okay. Yeah, I'm going to send her a quick challenge. Great. Thank you so much. I will move on to announcements then. And then we will move on to the regular meeting. So today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, city of Santa Cruz.com. If you wish to comment on an item on the agenda today, you can call in in the beginning of the item you are wanting to comment on using the instructions on your screen. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there was a delay in streaming so if you continue to listen with your television or streaming device may miss your opportunity to speak. When it's your time for public comment, please raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature in the webinar controls on your please note that public comment is heard only on council items that council is taking action on and not regular updates. Items that will be open for public comment during today's meeting are numbers eight to 14 on our agenda. I'd like to ask council members if there are any statements of disqualification. And then I'd like to ask state clerk to pronounce any additions and deletion. I'd like to now call on the city attorney Tony condati to provide a report on our closed session. Yes, good afternoon. Mayor Brunner members of the city council. The city council met via zoom this afternoon in closed session to discuss the following items. Item one was a conference with legal council regarding liability claims, specifically the claim of Andrew Don Hanson. The council received a report from city attorney's office and the risk management department. And by unanimous vote, council approved a settlement of that liability claim in the amount of $58,530 and 42 cents. Item two was a conference with legal council involving existing litigation. Council received a report from the city attorney's office on the case entitled don't morph the war. The city of Santa Cruz council received a report from the city attorney's office on that item, as well as on item three, which was a conference with legal council involving a significant exposure to litigation, other than the liability claim there was no reportable happen. The city council will now review the meeting calendar attached to the agenda and revise it as necessary. And I'll call on the city clerk to provide any updates to the calendar. This is now the time for council members to report out on actions at external boards, committees and joint powers authority meeting. For future meetings come prepared to provide an update on any meetings or actions that occurred since the last council meeting so that the council and public can be informed. And I will call on council member minors. Mayor. Yeah, I just have one. I'm going to let her read on. No, we haven't had a meeting that fast. I don't believe. But I will give an update on central coast energy. There are additional cities that have joined. The whole thing has recently joined and the also the board is in the middle. The last our last meeting was last week and board received a basically a recommendation by the staff roles and responsibilities of the advisory which was a foundational part of the agency when it was formed in terms of how input from the communities that are members of that was not well received by the board and there was and there has been an ad hoc committee set up review view that those proposals by the staff also looked by laws of the advisory committee. There was about 90 people that showed up although from all the membership counties and cities and out of two and a half hour and ended in the right place for staff recommendations changes by laws and some of the duties and responsibilities. That was one of the more longer or longer discussions. The agency as a whole is becoming much more focused on sort of ability aspects of the of the agency and there's a lot of pressure around losing the workforce development and the climate change roles and some of the other things. Community members feel really more why they race this form of having a community energy agency. So I think there's going to be quite a bit of work done in the and I expressed our need in our interest for development, local jobs and I mean climate change, green jobs as a priority. So I think a lot of people about that get in or get a hold of me if you're interested but there's a very very active public life changing a little bit in a way but with benefits. So there's a there it will be a strategic planning session annual number but I would imagine over the next two quarters. That is my report. Thank you. Thank you so much. Council Member Browne. I'll a quick report as the primary item of interest on at least one of the missions I am on the regional transportation commission was discussed at our last meeting and I think we'll have a more of a sense now of what that conversation is at the commission and then how that fits with the wider community conversation about the rail right of way. But we did have a transportation policy workshop that gave an opportunity for our staff and also the staff from the different from the county in the cities of Watsonville and Santa Cruz. So I was there to give us an update on the segments of the rail trail planning that are happening further and south of us. So from the segments eight well and it was really interesting that I was looking to see if the slides are up on the website and I can't find them but they are they should be and if they're not they will be soon. It had it provided a really visual representations of the kind of engineering work that is possible and likely necessary to continue with the build out of the rail trail and the presentation was intended to give us a sense of the overall what that looks like for the full build out but also talk about the potential for an from phase trail only portion some of the more problematic areas in particular related to the the trestle capital of trestle and further south which we talked about. So it was it was great it was it was really interesting we had a good conversation and that nation should be available if you want to see what you know the renderings of what it kind of the structurally what what it might look like and it really helped me understand the opportunities. So that was our key and then the AAA the area on aging being we had ongoing conversation about county wide effort to develop a master plan for aging playbook and more on that from related to what the city's role currently is and could be moving forward. I think I will that's my report. I'll let one of my colleagues from the revenue committee report on that. Thank you Councilmember Brown. Councilmember Callantari Johnson. Thank you mayor. Just to pick up where Councilmember Brown was touching on the RTC I serve as an alternate from the metro board and the presentation was really wonderful and detailed and thorough and it is up on the website. It's it's well it's really long the URL but if you go into the 222 presentation link it's up there. So I don't have a lot to report because a lot of my committees and commissions have not met since our last meeting. I will say that the metro board as as Councilmember Myers stated is meeting on Friday and we are also then spending the afternoon doing CEO interviews. So some leadership changes there so we'll have something to report hopefully won't the next time we come together and then I have met with members of the youth action network and we are discussing identification of a youth liaison. We adopted that last winter have a youth liaison from the youth action network connected to us and all the other committees will be meeting in the next. Thank you Councilmember Golder. So we did have a public safety committee meeting and that was I think pretty much right after our last meeting if I remember correctly and we kind of set months in meeting date with priorities. We got an interesting update in regards to fires that I found particularly interesting and it was just kind of from Chief Odie and it was from you know 2017 there was 63 fires and then in 2020 it was up to 141 and then in 21 it was down to 134 and so it was interesting that they were all human causes and with the last year there was I believe 25 arrests and six convictions and there was an update about the NFPA firewise community groups and we had a criminal justice report and maybe my colleagues can fill in anything else that was notable that I left out. We did not have a city schools meeting although we had on the calendar but we did get together internally so we haven't met with the with the superintendent or the school board members but we talked a little bit about allocation of children's fund and priorities in regards to scholarships and also providing personnel to help with after school recreation at the elementary school sites to complement the programs that are already existing. We talked a little bit about the fencing that's happening at the Santa Cruz City Schools campuses and ways that we can stop funding to open the campuses either on weekends or other times when school is not in session for the community to enjoy those recreation spaces and in addition the ad hoc election somebody met and I believe he'll be more information about that later so I'll leave it there but feel free to fill in anything I forgot about Public Safety or City Schools. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Cummings. Mayor, so LACOME, one of the Action Items, Oak Cliff's Recreation District. He had an item that was initiated by the Oak Cliff's Recreation District back in August requesting disillusion and incorporation to the CSA 11 Parks and Recreation District. Within this annexation there's a number of parcels that are in Capitola and these areas will be excluded. Parks and Rec Services being provided by the State of Buffalo for those areas. AMBAG, we had two reports. One was on the annual Comprehensive Financial Report this year 2021 and then the rural regional energy network presentation. For the Public Safety Committee just going to fill in a couple of gaps. Council members Watkins is the Chair, will remain Chair with Council Member Golder as the Vice Chair and then just a little bit of follow-up did outline a number of different items that we will be that we will have in a six month work plan so kind of in addition to setting regular meetings we did also a number of items forward to going to a work plan and this can all be found on the City's Public Safety website. And we did go over the report that came out of the Criminal Justice Council related to police policies regionally that touch on use of force, accountability, technology and while we didn't take any action at that meeting I would recommend other Council members haven't reviewed that report already to maybe do some of this any policy changes that we might want to align with that we had that were not in alignment with other regions of the county than we may want to take a look at those policies as well. Although I know that a lot of the questions kind of built off some of the changes that we had made here in Santa Cruz during 2020 so that includes a paint on general thank you but Council Member Brown do you have any additions I did have one other thing that I completely forgot if it's okay but I think it'll be it's useful and interesting also for the public the listening public I forgot that I did and the Monterey Bay Air Resources Board meeting I've returned to that board after some time off and we had a good meeting but the one item I wanted to highlight was the m barred electric bicycle incentive program which was launched last fall and is and this provides incentive for low-income applicants in Monterey Santa Cruz and San Benito counties in the m barred region to purchase electric bicycles and it has been underutilized of the program it did make some changes the eligibility requirements who make it a little bit easier for to expand the pool of applicants so if you are interested anyone out there who's interested it's a great program and you also were advised at that meaning that this incentive program can be stacked with a bike incentive program so it can be a significant portion of the cost boards in e-bike and people can go to the m barred website to find out more information at m barred.org from there you can scroll down and find electric bicycle incentive program link for more information on how on the eligibility guidelines and thank you great okay vice chair Watkin yeah no I think let me just see if I have anything really to add all of my colleagues have really touched on a lot of our mutual committees um the only thing I guess I could add is that you'll all in our community will be presented by the revenue committee with some proposals moving forward and the next couple of meetings or the next meetings so that will be forthcoming and then in regards to our charter amendment committee that is an item that's for us this afternoon um lastly just that the two by two continues to me to really think about how we can align our our resources is and leverage our various uh resources so that we work towards solutions to homelessness and really trying to get into some of those um just need nitty gritty around what's working and what can be improved and then yeah just in terms of forthcoming we do have a public safety meeting coming right up as well as our community programs so much more to add other than that thank you vice mayor Watkins um I'll just add a couple of items our health and all policies committee meeting met for the first time and I know outlined the the year with some topics from the direction that was given last year by council and um using the public safety committee as a committee to kind of explore some of the health and all policies items um looking at data reports and metrics and um looking forward to pouring gear and um needing to research and and find more information about that um and researching and recruitment and compensation of um BIPOC folks and committees and commissioners um uh I think also around looking at issues and items around harassment um discrimination and respectful workplace conducts the workforce and demographics data and reviewing the arts commissions um initial recommendations made for later on in the year a DEI statement from the and um kind of reviewing an annual progress report so just kind of a rough outline for that committee and if let's see councilmember voluntary Johnson if I left any you know um also the two by two committee meeting met and um we had um items that we discussed for shelter capacity navigation center the armory home key updates and um housing and program capacity inside and outside of this discussions related to the 14 million dollar funds that we will be receiving uh towards homelessness and and um also some recent grants that the Santa Cruz Tony has received one of them related to the rehousing wave services and I think that was a million dollars and you know the rehousing wave is an effort to support gas and um there were housing vouchers made available um through the housing authority of the the county of Santa Cruz um to support this effort and uh the update was that there were 51 units at least with available vouchers and 224 additional households have been approved for vouchers and are searching for housing and so more property owner involvement and support is needed um um there was encampment response discussions outreach model and organizing outreach and homework-bound flexible funding um discussed and um the art we are putting together our city um is being together a homelessness response plan and so we talked about that and I know that the city and county staff have been meeting as well the coordinate and leverage resources the county side on services and the city side so that should be coming up next month in our March meeting and um our visit Santa Cruz um I did uh attend the retirement um acknowledgement for Maggie Ivy the former CEO who is now retired and on behalf of the Santa Cruz and it's a certificate of recreation um to her and all her effort in tourism for the county and the city of Santa Cruz and um just a reminder that last year Mayor Myers did present a mayor proclamation to the city um for as well so um that's probably all that I have for does anybody have anything else wonderful well I did see Emma Ustatt arrive and so I will go back to item number five Santa Cruz mountains trail stewardship volunteers welcome Emma thank you for joining us thanks for having me I have a really quick presentation share um let's see oops not that share other share and uh feel free to interrupt me throughout ask questions but it's quick and sweet hello everyone thanks for having me here cool so this is a little snippet from Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship SCMTS's annual report we have a much longer report if you want me to share but uh I tried to focus on just the Sanacruz part so these were our stats here in terms of trail stewardship and just a reminder for anyone listening who doesn't know we are the local 501c3 nonprofit trail stewardship organization so we're a nonprofit that builds maintains a lot of different trails in the county with different land agencies including city of Santa Cruz anyway uh last year we were really excited because we got to work in a lot of new places but one of the stats I want to call out here is that we had 80% first time volunteers last year out of 467 unique volunteers and I thought that was really cool um as a lot of folks know since our rebrand last year we were branded from mountain bikers of Santa Cruz to Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship and because of that we've seen a really big increase in our trail user demographic which is really exciting and a huge goal of ours so it's starting to even out a bit more at our events in terms of what types of trail users are getting involved in trail stewardship which is what we're hoping for um for a quick project rundown one of the big projects we partnered with city of Santa Cruz on last year was the west side pump track I just went past it today and every single time I go past it it's just packed with kids families and all different types of uh pump track users which is really cool um it was so great to partner with the city oddness and um you know to make a sustainable pump track before it was kind of just an eyesore uh because there's not water available on site and um it was always all dry and so now having it be um having it to be a more fun and usable track it's always crowded which is so great we actually have a trail counter if anyone wants to know how many people use it probably find that actually I already see um 35 000 visits since we built it in august of 2021 very cool and uh one thing I'll just mention is that for anyone listening who doesn't know we partnered with the city of Santa Cruz to redesign it reconstruct the pump track and we also raised a few million dollars or not a few million two hundred thousand dollars helpful cool on to trail programs that's what I mostly do so we do a lot of public events there's a big part of our mission is connecting the public two trails to it um last year was really exciting because after uh over a year long hiatus we brought back our big flagship events called big days and big days are these large trail work events where we have about 60 people come out and we cap the events they always sell out and we provide breakfast and lunch and a postage raffle and beverages snack and um everyone comes out and does trail work with us we did a few in city parks here's some pictures from an improvement we did through a dig day on university connected trail in Pogonin throughout the years we're tackling some pretty big projects on the trails a lot of them due to natural springs that are just near the trail or poor drainage and so here's where we installed some rock into the trail this required a lot of wheelbarrow load um bringing in the rock and then of course installing it properly so it'll last forever here are some photos from the law of yaga where we rerouted a tiny bit of trail to avoid this natural rutting that was occurring you can see all the happy volunteers I think that was our student stick day on Martin Luther King jr. day of service and then here's just an example from a dig day we did on emmerich gray trail and this is kind of also showing um what we send to our volunteer trail crew leaders who are helping lead events or lead volunteers at these events where you know we're showing them where to install a drain the after photo the big improvements all around more examples this from university connected trail kind of the instructions we're sending about stone pitching and something that we added this year which is really helpful is all of our events have um a map online now where we flag out what we're going to do and where we're going to do it with instructions and we've seen that's been a huge improvement for our volunteers helping do all this work so here's just a few of the awesome reviews we got from city park this year we so far last year we got 330 participants to write back in our volunteer feedback form which was really amazing because as you probably saw we only had 457 unique volunteers so a lot of people responded and out of a five out of five ratings we got a 4.9 average pretty good so we're doing something right um the common themes I saw were that our staff and crew leaders are awesome our people love giving back to the community um people really like meaningful work the events were super organized people enjoyed learning and they were fun I did want to highlight this is really important to me that we still have work to do so for me the really valuable responses were the few that actually provided some feedback that on things we need to work on so the common that I saw were diversity education and creating more efficiency um we spend a lot of time giving instructions at the beginning and then also of course quiz no so these are things we're going to be working on in 2022 I realize I'm probably going to go over this I'm going to try not do we also work with the city every year we have for the last few years do the summary trail crew um so Santa Cruz mountains trail stewardship staff helped lead the program city helped fund the crews staff the cruise time and then also part of our crew leaders staff time so Katie is super badass she's our trail stewardship coordinator she led all of these students who had a really great time they got to work in so many different parks more creek um the harvey west pump track and the gray trail university connector um all over the place this is from a ronald golf where they got to install fencing and they had a great time and then this is another program we introduced last year called trail stages and it's kind of a graduate graduate program for our volunteer trail crew leaders so these are actually volunteers that we trust so much they're practically staff and they can lead volunteer events on their own and they've gone through a lot of training and it's been a huge success so far they're actually leading two events a week right now on their own and we've been teaching trail academy classes at every single dig day this year so we taught 20 classes last year um we had 422 attendees and they also have a 4.9 out of five average one last thing i wanted to touch on was that we also made two different trail pit series so trail etiquette was a big theme of last year and i think it's and i hope it's the way we brought a lot of value for our partners um this picture on the left is an example of one of the trail tip geared towards mountain bikers uh that we got a lot of partners to share and have been spreading throughout the year and then the one on the right is one of our pump track trail tip series so we have two different series right now one for multi-use trails and one for pump tracks just with the goal of spreading awareness about trail etiquette we saw a lot of new recreationalists last year throughout the pandemic and we are trying to courage good trail etiquette whenever we can i'll skip over these kind of boring yes we're doing well in terms of um increasing our membership our digital reach and so through that we're able to share more of the education that we're that was just talking about yeah looking forward um this year decided to increase stewardship through more adult trail partnerships with the city of santa cruise improved trail etiquette more education trainings and updated signage um we want to keep improving trails for all trail users and also we really want to increase the diversity of our volunteers participants staff and board plus all the other programs that just went up so that's it and i'll leave my email in the comment and please feel free to send me a message if you have more questions or ask me questions now thank you so much am i can you also verbally say the best way to connect with the stewardship program where would that be yeah so you can go to all of our um channels our santa santa cruise trails so you can find us on social media through santa cruise trails for our website is santa cruise trails dot org or you can email me directly at emma at santa cruise trails dot org wonderful thank you so much for that because it looks like we have a council member colder has a question hi hi not a question just a comment i just wanted to thank you for all the work that you do and i see you guys out there i hike a few times a week and i really appreciate all the work that goes into maintaining our existing trails and um it's it doesn't go unnoticed that you know we really appreciate you so thank you hey thanks so much and i should really share we have a link we record all the work we do on trail fork so if you want to read through that i'll be sure to share that thank you uh council member mires yeah am i just wanted to say thank you also um been watching you guys grow this organization for a long time since i was on the parks commission and you know the trails in santa cruise really are you know just testament for guys's great work and the fact that you know you're involved in graduation great to hear from you and everything that you guys are doing well thanks for being part of the city and helping care of our uh property hey thanks so much thank you uh council member calantari johnson yes i'll echo those sentiments thanks for the presentation and all the work and um the love to death um practice on the west side or love the death of my children so thank you so much for that awesome great done please feel free to also reach out if you have noticed anything on the trails you like to keep calls on trails have advice or ideas always open thanks for your time thank you so much ama thanks for joining us today bye okay we will now continue on with our agenda i we are at the consent agenda the consent agenda is let's see items 8 through 12 and i'll just quickly list item 8 is the minutes of the february 8 2022 city council meeting item 9 is cybersecurity event monitoring and managed security service provider item 10 is an award contract for on-call land surveying services public work item 11 is chestnut street street storm drain replacement and pavement rehabilitation also public work and item 12 is the check booster bypass upgrade project um for members of the public who are streaming this meeting now is the time to call in if you want to comment on items 8 through 12 instructions are on your screen please remember to mute your streaming device raise your hand by either dialing star 9 on your phone or by selecting raise hand in the webinar polls on your computer all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to comment on or pull any items being none if there are any members of the public that would like to speak now is the time to go i will go out to the public and see if there are any hands raised star 9 to raise your hand or raise hand in your webinar controls on your computer okay i don't see any i will come back to the council and um i'm now looking for a motion uh vice mayor Watkins yeah i'm happy to move our consent agenda okay and um council member brown second we have a first by vice mayor Watkins and a second by member frown and can the speaker or we'll call the member calentary johnson sir hi okay vice mayor watkins hi we sent agenda items past unanimous okay moving on next up on our agenda is item number 13 board of building and fire appeals appointment for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to call in on this item using the instructions on your screen we will begin with questions from council if there are any and we will take public comment and then turn to the council for nominations and voting to appoint someone to the board of fire so i'd like to turn it over to our city clerk ronnie bush i guess you could just spend for a public comment and come back to see if anyone has it on okay let's go out to a public comment i don't see any hands raised i will come back to council and council member coming i had a question i was just wondering because i know for the other when we have um commission appointments oftentimes commissioners are invited to kind of speak to the council for to make decisions i'm just wondering any what have been reached to or was able to comment because like a lot of the applications it kind of says like i've been working in buildings and construction for x amount of years and so for a number of the applicants it seems like similar applications have been submitted so it's kind of difficult to get a sense of what differentiates the different candidates so i'm just wondering if anybody had been contacted or when they plan on being here for this part of the meeting do you mean applicants yeah the majority of the applicants are actually part of the annual appointment process if you remember this was one group where we were appointed and then we was held one of the appointments to get more qualified applicants i do know that staff um was going to reach out to sort of um their recommendation i don't know if they did that or not but i know that there are um applicants that there are are there any other questions okay so i will i will just go around to council member and ask for nominations i will start with council member brown so based on the applicants um i uh i would nominate uh okay council member calentary johnson i'd like to nominate monica rattles okay council member Cummings no additions council member colder no additions vice mayor walken no addition council member mires i would nominate uh nielson and my nomination is christian nielson okay so your the um the three nominated candidates are christian nielson monica rattles rat roger member calentary johnson monica rattles and we feel so much pressure i feel i feel like everyone thank you everyone for for um wanting to serve um monica rattles christian nielson vice mayor what monica rattles christian nielson monica rattles got three of the votes wonderful thank you to all the applicants and thank you to monica rattles that completes the appointment to the board of building and fire appeals with a term ending january first 2023 we will now move on our agenda item step on our agenda item is item number 14 resolution ordering on the ballot for the june 7th 2022 primary election a proposed charter amendment create six districts and an at-large directly elected mayor 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 one a presentation of the item by the council members who brought forward the item i questions from the council we will then take public comment and return to council for deliberation and action so i'd like to now turn it over for presentation and who would like to begin the presentation mayor i'll chime in actually um kasey hamard who's with staff orton lee for us on this item as members they will present they'll be presenting the park thank you so much i'd like to invite kasey hamard to begin the presentation thank you mayor brunner can you all see my powerpoint presentation yes perfect thank you good afternoon my name is kasey hamard and i'm part of the team in the city manager's office who's helping with the city's transition to district elections and i've been helping with this since november i'm going to start by giving you a little bit of background and telling you some of the work that the council ad hoc committee on election related issues has been doing and give you uh some background on the proposal that the committee's bringing to you so the council has actually been working on this issue for two years now in may of 2020 the council passed a resolution indicating an intention to transition to district elections by the november 2022 general municipal election and then late last year in november the council created an ad hoc committee for elections related issues to look at a host of issues the committee has met a couple of times this year and um early on recognized that this transition to district elections is significant and historic and the committee was very interested from the beginning in giving the voters an opportunity to voice what this change could look like and whether it's a six district situation with an at-large directly elected mayor or where we would have seven districts as we are proceeding right now the early analysis from experts did not did not provide a clear legally permissible way for the city to transition to six districts with an at-large mayor in time for the november 2022 election however further research analysis did uh pave the way for for a potential path and i'm going to tell you a little bit about what that looks like if the city council opts to pursue this uh ballot measure the first track is that the council would pass a resolution placing a charter amendment on the june ballot that would create six districts and an at-large directly elected mayor the council would need to pass that resolution by march 11 in order for it to qualify for the june ballot in the second track the the city would need to continue moving on the current process for the california voting rights act um where we would do broad we're doing broad broad public outreach several public hearings on the maps and then the council chooses a district map the difference here would be that in addition to choosing a seven district map the council would also choose a six district map and so if the ballot measure passed then the six district map would prevail and if it did not pass the seven district map would prevail and that would go into effect for the november election as the committee was looking at this um you know they seemed very interested in making sure that the voters have the choice of what this looked like there was also the consideration of stewardship of resources having one public outreach process as opposed to say multiple public outreach processes over multiple election cycles if this was something that was hunted down the road in terms of the substance of the charter amendment proposal um in addition to creating six districts and an at-large directly elected mayor makes a few other changes including updating the rules on term limits the duties of the mayor how council vacancies are handled and it creates a two-round election system which which would be like a runoff election beginning with the 2024 election site so that's all the background that i have for you all right now i'm going to now turn it over to the ad hoc committee members so that they can share their insights thank you kasey humard i i will turn it over to my screen there i'm council member mires and then we see her walk and you're muted we've muted uh thank you mayor and thank you um kasey for the presentation and um i just a couple of comments from my colleagues um uh you know as we dug into this um um but we really realized was that you know we are on track um but you know the settlement agreement already have an extension on transitioning seven districts we looked at a lot of other cities and what they had done um as they were transitioning to elections um we have the good fortune of actually having a new city manager who has worked now and has worked in a city where districts are in place and receive um you know some good input from him as well as our as well as our legal staff i want to recognize kasey brunson she's been really working hard on this i know she's on vacation this but um our city attorney's office is very very helpful as well as kind of made her way through this um and we decided some of the things that were assigned to the ad hoc committee should continue especially the ranchers voting uh assessment and bringing that back as well as um the other the other methods that some some communities are testing but at the end of i think we've met three times at the really at the end of each meeting we just kept coming back to the importance of you know bringing this to our voters as quickly as possible um because as you get into district elections and this you know some of the things we've learned from other communities it's very hard to take a district away from anyone um once once they're in place once they won't run for office it's very hard to go backwards or change districts um once you've started down the road of seven of seven districts it's not to say that that isn't a viable and perfectly fine outcome for our community but um we feel it's this at this point in time is a very important to ask and answer um i will state for our community just in case folks aren't haven't had a time to look at the the actual charter amendment um this really does not change the degrees of our mayor um and i can have only uh comment on this a little bit more this continues to maintain the what the mayor has been charged with correctly in this agenda you know agenda setting and agenda development does however provide council members who also put an item on the agenda so we very much wanted to keep in if the traditions that people are used to in terms of the mayor um and what the mayor does its responsibilities um it also maintains our city manager form of government does not change our uh our uh structure to a strong mayor as some people for that um but uh so those two things i think are very important for the voters and for uh our colleagues to understand that um this very much is in keeping with how the mayor has functioned in general uh the big changes are is that the term would be a four-year term for the mayor um it would be out large elected uh and we've set a a consecutive years of process where by running uh city council could serve as a council member for years i'm excuse me for two four-year terms but then um they could also run for two four-year term mayor and again looking at similar cities um both of population but more importantly of issues as consecutive leadership training as a council member before becoming an elected mayor seems to be a very common comment across many cities um it's not to say that someone you know couldn't be elected into mayor right right out of the bat that would be allowable as well but um this idea of having those experience that experience and really understanding how to how to be an effective council member as well as as well in your during a mayor run is something we thought should be captured um other than that i don't believe there's any um many changes away from sort of the existing uh role of the mayor in terms of like i said setting the agenda etc um i just wanted to point those out particularly um uh appreciate the ability to dig into this and we supported by our colleagues important very very important question to bring to the voters that's really the best way to get public input is let's put it on the ballot for voters did you have some other members uh vice chair walkie yeah i just want to also thank council members for further clarifying what's before our council and before the community in terms of what we're bringing forward i too want to thank our staff for the meetings and just all of the various scenarios that we went through to land in this place to get times all of our heads might have been spinning in terms of just timelines and parallel tracks and ultimately we as a committee landed on wanting to use this unique opportunity this unique sort of time in our city's history to really bring forward this option to our community to vote on um anecdotally i've heard you know interest in wanting to see this move forward and regardless if this passes or not the requirement for us to advance into a city that has uh districts is forthcoming repeating no matter what so we know that that provided this one sort of window for us we dive it in deeply to make sure that we did our due diligence to bring forward a really comprehensive option and that's where we landed in terms of what's before you um and it didn't go without a lot of serious consideration and thought and ultimately this recommendation really puts the decision before our voters to decide ultimately how they want to see the city move forward in regards to having a directly elected mayor in six districts as opposed to seven districts only so um i appreciate you comes from my years for really further clarifying some of the nuances within the proposal in regards to the duties essentially remaining the same um and ultimately having uh somebody who that broader perspective of the city but also being an adherence to the um the the litigation that's before us as well so that's um that's sort of all the comments i have and and we're prepared and happy to answer any questions as well thank you council member colder i also want to thank the staff and my colleagues for all of the work that went into bringing this forward and um just acknowledging that we are moving to districts whether it's six or seven we hope that that will be for the public to decide and the idea that came from members of this body and the community that it would be nice to have um somebody with kind of a global holistic view of the city would be an asset to this group and so um i think we have plenty of time for public outreach and what better way for the public to be involved than to you know have it hit the ballot and let people um really weigh in so yeah thank you everybody thank you council member colder uh i would like to bring it out to uh council question at this time uh council member calentari johnson thank you mayor and thank you to my colleagues and staff for your work on this um i wonder if my colleagues who worked on this or staff but just share a little bit more about thoughts on public outreach and in particular outreach to communities who are harder to reach and outreach to latin communities that you can share the plan and the process about moving forward council member calentari johnson i think i'm probably in the best position to speak to that and the council members can also add um we've sort of been a holding pattern while we resolve this because it's already a little bit complicated we certainly don't want to complicate it anymore so we were waiting to have this resolved um before that before we realized this was an option we launched we began to launch our process on the seven district maps and but didn't really fully implement that um we have we have surveys we have interactive mapping tools for people to use to suggest alternatives and we will do that with the six district maps as well um but we also are very concerned about reaching out to our underserved communities um we have been we've connected with our uh city colleagues over at senior center to make sure we're reaching out to seniors and then um peter bca our community liaison to the spanish-speaking community has uh been working closely with me in terms of our outreach we are going to uh be partnering and doing some in-person event for for those who may not be able to have access to online resources that we have and um for those who may not uh read or we're going to go and do some in-person things he has been connecting with barrios unidos and uh talked to some of the mercy housing locations dissipating some of their meetings and um and some other venues like that and i know you uh suggested some other opportunities and we're going to we're going to exhaust those thank you that's really helpful council member coming thank you mayor i want to thank everyone for all the work on into this um agenda item um i keep some of my questions short for now um i have some comments i'd like to make later but i do want to uh reference you know the motion that um led to the establishment of this city and a couple pieces there were running with the process and time for community engagement uh considering establishing the charter amendment committee and then i do know that there were other options brought up that mentioned earlier about rink was voting so um i'm just curious about those the parts of this of what would the of the direction that was provided because the agenda report really only focuses on the uh six districts at large mayor it doesn't really address some of the other direction that was provided so i don't know if that's staff or if some of the subcommittee wanted to speak to that but um wanted to know kind of where those other pieces are at and um you know why we're not doing all these right now you see do you want to do that or protein yes there we go i'm happy to if it's you know if it is helpful i i guess what i'll say is we did we did have those we had a depth conversation around all the different considerations and ultimately landed on this is the best path right now moving forward um you know and so you know there are so many avenues there's no one way to do this right i think is ultimately where we kind of understood this all to be right when you start to sort of blend all the different options and how different configurations of city government can work they look really different and so within our discussions we talked about range choice voting ultimately decided not pursue that as a recommendation at this time given the really the shift before us being quite substantial in regards to our city not to say that that couldn't be forthcoming at a future time um as well as some of the other points of discussion that were brought up in terms of the original direction uh so i mean i guess in summary that's sort of how i would respond to that question it wasn't that it didn't go undiscussed it just meant that this is where we ultimately landed in the recommendation we wanted to bring forward to you all and i welcome Casey or others who want to and i want to also say super special shout out to Casey for her hard work and for Cassie they did a really great job thank you um whatever's on as well Casey? Sure absolutely um i just would um that you know this is this is the committee's decision on where they want to go as a matter of policy and we're trying to facilitate the direction that they're given to us my understanding is that the range choice voting is not necessarily off the table but that there was a time sensitivity around this one particular point and um so that there was an urgency to moving this to the council to make a decision on whether um the council would like to act on this uh because there's a limitation by March 11 but you know we if the committee would like to need to move forward on that we are prepared to do so on rank choice voting and the other questions uh we are we a staff stand ready to do that i had a quick question and then i'll go to council member brown um you brought up that can you come back to me maybe because i wasn't done that oh yes sorry i apologize let's go back to council member coming if you have your question you can go ahead and ask i don't want to digress so we'll stick with you finishing out your question okay thank you um thank you the next question i have for the city attorney just to get some clarification on the resolution going to be adopted and so maybe it'll be helpful for the public but um this is the first time this resolution is coming before us and i'm just curious if what gets adopted in terms of exhibit a if that would be the language that would move forward in terms of how the city would conduct um kind of threat left mayor process so the idea is that and i guess my concern is that you know no one's really doesn't really have to go to the public and i think it has been expressed that there's been some rush around this and so my one of my big that um you know uh terms of the roles for example the presiding of the mayor um and around terms and limits that some members of the community may have other thoughts on what the roles of the mayor should be and should we stick with the city manager from the government and so you know when people think about um what we're going to be moving toward in terms of direct left mayor this resolution kind of be something that the city council be moving forward and now i'm codified that would be the option that we have when they're voting on what we'll be moving towards in terms of uh directly so there's a lot to unpack there but let me let me see if i can narrow down the the focus a bit so what you have before you is a resolution that would if approved go on the ballot for the june election there's a timing issue here in that the election in june is on june 7th the county elections official has 30 days to certify the results of the election which is on july 7th in order to comply with the statute county elections official has to have the district maps by july 6th there's a chance not a great chance but there is a chance that the resolution could be placed on the ballot an election could occur the measure could pass but the election might you know there's a remote chance that the election won't be certified by july 7th and when we bring forward an ordinance for the council's consideration uh for adopting district maps we have to deal with that uncertainty so what would be brought forward is a result or an ordinance stopping a six district map and a seven district map in the alternative if it's clear after june 7th that the measure fails then the seven district map would go the voters in november if the results are known advance or before the 7th of july and measure passes then a six district map would go before the voters and so that is the process that would be followed and the language that's in front of you in the resolution would amend the city charter to specify elections by district for six council members at large election for the mayor slightly changed the wording of the mayor's duties but not in a real substantive way and also it would require after the november 2022 election that both council member and mayoral offices would be subject to a primary or first round election in the primary prior to each city council election in november whereby if a single candidate garners a simple majority of the vote that candidate would be elected either in march or june of the election year and if no candidate garners a simple majority then the top two vote-getters would be in a runoff election at the november election that's the process that is currently utilized for district elections for board of supervisors and so we would be basically on a similar pattern as the board of supervisors i think i that response to your question but if there's something i missed remind me i think that more or less got to it so pretty much the language that would be adopted in this resolution would be the language would be what the city what the community members will be voting on so should we move in that direction with an at-large mayor and these would be the roles and that's right abilities and outside of approving that language today i mean since this is the first time coming because publicly there'd be no other unless we extended it on the placement of the measure before the voters if council takes action today sort of putting another item on the agenda to rescind that action or modify that action at the march eighth meeting those would be the last opportunities because the calling of the election has to occur for the june ballot by march 11th the friday after your next council meeting um and then um one other question i had because there's been a lot and brought up around you know moving to seven districts and then having to back six districts and a direct like mayor and one item in the agenda report came up uh says that the election results are not certain as the city will proceed with seven districts the november 8 2022 election an implementation of the transition to six districts with an at-large mayor did not be implemented until the 24 election cycle and so i guess my question is it you know this language indicates that there would be some mechanism for shifting from the six from seven district back to a six district um voter map after the 2022 election and so i'm just kind of trying to understand you know why we can't take the time then to get more community input if it seems like there is the possibility that we will go to seven districts and transition back at a later one time the direct one i think the timing concern is uh dictated by the elections calendar that's provided for under state law for placing matters on the on the ballot so that's that's just the reality that we have to deal with and the scenario that you describe is in the very unlikely scenario or situation in which the process takes the full 30 days and in the last uh few days before the certification it's neck and neck and we don't know for certain whether or not the measure is going to pass and in that very unlikely situation then there's a remote possibility that there would be a seven district election in november followed by a redistricting and at large mayor with six districts in 2024 the last question one is around i've talked to some people in there interested in understanding what costs are through the city because it sounds like you know there will be the need to we've been on this track of creating seven district maps knowledge can be the need to create six district maps obviously you know if we've entered into a contract with specified number of maps that we're going to create now we have to mend that those costs are going to go up and so we've been asking what those costs would be there is an additional expense associated with the preparation of the six district maps but i don't have that figure i don't know cases actually the demographer is prepared to give us six district three six district maps as part of the in contract with no additional obviously if there's a two-stage election process then that will be additional costs for placing the matter on the on the primary ballot great and then i guess my last question is so are we in if this moves forward are we in this year that we wouldn't have a runoff for 2022 election that we would have if this would pass in the time in in november would we then have to have you know some kind of special form of election where they don't have a runoff and we just have that one election before the council members and the mayor no no the they proposed charter amendment would specify that for the 2022 election year only the candidate that receives the highest number of votes would would be elected and then the two round elections would start in 2024 does that conclude your questions council member coming i have more but in the sake of time and knowing there's other people with questions i'm just going to hold the rest of the question those are the some of the main ones i wanted to um get some information on thank you um okay council member brown thank you for waiting no problem thank you mayor i actually quite a few of my questions have been asked and answered i think i'm still as i think through how this is going to go i feel entirely clear but um thank you for uh for those i have a couple of other questions related to the content of the resolution uh the first one is in the in part one this is in section one p3 so it's not paid numbers the page numbers but it's like the top of the document attached to our agenda this is there is a consideration for around eligibility for reelection so as for the public probably without any information not not entirely sure what's happening here but the you know right now the council uh individual council members can run for two consecutive terms and then must take uh two year period before the possibility of running again and um there are suggested in the section uh and in section p in particular and these changes would allow for six the four terms consecutive in various considerations again the general public um and i understand the rationale for uh number the b and then um two um um and i what i not that would if you're if you're on the council and then you want to run for mayor you don't have to wait for one is on the council and wants to run doesn't have to wait for the two you're paid who is and or the other way so if you're met if one is mayor and wants to run in a district following the mayor that could happen immediately but part three is um does a council member um not be prevented from running for a different council in the event the council member move um and i am i'm i'm not i'm that is a piece that i i just don't understand the logic there um why in the unlikely event that terminology in the unlikely event that somebody is so enamored of uh being a council member but they wanted to continue and not take that break that they could then move and represent a different district so i i guess i i'd like to understand why what the rationale was the committee i suppose on why you included that um because it it doesn't it's kind of counterintuitive if the idea is to have better representation of somebody in your neighborhood um that for somebody if they wanted to continue to represent council member they'd have to go represent another neighbor so just if i could if i could hear more about that it would be helpful i have one other question that but i'll i'll pass that i think that probably is a question for the committee um there was a lot of discussion about how we wanted to deal with potential term limits for council members the the initial question was should a council member elected by district be able to run for mayor position after two terms and the committee was um and i think i think it was unanimously in support of that based on you know having experience as a council member before running from for mayor um the the concept of serving out two terms in one district and moving to another i think it was just reflected the committee's view that um in the event a council member moves to a different district that they would have the opportunity to continue to serve um but um but that is a policy question for the council and so that could be changed if that's the direction the council was yeah i i'd just like to hear the rationale the other does make sense to me being able to run for if if we go down this road that'll make sense there's a rationale in terms of you know you know governmental instructions and representation that makes sense to me there but the kind of building in again the unlikely potential for urban backing in you know across the city this seems i don't i i don't see the rationale so i just like to understand that and or ask my colleagues if you're considering that is there any um any council member on the committee that would like to respond to that i'll let martin i could martin if you want to chime in and yeah i um i he's um tony i interpreted that as being some consideration for legal purposes but i could be wrong i don't necessarily recall adding that component other and i know past our casey and our cassies here right now but in terms of some of the considerations that if for example someone needed to move that would be an unlikely scenario but it could be accommodated so i i felt like that was more of a legal terminology as opposed to a committee recommendation policy but i asked my colleagues if i this i was going to say the same thing like the way i interpreted is that not everyone's gonna live in their neighborhood necessarily for the rest of their life and it's providing flexibility for people in in particular like people that aren't homeowners necessarily that if they need to move or want to move and they could represent the new neighborhood that they live in or um that was how i interpreted it but um but i see sandy wants to say something council i i mean i i don't i i don't want to be difficult here it just just seems counter-intuitive that we would give country candidates or elected um an opportunity to serve 16 years straight by moving i understand accommodating will move but if you move then you can represent that just the next one that um so i guess i whereas don't move wait you have to wait again it's just i don't i understand what you guys are getting at but i don't think a remedy for that remedy for um renters or maybe displaced through you know choice or not voice um be able to continue to serve is a different question than being able to serve a third and fourth through i i just to clarify we did not view this as a legal requirement um it really is a policy decision for the for the council and so council members what and and and golder expressed what i took to be the sentiment of the ad hoc committee when we discussed this this provision understood but again i'm just so i'm asking my colleagues question is that your intention to allow for six for four consecutive firms only if no that wasn't our intent wasn't mine written though so i guess we can look at it i would like to resolve before we you know put this on the ballot yeah yeah thanks for pointing that out yeah i don't mean difficult it's no no no i yeah using yeah i mean i i i would like to point out that um that would be some tricky timing for a council member to serve two full terms and then step into a position because essentially if you relocated out of your district that would be tantamount to abandoning the office and so at that point the office would be vacant and you could do that in june of an election year in time to get your name on the ballot or november but the office would be vacant in the meantime so it's kind of tricky uh how that would play out again just wondering the rationale and given that it why i might just add that tony just brought up what i was understanding was that kind of the carpet bagger idea i think would be hard to for someone to do um but that the intent i understood the intent actually as it is written which is that um most and most most likely if someone was moving or they were first to move um and we were trying to you're trying to give that person the opportunity to make sure that if they did have to move into another district they still be serving two full and so the intent is to try to protect people who may not be home owners um but that someone who was in a seat uh would would really be kind of unlikely that they would you know vacate that seat with the intention of sort of trying to double depth in a way that's different than a council member who's staying in the right i mean the yeah you know at the beginning of the sentence says you know our our existing charter says that as a as an existing council member you can serve two two terms consecutive and then you take two years off and so i think part of the idea was that um you know someone who was forced to move that wasn't a homeowner it wasn't somehow penalized or lost or is losing the opportunity to those that could i appreciate that and i i i really and you've given the comments i've made throughout this process i imagine and you know i i do really appreciate that i guess i'm just what confused me is that it the way it's written is um within the exceptions that would allow someone in that way it's written here that that is but and and it is so again i'm this is the kind of thing where i feel like potentially partly due to the urgence and quickly turn around it may not be getting using language that actually addresses the potential problem but i do appreciate um you're you're thinking about that and trying to wanting to do something um so yeah it's really briefly be part of those conversations i i do think the spirit was just explicitly state that if someone were to move or had to move they saw the ability to run in a different district and i think that can turn that you're raising council member brown makes a lot of sense and i think one way to maybe thread the needle on it would be to still require a two-year clean off grade i've executed terms regardless of whether or not you're moving one district to the other to your point because it is in that exacted area now i can be an easy change that we can make to the way to the language if that's the direction the council wanted to go and i agree with tony it is a policy decision okay thank you um i appreciate that it's just yeah i just see maybe some clarifying language that you know clarifying language another question that i had was related to the duties of the mayor section um and this is the section 604 just a little further down on that thing um and i recognize it looks to be like section p is sort of codifying what we have as council policy about items going on to the council agenda only when there are members of the council who are willing to sign on to an item um but so i guess i'm wondering about the rationale for codifying that in our charter for section b and then c um this see this does seem like the way it's worded does like uh um it's a significant change and maybe i'm misreading but um significant change in change in terms of the the authority of the mayor of the primary but not exclusive responsibility for interpreting the policies programs and needs of city government and as occasion requires the mayor may inform so is that really but not the way we do it that the mayor interprets the policy i guess maybe i'm misreading maybe this is supposed about the kind of public relations aspect of the of the job and it's not really about policy and i read it more as a communications function than a a policy determination okay i i'm again just trying to make sure i understand and i think yeah sandy i can i mean i think that um the intent behind that was to just recognize that role that the you know that and we discussed whether or not it should go in um but because it the mayor will be at large um you know it's important to you know for people to understand sort of because we're moving to districts and they're you know so they're gonna be talking to their council member which is maybe a very foreign thing for all of us um but really understanding you know that structure and so we didn't think it would be important to try to codify part of i remember yeah that's right i would just add that it's essentially codifying the presiding officers or duties of the officer who's representing the city and the city council and communications essentially and um codifying the opportunity for three council members to also you know be able to add to the the city council agendas right thanks i'll i'll save my comments on that later by council member coming in and mires council member mires we have another question is it it's not only what we were having this conversation i mean we um a lot easier to make and actually tony maybe you can weigh in on this i'll actually have two questions first one tony if we move forward with seven districts and the ordinance change is that like is that something that a future city council will be able to more easily amend in terms of districts and roles etc versus what we're moved what we had before us is a sixth district rep with mayor charner um yeah yes um the council could uh could move forward with seven districts by ordinance uh under case law but um in order to move forward with the six districts and directly elected mayor it requires a charter amendment and a charter amendment as you know can only be amended by a subsequent charter amendment which is required to be presented to the voters and acted by the voters in order to take effect right because um i guess the concern comes from the ability to make changes to a system that we're going to newly adopt um that i haven't got the voters versus so you know being able to provide flexibility around seeing how a new system works versus kind of jumping into districts with the charter amendment because um my follow-up question was going to be um one thing that's absent from the charter amendment is what representatives who live within their district and then for whatever reason have to find new housing outside of their district we've seen that happen to city because i've been on the city council seen that happen to at least two city council members i just recently moved as well um yeah three city council members so um so the idea is that you know if people have to move during their term what opportunity will they have to stay in office or does it mean that if they move outside of their district because they have to move and they can't find housing does that then force them off the thing that's something that uh is worth kind of us thinking about so that's a good question um because i read the charter currently members elected to the city council have to be residents of the city so if person had to move from their current residents within the city and were unable and is unable to locate uh suitable residents alternative within the city then and then moved outside of the city then that office becomes vacant upon establishing the new residents outside of the city and the same rule would apply within the district so if a council member lived in district one and had to relocate to district six then that office would become vacant and then i have a question for the city manager and i think it's unfortunately heavy here since you just came from a uh a city that's in district um i know with quarter supervisors we have districts as well obviously and one thing that i've been aware of is that supervisors don't need you know um two others to another supervisor to put an item on the agenda that each supervisor put an item on the board's agenda and i just wonder because of the fact that since we're moving to districts and each district's going to have unique needs that might not you have interest to other members on the board whether or not we need to keep flexibility around that so that you know maybe individual council members from their districts can put an item on the agenda um because you know what happens in the flats might not affect the west side or you know um upper the upper west side or the east side and so being able to not restrict council members from putting items on the agenda and so i'm just curious whether or not Watsonville or curious about what the process was in Watsonville in terms of um council members being able to put items on the agenda since that was a city that operates with district uh sure council member covenants um good question so Watsonville's process not that dissimilar to what's here still requires um and provide some significant authority to the pair putting the agenda um and through an agenda review process um allows three council members um bring an item forward they're also similar similar to the structure that would be here if um council member was unable to read unable to pull two other council members to have that level of support to bring an item forward a motion can always be made during a regular meeting uh requesting support to also place an item on the agenda um so there's there's multiple avenues uh to get there thanks those are my questions thank you um many of my questions have been answered as well um i did want to um go back to if a council member moves is there an opportunity to finish out their term or just automatically comes vacant if they move out of district once we're in district once we transition to district election i guess that question might be for tony condati yes i'm i'm digesting the question um the way it's currently written um that would not be a possibility would it be different for the six or the seven tony that possibility you know it would not be different yeah i like we're confusing a little bit this it may be correct me but tony the charter the charter amendment not detailing the elected council member whether it's seven purely the election but out part feel like we're sort of big map but i just want to make sure that's um as i'm as i'm looking at this i'm trying to i'm trying to figure out if there's a way to interpret this as allowing a council member to serve out the term of their office if they vacate the district um but we are including rules in the draft charter amendment that that address um these issues and so it's not simply the question of just a six district with an at large versus seven districts um we have provisions relating to two-stage elections um what have you i can come back um while you look at that but my other um we have received some questions from the public i think many of them have been answered there was some um um understanding uh that the the the possibility of six districts that an at large elected mayor um would mean a strong mayor form of government and so what i'm hearing is just a clarifying question that is not the case it's still a council city manager form of government and there um would not be a strong mayor the only difference would be in this proposal is that the mayor would be elected by the public rather than appointed by council and the term would be a four-year term versus what's currently a one-year term that's right a strong mayor form of government is a form of government in which the mayor essentially functions as the manager of the city so that's it's not accurate to say that this proposal includes a strong mayor form of government thank you um the other uh question i just wanted to clarify was the rank place voting um uh question and my understanding is that an at-large rank place voting system is not possible at this point that we are already on track under the settlement to move forward with seven districts to transition to a seven district election and what's posed here is an option that be six districts and an at-large mayor but either way we're moving to district and rank choice voting is not an option at this point unless we move to districts and then we have rank place voting within district but at-large rank place voting is not enough um yeah i think i think we have to keep we have two two uh different issues that that you're raising one is can rank choice voting be used as a remedy for a violation of the California Voting Rights Act and and some cities have adopted rank place voting systems in lieu of district elections uh in and i don't know often if that is merely a policy preference of those cities or if that was as a result of a cdra violation obligation the second is with regard to the settlement agreement and the settlement agreement specifies the options of district elections or uh or seven district elections or six district elections with an at-large mayor so those were the two options that were addressed in the settlement great thank you councilmember brown okay if there any further questions if not i will take it out public okay thank you if you are interested in commenting on resolution ordering on the ballot for the 27th 2022 primary election a proposed partner amendment creating six districts in an at-large directly elected mayor raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or by selecting raise hand in the webinar controls on your computer when it's your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted the timer will then be set three minutes and i will go out to her and i have the first hand raised is i am watching you go ahead and yeah hi i agree with many of the basics of this resolution uh but i have some comments my reading of california law concerning elective mayors ballot measures section 39 900 seems to indicate the question whether the voters prefer a two or four-year term for mayor may also be presented to which i asked why not include that question why should you decide there's no downside to the public being able to remove a bad mayor sooner than four years also since a staggered district election idea is not specifically included here i assume all six districts and the mayor will be elected at once every four years starting in 2022 which i don't really like there is a serious question of the wisdom of possibly turning over all representation of every district at once or even whether having the entire council and mayor being beyond the reach of the people for four years is really the best idea i favor a staggered elect cycle whatever the questions are as to how fairly to begin such a staggered process i'm sure this can be fairly done as this voting for all six that one idea perhaps by having three district terms initially for two-year terms chosen at random or perhaps by the fewest votes gathered i suspect it would take two election cycles to get this completed but it is not too complicated and it has real advantages of continuity and more frequent public oversight of the council makeup the entire thrust of the mayor's section nowhere seems to indicate my preference that a mayor's duty is to provide leadership to obtain what is the pervasive will of the people for city service and want that they are willing to pay for limited by the authority granted by law said the mayor's greed somewhat like an authoritarian informed the public of the government's needs and inform them as to changes in programs and policies play for all possibly unilaterally this thrust language seems backwards to my sense of government during the recent covid mandate fascism going on in canada and in the usa recognition of uh who the government mayor council work for are in service to and purpose more welcome uh i suppose i'd vote no at this point with this as is lastly the existing section signal for a mayor being recognized by the governor for purposes of military law sounds very well willing to be and i don't know what that means i'm curious thank you for calling in our next caller is phone number ending in one seven zero five thank you thank you for taking my time to hear me yes and welcome great um so there's a lot of uh this understanding of the public i read that public comment letters this is eric from and um glad you were able to clear up the inflation with uh an at-large mayor versus strong mayor another um this understanding i believe is that public needs to vote on this district election there's a specific section government section code 34886 that provides for councils to adopt district elections in the cure of California voting rights act issue and um i believe that's what you're doing so some of the letter writers have said that we should be voting on whether or not to have seven districts and i don't believe that that's required to be set by ordinance and uh so these letter writers think that this move is some nefarious heart play but they're misunderstanding the actual content and direction of council and so i'm glad that we're able to have a discussion if they're most set up already but i wanted to add that that one that some of the letter writers had said just in that we needed to vote on this any district any move to district elections as part of a charter amendment we don't and if cd attorney wanted to further clarify that that might be helpful to the public thank you very much thank you so much for pulling in and are there any other members of the public that wish to comment on this item now is time to raise your hand and comment on this item i have caller ending in eight five seven five go ahead and there we go yes hello this is glenn shaller um i have been involved in politics at seven and i don't think i have ever seen anything that's poorly handled as far as what like we are moving toward just like we're doing so because of a loss we're setting up seven districts what we've had since the late 40s he moved to a separately elected mayor i do believe the power grab i think it's um a few folks would like to think or that they may have the opportunity to serve even if they are currently living where they are not going to be from soon i'm really hoping that you all decide not to put this on the ballot not to compensate the process for november and that we can allow the public to the idea that every year is some voting for city council and some will not and they'll have a chance to do so when it's return i work honorary day center favorite i work within the 16 cities and counties some with districts some that do not and what i find is council members council candidates and um speak directly to their neighbors and the entire are the folks who often get elected by leadership also i do not want to change the process of people taking turns being there i think it's been a healthy process whereby um folks find out what they're good at work hard and we have a number of events that on this channel thank you for your time and i hope not put this on the color thank you for calling in um are there any other members of public that would like to um say anything about this item uh now is the time raise your hand i have a fire go ahead and unmute yourself thank you may have runer and council um this is a challenging issue where you guide how to neutralize it as a city member or i've been working in politics in in washington dc the state of nevada colorado california i've found that when you have prong mayor and a city council the energy level of the dialogue is more powerful for the city and i can speak to the number of cities that have that type of relationship obviously some people think that it's called a power grab but one you've been forced by a lawsuit to a change number two you're under a dictate to do it by an over number three you have options laid on the table i think there's a strong preference to have a directly elected mayor there's a lot of moving parts on this one of my thought was interesting and that that council member brown brought up is you know if you have to move and you move in another move and then uh then i'm able to run for another office in another another district well that's problematic work with the number of cities in the southern part of the state that were sued and that they changed the district elections and i think one of the best options was to have a flexible two-year cycle and let the mayor be elected for four years then you limit the term limits as you have been on the uh part of that has been prevented there's no easy solution here but i think the the best solution is bring it to the vote of the people and give them the opportunity thank you for your time thank you so much for calling in our next caller has a phone number ending in 554 go ahead and unmute yourself press star stick unmute yourself caller ending in 554 two are you able to unmute yourself either and there we go unmute on your device for star six there you go hi there welcome uh good day mayor and council members on two two two zero two two two district elections as opposed to straight too much district election plan from long ago approved by council let's have seven and be approved by orton now before you today is placing a vote on the 222nd to share ballot to approve six districts and one at large and a directly elected mayor one step forward one step back change the district elections must have voter approval according to the city charter that's one step forward council public discussion must have seven period there's been no extensive public discourse about the direct election of a mayor changing our government is critical important to everyone how does an elected mayor click to manage your form of government discussed a little of that but a whole lot more needs public discussion and today's vote no way allows for this discussion many other complex the june vote could only be to approve or not approve seven electoral why the proposed council and one at large now because don mires wants to be elected as mayor putting her self-interest above public interest and discourse committee with don and mires put up allies boulder and watkins apparently created a rig process the end result have a proposal for an elected mayor as a foregoing council's compelled to proceed to support the district and one at large place language to assure that the current council members be prevented running for mayor for say at least four years after leaving off this would assure the apparent current power play not her one step at a time ask the electorate if they want district elections with seven districts period then once this is approved or rejected old public hearings about a direct election of mayor and the other issues that have been raised is strong sentiment this place of ballot measure have formal government and that would be the path for us i appreciate your time and thoughtful consideration have a good day thank you for your comment our next caller is phone number ending in six three five five hello hi mayor brooner and council members this is an simonton and uh this has this is a big change for our city this is something that we desperately need to have much more discussion about for example pony kandadi brought up the fact that we could use rank choice voting in lieu of district elections i mean that i'm clear to me there's so many things this is a very big change for our city it's imperative that we not do it in june that's a very few people i've lived in this community for a long time a few people show up for the june election it could be on november at very earliest and we need a lot more discussion about these about the details what are the options what can we do what is how is this going to work out we live in a city where 60 percent of the inhabitants are renters you you are saying that then also you won't change the city charter to say that if someone is elected in a district and then they have to move out of that district sony kandadi said if they move out of the city that but what if they even had to move to a different part of the district that also should be something that the community could have the time to discuss and talk about the implications of a landlord having the right to throw somebody out that is a duly elected official this is so much for this and i really hope you both know on this this needs a lot more town hall community discussion and understanding by the citizens of this city thank you very much for your time before your time and your comment are there any other uh keys that would like to item number 14 on today's agenda the resolution ordering on the ballot for the june 7th 2020 22 primary election a proposed charter amendment creating six districts in an at-large directly elect for it looks like you know more public comment on this item i will bring it back to council and i'll bring it back for deliberation and emotion and let's go back to council i see council member mayors have your agenda thank you mayor i was going to go ahead and make a motion adopting the resolution placing on the ballot in the seventh primary election it proposed charter amendment 80s just not large mayor um i would like to know if there's language that they're all legal folks or managers to offer for some big council member around the points and like the if there's any the language that we might just have i guess the question that i would have for the council is what specifically you would like to um do if if the intent is to make the council member ineligible to run for office after two full terms even if it's for a different district then we can write it that way i'll look at my colleagues repeat that again tony i think i'll i'm happy to kind of weigh in on what i think is the intent tony if i can if i can help clarify but essentially what i understood the intent to be was that we don't want to discourage me council members who want to pursue mayor and have experience you know from their council time pursue mayor so that was the intent around allowing them to then run for mayor but in terms of the between districts i think matt you had some suggested cleanup language around how to kind of reconcile that which wasn't sort of our hope to have people sort of move around to run the intent was really trying to encourage people who have experience to want to serve but not beyond the 16 years right uh council member watkins so the concern that i heard um council's discussion earlier was not having uh the two term limitation or prohibition apply to those that may be moving from one district so what i might just is just striking uh that subsection three in that paragraph that section and including a statement and tony can word this better than i can but including a statement um in that first sentence that just also makes clear that that is also including council members may move on council well again making explicitly clear that regardless of whether you're moving or not you can't be on council more than two consecutive not including those that may run wanting to make things right i think that was and that is what uh currently is in our charter is the two consecutive terms and then two years um where after two years you turn run again so is that the intent to kind of carry that through with the same similar intent and language any yeah yes i think yeah i think that that strike through discussion is is maybe we got markup so that is my motion i am working on that right now and i should have it up on your screen in a minute is there um a second or to the motion um vice mayor watkins you had your hand up yeah i'm happy to second the motion and um this will make a few brief comments and that you know i i will speak i think on behalf of myself and i think i can fairly on behalf of my colleagues who really you know put a lot of thought and effort into trying to bring forward a proposal before our council but ultimately before our voters given the unique circumstances that are before us in regards to the litigation that is impending and requiring us to um districts so i i um i also want to say if folks who you know don't feel the need to have directly elected mayor are not supportive of this charter movement if if they feel strongly about that then they should vote no and and that we we want to hear from our community we want to hear from our voters and we want them to help us look what form of government they like to see move forward for and you know for a long period of time so it was really around doing our due diligence knowing that we're in this sort of really unique time kind of of massive transition to really look at all options and to look at what i've heard and what i think a number of people have heard is point for this option and so the option is what we're asking really our council to do is just to put this before the voters and have them weigh in on what direction they'd like to see this transition take and if overwhelmingly they decide that they don't want to see a directly elected mayor then no matter what we'll be transitioning to the seven districts but we didn't want to pass up the opportunity to ask them this question and so i just wanted to sort of provide that context that this is really about us doing our due diligence as our as elected representatives of our community for our city without any kind of personal or kind of political angle around individual needs this is truly about the governance of our community and putting before our voters like to ask so i just sort of wanted to add that context for our community and for our council in regards to how we landed in place that being said i'm happy to you know continue to second the motion i appreciate the cleanup language in regards to the considerations around the term limits and the transitions and maintaining the same literally for the districts and yeah happy to move forward with with what we have for us thank you vice mayor Watkins um council member Cummings and then council member brown thank you mayor and i just do want to give um recognize the work that's done on this by other council members and staff and i think we can all agree that this is a major gift to our democracy um it's not not just the this reflection shift but this idea that we would shift to directly elected mayor and personally um i believe that what i've heard from many members of the public is that the public should have ample opportunities to weigh in on this major decision that we're going to be putting forward and that we're going to be putting on our ballot um there was a there was ample time an opportunity for us to have these discussions we last year this came up at the city council for the city council and where we were discussing essentially looking at um ranked choice voting at large mayor and i think we all reached senses on the fact that having these meetings with the community about shifting to districts then having a direct elected mayor possibly ranked voice voting was a lot for us to expect the community to take in all at one time which is why we need to move down this path of focusing on the seven districts which is in and of itself a major shift that maybe not many members of the public want to move forward with and um you know i believe that if you want to move forward with a direct elected mayor personally i'd really like to hear what the community wants to see because um we've already heard today uh some options around whether the mayor's years or four years um i think there are issues around compensation commuted i heard um there issues around compensation and then you cut off yeah i don't know how that happens because i wasn't touching my mouse but okay there are issues around uh compensation number of years someone served as mayor i think that's a valid point bring up and then also you know think about equity in our community shifting to a directly elected mayor versus having someone who rotates you know could actually have a lot of impacts on having it diverse voices serving the roles of mayor so for example um you have a rotating mayor there's opportunities for who may represent flats there's side by side have a chance of being mayor and you know one of the things that see from these levels of office is that um you know it takes a lot of time to run and having to raise a lot of money uh could actually train and see um representing us as the mayor moving forward i think that um that also was something i was going to bring up around the 50 plus one and runoff elections um having a longer time period of when someone is running potentially also really negatively impacts low income and work class because i think having us having all this run for office before you know even if you start in the lie or august during the normal filing that lines the line from august to november is pretty substantial amount of time and if this now turns into you having to run for almost entire year that can have a serious negative impact on who is um going to be you know able to run for the seat because we know that low income people can't take off that much time work or can work in class either and um that also gets this idea of compensation if we're keeping the mayor's compensation at what's roughly 40 000 dollars a year um you won't see as many people from lower income communities want to step up for those roles and so i think that this is something that people have been asking about in terms of having a discussion and so um i'm posing a substitute motion uh which i've sent to bonnie and it would be to turn with a process timeline for community engagement to explore charter amendments related to topics including but not limited to directly like the mayor district composition mayor and council member compensation strong mayor versus strong city manager from government mayor term length rate choice voting among other options um you know similar to where we're at right now if there were that we moved to seven districts and it turns out that many members of the community want to see us move to direct like mayor and six districts that could be a five two vote if we're three vote it could be a seven zero vote favor or we could have opposition but um i feel that what we've been hearing is that a lot of people haven't heard about the direction we're moving in right now this is the first time any of this language is coming forward to the community and given the impacts this will have on our democracy it makes the most sense we try to get the most what is possible um before making such a drastic change and then i guess the one thing i'll end with as well is um i'm totally in favor of having community weigh in on these types of decisions yeah putting an item on the ballot however similar to the revenue pressure um it's really important that we're doing our homework first to see if this is something that we really need on the ballot with the revenue measure we can have polls and what i've heard since i've been on the council is when council goes to put items on the ballot while this hasn't always been the case that they often try to do a poll to get a sense of the community of what the community wants to do and where they want to go and this seems like a decision that we're going to be making and putting before the voters that really would benefit us from us putting something out into the community first getting a sense of what does the community want um in terms of we're going to move forward the direct like what that role would be and what i've been saying before so um and if that's not the case i would imagine there are a number of ballot measures that we could move forward that would be interesting um whether that be you know the state transfer tax or other types of items that express interest in but we really want to make sure that we do our homework first so i think that if we're going to move forward with this it would make the most sense was to take our time take community input and and see where the community so i'll leave my comments there and thank you all for your hard work time on this issue thank you council member Cummings um we have a new motion on the floor uh is there a second yeah i'll second that and i do have some comments as well okay go ahead council member Brown we have a first and a second thank you um so i just want to make a few comments here about um i my feeling about the proposal for the agenda item as it was presented to us um my reasoning in supporting a substitute motion here um some of this has already been said by her Cummings i'll try not to be repetitive but there are a few things i think maybe do bear repeating um so we've been at this we've been having this conversation about the move to district elections and yet the general public is largely unaware of what's going on the i risk anecdotally um others heard yes you're hearing from people anecdotally this is a great idea i have anecdotally had uh many many people call and email me reach out to me our agenda was published saying what in the world is going on like coming out of nowhere you know has anybody had as public had any chance to um weigh in and um which i say no was new to me as well relatively you know um the limited opportunities that we've had for public discussion um in around seven districts there's been no extensive public discourse about the election of an atlard mayor um and and uh you know i'll just say um throughout the process i've expressed my dismay about the way this decision uh move district elections has forced upon us so i won't repeat all of that but incredible loss and until today we've been discussing making that transition without going out to the voters um we have been consistently advised that that is the smoothest way forward address um the potential claim and what was agreed to in the settlement agreement um not going to the voters we don't need to do that under c r a with trumps the charter um so you know i've been and i believe that we were all um however um you know uh uncomfortably or you know um yeah uncomfortably uh moving through that process um hearing and responding to that that recommendation added vice way and now here we are with a proposal that's very different um and we've also been told that district elections were coming no matter what um yeah i mean it didn't make that's true i suppose but now it's definitely the result of choices that have been made by the couple by majority members of councils now free iterations of this um over the past years that have been made and those have been made largely behind closed doors um we have not had this conversation out in the public we finally over the course of the past uh you know last fall have started talking about it um i don't believe we've um i believe there's a lot more work um this isn't this isn't a matter of me supporting or opposing this particular proposal and the idea of an at large mayor if you're gonna move this reflection i don't know i don't i'm a member of this council who has been following this pretty carefully and closely and i don't know and so i think that tells i mean that tells me something about um what what that looks like put a question before the voter um i agree that you know the voter it is important to put this for the voters and um so not supporting moving forward in the way that was proposed to us today prior to put a substitute motion um you know that's it's well i guess i'll just i'll just take a step back i'm gonna i because i don't want to go on and on about this but you know i just want to say you know it's it's the proposal that has been pretty hastily put together um there you know i i'm just gonna highlight the fact that we have had all this time the contemplating this and moving in this direction now nobody on this council came forward and said want to look so it's not about six or seven it's about the process by which it's a fundamental change for our democracy our system of representation and if we wanted to stand up over time and i believe well when they thought that's what we're looking for it deserves more than a rush discussion and resolution that i believe has been basically written with you know all respect to our staff and everybody who's and council members who have been working to try to figure out how to navigate this very difficult terrain that has largely been imposed upon us um but it we have we don't have we haven't had time and um you know i think if we're we're going to talk about a charter change then we should be we should we should open up that conversation out of this case because this is one very specific type of charter change and none of the others have been really talked about at least now with your committee i understand you've had that conversation but it hasn't happened in a way that's kind of legible or apparent to the public and for the other members of the council until today um i don't say this the um best that i'm you know i want to criticize your work or your intention but this is a major and you know i think that we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to the public to think it through before we put something on the ballot that is much more complex um has many many potential unintended consequences or and the consequences that we may not all be all understood um i i just think that we take so um i guess i'll so that's my rationale this isn't about me whether or not i support the quick and atlard mayor this is about the context in which we're making that decision it's that it's been brought to us mayor your thank you council member brown council member calentary johnson thank you um yeah i would like to thank uh my city council colleagues and and staff colleagues for all your work on this and callers and who've written and called um you know i think i'll keep my comments pretty brief um we as a council agreed to this ad hoc committee last year we formed this ad hoc committee to explore this very issue of an at-large mayor and secretary and and that's what you've done put a lot of work into it and you've to me the presentation that we saw earlier you've done your homework and you've done your due diligence um this so this isn't new to me and um it's not new to some of the constituents that have reached out to me and called me and written me letters and emails um i'd like to hear from the community and i think putting it on the ballot is the ultimate democratic process a way for us to hear from the community it's clear from what i heard staff and legal school that we have a timing issue that's unfortunate but it's clear that that's the reality that we find ourselves in um and it's also clear for some of the questions i asked and others asked that that staff is like has a outreach process ready to go sort of shall already but have been waiting for us to be able to bring this to the public in this format um so so um those are my sentiments i think putting it before the voters um is is important i think if we do it twice now and then again in 2024 it becomes more negatively impactful and more difficult for voters so i think the best way to engage is to um work hard the next several months engage voters and let the voters decide thanks everyone for your work thank you council member kellen terry johnson um and i think you know a lot of the points that were made are really important in us determining a path forward um this is new to me as well as it as a new newer council members some of these decisions were made prior to joining our city council but one thing has been clear is that we we are moving we have adopted we are in settlement agreement to move forward with seven district so that's not a question at this point um and that does not need to go on a ballot to move to seven district so i wanted to just say that november um we will be moving to seven district i think what we brought up based on the settlement agreement there was another option under that settlement agreement and that was that we could also choose to go to six districts and at large mayor and so that question um for us to make would require a charter in seven districts not require a charter six does and so that's why that would go to public in the june ballot why the june ballot because it has to be before our settlement agreement deadline in november and so if we wait till november we we can't ask that question unless we go to seven district and then in a future couple years change charter at that point which might mean and would most likely mean changing the map changing the districts then and so um it's so much information to absorb and to learn and there were a lot of clarifying points today i think um uh the the the big thing is uh letting the this item is not us as a council deciding that there's going to be six that's not what's before us it's us saying hey let's put it on the ballot and let the voters decide they want to keep seven districts or or a or b seven districts or these districts with an at-large mayor and um so i think over the next few months if we move forward in that direction the next months before the june seven election um will need to be a lot of public and and out and um i'm glad uh council member voluntary johnson you asked some of those questions that i had also asked um earlier about outreach what where is where is that outreach in person online um at events at residences um what does that look like what other languages are we reaching for what demographic to make sure there are small group stakeholders for example but the public is clear on the two options that are before us um you know having having that item on the the june ballot will help Herman uh and again kasey humard correct me if i'm wrong you said there's already three maps but the demographer was weird one if you all vote to move forward with this we are prepared to release the sixth district map we have three drafts okay so there's currently three drafts of seven districts and that's what we're moving forward but before before we had there this option to um really let the voters decide before it gets too tricky later on changing let's determine our district now and move forward rather than go to seven districts and then decide if but it's not later um so can we uh thank you for all the work can we that there's a substitute motion can we yes um i have some alternative language for the resolution but i think you should proceed to vote on whether to accept the substitute motion first thank you so the substitute motion to return with a process and timeline for community engagement for charter amendments related to topics relating but not limited to directly elected mayor district composition and mayor and council member compensation strong mayor versus strong city manager from a government mayor term length and rank voting among others okay so is um we have a first this is a motion by council member Cummings and a second by council member brown and so so this the you have to vote to decide whether to accept the substitute motion and then if you vote to accept it then you subsequent then you can proceed to voting on the language i'm going to ask the city clerk for a roll call vote member calentary johnson no sir no no but i do just want to record i recognize that many of the things in this motion are things that still be continued to ask work as we um basically for collection but for the motion mainly for the reason of you are going to district by a very clear community awareness and many of these things are that i appreciate the motion no i hear what you know no and also for reasons mayor meyers brought up um this is part of the engagement that will happen regardless and the future work that for us so thank you for bringing up those items i'm going to move over now back to our original motion and if we could come back that motion is there a written version or the maker of the motion read that motion he was the motion was simply to adopt the resolution as presented with a modification to subsection d of section 601 i'd like and i'll share the language with you at this point thank you when are you really quick at this section 601 i believe so yes it's 601 subsection d you just lost the motion this is the alternative like sorry there we go uh so no member of the council shall be eligible for re-election or for election to a different council district two years i one general cycle after the expiration of the second consecutive full term of the office for whatever this prohibition shall not bar when a council member elected by district from running for mayor immediately after terms as a council member or two the mayor from running as a by district council member immediately after terms with that said in no event may any person serve on the council as either a council member or the mayor for more than 16 consecutive i accept that change is the seconder of the motion accept that change i do and i just i have one brief comment if this would be a good time where i could do that leaders you can do that now okay thank you mayor and i just i just want to thank and acknowledge my colleagues for this robust session i think it was um it was very insightful and the reality is i don't think there is one one way to do it completely perfect in anybody's eyes right and there are so many iterations of what this could look like what two to four years whether it be not to have consecutive terms or to others or and the timing isn't ideal and i acknowledge that as well and given the considerations and the time constraint that we're under in regards to the seven districts that's where we are i appreciate where council member mayer is really highlighted that a number of the things in the in the prior motion really are priorities for exploration as we move forward um and just want to kind of thank our council robust and it's part of how it goes right and so i appreciate all of the thought and all of the input that was provided i understand it's imperfect and i don't know if there is a perfect here so it's just sort of holding a both and of that kind of understanding that and ultimately it's an opportunity of our city to do as best we can outreach to every member of our community about what is before them so that they can go into the election understanding what and and to hear from them is the ultimate form of democracy which i really appreciate that process so i just wanted to acknowledge and thank colleagues for this discussion and i too as second or you know approve of the of the modified language i appreciate council member brown bringing that up for clarification thank you vice mayor what okay um so now we'll do a roll call vote on this motion and i'd like to ask the speaker to roll call vote mayor council member elementary johnson hi holder hi and i'll say for the record that um part of the direction that was why i was supporting this back in november was that i'd make a friendly amendment through the final process of timeline meeting engagement which was agreed upon we all voted on um not have timeline and process around you know the meeting having this so i don't have a ruling in either direction or or rep the like mayor or rotating mayor um but i do think the process is very important we'll make these major decisions about the shift on democracy so um given that you know you hasn't had a good opportunity to weigh in and up till last thursday did not have a copy of the proposed language um for rolls to elect relect mayor in the ballot language um i don't think that we've had very good not voting in favor of it this time but that doesn't mean i'm opposed to having at-large mayor or not rotating uh no and i the record would just reiterate that this is really about um process for me and um so i'll leave it out hi i do want to state for the record um was expectations and also a caller tonight who um indicated that this guns like run for elected mayor i will publicly state right now i am not running for mayor there's no intent behind this except the recognition that having multiple election periods and cycles where we are going back and asking the voters for different both pause a lot of and actually i think they'll disincentivize from running i you know want to echo the the mayor's comments that we are moving despite the work of the committee and trying to also look at the process he decided the most important process to always go to your voters okay that is ultimate that is the ultimate way that we should not bring the um i appreciate the work of my colleague and uh i know this is pretty hard very very hard um i do think going to the voters is a very important question now very i appreciate comments though and voters say um so i'm and i thank you for watching hi ambruna hi that motion passes five two and um i would like to ask um our city staff for um an engagement timeline and that process um when we can have that information and how we can be involved to help share that information that process mayor brunner we found that we have direction we will be finalizing all those details we will post a lot of this on our district elections page and we will share it with the council and beg of you to share it we want we want the information out and we want this to be successful we want the outreach to be successful i think it would also thank you casey it would also be helpful to know what the full engagement plan is and um how we can participate in in all of the aspects of it whether it's in person whether it's um online whether you know it's small stakeholder groups whether phone calls i think you know we're all in and making sure that this process that we can all be successful and making sure the public is informed for making a decision we will we will keep you all um involved and engaged in this so thank you so much do you have anything else to add um city manager matt puffaker you you almost look like you were about i was thinking about it i just want to i want to echo comments that we are eager to start this process that could put together a very thoughtful approach that will meet our community members where they are including our community so and working with elizabeth sfeb on our team as well we've kind of came out press release with those details and i can certainly in my next update to the council provide more details uh and in the interim timeline places um and approach out to the council movement of this work and today's decision by the council is very helpful allowing us thank you so much uh let's see i saw two hands go up council member comings and then council member brown had a question for the staff which is some of the comments that were made um we were making deliberations we're mentioning that um you know there already is a process in timeline for a number of topics that were up in my motion to come back so i'm wondering when we should expect to see that come back as well in update on that because a number of those related to um thanks for his voting the part of amendment committee all sorts of other options and since it sounded like previous direction had been given on that why um that motion wasn't accepted then i think it would be good to see in the sense of when we're going to be having those conversations in the process timeline will be established that is helpful i think that uh i appreciate that council member coming um i think that the sense of urgency from the committee on this sort of deferred the considerations and everything else i did have a uh work plan drafted for their consideration which they have not had a chance to review yet because because the timeliness of this one particular thing uh we i think that we will bring that to the committee for their direction on next steps uh committee members uh you may want to weigh in on that too but that that's my thought i would just add a council member coming in the number of questions and vision points that were included in your motion that would need to run to ground uh i don't know that cc's work plan was inclusive of all the items there but that's certainly a discussion we can have with the with the expectation being the committee was tasked with the core responsibilities and what we fully covered today okay well some decisions that thoroughly reviewed um in a timeline that'll be work yeah i just i guess one point i'll make to those you know there's like some of these decisions definitely need to input a community it shouldn't be just solely made by the company so yeah it'd be good to hear about what could come back and when and then how it further engages the meetings was direction so i'll end my comment there but i'm mainly saying this too because um there's a lot of feelings of mistrust around people's community with what the council says it's going to do versus what ends up happening and i just don't want to see us you know going back in this situation where we have more division in unity and less trust with our local thank you councilmember Cummings for your comment councilmember brown did you still want to or you took your hand down thanks my question was about you know all the rest of it but you know where's that going to go okay and will we ever hear about it again so yeah thank you um vice mayor Watkins i just wanted to offer that if there are individuals that some of my colleagues do want to refer to the committee or to the staff that had you know concerns to please feel free to do that that we do want to hear from everybody and so if there are specific people that you're hearing from that we're not hearing from please our way as we start to explore some of the others thank you vice mayor Watkins okay thank you so much Casey for joining us today thank you very much after well thank you so much um i'm going to call a five minute break and then we will return with agenda item number 15 which is a presentation on the results from the national community survey so we'll return here at 535 thank you so much everyone a chance to back online turn your cameras on someone is not muted and um wondering if this park is ready okay all right so um that was a quick break thank you we are now continuing with our next agenda item number 15 which is a presentation and i just wanted to make sure normally we um have presentations at the beginning of our meeting and i've been scheduling uh presentations to start our meeting off and um in this situation our presenter was unable to attend the meeting so we were able to schedule this for the end of the meeting instead so i really um tried to be flexible thank you jade alrocha director of survey research hope though and thank you for joining us today in our communications director elizabeth smith this is a presentation item on the results from national community survey the order will be a presentation of the item by jade alrocha and followed by questions from council since this item is only intended to provide council with information we will not be taking public comment on this so go ahead welcome jade thank you for being here and thanks for being flexible with time yes thank you so much for having me and i appreciate your flexibility as well at different time zones and um yeah so i'm really happy to be here um actually i'm sorry jade i'm sorry jade i just wanted to say a couple things before you got started um thank you um my name is elizabeth smith i'm the communications manager for the city um we initiated this process with polko to do the national community survey as a benchmark for the city we haven't ever done anything like this before we've done polls on specific issues but not a broad range of quality of life issues and investigation um we really wanted to take the temperature of the community on the regular basis and so we'll be doing this survey every two years um it's a reliable set of data points that we can use to try to understand issues that are imported to the community and then also how to how to spend our precious time and monetary resources and then one last thing that i want the council to know is that as we're using the polko platform for this survey we do also have access to um to a survey tool and um our building a panel of santa cruz resident who will get notified anytime we have an engagement opportunity so um when we launched the district elections um maps the first set of maps immediately got some responses on that um on that effort and already have 60 60 piece of people have weighed in um on those maps without us doing a lot of a lot of promotion as we were waiting on the decision i think we're moving forward so just know that that's a resource to you and jade i'm sorry for interrupting you but i wanted to get wanted you to get into the meat of everything and me to do my little preamble before you got started so please please feel free to take it away jade and thank you so much yeah thank you all is the best um yes but no no problem at all i'm happy that you did that um so and i actually before i jumped into the results i wanted to thank elizabeth for uh she was our primary contact throughout the duration of this project it's a pleasure to work with uh very helpful throughout the survey development and and implementation process um but with that let me go ahead and share my everybody see that okay so this since this is your first time we're just a little bit of background about who we are um so we are also black research center national research center has been a the premier community survey this survey expert in this country for more than 25 years now um and then back in 2019 we merged with online engagement platform polo uh work with local government to engage their residents online um so that brings a lot more functionality and um capacity to these services that we are able to offer our clients in addition to the regular community surveys such as the national community survey as elizabeth already mentioned you have a lot more um ability to do further outreach and you're using the platform talk a little bit more about that at the end and so before i dive into the effects survey results just a really brief overview about what our clients usually use data for so um most often these survey results um are used to monitor friends and rather than opinion over time as you go survey again over time you will establish a friend line and be able to identify increases and decreases the ratings measure about government performance and public trust meetings to inform budget decisions as well as planned use strategic planning decisions some of our clients even use their survey results to inform creating a strategic plan if they don't we have one and finally uh we do have