Can you send me the, this, I'm not seeing it. Okay, let me begin if everybody's ready. Let me pull up the zoom. Is it ready to record? It's in practice session. Okay. Yes. Okay. Good afternoon and welcome to the 1 30 p.m. public portion of the closed session of the October 11th, 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. If you would like to comment on a closed session item, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. In this part of the meeting, the council will receive public testimony and thereafter, the public line will be closed and inaccessible. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming, so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. And if anyone here joining us in person that wishes to speak on closed session agenda, you can line up here to your left. I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor, Council Member Callentary Johnson. Present. Boulder. Cummings. Here. Brown. Here. Myers. Here. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. And Mayor Brunner. Present. Thank you. If you are attending virtually and would like to speak, you may raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand on the webinar controls of your computer. You will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted and the timer will be set to three minutes. You may hang up once you have commented on your item of interest. Let's go to attendees. We have participants and nobody with their hands raised. And nobody in person. Okay. Hearing none, seeing none, this meeting is now adjourned and Council will go into closed session. Members of the public that are attending the meeting virtually, please leave the meeting and rejoin us again at 3.30 p.m. when the regular meeting resumes. Thank you. Okay. Is the city clerk ready? Can Council members turn on your cameras? Okay. Before we begin our regular City Council meeting, we need to have the annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Industrial Development Authority, IDA, and the Santa Cruz Public Improvement Financing Corporation. City Council members serve as Board members on these boards which were created for the purpose of providing the city and instrument to issue bonds. Annually, while the bonds are in existence, the Board members are legally required to hold a meeting of the IDA and the Santa Cruz Public Improvement Financing Corporation. The meetings are procedural and for the purpose of approving minutes and electing new Board members. So without further ado, I would like to call to order the annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Industrial Development Authority. I call to order the October 11th, 2022 annual meeting and I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. I'm going to do it as Council members for now. Council Member Calentari-Johnson. Present. Boulder. Here. Cummings. Here. Brown. Here. Present. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. And Mayor Brunner. Present. Thank you. So now I'm looking for a motion to elect new officers as set forth in Section 3.02 of the Industrial Development Authority Bylaws as follows. Executive Director, City Manager Matt Huffaker, Chief Financial Officer, Director of Finance Elizabeth Cable, President Mayor Brunner, Vice President Vice Mayor Watkins, and Secretary Treasurer City Clerk Administrator Bonnie Bush. Is there a motion? So moved. Council Member Golder, is there a second? Second. Council Member Brown. All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? None. Okay, that motion passes unanimously with seven yeses. And now agenda item number five, the minutes of last year's October 12th, 2021 Industrial Development Authority. Are there? I'll move approval of the minutes. Okay. We have a motion by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member Golder the minutes of the October 12th, 2021 Industrial Development Authority meeting. Are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? I don't see any in person. I will look to my attendees here virtually. You can raise your hand by pressing star nine. I'm not seeing any hands raised virtually. Okay, I will come back for a vote on the minutes. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And any opposed? Okay, that motion passes unanimously. And now the meeting of the Industrial Development Authority is adjourned. Thank you. At this time, I will call to order the October 11th, 2022 annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz Public Improvement Financing Corporation. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Director Callentary Johnson. Present. Golder. Here. Coming. Here. Brown. Here. Meyers. Present. Watkins. Here. Brunner. Present. Thank you. I am now looking for a motion to elect new officers as set forth in section 3.02 of the Santa Cruz Public Improvement Financing Corporation bylaws as follows, Executive Director, City Manager, Matt Huffaker, Chief Financial Officer, Director of Finance, Elizabeth Cable. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Cabell. It's Cabal. Cabal. Thank you. President Mayer Brunner, Vice President, Vice Mayor Watkins, and Secretary Treasurer, City Clerk Administrator Bonnie Bush. I am now looking for a motion from a director. We have Director Watkins. Second. And a second by Director Cummings. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That motion passes unanimously. Moving on to the general business, the minutes of the October 12, 2021 Santa Cruz Public Improvement Finance Corporation, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on this item? I will look to my virtual attendees. And if you'd like to speak to this item, you can press star nine to raise your hand. If you're joining us in person. Okay. Seeing none.  I'm looking for a motion on item number seven, the minutes of the Santa Cruz Public Improvement Finance Corporation. I'll move the item. Okay. I have a motion by Director Myers. I'll second. And a second by Director Cummings. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That motion passes unanimously. The meeting of the Santa Cruz Public Improvement Finance Corporation is now adjourned. Good afternoon. Now we begin our 39, 340 p.m. session of the October 11, 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. And I would like to ask the clerks to please call roll. Council member is Calentary Johnson. Present. Boulder. Present. Cummings. Brown. Here. Myers. Present. Thank you. We'd like to begin today's meeting with a couple of presentations, the first one being Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship Summer Youth Trail Crew Accomplishments. And I'd like to welcome Emma Usat, Trails Program Manager of Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship. I just wanted to say thank you so much for all your service for the City of Santa Cruz and also thanks for giving me the time to chat today. I did just want to check in real quick. I can't tell from my end. Are you viewing my presentation right now? Is it being displayed by Bonnie? By any chance? No. Okay. I see it's going out. Here it is. Now we see it. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're so familiar. Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship has been partnering with the city of Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Department for the last five years to put together a summer youth trail crew. So we can go ahead to the next slide. Kind of hard to write a description that's really easy about what it is. So the summer youth trail crew, we call it SYTC. We have four members get to work on a crew together basically just for the summer break to perform trail maintenance in city open spaces. And I just put this little disclaimer. This is from the city's job description. Yeah. It's aimed at high school students. So high school students only may apply. So it's for the youth. And these are our, this was our crew this year. We had four members. We had four members. We had four members. We had four members. We had four members. We had four members. We had four members later. There were a few things that were challenges this year, but one was actually an overall challenge for all the city parks to park city jobs for the summer was getting enough people to join these temporary jobs. It wasn't just for this job. It was for a lot. And we did a ton of outreach, but for some reason it was kind of hard to fill this role for the summer. I think just COVID stuff. So we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun. When is returning crew member. And we've had that happen a few times in the program. And I think that really says a lot about how much fun they're having. So we can continue on. And this is Travis. He was the summary trail crew lead. And so he's been a volunteer for the last almost decade. SEMTS. And he went to trail bowling school. And he was the first to be in the team. And he was the first to be in the team. Lead the crew was, we were super fortunate. And the crew had a great time. He has a lot of great quotes. And I have all this and more of an official report that I can share with like the debrief notes and everything after this meeting. But for this purpose of this meeting, I just kind of wanted to share some of the highlights. So yeah, Travis was the crew lead. And he actually is full time with our organization. Now as an account manager. So you want to keep going. Just to give a basic overview of the projects. So we started out with the first schedule this year. And then we ran it by Blake and who is works the city and got everything approved. And I was really, really happy for the crew this year because they got to work in so many parks. I can, I can't even think of other parks that they could have worked on that are city parks with trails. So it was really cool. They performed a lot of trail maintenance and cleanups. So like picking up garbage, just generally looking at the whole trail corridor and seeing what needed to be improved. So they did a lot of work. They did a lot of work. They did a lot of work. They brushed and removed a lot of invasive plants. When we get to it in a minute, you'll hear that they removed 4,000 pounds of weeds. They fixed a lot of signage and did a lot of fence installation and repair. They did get to help out with the new trail construction project at Sycamore Grove, which they later all said was their favorite part of the whole experience. So they had three old trails, they came back to Sycamore to have a whole entire eight weeks at the West side pumptrack, fixing a few asphalt marks and painting. And of course they got to have an ice-cream party the last day. Yeah I listed some of the trails and parks that they worked in, they law, which we're actually going to tomorrow to lead 100 kids to do invasive plant removal, a bunch of Koganic trails that remember basically anywhere that you can think of that is trail and city park they were there so we can continue oh yeah I just included a few before and after so you can kind of just get the general just of the amount of work that they did this is a before picture this is that more creek if you want to go to the next one it's pretty much impossible and afterwards you can see where the 4,000 pounds of weed comes from and I just want to highlight that you know we as an org and this crew really look at the whole trail so it's not just the tread the actual trail we're working on you know brushing like I said graffiti removal from bridges the whole experience for the trail user so keep going and just kind of skip through these this is a before I want to highlight the sign here a lot of signs are we're unreadable and then if you go to the next the crew spent a lot of time cleaning up interpretive signs and installing missing signs and we have a whole list of the unfinished business that will be able to accomplish at a later time keep going here and thanks Bonnie and yeah just a few pictures of what their experience was like and we can move on yeah so to wrap it up with a little bit of stats we spent 40 days altogether 1600 hours in city open spaces 355 of those hours were kind of our time like me putting together the schedule but I just want to say that doesn't count city staff time and city staff is one of the highlights that we'll get to in a bit they worked in on 22 trails parks and pump tracks like I said 4,000 weeds which we have tags where we weighed the weeds so we know my favorite part of the entire program is that Jaden and Quinn pictured here became best friends and they go fishing together all the time now and it was really cute Jaden lives in Watsonville Quinn lives in Boulder Creek and yes they had endless memories and life skills acquired as Travis said so if you want to keep going another picture we can keep going I'm not going to read through all these but we have a lot of what went well from our official debrief that we can share and but the one thing I did want to highlight is that the city acquired through a grant a tool trailer and tools which was incredible and now we're like wow we need to do that too because it was just so helpful to have a library to choose from and it also just helped us do more work this was definitely the most work we've ever done even with a four-person crew as opposed to a six-person crew and then also Blake Travis Tony all the the city park staff are just the best like I work with all the land agencies I work with people from all over the state and the country they are so responsive so professional so fun and easy to work with and it really makes a mark I think on this community it really drives projects forwards and helps amazing programs like this happen so I just wanted to give the city a huge shout out but we can keep going don't have to read through all these let's get to the next slide which is improvements I believe if you challenges yeah so like I said it was challenging in general I've heard from every labor force to fill for youth this summer I'm not sure why but the other I guess things here would be just a few internal things nothing nothing too crazy to share here actually I think it's the next slide actually that had a few things I wanted to share oh yeah so definitely something that's really important to me and was important and I tried really hard but it just didn't happen was you know making sure our crew is dived like a diverse group of people and the prior year we had three women which was really great and it it yeah it was just awesome to have an equal number of people on the crew so really making sure that that happens again next year I did not let you let the youth use power tools but I can see why that was added just because a lot of the time Travis the crew lead would be using the power weed wacker on French room and other stuff and then the crew would just follow and it would be to be able to do that much more if the crew could be trained to how to use power tools and it would also just be a cool educational opportunity and yeah a few other things here but again I can share this after so if you want to keep going this is the last piece I just wanted to share so as you all may be familiar how it kind of works is that we the city pays for the crew's staff time which is not listed here so obviously that's a huge lift and then also half of our crew leads staff time which we pay more than we end up supplementing so anyway the general point is this is about how much rough estimate we invested not counting things like you know swag or ice cream parties or other other random things that we threw in but that's just a little snippet of about how much we're investing each year on this program and then if you want to continue yes like I said we just want to thank you all for helping make this possible and I'll just end with the last slide is the next one it's nothing really but I just want to end with you know my vision is that this program is incredible I really see it changing lives honestly I worked closely with I went and visit them every week and brought them pastries Travis paid for them to have lunch is from his own pocket every Friday like we love this crew I just seeing the friendships and also the careers like three of the people on the crew were like I really want to work through the city next or I'm really interested in working outdoors now or in natural resource management I just think the potential is huge for a program like this and my dream would be to have simultaneously work with the city of Watsonville and I don't know the city of Scott's Valley and have like a crew in the city of Santa Cruz a crew in South County and a crew in the Santa Cruz Mountains going at the same time so that's kind of how I envision this and I just yeah I wanted to say thank you so much so if you want to go to the last slide it has my contact if you have any questions or comments yeah thank you so much thank you so much Emma congratulations to the program being so successful and thank you for sharing those efforts and photos it's pretty amazing and it's greatly appreciated I would like to just give council members an opportunity for comments or questions councilmember Cummings and then councilmember Calentary Johnson first off thanks for that wonderful presentation and it's great to see all the good work that you know you all are doing it with your group and then how you're inspiring the youth to be good stewards of our environment I had a question but you actually answered it in part at the end which was kind of like what's happening in terms of is there any connection with the young people in the city in terms of like pipelines for kids getting jobs in the future and I guess the comment I'll make is just that it'll be great if we could kind of track that and see like you know if there are young people who come through these programs like do they get jobs in the city and where does it kind of lead them into the future but yeah just really good to see how this is having a positive impact on the lives of young people in the community so thanks for all your work and looking forward to see more thank you and yeah that's really important to me too as a program director you know I really don't want people to come to one event or do one program and then never never see what happens and so that really gets me my mind spinning and I'm gonna look into that I'm gonna follow up and see whatever happened because I know previous classes of this program they also were very interested in working for the city so I will get back to you on that councilmember Calentari Johnson thank you for the presentation and the work I can't stop smiling seeing those faces on our screen I have a few questions maybe I'll just ask them all at once can you remind us the the capacity for the program I know you had four youth this summer maybe you said that a night and I missed it and then what are what strategies are you using for outreach so that we can think about how to augment that in the future and I had sort of similar thoughts as councilmember Cummings up what a great workforce development opportunity this is and this is sort of question and comment but is fire prevention and fire mitigation incorporated into the teachings as you do the trail stewardship and if not that there's a great opportunity there thanks for all the work day thanks for all those great questions the first one capacity building okay so yes four people I actually don't know as much about it's the city's budget that really determines like well I know we could have hired up to six I think that we I think the program cost the city I'm I don't want to quote wrong but I feel like it was around $35,000 for for the city and so to build it what I like as a person looking at our mission is to build and maintain all the trails in Santa Cruz County so my dream would be to team up with the city of Santa Cruz to get a grant to like expand the program and also yeah and have the mission be a workforce development program of some kind or like educational and so I feel like right now it's it's an incredible experience and they're learning a lot hands-on but as you may have saw in the challenges or improvements more educational opportunities we try to fold that in like I teach the crew trail Academy classes and but I think we could really we could add more we could add wilderness first aid we could add chainsaw training we could add a lot of other useful tools that then they have with them to go and apply for jobs and we do send them a list personally of like all these job boards and resources and we personally offer to help them with their resumes but I would love to make it more official and keep growing it because it's so awesome and I just really don't want it to disappear thank you thank you are there any other comments or questions all right thank you so much Emma for joining us and did you have a question we do have another question here in person sorry I'm not here for this item but I'm fascinated by it I did want to let Emma know and the council members also we're having a trade day event at the Civic Auditorium on the 15th of November and it's 832 30 Emmett if you want to get a hold of me I can give you the name where you can sign up for a booth we've got a bunch of different kinds of coming can you talk in the mic oh I'm sorry there you go lots of different kinds of groups coming and it's about right now around 450 high school kids kids from all over the county are signed up to come so it's we're working on getting folks it's free to participate if you'd like to get a booth and think about talking about what you do it's great will be targeted just as exact demographic you're looking for I know the city is having water and wastewater and refuse or having booths there's a lot of interactive activities that are planned there's going to be big equipment in the Civic parking lot that people can do hands-on things with so more information will be coming on this but it's a trades day activity we're doing in combination with your future is our business which is one of our partners in our workforce of workforce development initiative we've been working on also the the construction industry education foundation is another partner so the city is providing the sponsorship for the participation of the Civic and Water Department is going to pay the bill for the Civic staff to participate so it's really a great opportunity I think to reach out for trades construction trades skill trades and green economy jobs and get that information out to our community and future workforce I'm sorry is November 15th at what time it's going to be 8 30 to 12 30 at the Civic Auditorium and I can send you all a flyer about it but fundamentally it's we're working on getting it organized right now and I'm pretty excited it's a great opportunity to talk about what we do but also bring other businesses an interest in to talk about what they do in this particular area thank you what was your email you know what it's our manard at cityofsantacruz.com R-M-E-N-A-R-D okay now everyone knows okay awesome before I go real quick sorry I forgot to answer the question about outreach I run our DEI committee and I also partner really closely with the city of Watsonville and I was really trying to make sure we had equal representation from all parts of the city and the county and we we did actually so we had yeah kid from the west side a kid from like you said Boulder Creek we did have one kid from Watsonville and the last kid was from Midtown so yeah we did have good representation I guess but it was really challenging to get so yeah basically I have a huge outreach list sent it to all the schools repeatedly all the teams all of our agency partners I made a poster I put flyers and I did table at an event held by the city however I think next year what I've already been doing is I take I just did a presentation at PCS and I'm gonna table at schools during lunchtime like a month before hiring to try to recruit more people that is okay thank you thank you so much Emma okay have a good day okay our next presentation agenda item number nine on today's agenda is a pure pure water Soquel project update Soquel Creek Water District and I'd like to welcome Melanie Mao Schumacher with Soquel Creek Water District hi hi Melanie hi thank you mayor vice mayor and fellow council members my name is Melanie Mao Schumacher I'm the special projects communications manager here at Soquel Creek Water District I'm also overseeing the pure water Soquel program today we're just really grateful to have the opportunity to be before the council to do a quick short presentation on the film that has been released last month on pure water Soquel we're pretty excited about it and we're really just trying to do a little bit of outreach to organizations and present the movie at their meetings unfortunately Ron Duncan my general manager was here but we had a conflicting meeting that started at four so he also wanted to just share his gratitude in the partnership over the years with the city of Santa Cruz this project is not just Soquel Creek Water District's projects it's in large part we could not have done what we've been doing with this project without the city of Santa Cruz with the agreements with the partnerships from elected officials down to staff we're really going to miss Mark dental who's the public works director who's retiring his staff and Rosemary staff have been instrumental in the development of this project so we have about a five minute video and what I wanted to share with you and just a couple of slides and then them then the film can you see my screen yes okay great thank you so as I mentioned that this is a film on pure water soquel that's part of a larger online series put out by the International Water Association and all of these films are produced and made by BBC story works the films were a part of a series called beneath the surface and was tied to the launch of their international water conference in Copenhagen the films really feature in highlight innovation and innovators specifically working on water sustainability projects the films in themselves are 17 films that focus and highlight 16 different projects and of course geographically located all throughout the world this is just a list of where the projects are coming from and specifically of this week there were two that were from the United States one from California and Santa Cruz County the pure water soquel project and another project from Omaha and the press films are located online this is the location from the BBC story works website that illustrates and shows you know a little feature at all of the films pure water soquel with the first of the 17 films that were produced and showcased and so as you can see if you go on that website or just in that top right top left corner we did the filming in March and the film is about five minutes long we have in addition to myself who was a representative of the community of the pure water soquel program director also as a resident and customer here we also had Cindy Wallace laid to the sustainability lead at black and beach black and beach is the design builder who is building the pure water soquel treatment facilities and we also had Bridget Hoover who works at the National Monterey Marine Sanctuary and the film was released September 8th at the conference and then each day one film will have like an international launch date our date was originally supposed to be on September 19th but with since these are all produced by BBC story works it was delayed by a couple of days because of the Queen's passing so September 22nd was our official launch date and we've been able to show and promote the film so with that I'm going to need to stop really quick just so that I can share again what's down we're just seeing your I think water is so critical not sharing the right screen you got it yeah you got to expand the okay thank you thank you for your patience I think water is so critical and important and it has such a nexus to enabling a community to thrive and for us we have a water scarcity here we had a water challenge that our only source of water was going to be contaminated with seawater which basically means you can't drink it we rely on rainfall to refill our groundwater basin and our community are rock stars at water conservation but even that conservation hasn't proven to be enough as water is extracted and there's not enough water to be replenished by rainfall that's what created the kind of critical overdraft of the groundwater basin and cause seawater contamination and intrusion at the coastline developing a water supply project is a marathon it's not a sprint there's so many things that that need to take place over a long period of time getting people to understand the problem and then understanding the technical aspects of it and the science and the data and then tying that to the community values that's what narrowed us to recycled water and I think that's why we've been able to go in about seven years from kind of planning a project to actually constructing the project I think that people are learning about the critical foundational role that water plays in communities when you when you go through a city you don't see the water infrastructure you don't see the pipelines you don't see the treatment plants you don't see all of the intricacies of what it takes to be able to deliver water to the tap and to take wastewater away and so we have spent a tremendous amount of time educating showcasing the role that recycled water can play and should play and must play within our communities to be able to have a secure water future the sanctuary is one of the largest marine protected areas in the nation it was designated by Congress for the purposes of resource protection research and education water is a really big part of people's lives here it brings people to the area to appreciate the ocean and the beauty that we have here but it also provides a lot of recreational activities as well whether it's surfing we're internationally renowned for our diving and all of the organisms that you see when you go out into the ocean we're lucky here in California especially on the central coast that there is an ethic of environmental protection many people ask what is advanced purification mean it's important to think that we're beginning with the source water that's already been treated now we're going to take that water and we're going to provide six additional treatment steps to it to get it to drinking water standards as a community is a globe we tend to be really quick to label the drop by its history oh that's wastewater oh it's stormwater is it potable water is it groundwater and my perspective is we need to look at this holistically and make sure that we're making the best decisions for every drop of water in our community and with that challenge we now have to look at how do we manage water differently when we think about that secure water future it is also understanding the impacts of climate change and what is happening around the globe and recycled water plays a great role because it allows us to now decouple climate from water supply and so we really saw this as an asset that we could take that water which has already been treated and then further treated through advanced water purification and then put that back into the groundwater basin so it was able to replenish the basin it was able to create this freshwater seawater barrier and create that frontline of defense to protect our groundwater supply and it's the collaboration across a community because no one alone can solve the challenge by themselves but together communities can provide a sustainable water infrastructure it's an asset that we need to protect that we needed to replenish in this project isn't just about supporting a community it's about environmental stewardship to be able to create sustainability resiliency and reliability for my children for my friends for my community I want to help create that sustainability definitely has like a flair for like BBC Storyworks type of filming it really what they call it is kind of more of a human-centric it doesn't have a lot of the the technical part we do have a very robust website with more project information for people who are interested as you guys probably know we've been in construction since 2021 a lot of us took to copies and kind of built our creative side during the pandemic we did that on on a personal side but professionally it was you know getting this project through design and into construction active construction underway the wastewater treatment plant at the shana clear site where we're building the purification center the eight miles of pipeline that are going through county and city streets thank you again thank you we know that that is definitely an inconvenience to your residents and then the three seawater intrusion prevention wells we are planning on having the project online in 2024 and we are starting to explore and look into developing some tours during the construction of the water purification facility right off the freeway so we'll keep people posted on that if they're interested in doing a site tour but I'm here for questions but I know you also have a lot on your plate so I just appreciate the time today thank you thank you so much Melanie thank you for sharing that movie there's some great shots in there as well do council members have comments or questions councilmember Golder I just have a quick comment I want to say thank you I really love how and I look at those things on BBC something actually like to do so I appreciate now that I can point community members there because the one of two complaints I get is around water it's a concern I guess and the complaint I get is around the traffic and I'm with the construction and I'm constantly trying to explain why the roads are under construction with this project and that's a it's a great resource that I can point out now moving forward I was beautiful beautifully done thank you and thanks for all your work thank you for taking those complaints councilmember Myers hi Melanie I just yeah I just wanted to say thank you and also similarly just keeping the information flowing about you know what's happening why our streets are being you know torn up and the kinds of things that people are seeing your communication has been really helpful and excellent and like you I also want to just recognize our city departments that have participated in this because it's really a being in the water world professionally this is a project that people are looking at literally around the world and certainly is very very well regarded in California so it's just exciting to have a little city like ours and our partner at Soco Creek Water District doing really cutting-edge work so congrats thank you I think we've always gone into this project as it being a regional project with the collaboration and I get I must get goosebumps when I think now the project is available to show to the world that you know like our partnership in the collaboration and it's not just it's not just Soco Creek Water Districts projects not Soco Creek and and then city in the county it's now California's project and the United one of the United States projects on that scale so I hope that you guys feel that as well as we do as this opportunity with this film has shown us wonderful thank you thank you are there any other council members okay thank you so much Melanie for joining us today thank you have a great day you too okay we will now continue with our agenda today and I have a few announcements and then we will move on to our regular meeting today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website city of Santa Cruz comm our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption and we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside or outside of chambers for the consideration of our community please stay home if you have any symptoms of a cold or flu or are feeling unwell in any way if you wish to comment on an agenda item today and are attending virtually with us you can call in at the beginning of the item you are wishing to comment on using the instructions on your screen and remember to mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone please note there is a delay in the streaming and the sound so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device you may miss your cue to speak when it is time for public comment please raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer public comment is heard only on items council is taking action on and not on regular updates and reports so the items today that will be open for public comment are numbers 12 through 20 and 22 through 23 on our agenda before moving on to our regular agenda I'd also like to briefly announce in raising awareness for domestic violence awareness month the Commission for the prevention of violence against women is planning a three-day event next week and it's completely free for the community to attend there will be a premier screening movie I think it's called my name is Andrea and that will be on Tuesday October 18th at 7 p.m. at landmarks Del Mar theater oh thank you so much and it's listed here on the screen we also have a rally sign making on Wednesday October 19th at 3 p.m. at the Museum of Art and History this is all events that the Commission for the prevention of violence against women have organized and then March for women's rights on Thursday October 20th at 6 30 p.m. at the Santa Cruz County courthouse so the information is listed on the city website city of Santa Cruz comm slash city calendar and in honor of domestic violence awareness month I did issue a mayor's proclamation proclaiming the month of October 2022 as domestic violence awareness month in the city of Santa Cruz and encourage all members of our community to participate in the activities during the month of October to raise awareness and work together to prevent violence in our world moving on I'd like to ask the council members if there are any statements of disqualification today seeing none I'd like to ask the city clerk to announce any additions or with the exception of 21 there are none thank you at this time I'd like to call on the city attorney to provide a report on closed session yes good afternoon Mayor Brunner members of the City Council this afternoon the City Council met in closed session to discuss the following items item one was a conference with legal counsel involving liability claims those are the claims of a Zoran Sica forgive the pronunciation and the claim of the Santa Cruz Elks Lodge number 824 those are also listed as item 20 on your afternoon agenda item 2 was a conference with legal counsel concerning existing litigation the litigation entitled Alicia Lopez versus Mary McCoy currently pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court and in that item the council by a unanimous vote authorized the city attorney's office to file a writ of appeal in the 6th appellate district challenging the Superior Court's recent decision denying a motion for summary judgment that the city attorney's office filed in that case item 3 was a conference with leap with labor negotiators involving SEIU temporary employees SEIU service employees supervisors OE 3 the council deferred discussion of that item until later this afternoon or evening and that concludes my report thank you at this time I'd like to call on Laura Schmidt assistant city manager for a report on updates thank you mayor Bonnie if I can get your help so all those slides are loading I'll be giving you my first update on the San Lorenzo San Lorenzo Park restoration and benchlands closures right now there is go ahead and go to the next slide please right now there is a citywide team making herculean efforts to restore the benchlands and there have they have completed five zones zones one through four and zone nine and then zone four that closed on October 5th is closed however they are continuing to clean it up you can go to the next slide today they noticed closure of zone 5 a and then are they close zone 5 a and they noticed zone 5 b for closure and that will close one week from today on the 18th we do understand that with the closure of the benchlands that other neighborhoods are feeling impacts as far as some campers get picked up by relatives some campers move on to other locations outside of our area and some campers move to our other parts of our city as well as into other zones in the benchlands that are not closed the team is working as quickly and as much as possible to address the other impacts that are being raised we hear the neighbors we hear you council members and they are really making an effort but as you'll see in the next couple of slides the work that they are doing is enormous Bonnie if you can go to the next slide this is an example of a zone before the cleanup so the picture on your left is zone 4 before cleanup and the picture on the right is zone 3 after cleanup you guys will have received an update on the 7th that about 171 tons of trash had been picked up to date we just got an update from the team today and as of yesterday that number had changed to 203 tons and because I like to put things in terms that people can understand 203 tons is equivalent to 138 Toyota Prius is a pre-eye depending on how you say the plural if you put 138 Priuses end-to-end that goes from Sydney Hall to the London Nelson Community Center that's how much trash has been picked up and you can imagine the size of a Prius as well so it's very substantial and quite arduous the work that the team is doing as far as the next slide shows you the aerial view of the cleanup so the five zones that have been cleaned up are outlined in red and then the rest of the bench lands are what remains to be done the other item that we're reporting on is a next step in our Water Street bridge remembrance so in 1877 there was a lynching at the Water Street did bridge a terrible moment in our community's history the bears forming an ad hoc committee based upon previous direction from council and that will be comprised of local historians and then over the next three months those historians will help us help us look at the historic record engage the stakeholders and return to council with a recommendation as far as how to commemorate this event interested community members be on the lookout will do postings to our intrat internet on how to contribute and participate in this process and then the mayor is has also already reached out I believe to some of our local historians to begin to form that ad hoc committee our fire department has been working in concert with the police department and Parks and Rec as you heard I believe in the last meeting from chief OD they have been doing a lot to receive grants for wildfire resilience a very needed effort in our community especially with how dry things have been over the last few seasons and the outreach and education they're doing some specifically in open spaces most recently on the fourth they did one in more creek are on a gulch and lower dale of vega and there's a third round in the next two weeks that will be in the coconut area additionally they have some events one just happened on October the 9th but there is one coming up on October the 18th it's a community town hall and will do some training and education on open space wildfire preparedness and evacuation plans and drills and that will be at 6 to 7 30 p.m. at Dale of vega elementary as far as the farmers market update the board met yesterday and our economic development and housing department have been working quite a bit with the farmers market and I know my mayor Watkins sits on that board as well so she can help with this update but the farmers market has affirmed their partnership with the city and they will be doing a joint statement and released to that effect shortly an additional commitment that's been made is that the farmers market will mean remain downtown so there are multiple viable sites that have been in discussion and those are temporary and permanent sites and then a memorandum of understanding a final draft is currently in process between the board and the city upcoming affordable housing projects there's a lot of great information that planning and community development and economic development and housing put on our internet so the photo that you see on the right is the cedar street family apartments but all of those affordable housing projects can be found out on our website and additionally I think I lost some text if you go to the next page if you type in our website housing assistance information it will bring you to this consolidated page so not only can you learn about the affordable housing projects but you can learn how to get into the assistance pipeline to be able to get on the list for those affordable housing projects as they come online so a lot of great information that EDH has consolidated into one place and I think that is the end of our update wonderful thank you I'm really happy to hear that the the website was updated with the information for the housing lists and and connection for folks that are it's probably the number one question how do how do I find out when will they be available how do I apply and I will open it up for council members for any questions and council member Cummings and then council member Cal and Tari Johnson thank you for those updates the only thing I just wanted to I didn't have any questions I just had a comment which was further on the water street bridge item I do know that there's a number of students on campus and so who are interested in this item kind of brought this to our attention so happy to put them in contact if they haven't been in contact already and they would just recommend that as the group takes a look at that item that they refer back to the minutes and the gender reports that were generated on this item but I know there was some discussion that was had around this topic in terms of what that plaque would be and how it would come forward and kind of the message that it would be sending to the broader community and so given that council had a lot of discussion around that just encouraging that those are uses reference materials when kind of diving into the subject absolutely we will can I comment on that briefly thank you and I know that City Clerk has been very helpful in pulling all of that information since it was before I was on council so that's all been very helpful and any anybody interested please reach out to me I do have confirmation from one UCSC student so far so I have three confirmation so far in total so thank you for because you were you were mayor at the time no Martin I believe that I was one of the council members that brought this item forward okay great thank you councilmember Calentari Johnson thank you for the thorough updates I just wanted to let everyone know that the town hall the fire prevention town hall time has been moved to 6 30 p.m. to 8 thank you we'll get that updated so it's in the PDF as well councilmember Brown thank you thank you so much for the updates I I'm hoping you can we can hear a little bit more about the efforts to address the consequences of the Vengeland's closure because you mentioned it and so I know everybody's well aware that you know people as they are moved out as they're displaced are finding other places to be and we're seeing you know trash pile up and there aren't services available and I mean this is something that obviously I know we're all concerned about I've been harping on it for a long time you know what but what I see now is like we're gonna just be chasing piles of trash around and doing these cleanups and they cost a lot of money and you know I've been a big advocate for early interventions on these and trying to get the resources needed to do waste management on a regular basis I recognize there are real challenges with that but I worry that as we you know that we're kind of continuing to do what we've been doing for a long long time and you know I'm and with an investment of a significantly more resources so I guess I would just would like to hear about what that means we're trying you know we're we're on it we're thinking about it like what and also we have a public works and and parks crews that are you know so overextended what are like what is what what does that mean we're gonna be addressing it just a little bit more on that would be helpful thank you councilmember brown I'll do a few introductory remarks and then our deputy city manager for homelessness response Lisa Murphy is also on the line as you know that we have a broader three-year homelessness response plan and the restoration of San Lorenzo and the benchlands is one component of it the team is working as quickly as possible on all those components and even the work that they're doing in San Lorenzo and the benchlands has a strong component of outreach and trying to fundamentally help the homelessness folks that are in residence in our city so there are a lot of cleanup efforts that are happening but there are also a lot of strategic longer-term efforts and conversations that are happening with the county and we are doing our best on all of those fronts but we do have limited resources and as you said that the teams are pretty exhausted right now so it's it's still in all hands on deck and we're doing as much as possible and with that I'll hand it over to Lisa Murphy that can give us some more context and as you know your next quarterly update on the broader plan will be coming to you in December I believe Lisa yeah thank you Laura that was a great introduction thank you for the questions while all of our attention has certainly been focused every day down the benches and the closure I mean the real boots on the ground is trying to provide those individuals with the housing that in shelter as they want it and connecting with services so we have our outreach workers every day but not everybody's wants to accept that shelter and that offer of services and use you know it and you see it you're seeing it in your neighborhoods and certain you're hearing it from your constituents that they are moving into other open spaces and how do we address that that that is a real question and our resources because once the camp gets entrenched then the cleanup effort right is overly expensive and it's we don't want to rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat and so having those spaces available to offer shelter at least for in the in the short term as some of these longer term projects come on board that's really important but we are trying to make every effort to prevent the entrenchment that is happening in the certain areas but right now as we're focusing on benchlands and the limited shelter spaces available makes that difficult as you know to try to relocate people from other open spaces but we do have I really want to encourage the community we have an encampment assessment team we meet twice weekly and we as complaints come through the Chris portal that's online we track each and every one and take make efforts to address each one but not all are able to clear out that's that's the bottom line because we aren't able to offer it enough short term shelter but we'll continue to work on it and the county has definitely been a partner with us looking at other short-term shelter sites they are difficult other sites like the transitional shelter like 1220 which is really working quite well we've had some significant results we're also looking at additional short-term shelter housing matters location so we have a few things on out there that we're still working on to come to fruition that will help with the encampments but you're right it while we're gaining more resources to try to address it it's still a growing it's not necessarily shrinking it's growing if I could follow up thank you for that and I'm so one of the things that I'm trying to do here and I probably didn't make that clear is differentiate between the question of moving people and and the waste management question because we you know we have we know that there are people who are not for a variety of reasons going to be able to make utilize the shelter or don't want to and others have just barriers access barriers related to work schedules and all kinds of other things I hear about these on a pretty regular basis because I talked to people who are located in the benchlands I talked to people who spend time there and so you know I there's just reasons why that that's not going to be the solution for everyone so but what I'm talking about more is the we know that where people are if there's no trash cans and there's no regular trash pickup that it just piles up so you know when we talk about entrenchment of camps I'm talking about the entrenchment of trash and so I guess I'm just and and that is something that just requires human labor and you know some not really infrastructure but some equipment to deal with there's a cost to that but and you know upfront it tends to you know for I don't have any study in front of me to prove this but I'm pretty sure based on what I'm on the anecdotal evidence and what I hear from people who do this work that doing it up you know ongoing and upfront is much more effective and cost effective way to deal with it so that's what I'm really hoping that we can in your planning conversations I mean that's just a reality we can't you know we can hope that people are going to make use of shelter we can hope that there's going to be enough spaces available but people are still going to be in spaces that don't have and don't have the ability to remove refuse on a regular basis so I just am wanting to I'd like to see more of that be a priority for us if I could answer response that we are moving in that direction we just heard our field service supervisor that's solely focused on homelessness we have the positions are going to be filled for the maintenance workers that should be filled anytime now so definitely getting that team in place that that is one of the issues we also do as we hear I have refuse bins placed oftentimes are in locations that we're familiar with they're vandalized and people always make it to the trash right so so there are a lot of efforts that we have done it's it's unfortunate that we'll put big the big blocking bins out there not even locked but then they're they're destroyed or fires but we'll continue to do it and we'll continue to address it and if people see other spots that are high that maybe we haven't quite seen again encourage the report so we can try to address whatever the environmental issues that might be happening but the field service supervisors should be starting in the next two to three weeks that's exciting and those are the kinds of things that that team is going to go after before I give up the floor I just do want to say I appreciate the the intensity and the magnitude of the effort at the bench lands however I just want to remind us all that a lot of the material that was removed was not necessarily trash you know a lot of people's survival belongings were part of that and you know because people don't have anywhere to go so it is a cleanup issue it's it's a challenge but you know I just want to remind people that that there's other ways to think about addressing a lot of that material but without doing it in the trash cleanup there for now since this isn't an item on our agenda today but thank you for the update thank you are there any other council member questions council member Myers thank you thank you mayor Lisa I just had a question just trying to get a sense of sort of those accepting shelter I've seen numbers that you know on the weekly reports that I think you provide do you have a sense of folks who are sort of moving into shelter versus not moving into shelter in terms of sort of you know I've seen counts obviously now that we're contacting folks and are there also other opportunities being offered such as you know assistance with getting travel money home or what have you or and then also just want to understand additional services my understanding in that there was there's both domestic violence crisis support there on site and there is also case management as well being offered there so I'm just trying to get a little bit of a sense of sort of are most people not accepting shelter or you know kind of just get a general sense of that thank you yeah provide your reasons I think that counts my brown even pointed out of those individuals not accepting the shelter but the overlook convenience factors trying to get to and from work which we understand so about about one in three is sort of the estimate but there's about 50 so far that have accepted shelter there and we've moved some individuals to 1220 who because some individuals that 1220 have been able to find other housing you've mentioned all of the outreach workers are there we also public health is down there quite frequently as well in nursing outreach workers homework bound the utilization of the homework bound process family members still showing up occasionally to provide assistance but all of the outreach workers that are down at the variety is the amazing mass service trying to connect individuals who do have some individuals have their housing vouchers and are still trying to connect that's a that's a very difficult thing that's occurring that we want to see those folks are already ready to go not having a place to be accepted just yet but yes there are there are not a lot of options that's the problem we need more options and more for folks to be able to meet their needs the way that works best for them and I just again want to do want to commend all the outreach workers that from across the system from the numerous you know from the county our city all the nonprofits that the work is incredible they're down there every day trying to connect people to services just to get from their vital documents right so that and they can so they can try to get housing the very basics but the work is ongoing and they still continue to go up to the overlook at the armory and they go up there to try to provide continue providing services to those folks there as well thank you I know we'll get an update at our next meeting so I don't want to ask too many questions but I do just want to recognize Jeremy and Chris and Monica you know just and Larry and the team I've gone over and visited as well and and spoken with county staff and have seen the you know the the box that has been set up the you know the basically the travel box that is now basically a functional office trying to help people get connected so I just for the public's knowledge you know this is probably the largest most organized most sophisticated decampment of folks that unfortunately have been living in an area for two and a half years including going through a major flood last year where many of them lost all of their belongings so it's not safe to be on a on a floodplain we learned that unfortunately last winter and so I just really want to compliment our staff and all the work they've been doing I think that we have been really providing stellar services and communications and really understanding a lot more about what's happening in encampments like this one in the city so thank you Lisa thank you councilmember Myers very much councilmember Golder and then councilmember Cummings I don't want to beat a dead horse but I want to thank councilmember Myers for her comments I you know agree appreciate and want to thank the staff and all the efforts in this encampment cleanup I was wondering I was walking through there two Fridays ago I walked through twice during the day and I'm wondering if there is any collaboration with probation or PD you know I had an opportunity the lot over the last course last year to spend a lot of time in department three at the court and I've just been watching and listening and seeing lots of failures to appear and a lot of the people are transient nature and I'm just wondering if people that don't want help perhaps have warrants or can be picked up and and you know checked and maybe sent to other counties with criminal cases pending I don't know and so I'm just wondering if that's happening in the in the efforts as well thank you I see chief Escalante has joined us yeah hi mayor Brunner and council members so to to answer the question we have had anywhere between three to four officers assigned to this operation the entire time from a lieutenant to a sergeant and two officers additionally with two community service officers that are part of the encampment team that have been assigned to this operation the entire time when we've also collaborated with the Santa Cruz Sheriff's Office fit team focused intervention team which also addresses some of the folks that you know that are the attempt is to get them towards services whether it's addiction services mental health services or medical services to try to address some of their behaviors so we have not had probation necessarily down there with us but there's been a lot of effort from the law enforcement side to to address some of the issues that you bring up I had council member Cummings next and then I'll I'll let you speak when it's your turn thank you does that conclude your questions thank you I had a question that was kind of related to something that council member Myers brought up just wanted to get a little bit clarification on the timeline for the closure and then in the event that there is let's say you know an atmospheric river event similar to what we saw last year that may happen within the next few weeks because generally the end of October is kind of the beginning of the rainy season here in Santa Cruz and so just wondering you know what the plans are for if there is an emergency event where we need to evacuate the landslides thank you for your question council member Cummings well I've been working closely with fire and there is not any information forthcoming of the atmospheric river or rain in the in the forecast but we do have Chief Odie who's with us every week when we meet with our our our bench lands IAP to give us updates the expected closure is by the first week of November and where in terms of where we are with that with it this is that's one to three and a half weeks we think that will be in good shape I think in terms of if we had some and foreseen event occur for an atmospheric event we would have to armored operations plan would kick back in like so we meet twice actually twice a week and we would have to develop our plans for that and I think with the assistance of PD and fire and having already gone through this we'd have the ability to adjust quite quickly with the information that we'd have to provide alternative housing there's probably about I think some in the neighborhood 50 to 60 individuals still there and again each week we're able to move approximately 30 individuals so if they something happened within the next three weeks we'd probably be down to approximately 30 individuals that we would need to find alternative shelter for thank you council member Cal and Terry Johnson thank you I just wanted to respond to council member Golder's question the county did recently get a competitive state grant and in partnership with public defenders office probation the courts and the DA's office and part of that is to send out public defenders to encampments like the Benchlands and to search for warrants and then divert folks into systems of care and I and I think that kicked off a couple of weeks ago thank you council member Cal and Terry Johnson that was a good discussion good questions comments thank you for stepping in and filling the city manager's report you're welcome okay at this time in our agenda item 11 the city clerk will provide any updates to our calendar okay thank you next up is the consent agenda these are items 12 through 23 on our agenda with the exception of item 21 item 21 SEIU local 521 tentative agreement for a successor memorandum of understanding has been pulled from the agenda and will not be discussed which means we will not be taking public comment on this item for members of the public who are streaming this meeting now is the time to call in if you wish to comment on items 12 through 23 with the exception of item 21 instructions are on your screen please remember to mute your streaming device raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls on your computer all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to comment on or pull any items okay I'm gonna start on my left with council member Brown I'd like to pull item 15 I have a question on 23 okay council member Brown is pulling 15 and a question on 23 thank you council member Calentari Johnson I want to comment on 18 please comment on 18 council member Cummings yeah I just had a comment for 18 as well 18 Cummings and vice mayor Watkins 18 and council member Goulder okay thank you so with that we have pulled item number 15 so we will come back to that item and I'll call for I'll start with the item 18 with all the comments and then I'll go to question on 23 so let's see vice mayor Watkins you had a comment on item 18 I just want to thank council member Calentari Johnson and you mayor Brunner for signing on to this resolution in solidarity with the women and the people in Iran who are standing up for women's rights and their choices and I think we all observe what's happening on the news on a regular basis internationally in terms of the struggle and the fallout after the event that started the protests and just really want to applaud all those who have such courage to really stand up for what's right and so just really appreciative to bring this forward thank you council member Cummings I had a comment on item number 18 yeah I just wanted to thank I know that we received an email from a member of the public who asked this to come on the agenda and so I'm glad to see that their council members who are able to meet that request and put this item on the agenda because it really is important that we're standing up against oppression in all forms throughout the world and here in our community as well and you know this highlights just another instance where we see this occurring in the world but we also you know are currently continuing to watch Russian aggression on the people of Ukraine we're still addressing the treatment of Latinos here who are crossing the border and how they're treated by ICE agents in our country and we see how black people are continuing to be wrongfully treated in our country as well and I think we need to continue to acknowledge injustice where it occurs and stand up for the rights of all people throughout our world and so I'm very supportive of this and just want to express that as we move forward thank you council member Cummings council member Calentari Johnson thank you and thank you to you mayor and you vice mayor for co-authoring this and bringing this forward I do want to give an update that since we submitted this for the packet the death rate has gone upwards to 185 people 19 of those are children so this is really really important that we continue to give voice to this and we continue so my call to action to all of you my colleagues and all of you in our community is to continue to give voice to this in any way that you can because that's how change will happen as we if we put pressure so thank you for acknowledging this and hopefully supporting this thank you council member Calentari Johnson and for those of you that don't have an agenda in front of you item number 18 that was just commented on as a resolution supporting the rights of people of Iran to free expression and standing in solidarity with the women and people of Iran our next item is a question for agenda item number 23 and that is hsip 10 un-signalized crossing improvement project advertised for bids and award contract it's a public works item and council member Brown had a question thank you mayor and thank you to the preparers of this agenda item I which I absolutely support I and I one of my questions was about the kind of specific plans around the crossings that were identified but I think I figured that out that and that's in the materials that are available on the website so I'm just gonna stick with one question here and but it would be helpful to get like if there's any way that we can get with items like this a list of just like here's the intersections we're gonna do because we have seven different countermeasures improvements whatever you want to call them possible like which ones are happening in what location I found it so I won't ask about it here but it would just you know because it it it would just be helpful to have a sense of what's coming and I really am very excited about pedestrian safety improvements so I appreciate all of your work to make this happen I'll just ask my one question which is about the selection of the Almar site along the rail trail and the need for stop signs along the rail trail is that that's a requirement that is that's something we have to do I've heard speed racers who like to use that rail trail I've suggested it's a it's a challenge for them to and that some streets are just easier to move on so I'm just wondering about that one in particular I see Nathan shaking your head a little Council members Nathan Wendt assistant director of Public Works I'll field that question with regards to the rail trail design with regards to that back in 2018 when we when we took a second seven phase one the approach with the roadway crossings on rail trail segment seven phase one was to include stop signs at each of the crossings because it acts as a mid-block crossing which is standard to have a stop control for the users at the mid-block crossing and not stop the roadway for in this case would be for the trail what we decided back then is that we would use the stop control as a more conservative measure to reduce exposure to the city with regards to liability if there was a question about who should be yielding when in a mid-block crossing again that's why it's standard for the trail users to stop in the mid-block now if volumes in the future but we also said at that time and when we approved the project was that if volumes and things change in the future that staff we bring that back to to council to to consider whether we would and change or improve those type of stop control or trap control devices along the rail trail gotcha so that thank you that's really helpful I remember the segment seven work but not every detail so that's very helpful so is this just one that what hadn't occurred yet is that so our crossing actually has stop control and it currently does have an RFP so a rectangular rapid flashing beacon and that actually what is essentially this project you know each location those five or six locations in this project are going to get those beacons crossings protection activated beacons at each one of these crossings in this case our more actually has some that are existing but we're actually relocating the westbound our RFP head push button so it's on the right-hand side for the trail users so that's the update we're making an L mark but it does currently have an actual RRB device there thank you that's what I thought and I so I was trying to all together thank you really appreciate the explanation yeah thank you so much thank you for answering and being available so our next step then is to move on to public comment on agenda items consent agenda items 12 through 23 with the exception of 21 that was pulled and 15 as well was pulled so I will now look out to our virtual audience if you would like to comment on the consent agenda items please raise your hand by pressing star 9 or choosing the raise hand feature in your webinar controls if you are joining us in person you can line up to my left of the dais and it looks like we have one hand in our virtual attendees go ahead and press star 6 to unmute yourself I see I am watching you yes hi only 10 states still have declared covid states of emergency and nine of those have very near expiration dates but the french library emperor nuisance california has no basic covid emergency state expiration on 49 states are going one way and Gavin goes the other that's not leadership it's probably worse than hubris florida's surgeon general now recommends against vaccinations for younger men due to links to heart problems go alone Gavin insists all students be vaccinated use state positive cases and hospitalizations continue to fluctuate the nature of the pandemic is unpredictable and transmission rates have the potential to rise quickly unpredictability and potential are not justifications for emergency declarations and the illness has always fluctuated by seasons biden said the pandemic is over and ignored concern is increased all cause mortality hey where's all city cows are going anyway even not including deaths from covid i believe death rates are still above average despite a million of previous past covid deaths among the then soon to die anyway old and vulnerable that should have brought current death rates down to below normal by now as well as due to any real positive efficacy of vaccines alarmingly those have not done so something is wrong there's not spoken of as an emergency instead just the stale covid fear narrative is still an emergency when nothing absolutely nothing has been proven accomplished by these emergency declarations for at least a year providing any measurable improvement to achieve normal mortality something i suspect the government's response including both vaccinations is actually harming health going forward young people are dropping dead like never before the cdc or fda hit analysis of covid adverse effects data and vaccine trial data lawsuits are required to obtain any factual truth okay uh there were too many mistrus told about two weeks to flatten the curve lockdowns mass herd immunity natural immunity origin covid the blocked alternative treatments methods of transmission social distancing age risk reward and the smear and destroy campaign leveled against all or anyone with different or learned opinions has now severed any trust in government health mandates and their stooge media propagandists that they ever had this continued emergency declaration to me is just one more government lie similar to that if you get the vaccine you can't get covid stale face lie that yes the cdc fouchie collins and joe biden most definitely told us until the truth came out but they never admitted they lied the suppressed truth of the damage caused and continuing by the covid government response is being uncovered how can it possibly be acceptable the new strain double strength vaccines were tested on only eight mice i've had enough obey and be safe thank you for your public comment i will now go to members here in person uh go ahead and step forward and make sure the microphones at your mouth thank you yeah um i leave a quarter here do i get an extra 10 minutes there we go um this is i'm assuming this is uh 12 uh agenda item 12 uh that's largely what that gentleman was talking about excuse me it excuse me any any of the any of them oh yeah well uh i guess mainly yeah i'm interested in that i had a conversation with one of the world's premier um very very special experience uh harry knoller uh professor emeritus at ucse talked to me about RNA biology and he he's as i as i said he's uh one of the world's premier RNA biologists and he told me uh you know one thing we discussed was the fact that RNA viruses mutate much more rapidly so dna is much more stable and it's one of the reasons why RNA uses it to store information now um uh covid is a is a is a rapidly changing coronavirus uh is a rapidly changing RNA um i think it's single-stranded um anyway it might be double-stranded anyway it's RNA so the mutations occur more you know to to a much uh a much more frequent uh extent than the uh than dna viruses and and such so so covid you know it typically is gonna is gonna have mutations and mutations so we have strains of strange strain now we just have omicron and sub variants of omicron they've refused to kind of go past omicron mainly because uh maladaptive mutations are occurring so really it's getting less and less ferocious covid really really is i mean in some in some ways really the prevalent prevalent strains are less frightening to scientists and i just i actually i just feel like yeah maybe you know 60 days more of an emergency declaration after that you might consider just doing away with the emergency declaration because mainly you're not hearing about the same numbers of fatalities uh of 51 49 minutes um i'm going to uh turn them over to thank you for your comment uh i will now look to our next person here in person hi there welcome i'm not exactly sure what i'm doing right now but am i allowed to comment on the consent agenda yes consent agenda item with the exception of 21 or 15 21 was sciu and 15 is the wharf okay item in general um my point in speaking today is i am i am just really getting unnerved and alarmed by the situation with the lack of housing in santa cruz and as we all know it's a problem so um when i say that what i'm really trying to talk about is first of all i've recently found out that affordable housing what it really means is that it's affordable for the developers to build it's not necessarily in other words the construction of the unit is affordable so i just i want to say that out loud i also want to say that i have become aware that the city is in negotiations with developers and this is pertaining to item number 19 to give away free land to out-of-town developers and i just really have to call this into question the last thing that i just want to say is about this that i i think that it is absolutely morally important it's a moral imperative at this point to build low income housing and completely subsidized housing in the city of santa cruz as it is important to build it in the county and in many other cities across the country so i just wanted to say that about that and um i'll just leave it at that for now thank you thank you are there any members any other members of the public um i wonder if um i could just there is someone with their handrails didn't virtually oh great okay let me go to virtual i see a handrails we are taking public comment on consent agenda items with the exception of 21 and 15 go ahead and press star six phone number ending in 2915 hello this is becky steinbruner can you hear me yes welcome thank you thank you for having the hybrid ability for the public to join your meetings i appreciate it i wanted to talk with you a bit about the pure water soquel project that is certainly causing a lot of conundrum in the city streets of santa cruz but most importantly i want to point out to your council that the laurel street bridge portion of the conveyance project can i ask you a quick question what item are you speaking to on the consent agenda oh i'm sorry i just joined and i thought this was public comment public comment on the consent agenda items oh i'm sorry i i thought it was public comment which is scheduled for 515 oh yes that was oral communications and um that will be next okay i'm sorry i'll i'll wait and join in a little bit then thank you i apologize that's okay i just wanted to be clear about which item so we could be clear uh okay uh it looks like that is it for uh public comment on consent agenda items um and i just wanted to briefly on uh member of the public spoke on agenda item 19 pacific station south affordable housing project which is um 100 percent affordable housing it's one of the city's low income housing 100 percent uh low income housing units at the metro station there yeah so hopefully that answers your question um okay so at this time we will go to uh we've done public announce uh public comment on agenda and now i will look for a vote on i'll make a motion okay we have a vice mayor Watkins has uh made a motion a second and Cummings has seconded may we have a call vote councilmember it's Calentary Johnson aye boulder aye Cummings aye frown aye buyers she's sorry i'm here hi um what is your vote for uh did you register your vote councilmember mires yes i okay um vice mayor Watkins aye and mayor brunner aye okay that motion passes unanimously and now we will go to consent agenda item number 15 that was pulled by councilmember brown thank you so this item is uh we are we are here with this item today to rescind the wharf master plan and the environmental impact report as a result of um legal action taken uh and our non-compliance with sequa around uh particular elements of that master plan um i won't go into the history of that and lament the delays but i um i will i i did just want to raise this here and ask a couple of questions about um the process moving forward um so we are being asked to rescind the non-objectionable portions of the master plan and eir sorry councilmember brown can i ask a point of order just because i know that if we have a hard stop yeah i know obtained for i know i'm wondering if maybe we could hear this item after oral communications because if we break up this this discussion to go into oral communications and come back people aren't really gonna you know me have forgotten you know the reasons why this was brought up so i'm i'm fine with that i don't want i my hope is to not belabor it i'm just trying to give you the the basics but i understand if we are going to have to shift gears then i'm happy to wait okay there are i think a couple members of the public who would like to speak on yes so at this time we will find really up to the pleasure of the chair how you want yes we will um pause consent the pulled consent agenda item 15 in order to adhere to our oral communications time of 515 and um so at this time thank you councilmember brown and thank you councilmember Cummings at this time uh if you would like to uh speak to oral communications for members of the public who are streaming this meeting oral communications is an opportunity to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda if you are interested in addressing the council raise your hand by dialing star 9 or select raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer if you are joining us here in person you can please line up to my left your right and you will have two minutes to speak we request that you sign in to ensure correct spelling of your name in the meeting minutes however it's not required and please remember this is a time for council to hear from the public on anything not on today's agenda we are also not able to engage in dialogue with each member of the public during this portion but when we are able we can address the questions raised after oral communications has completed okay so I will look I see a couple of hands and I see one person in person so I will start with our virtual attendee uh the first hand raised is the name I am watching you go ahead and press star 6 yes thank you I am moved to recite part of Tulsi Gabbard's amazing speech today quote I can no longer remain in today's democratic party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wolfness who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism actively work to undermine our god-given freedoms our hostile to people of faith and spirituality demonize the police and protect criminals at the expense of law abiding americans believe in open borders weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents and above all dragging us ever closer to nuclear war if I if you can no longer stomach the direction that so-called woke democratic party I the logs are taking our country I invite you to join me and quote that some spot on heroic advice that the machine will surely spatter its far-left smears of political opponents as races nazis fascist extremists and threats to democracy when actually those apply more so to themselves if at all okay enough of that I'll offer some different stage advice I'm voting no on everything there's nothing on the ballot except woke garbage and masquerades of special interests uh additionally for clarity and fyi I will address that person with some real prejudicial hot spot that called in last meeting asking I be denied my right to speech and declared the word globalist is a jewish ethnic slur this is a fairly new false claim that any globalism is anti-semitism I had to look it up apparently it started with the leftist mouthpiece new york times doing a hit piece suggesting steve bannon supposedly was using globalist as a god whistle term meaning jews for being behind global job outsourcing nobody including jews gets a virtuosity pass on making false racist claims there's no ethnic identity monopoly to being a powerful globalist such as the w.e.s. squad schwa bill gays with his national disgrace open border policy thanks thank you our next uh attendee virtually is phone number ending in two three one six go ahead and oh i'm sorry two nine one five go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hey this is becky steinbruner again can you hear me yes welcome back thank you all right thank you and again i apologize for my misunderstanding earlier i have actually three things i'd like to speak with your council about the first one is what i had begun to talk about the delay in the pure water so-called project connecting the 14 inch diameter water a recycled water it's it won't be recycled at that point it'll be coming from the sewage treatment plant on bay street to the new shanticleer treatment plant in live oak that 14 inch pipe will be connected to the laurel street bridge as well a six inch pipe returning water that is purely full of contaminant including carcinogenic disinfection project products that's crossing the san lorenzo river and i have a lot of concerns about that the reason it has been delayed was actually because the cliff swallows that nest under that bridge would have been disrupted in their raising their young over the summer that's why it was delayed but it is back in process now since the birds have migrated back to argentina so i want to make that concern about the water if if there were a seismic event that water would go into the san lorenzo valley into my understanding there's no protection to monitor for real-time leaks i'd like you to look into that if you would please the second thing i want to talk with you about is the new pre-application that has been submitted for the very large project at 908 ocean street that is a huge project and a new developer the city is going to spend 1.5 million dollars next year improving ocean street and i think this is a waste of taxpayer money given that a large developer will likely rip it up and should be doing the work that was your timer bell for free to email us uh with with your third item okay uh it looks like that's it for virtual attendees and so in person please step forward welcome welcome back i just want to say i've i've been organizing and present at the benchlands throughout the sweeps and i think today's sweep was either the fourth or fifth one and i just went down there to basically agitate and yell i started out as a very law-abiding uh person in my youth and i find myself yelling epithets at the police because people people need to understand that what is happening to our people and i say our people regardless of immigration status regardless of whatever brings them to this situation of being homeless people have to understand that this is a failure an utter and complete failure of our government i myself had a journey unfortunately very sadly and tragically through domestic violence where i ended up homeless for part of it my father was one of the highest level lawyers that anybody can ever achieve in this country and his wife and they were egregiously cruel people but they pretended to care about me and so it took me years and i think the good people who ran the shelters here and helped me stay alive during the rains and the winter it was a long and difficult journey and i was a successful much awarded person in my youth they couldn't give me enough words in high school so i am trying to right now say that people wind up homeless we need shelters we need lots of shelter space we need simple housing basic housing needs what's happening is utterly morally wrong and i've made the point up here before that we came into the Holocaust i'm not saying it equates with the Holocaust but the kinds of demonizing of these people the kind of conditions that they're living in we are also refusing services and some of the best activists is the last sentence i'll say feel that what is happening is the government is deliberately leaving people unhoused and unserviced very severe mental illnesses absolutely unaddressed so that they can scare house people and create the police state that we're seeing develop thank you very much thank you okay our next person in person welcome back again i've got a lot of quarters in my pocket uh no i can't uh so the um occupy movement of 20 i think it was 2011 that was a big uh bernie moment um there's a couple bernie supporters on council um one more um the uh the uh occupy movement uh kind of established that people didn't have a place to go they were going to go to that park and it was about four years i don't they've been there about three years now say three years they've been in the bench lands and uh i i uh i kind of conspired with um uh uh Brent Adams uh to to to let them be there all i said was i will treat the wounded it's and you know there's there's no there's no be it over there it was moving out right now we suffered and harm as far as i'm concerned there was some talk of lynching back in 1877 but that was a different bridge a different time a different thing entirely okay there are people over there there's uh 200 tons of trash that's uh almost almost 2000 pounds of trash per camp wait a second that can't be accurate i i want i want to question that i want to question that is there really two 200 tons of trash they've taken out of there i think most of it's just they've just scooped down deep and taken away some of our park okay and some of those people had nowhere else to go Boise Idaho the precedent where they said if you can't give them an option they get to take one and that's very very fair so anyways i have an article here uh it's by uh Mike Bonin the LA uh city councilman uh recently in the news because of the kind of outrageous comments by some of his colleagues he's talking about the acuity of homeless people and the acute get the help but then the safety net for everybody else's kind of thank you thank you are there any other uh comments for oral communications we don't see any virtual attendees with their hands raised okay uh that concludes oral communications i will now bring it back to our consent agenda item we are on item number 15 which was pulled council member brown thank you thank you i will hand it back to you hi come back back so i um i would pull this item on the um the resolution rescinding the wharf master plan which i do uh support um but i wanted to pull it because i do this is a big project this is a you know this is a lot um many components and obviously uh a lot of community interest so um i'm i'm just wondering if we could get a bit of an update i have a lot of questions that kind of came up for me as a result of this agenda item which i won't raise all of those here i'll send them along um just it would be helpful to get updates on where some of the um items that were not um stopped through the lawsuit process um where they're at how you know how we're moving along those are really important maintenance and restoration issues um but with respect to what will happen next i'd just like to get a uh some overview of how the city intends to move forward with circulation of the new eir um the you know when that i saw i saw kind of a general timeline but just what's going to happen and um so i'll i'll ask the general question and i may have a couple specific follow-ups yes um without going into too much detail the court uh invalidated the eir that was prepared in connection with the wharf master plan and in so doing directed the the city to rescind the resolution that uh certified the eir and also the resolution that approved the wharf master plan and uh the court in sort of a footnote um stated that the ruling did not prevent uh did not prevent the city from moving forward with components of the project that were not found invalid in um in the judgment and also the plaintiffs in the case were amenable to the city moving forward with those components including the wharf gate and a couple of other um fairly minor aspects of the wharf master plan um what is happening now is that the city per the court's direction is in the process of preparing uh an amended or revised eir to address the infirmities that the court found in in is that judge verdict found in in his decision and i'm not aware of the specific timing of that but i expect it to return to the city council either late this year early next year okay um thanks i can i ask some follow-up questions then because i i got that from the under report and and conversations i've had thank you for your overview um is the intention to release the revised eir for the total project um only the sections that were um rejected by the judge and um so that's one and then what's the next steps where will it will it come back to the council my understanding is that the eir is being prepared to be recirculated but the court only identified a couple of minor issues that need to be addressed in the revised document so i expect it to come back looking um similar very similar to the eir that was presented to the council at the last um when at last considered this but um specifically addressing the issues that judge verdict identified in his ruling right so that would come so then this i want to be clear here the so the eir would be circulated comments and then it comes to the council for certification if that's right the planning commission first uh the document i believe will be uh a draft will be made available to the public for comment pursuant to the requirements of cqa 45 day comment period um that will be received uh the staff and its environmental consultant will prepare responses to the comments and make any corrections or minor changes that are necessary in view of the comments and then a final version will come back to the city council for certification uh with with the comments and the responses to comments okay so then the council will get the final version and the only at based on the current plan the only opportunity for public input will be through the 45 day comment period that is that is that is the secret process yes okay well there are there's other parts of the secret process for example scoping uh meetings and talking with the public um so i just wanted to see what was in part of the plan that's absolutely correct but in this case um you know the project is very clearly defined and the court based its decision on a very a very limited uh number of issues that were identified as um not properly addressed in the eir that the council certified got it i was really i don't think it's going to process moving forward yeah it's not going to be a completely new ball game it's just going to be fixing what was found effective and bringing that back to um you know making that available for to the public for comments and then bring it back to the council okay thank you um there i'll save my have a comment comments for afterwards those are my questions thank you thank you are there any other further questions before we go out to public comment on this item okay if i could um just so it's clear for the public uh we received some comments from uh plaintiffs council this afternoon who had not had an opportunity to review the draft resolution that was in your agenda packet that was distributed last thursday we took those comments into account and agreed that some minor edits should be made to the resolution so there is a hard copy of a revised resolution with red line markings showing the changes and my understanding is that there are a couple of of hard copies available for members of the public in the audience today uh and i believe they are also posted online for people who are viewing the meeting remotely great and i see the hard copy here it looks like the two paragraphs are where the red line um that's right changes were made okay thank you uh okay at this time i will now bring it this item consent agenda item 15 out for public comment if you are joining us virtually now is the time to press star nine to raise your hand to speak to this item and if you are joining us in person please line up to my left and um i will alternate back and forth and i'll start with in person hi welcome thank you mayor bruner council members my name is jillian greenside and i'm here today speaking on behalf of the community group don't morph the wolf and thank you for updating and making this revisions to the resolution available um so the approval to the resolution um is what you're voting on is to set aside the environmental impact report and the master plan and as you read in your in the resolution that uh don't morph the wolf uh recommended and allowed certain projects to go ahead not subject to further environmental review um we didn't feel that they were minor and with all due respect uh we feel that they were major aspects and and uh most of them um are involved with protecting the wolf and for its longevity and its structural security it includes replacing the road and the substrate the five percent of pilings that need to be replaced the biggest maintenance cost on the wolf is for the um dump trucks and the uh the heavy equipment so those were big items so we hope the city will go ahead with those we didn't stand in the way of those and uh i see a bit of work has started on the road which is good and the migratory birds have flown back to um puget sound and so you've got a window to complete that work uh so it's not minor and i have to admit that we hoped uh that that would be sufficient however you have decided to go ahead and do a revised environmental impact report and um a master another master plan and with all due respect again we don't feel that's what uh the judgment of the court nor what was raised are just minor issues um that uh they are actually issues of great concern to the community as many of you know there was um really widespread community opposition and concern about the changes that were proposed and a lot of input i'm sorry the time wasn't going here i didn't know oh it's up there well i could i'd need to just add that we ask that you do do a notice of preparation for your revised eir and that you hold a scoping meeting so the community can weigh in we're eager to move forward with you we want this to be in a good spirit but to not have those meetings to allow the public to weigh in and guide what your objectives will be won't be starting on a good footing so we hope that you will ask at that go ahead with a scoping meeting thank you thank you for your comment please step forward that's okay thank you my name is john aird i would like to just echo what has been stayed stated here by julian greenside um this issue has been very controversial you know that there have been over 1600 plus people that signed petitions against the plan you have an opportunity this is sort of a signal the judgment has been made this is a signal that this plan had major deficiencies the council is going to be changing in a matter of months in terms of its composition you've got a lot of other controversial issues on the plate of the new council i think you should take an opportunity here which is more in the spirit that julian spoke to to make sure that there's a real opportunity during this pause period to hear from the public again and make sure that your plan is more consistent with what this community wants and if you feel that that's a step back i would say it's an opportunity to gain the community support which you should be reflecting so thank you thank you for your comment sir anybody else in person joining us that would like to speak to oral communications any item not on i'm sorry we went back to item 15 the wharf uh item i don't see any virtual hands raised okay i will bring it back to council i'm wondering if city attorney you can just briefly speak to um the the differences with a scoping meeting in the 45 day period scoping meeting is typically done um when you are initially setting out to define the project and it it guides issues like what is the definition of the project what are potential alternatives to the project it's really starting from square one with the eir process um my understanding that is not what is required by the court here the council could always um you know um on its own decide to begin over from square one but but that's not what is required by the terms of the judgment so um what the position we're in right now is really just to address the deficiencies that were found by the court in the eir and then to bring it back to the council to correct what the court found was was improper and um you know at any time the count this council or any future council can amend the wharf master plan to add or to eliminate any components that are contained in the current plan um and if that's the council's direction then that will be the marching orders to the staff but that's not what's required by this court decision and that's what we're specifically trying to address with this evening's item so uh just to clarify um the 45 day period would be specific to the items that the court found had deficiencies and not a broader discussion it wouldn't be um it wouldn't restrict members of the public from commenting on any item in the eir however we did re receive extensive comments um those were all addressed in responses to comments in the eir and there were a number of issues litigated in the case and most of them the court found um the eir was appropriately prepared there were two two issues that the court found lacking with respect to uh the reports analysis of and mitigation measures for um recreational impacts and those had to do with the the area where people fish not on toward the end of the wharf and also the sea lion viewing holes so those were the specific issues that the court asked to address as well as I should add um the western walkway and the analysis of the of the rationale for concluding that the alternative to the western walkway wasn't feasible so those are what are being addressed in the in the revised eir that will be recirculated but it won't prevent any any member of the public from commenting on any other aspect of the eir okay thank you for clarifying that uh vice mayor Watkins I just have a quick question and if I don't know Tony you can speak to this in terms of what was conducted in terms of community outreach in the eir process prior um you said that was sort of in compliance and so I don't know if you want to speak or if you have any understanding of what that looked like yeah the process that led to the council's adoption of the worst wharf master plan was very extensive and in particular um the um the original wharf master plan was analyzed and it was determined that with mitigation the wharf master plan would not have any significant impacts on the environment that would justify the circulation of an eir out of an abundance of caution the council elected not nevertheless to prepare an eir for the project so there was public comment on the initial uh environmental document um the city took a step back and drafted an eir uh received extensive public comment on the draft eir made extensive uh comments on the public or responses to the public comments made certain adjustments to the language of the eir to address those comments and in the findings notwithstanding all that work the court found a couple of areas lacking and so um yes there was extensive public comment and again um there's nothing preventing the council from doing more uh public outreach than is required but what we're presenting you right now is just a step along the way that's required in order to comply with the terms of this judgment thank you vice mayor Watkins if you have more well I just appreciate the clarification and also the understanding that there's going to be an opportunity for the public to weigh in either way um so with that I'm I'm happy to move the the item in the recommendation okay we have a motion by uh vice mayor Watkins council member brown I'd like to make a substitute motion okay oh okay I get do you need a second for a substitute is that required I I believe that the second was to council member Watkins yeah but I do so I had to wait until there's a second I'm just asking it has been seconded at this point I believe okay so I would like to make a substitute motion I'm going to make my comments before I make that motion and now I feel even more strongly about making these comments so I I appreciate the legal guidance and all of your work on this uh Tony and um I'm the arguments that I'm going to be making right now are political and um also because I think it's the right thing to do um so we're here tonight again once again because almost two years ago um the council majority a council majority voted to approve uh an EIR that had deficiencies and they um I agree that they are not minor um in the legal kind of technical world of specifics of the language that it may feel that way but these are really big issues um a western walkway a massive tall building that's just going to be perched at the end of the wharf um you know those are big issues and the community really cares about them and we've seen that in the comments we've received the attention that's been paid and then with the failure of the city of city leadership at that time to take those concerns seriously enough through a lawsuit and I think it is in our interest to um recognize that we're here because of mistakes that we have made and that we should take that seriously and we should um provide an opportunity for the community to weigh in um and talk about what they want to see in defining this project um I think we've heard pretty loud and clearly some of the things they don't want to see and um the idea that we can vote at any time to amend kind of just doesn't doesn't really feel like it's it's an adequate um uh adequate response to a challenge that we know we're going to be facing we I have sat here and watched the city push um through um projects major projects that they're going to define the the direction of this city um and then we have to and because it's so urgent that we have to move forward well two years later we're we're talking about rescinding something that um some of us said um if it were revised uh you know even in small ways we might not be here we could have just moved forward so um you know and I'm I'm I'm just kind of perplexed as to how um we would not take that very seriously and and actually do some more community engagement um have a whole discoping meeting there's nothing that prevents us from doing it just because we're not legally required to do it well that's true um but I have a feeling we're going to be having more conversations in closed session about this item for years to come if we continue to not listen to to the public and take those those seriously so my um substitute motion is to um uh adopt the staff recommendation rescinding all but the or rescinding the um resolutions number ns 29 747 and then that's 29 748 and to direct staff to um issue an nop and um hold a scoping meeting as part of the um recirculation or the circulation of the new environmental impact report okay is there a uh second to the substitute motion all second okay and then well I have the floor I could just make a few comments on that um so I when this first came to council um we'd been hearing from members of the public and um I know that there were some changes that were requested to be made we did go back and forth and there were some changes but I know that at the end um they weren't all the changes that members of the public wanted to see and to council member brown's point um you know there were obviously now deficiencies within that plan I was one of the people who supported moving forward after meeting with staff and hearing from them and hoping to make some um um to read some kind of compromise with what was being asked of by the public and what the staff recommendations were um but it's clear that you know this has now gone to the court ones and the courts were able to find deficiencies which means that we didn't we weren't able to um completely identify some of the holes within that plan and you know to the point of the people who came in and spoke to us today you know it really is important that we're providing the community with the greatest amount of opportunity to have transparency around these issues and what we've been finding consistently is when there is not transparency we end up finding ourselves in court and so I agree with council member brown that you know having heard from the public today and having gone through this process that you know we should support having another notice of preparation having another scoping period and you know people might say well that's going to delay this but you know if we provide opportunities to hear from the public that can keep us from ending up spending so much time and money in court and it's part of our job to be physically responsible and so we don't need to be wasting um tax period dollars on court fees when we can just take the time to actually hear from them um incorporate their concerns into our decision making and then move forward so I'm happy to second this thank you I have other council member hands raised um a city attorney can you um again clarify a scoping meeting would happen in tandem uh at while during the 45 day period how no a scoping meeting would essentially start the process over from square one well that's not what's required by the court here the court identified specific uh issues that need to be addressed in a revised and recirculated report so it's not um from a legal perspective it's it's just not necessary to do that um I mean I would also add that um well the EIR addresses environmental impacts associated with the project and it analyzes environmental impacts of various components of the project such as the landmark building the sea lion viewing holes the fishing area and the western walkway um it does not serve as a mechanism for from a from a legal perspective it's not a mechanism for uh a policy decision about whether or not to move forward with the project it's really a question of did the environmental review identify potential environmental impacts and appropriately mitigate for those and if it can't be appropriately mitigated then are there overriding considerations that would justify moving forward with the project notwithstanding those environmental impacts so um you know again if the council wants to revisit the issues in the wharf master plan itself as to whether or not it uh it prefers to move forward with those it's certainly um that would be a valid positive uh policy discussion to have but it's you know in the context of what's required in order to comply with the court's order it's much narrower than that it's really just to go back and more specifically address the issues that were identified by the court with respect to impacts to fishing impacts to viewing holes uh and the analysis supporting the alternative of the western walkway so the 45 day period is to address specifically the deficiencies a scoping meeting would start everything from square one again right okay it would start the whole EIR process over again okay um and is there a timeline on that is there typically a period of time I mean I want to say that that that the initial EIR from soup to nuts the issuance of a draft environmental impact report probably took a year I don't recall this specific timeline and um what would that impact I'm not the best person to answer that question because I'm not as familiar with um Bonnie Lipscomb maybe or someone from city staff could speak to that hi welcome good afternoon mayor and members of the council um you know a year delay um at a minimum would just would hold the the process up that we currently have in place while I acknowledge and recognize that there's some elements that we can go forward we have been moving forward on the pilings it does put a sort of an indefinite hold um by resetting restarting the environmental review process from the beginning for the project I think would be more than a delay of year of just the preparation of the EIR I think it just sort of you know resets the clock and the delay of that needed infrastructure investment in the wharf I think now more than ever you know post pandemic um it's really critical for us to recommit and reinvest in one of our most amazing resources we have in our community and my concern on the staff level is that starting from beginning on the EIR would negatively impact the businesses and our resources on the wharf the other thing to consider would just be the cost involved in starting from zero again on recirculating and restarting a new EIR process at a minimum I would anticipate that would at least be 100,000 potentially more what is that 100,000 I would say that is laid out emphasizes there will be an expanded revised and expanded section in the EIR on recreation and recreational impacts so that is an enhanced area that we're going beyond um what was required um in the judgment if I could just follow up but I'd like to clarify something um in response to councilmember brown's comments I perhaps misspoke when I said that the issues identified by the court were minor it probably would have been better to say that there was a fairly narrow range of issues identified by the court I recognize that um you know fishing and um the sea line viewing holes are important components of the wharf experience and didn't mean to minimize that but they are a relatively narrow slice of the issues that were reviewed in the entire EIR and so a do over would be a very large undertaking to address a relatively narrow set of issues identified by the court thank you I see councilmember Myers vice mayor Watkins and councilmember Golder with hands up so and then councilmember brown councilmember Myers thank you mayor um yeah I I definitely um appreciate all of all of my colleagues concern about you know the public process around a major change on a facility such as the wharf um but if I recall and I appreciate Bonnie Lipscomb's additional information as well Tony as your clarification you know this is about a four-year project um now extended because of the lawsuit on the CEQA document you know CEQA documents are not planning documents they're documents that actually look at the environmental impacts of the projects as Tony mentioned um and so typically a scoping session that would be done for an EIR would be uh really going backwards because it we would be considering the same project um and so in many ways it would be redundant and and re-spending you know it sounds like maybe a hundred thousand dollars on a new EIR when the court did narrowly define and um did find um you know deficiencies in in in the CEQA analysis let's make sure it's very we're very clear that the deficiencies were not in the project as proposed they were proposed they were deficiencies in the actual environmental review that was written up as part of the CEQA documents so um I think we're kind of you know I'm not going to support the substitute motion I I'm frustrated to have to vote on something like this tonight um on a consent agenda item um when we have important business to um hopefully hear from our our folks um at SEIU this evening about their concerns so um you know I'm going to not support the substitute motion I feel that um you know what's been laid out in terms of the re issuance and re uh reexamination under the CEQA you know guidelines on how these specific impacts need to be reevaluated and then brought back to our community are very valid obviously the court has directed that um but going backwards and re scoping and putting out a new notice you know notice of intent notice of preparation all of those things are you know lots of CEQA acronyms that sound right but those are not going to we're not going to rewrite I hope the Worf master plan um and so I've heard comments um that sound to some extent that we're looking backwards um to you know make any decisions the Worf is over 100 years old it is probably the most important piece of infrastructure besides the wastewater treatment plant and our water treatment plan that we have in the city of Santa Cruz and we are not able to maintain it it's um not living up to its true economic um piece that it provides to our city um and you know we have a lifeguard tower is a great example it's falling down so let's invest in our infrastructure let's figure out how to make the Worf a great place yes some of the things that were in there were not they were obviously not tenable but um you you make your decisions as things get permitted um there's always lots of other steps to go but let's just get this piece of infrastructure taken care of let's not go backwards and do a whole other EIR um just doesn't make any sense for me so I'm not going to support the motion thank you thank you vice mayor Watkins no you know my question's right okay council member colder um I just have a question and I don't know if maybe Bonnie you could answer it I'm wondering because of the lawsuit was their grant funding that we lost and would a further delay cause us to lose additional funding we had a grant funding actually that helped us with the preparation of the Worf master plan so that one has been concluded successfully um we do have a grant funding for um the pilings on the work and we successfully match that and that's going forward as as well so we don't have pending grant funding uh specifically that's that's related to the actions before us today and I just have like I just have a couple comments I don't think that there was a lack of public outreach regarding the Worf master plan initially um I provided input as a private citizen and I said even in my comments back then when we were voting on it that I thought the landmark building was hideous myself but it's it's not about that I think at this point and that's how I kind of feel like it is I think that the plaintiffs in this case and other cases that we see in closed session sometimes add their opportunity they don't like the direction that things went and they have the means and the privilege to hire lawyers and fight and block things that are happening and they're also really skilled at sending out messages to the community that people might not fully understand and then get behind and rally and support and so I am not in agreement that there's this huge community group that wants to stop the Worf master plan I think there was never a plan to remove the fishing or the sea lion viewing holes there was a plan to move them not remove them and so to me I agree with council member Myers this feels like a waste of our time when we have important city business to do and this something that I don't want to discuss further and I'd like to just call the question on the on on council member Browns I can't even get an item on the agenda because I don't have two additional supporters which for those of you out in the audience who don't know this individual council members can't get items on the agenda unless they have at least two council members who are willing to sign on to an item and this is an ongoing challenge I use the opportunities I have available to me and I am trying to make the point that if we continue to say we let the public speak and we made our own decision that they will continue to challenge us in the ways that are available to them and the legal process is one of them and there is you know to you know shake our heads and say not fair you know there they have privilege is really just displacing our own lack of being responsible and making the decision listening to the community and trying to respond accordingly and so I would like to ask the question now how much money have we spent offending this lawsuit because I know we have a hired firm an outside firm that we are spending money on for this as well as our own city attorneys budget that gets stretched very thin and and they absorb that cost internally thank you Oni and your partners for that but with outside council we pay big bucks so I'd like to know how much it's cost for the two-year delay we've had because we couldn't wait any longer and have more community input I don't have that figure available for you tonight I'm happy to provide that information and a follow-up report to the council that'd be great thank you so we can go ahead I didn't expect to have support for this but I want to make the case that it's in the city's best interest to you know respond to issues where there's major community concern and maybe try to find ways to work with the community rather than just saying we got the votes and so we're gonna do this and if you don't like it see us and we'll complain about that too it just isn't really a productive way to do policy and to do public service Vice Mayor Watkins I just have a brief comment I think that um you know I think we all value a public process for one and I know to a certain extent that's been a point of contention into what actually constitutes an adequate amount of public process so I will just say that and then I also have heard time again that you are unable a council member Brown or even council member Cummings in the past had said that you can't get things on the agenda I just want to say for the record I have never been reached out to have a conversation about any of these items and I'm happy to have those conversations if we're interested and part of that requires us being willing to have compromise and hearing other people's opinions so um all all due respect to your perspective but um I haven't been reached out to I'm not sure but I can't speak on behalf of my other colleagues but um that's not that's not my experience council member Cummings um I'll just say because I mean I don't want to get us off topic but I have reached out on items that we wanted to put on the agenda and we'll just and again because we're um this is we're talking about the wharf here but with um within the context of the wharf and environmental protection part of how we ended up having to vote during oral communications on putting in the item around plastic waste on the agenda is because I reached out to council members yourself included and never received a response so that's you know I just want to put that out there and anyway um but I think that you know we need to stay on topic and not turn this into a he said she said discussion we're talking about the wharf so I think we should move forward with the vote tonight because we could just get into it otherwise and it's completely unnecessary for us to have these discussions at this point in okay so we have a substitute motion um council member Myers your hand is still up okay we have a substitute motion um I'm hearing loud and clear that there is a request for community engagement around this item and um it sounds like right now before us are only two options and I'm wondering if there's another option that we could consider I'm just throwing it out there for community engagement around this the what is being prepared is a revised draft environmental impact report and a notice of and a um a notice of draft environmental impact report will be made available to the public for public comment you have the option of uh conducting more public comment than is required by having a discussion at multiple meetings for instance or by extending the public comment period or the council can really do as much outreach as you collectively decide is warranted under the circumstances so um really the the options that are available to the council are limited only by you know what the council majority believes is appropriate and mayor and council if I may just chime in um agree with the city attorney's comments I would also just say that in addition to putting out a robust uh notification when the circulation begins we we could also have the option of holding a more general community input meeting certainly not starting at ground zero as the city attorney um described with a scoping meeting but a more general community meeting that would allow those that are interested in the topic to weigh in um at the end of the day the EIR is a reflection of the master plan itself and the projects that are defined in the master plan so if there's broader interest in wanting to revisit the master plan itself and the projects that are identified there I think that's a different discussion the action you have before you tonight is to move forward with these um very limited narrow revisions as the city attorney described but we would defer to the to the council as to whether or not there's interest in wanting to do some additional community meetings as part of that work can I clarify with council member brown is your intention on the scoping meeting to revisit the master plan or just to have more general community um engagement and input around this my intention with the scoping meeting was to have an opportunity to talk about some of the elements of the master plan that have been narrow rejected along narrow lines in the environmental impact report um specifically but I mean that could happen in a lot of different ways so I don't have but I do believe that we should be and it's not really starting from scratch because we have most of that material it's not like we have to throw it all away and go find it again um the saying so but um when it comes to public input I would love to see an opportunity for uh the public to weigh in I mean as an alternative I'm I still would like to see the scoping and so let's take the vote but if you want to talk about that at another time I'd be happy to okay so um at this time let's take oh sorry go ahead I was just gonna say if we went back to the original motion I'm happy to add that we could add in some community meetings and maybe pictures and models where people can commen