il for the opportunity to address the safety issue for my family and neighbors who live on the west side first of all i'm very concerned that today's tree permit appeal is being used for political purposes and then it's become part of a bigger political agenda that might that has my family and our neighbors in the crosshairs this was organized by sally schultz who is in her own words as she said to me going to have her first dog fight my family is not interested in being on the receiving end of a dog fight we did not ask for my husband and i encountered salary want sally wandering our street trying to collect signatures for a petition we were surprised when we heard from some of our neighbors of this tactic we invited her to come see our tree issue and hear the information from us she hesitated and came and seemed quite surprised to see the magnitude of the tree roots and to hear other info about the case she was not aware of how could she be aware of those issues when she doesn't live in or near our home nor has spoken to us or any of the neighbors who have expressed repeated concern about their own safety regarding the gigantic sequoia tree we clarified that as a solo peeler she had the right to withdraw her appeal if this added info now changed her mind but she claimed she couldn't because the ball was already rolling with some big people and others involved this is concerned us because why were big people getting involved in our family's safety matter i don't even know who they are we asked her to extend invitation on our behalf to those people to come see and hear directly from us but oddly enough she later informed us via text that her comrades were not interested we found the use of the term comrades very perplexing and disturbing because we thought we were community not adversaries why wouldn't people want to have all the facts about an issue and learn about what is at stake for the families involved it really made me wonder so it leads me to believe that this appeal has nothing to do with our specific situation and has a predetermined agenda that focus on their say of the trees packed one whose passion i can admire but it's disregarding public safety and our particular case at hand so we want to remind you city council members to please look at this as its own individual unique case that is a grave safety issue for our neighbors and us as well as a financial burden we ask that you consider everything here carefully with an open mind and with logic and being reasonable such as the park and rec commission did when they decided with a nearly unanimous six to one vote i repeat a six to one vote to grant the tree permit they voted this way because they saw the danger posed by this giant sequoia to our family in the community they logically and unemotionally saw that an inappropriate scaled non-native tree caused damage to the structure and will continue to do so with the roots that are heading straight to the pillar connected to the roof they saw dangers of problems with city infrastructure mainly sewer lines and sidewalks they saw the temporary nature of the proposed root barrier which fails to address the issues on the neighbor side and the sidewalk that keeps raising every day even higher so this is an increasingly expensive battle that this tree would cause for the owners and city alike they saw the private property components and the undue increasing financial burden clean being placed on a single family they did not want to in their own words just keep kicking the can down the road yes please so i ask you to set aside all the biased political chatter you might hear today and focus on this individual situation first of all we'd like to start by saying we are nature lovers our family hikes camps beachcombs and participates in junior guards we understand and respect the importance of trees in our community and environmental science so let that be very clear edwardo and i are both first generation university graduates i'm the proud daughter of immigrants and edwardo himself is an immigrant to this country we have worked very hard as individuals and as a family to get to where we are today we are very proud to have purchased a home on king street and while this physical structure is important and paramount because it contains our life savings our family and their safety are even more important we decided to move to the west side of town last spring because this is where our life is centered our kids go to school on the west side our friendships are there etc at the time when we purchased the home we were told the previous owner was dealing with a terminally ill that the terminal health issue and we should try not to bother them with too many questions later some months after moving in and obviously after us go crowsed closed our neighbor chris parsa who'll talk later told us about this destabilizing root job that was performed by the previous owner so we realized this tree although it's beautiful and we love it has become a ticking time bomb and a nuisance in fact there should have been a proactive forward-thinking city ordinance in place requiring permits permits before residents can plant non-native trees like an invasive giant sequoia in a dense neighborhood so we're going to give you a little bit of background about the sequoias themselves first all right so thank you i'm just going to walk quickly because of interest of time but i'm just so you have an illustration in front of you you see the sequoia it's right in the middle the giant sequoia so these trees can grow up to 300 feet high okay so that's the equivalent to a 27-story building just imagine that having in front of your house the tree itself right now is 60 50 to 60 feet high so it's going to continue to grow to five times what it is today five six times okay the tree by nature is invasive okay the tree roots can actually someone asked the question about the roots the roots themselves can actually go one acre in the square footage okay this is according to the california national parks okay so the tree itself is very invasive and you can see it so let's carry on quickly okay so really quickly sequoia has grown a forest and their roots intertwine with each other so they help support each other our tree is a single tree and has no other trees to help support it so it appears to also be trying to intertwine with some of the plumbing in our poor neighbor's yard and we assume it's heading towards the sewage under king street to the sewer lines if it's not already there we have no way of knowing but that's definitely a potential hazard that could already be a hazard if a sequoia falls in the forest it opens up a patch of light in the canopy where the tree used to be the other trees compete to get to the top of the canopy our tree has no competition and nothing blocking the light so it is growing faster even though it's not in it's in its native area and because it grows faster the rings are wider less strong and more susceptible to storms and wind in addition we have a lot of ground water that comes down from the maramar hills area our neighbor has a well behind his house we often see the water going down the street and we were told by various people in the industry that are not certified arborist because no arborist wanted to come and talk in front of city council so we couldn't get an opinion to give you we tried very hard they said that this tree is accessing groundwater and so it's just sucking it up it's not it's got nothing to compete with and it's really spreading its roots very far so this is our home right here right so you can see we're in a corner lot right the tree it's massive it's actually uh tilt right so it has a list i'm not sure how safe that list is but it is there and it's very not not not noticeable many people can see that also another point to take into consideration is unfortunately our house was built in 1929 our neighbor's house was built in 1917 back then they did not use rebars on the foundation so anything that starts pressing against the foundation will crack it and that's what's happening with the roots so again any any pressure will just crack it immediately okay so this is the tree itself so you can see i was trying to put a graphical representation of where the tree should be how much is tilt and right now we're at 60 feet high 50 to 60 feet high if you were to take this now to 100 feet remember keep in mind this tree can grow to 300 feet high okay you're gonna actually stop at 200 because i just didn't want to keep going right you can see the the tree completely leaning on our house completely leaning on our neighbor's house all of our bedrooms are actually on the right side of the house so that's where we sleep if these three were to fall at night our whole family will be killed okay so yes so you get an understanding also the tree the tree right now did some calculations online the tree weighs about 30 000 pounds right now as it is okay keep that in mind so keeping that in mind i want to read you the letter of what our neighbor told us some months after we moved in leslie the city arbor's had been out a few times checking on everyone's concerns about the tree and chris parser writes one day about two years ago michelle wash the previous owner hired day laborers from san lorenzo lumber and they used power tools and jack cameras to dig about five feet into the ground and remove roots of the tree on her side of the property so that she could build a patio of decomposed granite material which you see here i became extremely alarmed and worried about the safety of this operation but she wouldn't stop permits were never obtained so this was done in preparation to sell the house to us and we had no way of knowing because you know like we said we weren't allowed to ask many questions and what seller in the market that santa cruises had in the last years is going to give permission for someone to dig up their entire yard we know that's unrealistic to be able to check that so somewhere the ball was dropped between the city and this owner there should have been more communication and monitoring to avoid the situation we weren't privy of this how would we be so we had the arborists come out to see the tree as soon as we'd heard the story and um the arborist said that the tree was obviously inappropriate for this size law and would need to come out at some point i'm betting that jay allen the other now famous arborist would agree yet the city arborist denied the permit why probably because we'd already fixed the foundation so she claimed she couldn't see the damage it wasn't visible in the home inspection or claimed in the home inspection as being such my understanding is a home inspector is not an arborist so he wouldn't legally be able to claim that the receipts of the repairs and all the routes going straight under the pillar attached to the roof so because we're diligent homeowners who take care of things proactively we feel we were penalized and had we been like the previous homeowner and let everything sit to the point of the serious situation we're in now perhaps we would have been granted the permit where the arborist very own eyes could see the damage so as the park and rec commission member said this is just kicking the can down the road the expense of the tree and its removal is only growing by the minute and it's putting our kids and our family and our neighborhood in danger because if this falls down and it kills someone who you know we as owners and the city are going to be held liable and i don't think anyone here appealing this or anyone on city council would want to have that on that kind of tragedy on their conscience okay so we understand trees are alive and important and that's why we've agreed to replace the tree and we just want to make sure that the city council is looking at this as an individual case my husband will talk about why the root barrier is is failing to address all of the issues basically it would have to be a 360 degree root barrier to stop increasing cost for us as owners and for the city grant program which um even is quoted in 2016 july 13th uh kitty says the program disappeared for a few years this isn't a good times article during the economic downturn contains 25 000 k down from 50 k in the early 2000s so we can't count on this program to help us pay and it only pays for half of the cost and the 5 k doesn't even cover the sidewalk repair at the moment it's over 10 000 and as one family in a city of 50 000 we obviously aren't allowed to suck up the whole grant program that wouldn't even be legal or fair so it's just not a feasible reason or a way to address this issue okay so i was just going through some some images right so you guys can see the damages so the foundation was repaired the quote of actually the the invoice was attached to the ring only package that we submitted so that was there we had to remove the patio right because we had to expose all these roots that were there water was getting into the foundation as well we have a lot of cracks so some of the council members got a chance to walk the property they saw the cracks on the wall the walls are cracking because of the the roots right so let me just kind of go through this quickly yeah so so this is i just put a small illustration on where our house is where you have the tree in the middle right so the tree has a five and a half diameter rim right now so in order for us to do a safely prune of the roots we need to go three to five three to five times the diameter of the the tree away from the the base of the tree right so that means we have to go anywhere from 16 and a half to 27 and a half feet away from the base of the tree which means the barrier that was suggested 90 degree barrier that was suggested needs to be in our living room in addition to that our neighbor's house was never addressed the sidewalk was never addressed king and streaks were never addressed so it's anyways so we just want to make sure that all this is considered and we don't think it's fair to expect one family to keep this up for the city at their own expense and what's potentially going to be the city's expense because we're doing everything we can to mitigate the expense and the danger and if we are not able to get a permit then our hands are tied and then you know what are we going to do so we really want this to be considered it's going to be expensive every day that goes by it's going to be more expensive for us and for the city because it's going to cost thousands and followers more to remove the tree and it's going to cause more damage and I don't understand why we'd be expected to use up our kids college savings we have two kids we have retirement savings so that in a few years we'll be back here and you'll tell us okay yeah now you can remove it now we see it and this is a safety issue so it's a liability issue as well so we really hope you'll consider all this and all the reasons that the park and rec commission already granted the permit and see that it's the most logical reasonable thing to do in the best interest of us and the city thank you thank you okay so at this time we will open it up for public comment any member of the community can speak to the council on this item you will have two minutes to do so and if you will line up or gather on the on my left hand side of hello i just happened to be here but i heard about this uh tree again i'm trees are a big part of our community and um this is an iconic tree on the west side i mean everybody knows this tree um these property owners um purchased the property i believe about a year ago when they bought the property they were entitled to full disclosures about the tree and they bought it obviously knowing the tree was there um to say now that all of a sudden they don't really understand the problems with this property is being a bit naive um the picture they showed of the tree falling on the house was not the same kind of tree by the way so i think it's a little misleading and i also think that they're making it very personal with them in the community when you go into a community and especially when i went into the east side community and moracy um my neighbors didn't really talk to me for a long time i had to earn some respect i had to be there in the community for a long time and i had to learn about the community by being and existing in that community and i feel like maybe that's not happening here this is a beautiful tree and it deserves to be saved thank you my name is richard stover i live on king street about a block from this tree i want to bring to the council's attention the impact cutting down the sequoia would have on the city's climate action efforts promoting co2 captured by trees is one of the easiest things we can do to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change to investigate the impact of cutting down this tree i have estimated the amount of co2 captured in this tree with new growth each year to make the results understandable i compare the sequoia to the remove the sequoia removal to the city grant program of planting 500 trees to keep things simple i'll compare the sequoia to the new redwoods of the size leslie is planning is currently planting the analysis shows that in the first year after removal of the sequoia the co2 that would have been captured is equal to about 84 of leslie's newly planted redwoods you may be aware that the condition of the grant is 100 survival zero trees lost the removal of the single giant sequoia is the same as the loss of 84 trees in that first year if not killed the giant sequoia will continue to grow and each year will capture even more co2 than the year before in 10 years the amount of co2 captured each year would increase by about one-third of course if the giant sequoia is killed all that co2 is not captured instead we get ever-growing negative climate consequences from co2 left in the atmosphere the welfare of the city its residents and the world i ask you to uphold the appeal and save this valuable tree thank you hello i'm nathan kennedy and i think what we should do with this is if they are allowed to remove this tree we we should use get it used for lumber purposes or can be made into paper parts for houses or whatever but just one tree into the bunch that we need as a society so just if but if they end up a lot being allowed to take this tree down i'd say they should be made to plant several other trees like a minimum of at least five but several other trees in well in areas that are already well marked for not invading the our streets our houses and stuff but five at least five trees in an appropriate place would be good and you know if this tree has to get cut down which it looks like it does then we at least need to make sure that this tree is put to good use thank you good afternoon council members thank you for being here today and listening to all of us i know what it's like as a former council member and i'd like to just say i am a 49-year resident of the city of santa cruz and i'm speaking in support of upholding the tree appeal of sally schultz you have the over 200 signatures that have been submitted by members of our community to ask you to save this tree and i would say that um you have also the your city arborist recommendation and the recommendation of jane's allen a certified arborist who says the tree can be saved i'd like to mention briefly that in terms of the sidewalk there are many sidewalks in this city in much worse condition than that including many on walnut street that i have to walk on frequently i'd like to mention our personal positive experience on our escalona drive property with root barriers we have a for example a liquid amber tree which was uprooting our neighbor's driveway and we had it um we had it root uh root barrier put in the driveway was fixed and um it's happened 17 years ago that driveway is exactly where it is was before and there's no damage to our tree no damage to any building or any property my husband will address another root barrier that we've had put in on our property and so i think it's just um i think what we need to think about are the kinds of things that richard stover just talked about which is the benefits of the urban forest i hope you read the article that was in your and your packet about the benefits of the urban forest and the state urban forestry code emphasizes the importance of carbon sequestration and that's not a minor concern and the city's grant of course means that you are going to be in the business of planting more trees thank you thank you please uphold the tree appeal and thank you for your time thank you okay next speaker good afternoon council members i'm peter scott living also with my wife on the escalino drive um i wanted to tell you about a eucalyptus tree that's growing uh on our property and was growing there when i bought the property in 1972 which is what 46 years ago i guess um it's a very large eucalyptus tree we have several eucalyptus trees on our property but this is probably the largest of them it sits next to our garage it was uh destroying the floor of our garage it uh is a tree that is well i measured it by measuring the length of a string around it and dividing by pi the diameter is 44 inches it's a very large tree um it's uh turns out to be uh 20 inches away from the foundation of our garage about that far it's a home or a roosting place for birds it's um it was as i mentioned uh causing problems with the floor of our garage it was there before the house was built the garage was built in 1940 um but uh so what do we do about it well it turned out that uh uh leslie keedy had an idea which is you when we took out the rocks in the bottom of the garage here's the root of this big eucalyptus tree it's about this big in diameter what do we do about that we were low to cut it off i'll i'll stop and i just want to finish this one story you know thank you so much i i i've i feel very strongly that we have to have equity of voice and i try to stick consistently to the two minutes and you've had your two minutes so i i appreciate your comments and you no longer have any more time so thank you very much and i'm going to ask the next speaker to come up thank you okay next next speaker please hey um don't start my net am i starting oh okay i'm chris parsa i'm the neighbor i'm the neighbor on the receiving side of the list in the tree and i've lived in my i purchased my home in november 1999 so i'm going on 19 years in the neighborhood i feel i'm very well established i know all the neighbors on my block down several several blocks uh my children were born in the house my daughter's starting college in a few weeks so we have a very large presence in our in our immediate street when i first bought the house it was a beautiful tree it's still a beautiful tree it was not a very noticeable tree it began a very rapid growth around 2010 the first time i called leslie to say i was concerned i noticed a list in the tree the tree was growing very rapidly it began to encroach into my yard it destroyed my sprinkler system i was told by the plumber there were tree roots in my sewage line leslie came out she looked she recommended to the owner then to periodically measure the list of the tree to help me with my anxiety i started moving my son to the back of the house whenever there were storms i was very very concerned we had the el nino years that's been going on and on i've been living next to a homeowner that would sneak things in hire people from san lorenzo lumber do all kinds of things my next contact with leslie was about two years ago when she hired day laborers as victoria explained started digging with jackhammers in at the roots on her side i was already concerned about the stability of the tree i really almost went crazy calling leslie like you have what is going on she wants to build a patio it was all covered up actually the only unaltered roots are on my property mine is the only side i have the list and i've never cut any roots they've taken over my yard i feel like i i just feel like i'm being forced into this situation you know it wasn't an issue when i bought the home we live in santa cruz i don't feel like i should have to defend myself i live in santa cruz because i love nature my family loves nature that's why we're all here but i believe the spirit thank you very much reasonable thank you okay next speaker please hi thank you so much to the council for hearing my comments my name is silvana falcone i am also a resident on the west side i'm making these comments on behalf of myself and my husband dr matthew layman who could not be here today i've known this family four years the our pillars in the community our children have grown up together to insinuate that somehow they're not community oriented people is really really upsetting they are not anti-environmentalists they understand climate change science these are good people the tree in question is not natural to king street and i think that's been made clear it's a tree that was planted by two previous owners by people who may not have a fully appreciated or consulted with the specialists about the potential harm or the consequences of planting an individual giant sequoia tree long term and the harm that they may be causing future homeowners like the toledos the proposed plan is clear the current owners will consider the future and would replace the tree that was planted decades ago by previous owners without that fort site it is a sensible solution to a massive problem those who've taken the step of signing this petition that has circulated have done so without getting this family side of their financial hardships or the security and safety realities perhaps they should talk to them to hear from them directly and have some compassion and empathy regarding the the financial and safety issues facing the toledos and their neighbors the toledo should not be expected to undertake the burdens of city climate action plans it's not their individual responsibility to do so for the city to ask this family to undergo serious financial hardships for a tree that is not natural to this area is extreme it sends a message to working families in the city that it does not matter how much you give back it does not matter how much you work it doesn't matter how much you contribute to the community it sends a message that you were expected to take extenuating financial burden for a heritage tree that again should never have been planted in the first place thank you okay next speaker please is there anybody else who would like to speak to the council on this item okay okay hello my name is andrew harris i live across the street i'm at 1504 king i've lived there for 25 years over the 25 years i've watched drainage problems i've watched sidewalks uh on the side of the house between chris's house and victoria's house lifted uh i've seen water damage under the house i've seen the sidewalk lift on king street uh i'm i'm somewhat concerned about our newly paved king street which is so lovely and smooth at this moment um there is a pronounced lean towards chris's house every time there's a storm it's obviously anxious making i actually lived in a tree or lived in a house when i was in college and a tree did fall on the house it it certainly does happen anyway i think the tree is out of scale for the neighborhood and i hope you can let victoria and edwardo remove the tree thank you very much thank you okay and unless there's anybody else who wants to speak to the council on this item you will be our last speaker hi my name is debbie bolcher i live a block away from this tree i've lived there for 25 years and um i hope you make your decision based on science and fact and not emotion we've had a lot of emotion today the fact is is root barriers work and it's sad it's very sad i know most of the neighbors that have spoken and it's sad that the new owners are afraid of the tree that they have purchased however it's clear from both the city arborist's report and james allen's are who was also an arborist's report that removal of this tree does not fit the criteria of the heritage tree ordinance with a root barrier it can be prevented from affecting the structural integrity of the house and the tree is healthy and happy as they have told us owning a tree entails a responsibility for tree care and maintenance it's similar to owning a pet when one has a dog or a cat a person is responsible not only for feeding and grooming but also vet bills which can be very expensive and by the way taking this tree down is also going to be very expensive and i find it a bit disingenuous the concerns that caring for the tree is expensive everything's expensive here as homeowners my husband and i have assumed responsibility for the four london plane trees in front of our house which were beginning to damage the sidewalk on berkshire avenue this year we rerouted the sidewalk around the trees with the city's permission to save both the trees and create a new level sidewalk for pedestrian safety so you can a homeowner can take measures to both save a tree and preserve safety so please listen to your arborists and uphold the appeal thank you thank you so that concludes the public comment portion of the appeal i'd like to now invite the appellant back up if they would like to take five minutes to rebut i want to remind the appellant that they cannot present new information to the council at this time you are only allowed to rebut any information that was already presented so no new information can be introduced i just want to emphasize that it would take about 38 trees to replace the the existing tree and it would it would really help to if they could just be open-minded to trying root mitigation first and because it's supposedly according to the arborists it will give them 15 years of of solace there and maybe in 15 years readdress the issue about you know is this really a lost cause do we really need to get rid of this or can this possibly work i mean it's worth a try is the way that i'm looking at it to save a kind of a sentinel tree of the neighborhood that so many people want to save so and also what peter was talking about about that they put in like a half of a culvert thing and it helped stop the root mitigation for over 10 years so anyway it can happen thank you so much thank you at this time we'll return to council for deliberation and action or further questions apologies does the also the homeowner doesn't get another bite at the apple right in my script just a couple questions i had for leslie how much approximately would it take to cost take the tree down probably three to five thousand dollars would be my guess i mean a tree of that diameter and weight would likely require a crane for removal and that's probably about a 1500 a day for that piece of equipment on top of the crew and it's probably about a two-day take down so i think three to five thousand dollars would be a reasonable price for that and three on the low end for sure i know you said there's only like five of these in town um do you know of any history of sequoia is falling like no i have never seen a giant sequoia fall and last winter 2017 we had a tree fall almost every night at 2 a.m what's that bend in the tree that's pronounced you know it's always hard to exactly say why the tree would list that way but to project that it'll continue to grow in that direction is conjecture sometimes they'll list a little bit and then lean back towards the light and the light is actually opposite the lean so it's possible down the line that this tree might right its upper crown do we allow people to take trees down like when it's grow the roots are growing into the sewer line not typically for sewer and generally in sewer situations and in most of the cases we actually recommend not a root barrier panel but that they upgrade their clay pipe system to an abs system which is a plastic impervious pipe and it's impervious to root intrusion so on that side of the tree i would not recommend 360 degree root barrier i would as i stated 90 degree root barrier on the corner of the property and then an upgrade if their system's clay to an abs that would limit any collars within the root zone and the sidewalk is not that damage so i would recommend some minor grinding on that and not make that a large issue at this time for repair thank you very much uh mayor i have a motion i like to uphold the appeal without prejudice and submitted to by sally k shell's reversing the parks and recreation commission's approval of the true removal permit number 18 007 submitted by edward letele and victoria sanchez to remove on a giant sequoia tree located at 1420 king street and at the tree root barrier be installed with help from the city's tree fund and that the tree arborist report back to the city council in one year on the health and stability of the tree at that time second that was a motion by council member crone and a second by council member brown any further discussion or questions from other council members at this time council member norie so as this tree grows what will happen to the roots will they keep going to so the root pruning that occurred with the previous owner was probably i know the neighbors would understand this better than i do but probably about three years ago would be my guess and i didn't see any regeneration on that we've had cases there's one up on a street right up above on the west side where i actually issued a ticket to a sewer repair person who root pruned 180 degrees of the tree and i was really fearful that the tree would either be compromised or destabilized and the tree didn't miss a beat and the roots haven't regrown to compromise his sewer so it was another question i wanted to ask in the packets it talked about how root pruning can destabilize a tree and you mentioned that the other sequoias didn't have you know you don't know of them falling but do we know whether or not those roots and those sequoias have been pruned or not um you know i don't know if you can compare this tree to one in nature not falling when one hasn't been you know pruned and the others and the other has so there's industry standards and the app or the property owner alluded to that so we look at the diameter of the tree and we multiply that by three and we do root pruning based on my observations as these are very large matrix of roots but they're all parallel to the foundation so i think if they were root pruned back to where the pillar is which structurally supports the edge of the roof that um they would and a repair panel was installed that it would be unlikely for the roots to regrow and of course all trees come with some degree of risk and i can't say this tree's never ever ever ever going to create property damage or um cause some type of an issue um but based on what was pruned several years ago in the regeneration that i see i don't really see that roots would regrow so but once the tree grows and the roots are pruned so the roots stay the same size as the tree gets larger and you don't think that destabilizes the tree the roots will continue to grow in other areas and in as much as you prune a branch and it sends out side branches when you prune a root then it would be synonymous to that you would have some lateral development that would and uh regrow but closer back from where you've cut so the roots will grow they will but the tree grows yes yeah so there seems to be a difference of opinion here about uh the you know questions around structural integrity and the potential for root pruning and root barriers to address the concern at hand um and i i don't know that we i mean this is interpretation here and and some of that will be again um empirical question to be answered in the future i'm also very sympathetic to the applicants concerns about safety and i'm very concerned about um the the um particularly safety but you know the the costs to them uh of of trying to maintain this over time i mean you know i it's unclear to me um what that's going to take and how you know how quickly that will be required and at the same time i do want to find a way to save this tree if possible i am you know i'm hopeful that the um the arborist that um leslie your suggestion that uh that pruning and root barrier could actually um lead to these results and i'm not you know again it's a projection so i would like to if we're going to um uphold the appeal have some kind of uh time frame for report back to ensure that um we're what we expect to happen based upon your projections is actually happening or rather not happening um so that we don't leave uh this the homeowner and the neighbor hanging indefinitely um i and i appreciate your point about kicking the can down the road but i do think that it's worth a little bit more deliberation and time to figure this out i put it one year on the motion sorry motion okay thank you a bit maybe more time is needed or less time i i'm i'm amenable okay council member um i'll just say i'm totally conflicted on this um having um been involved in tree planting for decades and also spent bundles and bundles of money maintaining trees and taken a few out so um i will note this is in no particular i have great respect for james allen also i've used his services he does note in his letter it was a brief visual visual inspection ground based visual inspection only preliminary brief visual analysis um no additional trees or situations were observed etc finds it to be in good health but it's clearly a very limited assessment so i'm just to to make a note of that um in terms of a time frame to report back on any mitigations a year is just inconsequential i mean we're talking a long time um and i have to imagine if um leslie you may know this um but if the home was built in 1929 the tree was probably popped in the ground about the same time is that your assessment about 90 years old i don't think it's quite that old i think it's probably a 60 70 year old tree that might have gone in the 50s or 60s says somebody's christmas tree which was brought up at the we all know a whole lot of trees are optimistically put in the wrong place so um and um given the i mean how long do those things last a couple thousand years yeah we'll all be dead and gone by then but um potential for future growth is uh substantial here um to me the fact that it's non-native is not an issue there are plenty of good landscaping trees that are not native so the issue to me thinking about it is the potential to save a tree and um i think that that certainly is um potential but i also am concerned with the predictability of ongoing damage over time to both the current structure and the neighboring structure um we all totally appreciate the value of trees in this climate action um equation um but this is a matter of a particular tree in a particular place and we we do understand that uh replacement trees for the future are part of this um so those are my conflicts yeah i put them on the table i share i share your conflicts and i um i agree i i don't think anybody wants to cut down a tree and i also understand the potential impacts it can be have it could have or is having and i'm curious if i could hear from the staff or maybe from parks and rec commit like just sort of the sentiment of the parks and rec commission knowing that you know we appoint uh commission to also look at this and and their uh vote in favor of the removal of the tree stands out in conflict for your your position so i know in absence of that it's hard but it'd be interesting to hear your perspective or i don't know if you were there carol but um the the overall kind of feel of the commissions so i'll i'll take a first opinion on this um so i actually would look at them through the lenses of an arborist and whether or not they're viable options and look at the products that are on the market and what the warranty is on these and um so with the bio barrier panel they are a manufacturer's warranty of 15 years and with the um continuous root barrier panel you're looking more at about 10 years of um we installed one for example down on the liquid amber trees adjacent to a basketball court at our Loudon Nelson Center in 2008 and the court is undamaged at this time obviously the scots have installed root barriers and have had good success with them and um we have installed a root barrier panel on a tree off of branch of 40 that's um not a giant sequoia but it's a redwood which actually is more vigorous in our community and within five years we pulled the street up and there was no root damage and we didn't pull the street up because of roots but there was some drainage issues and so um and no roots had regrown adjacent to that root barrier panel so um I think the commission in looking at the resolution is a heritage tree has or is likely to have and they said well you know it's possible that um this was tree related that caused those cracks um the root exam didn't defend that but it's possible so they felt that there was uh possibly that the foundation had been damaged by trees and that I couldn't guarantee into the future that no damage would ever occur and so they felt that this likelihood clause um they just uh factored in um from a broader position than just looking at it from our Boraculture. Did you want to add anything Carol? Okay thank you okay I appreciate that. Yeah I think that's where I'm getting hung up because I keep looking specifically at the clauses in the heritage tree ordinance and basically number three is eliminated because it's not a construction project health nobody says there's any health concerns about it so it's really number one that that we should be considering here and the and it is helpful to know that that's what the commission kind of weighed in on was the likely to have because based on your testimony Leslie you're not feeling that it has had an impact to the structure um so I think many of us are sort of in the same position right now where we're trying to figure out what to do with this situation and there's not an easy answer on this. Question to Council Member Brown. With um Honorable Vice Mayor I one of the the person has their hand up and I'd like to acknowledge them the homeowner um wanted to add something. Okay. I I'd like to up to you okay it's up to the chair for additional time um I think the question of a specific interested party at the request of a council member as opposed to someone in the audience. Oh did you have a question? No it's uh I just I know your hand was up and I want to give you every chance and I'd say 30 seconds. Okay so I wondered why there wasn't someone here because according to the ordinance there should be someone here from the Park and Rec Commission either a director and I know it says designee but I feel that's a conflict of interest like why weren't the Park and Rec Commission members notified of this meeting. I'll get that question answered. Because my understanding is. Thank you very much. You've also had your chance. I I'm going to actually go ahead and stop you right here. No I'm going to go ahead and stop you right here. I apologize. We have a process in place so I just really want to acknowledge that process unless we had any additional comments. I apologize. I thank you though sir sir thank you very much thank you very much. Okay so Carol I'm okay so to acknowledge the question I'm assuming that Carol you're the representative of the designee on behalf of the commission. Carol Scourge interim parks immigration director. I think that really you'd have to look at the ordinance and I think I'd have to ask Tony to to respond to that. Right and and the appeal when it's considered by the city council is an appeal de novo in other words the city council takes a completely fresh look at the issues that are presented and and is required to make its own independent decision so so it's very uh unusual and rare for even a an individual commissioner to appeal and comment on the issues that are presented in an appeal from that body and it's really not done that the commission itself has a representative there to express the opinions of the commission at that time except to the extent that they may be contained in findings in the resolution. I see okay thank you for the clarification. If we're ready to go there if Council Member Cron would restate his motion. My motion is basically one of the motion that Leslie put forward as well. Just the additions if you would. My only addition is that we make every available opportunity for the homeowner to apply for money from the heritage tree fund and also that Leslie Keady our our city arborist report back to us in a year and the council take another look. So just to be clear I assume that the motion is to adopt the resolution. Hold the appeal without prejudice submitted by Sally Schultz. Right reversing the parks and direct commission's decision to approve an application and upholding the appeal with the additional caveat that Council Member Cron described. Would there be anything substantial to report in a year? So unfortunately when we install the root barrier panel and if we revisit it in a year then the property owner's going to have to do some digging because I won't be able to look at the ground and see yes roots are regenerating yes roots are in contact with the root barrier panel. I have to go with the manufacturer's warranty that or in my past 25 years of experience that once you install the root barrier panel you get 10 to 15 years. If we extend that if we inspect in a year then they'll have to dig a portion of next to the root barrier and it's an economic hardship. So putting a timeline on it is very difficult. I know. Council Member Matthews and Council Member Norring. Yeah I think reporting back in a year is meaningless. I'm curious to know you said there's a 10 or 15 year warranty on the root barriers and that's a short time frame in the life of a tree and particularly that tree. So projecting out we don't know what happens to these things plastic busts up etc so that again for a tree that will have future growth adjacent to a home it's 15 years but it's temporary still on the life of the tree. And that's where the commission was challenged with the decision. Yeah what about oh I'm sorry. Well I know Council Member Norring had her hand up so let me thank her. How much is it a place of root barrier around a tree like this? So the Heritage Tree Grant just did one over here on Union Street where the neighbor feud was taking place and it was $3,000 approximately so probably would be about a $3,000 proposition to do and and I would not do the physical root barrier panel I would recommend the bio barrier which has the 15-year product warranty on it and do the 90 degree and it probably would be $3,035 maybe four or so. And so what I was a little more opinionated or had a more firm opinion of this before sitting here with you today and deliberating this but I just can't help I keep going back to the wrong tree in the wrong place I mean it just shouldn't have been planted in that location in a dense neighborhood you know in a neighborhood with you know that doesn't have huge backyards they're not big ranch houses with big space it just seems like it should not have been there and I think about myself and the place of the people who are in the home you know and I don't you know making this decision don't have to live with the consequences of the tree continuing to be there of it possibly continuing to hurt the sidewalk which we all know homeowners are now responsible for the sidewalk and the cost of it which you know isn't chump change I mean I've seen some of those costs be $10 to $12,000 for people to fix sidewalks in front of their house I'm concerned I do share the concerns about the tree being destabilized just because you know we know these trees don't tend to fall if their roots aren't pruned but I don't know if we have any sort of studies to show how they how stable they are when they continue to grow and the roots have been pruned I'm not sure I haven't been shown any information on that and so you know my heart goes out to the family that you know would have this to deal with and it sounds like the neighbors too have come in and said there's issues as well so I don't know I tend to lean more towards the side of letting the neighbors do what they want with their yard and taking all the other facts into consideration so but I'm willing to have the open mind and keep listening to my other council members though probably at some point we should make this decision so I'm wondering if the maker of the motion would be open to modifying that second addition because I'm not sure that there's going to be much to say in a year and I don't want to actually add additional costs to the homeowner I'm wondering though if it would be helpful to have something in the motion that was responsive to some of the concerns that both the homeowner and the neighbor brought forward about their issues around sewer issues sidewalk issues basically if those types of reports were to happen over the next whatever period of time that we would consider that and look into is this in fact what is referenced in the heritage tree ordinance which is clause one having some infrastructure damage that to me feels like more more specific to what the heritage tree ordinance was intended for and wouldn't make the homeowners unnecessarily dig up any part of their property in order to determine if there was an issue but actually be responsive to something should it occur so what would exactly be the friendly amendment it looks like you're open to it but maybe council member Matthews has a modification I'll just say damage is incremental over time over a big time scale and if there were one and probably be 10 years I've honestly dealt with this you know replace the sewers and yeah you know you at the cost of many thousands of dollars dig up the whole sewer line out to the main and replace it with plastic etc that's and then and then the roots don't get in and similarly the damage to sidewalks and foundations you're not going to see it in one year couple years whatever it's it's incremental over time and by then it'll be five councils down just saying are there any other and the other thing too that I want to say I mean clearly to some extent this is a matter of personal commitment there are people in the audience and and I count myself among that too who voluntarily spend a good deal of amount of money pruning creating root barriers etc etc etc to preserve and contribute to the health of the trees and that's that's a personal path that they've made but the ordinance doesn't necessarily require that before I ask for clarification on the friendly amendment I just have a quick question in terms of the potential to condition if the tree were to be removed the home owners to plant more compatible trees for urban canopy how would that look in terms of so that actually is on a separate resolution to the chapter 9.56 and so what what this decision would be because they voluntarily suggested that they would replant as they post a $250 bond and then they replant either one 24 inch box tree or three 15 gallon sized trees and so since that's a city council approved resolution we can't tell them you need to put in something bigger or you need to do twice as much we have to be consistent with the rules that we've adopted which is that specific criteria and again Leslie that that doesn't necessarily have to be on their parcel so standard city lot that would be well if they bond and they do what they committed to is replanting then it would be on their lot if they change their mind and say we don't want to replant then they could do a hundred and fifty dollar in loofy and then they don't have to put in a tree but and we can condition mitigation if we if we want to and they voluntarily said that they would put in a new tree but the best we could mandate so to speak would be a 24 inch box specimen and it doesn't have to be something of that same stature it could just be it's just the size of container by our resolution right I mean again just saying depending on the tree three 15 gallon trees a short period down the line can be problems under themselves there again it's it's what are you putting in the ground so sure okay I prefer more flexibility on that I have a I have a modified a friendly amendment we'll see if it's accepted to replace the return in one year um so and we can kind of wordsmith this a little bit return to either council or public or parks and work parks and rec commission whichever is more appropriate should adverse effects to the structural integrity of a building utility or public or private right away occur subsequent to the root barrier and all the things that are included in the resolution it's acceptable but then what would you think would occur should they come back or should they not come back I mean at that point I guess that they can put in you know requests for removal potentially because at that point it would meet item one of the heritage tree coordinates and right now that's the thing in front of us that Leslie is saying it has not met that parks and rec commission disagrees because the likely standpoint so that to me would that's where I was trying to get to a little closer for myself to cause one I don't know Tony wants to weigh in on that I was just discussing this with the arborist the ordinance states that once a decision on an appeal is made that a new application can't be filed for a period of one year from the date of the decision were there new evidence discovered of damage to the foundation or other issues that constitute a valid grounds for filing an application for a permit in the future after that one year period has lapsed then a new application could be filed so we wouldn't even need to add that in because if there were something that came up I think that's right I mean the likelihood of some problem manifesting itself within that one year period is pretty slight and should that occur in the future a new application could be filed and the fact that you upheld an appeal in this particular instance wouldn't amount to a pre decision that issuance of a permit wouldn't be appropriate in a future instance based on the circumstances at that time and not to further complicate this but why not the sewer if it's a clay pipe which I believe is then you could have root intrusion within that next year or the sidewalk could lift an eighth of an inch more or a half an inch over the next year so it's just an awkward position that last time I was draw even more confident and I think the thinking of the parks and rec commission about the likelihood of damage and the fact that the trees going to continue to grow you know I'm struggling over this too but I think what was just said put me on the side of giving some relief to the folks who own this home the fact is that that was not a tree that should have a type of tree that should have been been planted there and it probably if it had been maintained maybe we wouldn't even be here today but it sounds like it was just hey this looks like fun it's a Christmas tree and then not much else thought was put into it the houses were there before the tree was put in the ground too okay well anyway is the amendment yeah I was yeah because it doesn't seems like that's inconsistent with what we would want to have in there anyway so I'll withdraw my friendly amendment I couldn't support the motion on the floor with the one year back return back because I don't think that's going to be telling and I don't want to add any additional financial burden to the a pellant I can withdraw the one year I mean I was just doing it because I thought it would be something for the helpful for the homeowner so I'll withdraw that part of the motion the one year and we're just going to go with upholding the appeal but I I really want the city to reach out and make sure that the homeowner knows that funds are available to help with the root barrier just to be clear Leslie is that it's not in the recommendation upholding the appeal doesn't there's there's two you either side with the commission or staff but if the appeal is upheld am I getting it right if if the tree is preserved there's no language in the motion which I think you could include being explicit about access to the tree fund that's that's where I'm going with that or is that just automatic anyway we don't have to be explicit well I'll be explicit I mean I really like to be okay okay so for clarification um maybe you could repeat your motion at this time and then we could go ahead and vote on on that well I'm going to include the truth on it to uphold the appeal without prejudice submitted by Sally K. Schultz reversing the parks and recreation commission's approval of tree removal permit application 180077 submitted by Eduardo Palero and Victoria Sanchez to remove on one giant sequoia tree located at 1420 King Street and at the tree root barrier being stalled with the help of the city's tree fund okay and that was seconded by council member Brown okay um is there any further deliberation at this time okay so all those in favor please say aye aye post no so that's a tie that a hung jury based on the tie the matter would automatically be continued to your next meeting oh you're kidding me okay due to the fact that the tie is a result of an absence of a council member okay not a recusal or disqualification we were just waiting to say that Tony I have a question so procedurally does this mean we have to go through this same whole process at the next meeting no you may just defer the decision provided that Mayor Taraz has rehabilitated himself by by reviewing the make sure he is okay members of the public would have an opportunity to address the council at that time I will make homemade Armenian food and invite him over if that would work to make sure he watches this before next meeting okay all right okay so I'll just restate the vote um that the vote was council member crone council member chase council member brown were in support of the motion council member matthews council member norian and myself were not and we will decide later okay this be clear it need not necessarily be the very next meeting but as soon as it can be scheduled in accordance with okay other pressing agenda matters thank you so should we continue thank you all right so the next item on the agenda is item number 22 which is going to be also continued until September 11th 2018 at a future council meeting and will not be discussed today okay we'll transition presenting thank you good evening commission council and you know I might just pause you for a second can I ask that we uh we're going to continue our discussion if you want to move your conversations outside so we can continue on with business thank you very much good evening council um nice to be here today we are um bringing to you our community outreach policy and this is a policy that has been um developed in response to direction from the housing blueprint subcommittee um and the intent of the policy is to provide more robust community outreach for planning policy changes and development projects so this is specific to planning department projects it is not a citywide policy sorry um there are certain key themes that came up with the housing blueprint subcommittee um that we were very mindful of while we were developing this policy um we wanted to be sure that it would provide early meaningful input from the public we wanted to expand outreach um especially I should say when no public hearing is required um we have also incorporated planning commission subcommittee slash site design and architectural review um early in the process and um the intent is also to provide some certainty in the process for the public for staff and for developers um and the way we've developed the policy um the extent of the outreach is based on the project size and the importance to the community and that was a specific recommendation from the housing blueprint subcommittee um pre application and or preliminary review for large and significant projects is um highly recommended for large and required for significant uh onsite posting is required for all medium large and significant projects and we um will also be recommending it for small projects particularly ones that we think are going to um have more community interest um we will also be um creating a new posting on our website that will be updated monthly that will be a list of all application current applications um and that will give the public notice of projects that are do not require a public hearing and that are um smaller than the size that would be required to have an onsite posting uh and we also will have added planning department community meetings to the uh types of um notifications that members of the public can sign up for and and I would like to say that we actually used that um that community meeting sign up for this hearing for this for this item and there were a number of people signed up already um while we were developing the uh outreach policy we did some outreach to the community um it originated with the housing blueprint subcommittee and um there were a number you know the subcommittee came up with um a hundred items and a number of those related to um this outreach policy or or have been incorporated into this policy we um had a community meeting on May 15th and at that meeting we provided a first draft and I had to say um I was the planner who who was manning the booth for this one and next to me was the adu booth and they got all the attention we also uh presented it at a developer's round table on July 12th and this is a sort of on again off again meeting we have when we have something that we think is of particular interest to developers or that we want um specifically to get developer input on we call a developer round table meeting um so we did that on July 12th and then we had a second community meeting on oh sorry I've got these two dates wrong one date is right one is wrong uh the developers round table was July 12th the community meeting was July 17th and um at that time we had incorporated the comments that we received from the first community meeting and from the developers round table into the draft outreach policy um and we got more feedback at this meeting um in general uh the feedback was just that they were really people were really glad that we were doing this and they thought it was a good idea um and then we also presented it to the planning commission at their August 2nd meeting that is the end of my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions any questions yeah actually I do um in terms of what would get posted in terms of um projects listed on the planning department website how far down do you go someone's everything adding to their house everything that is a a planning project so it wouldn't be building permits but it would be everything that comes into the to the planning department the long list I have a quick question I was curious in first of all I I know we're going to have comments even but since but since I can I think I might just say thank you I know that we had a very comprehensive report for you to go on and you quickly turned around what I think was essential and critical component component that crossed every one of the recommendations which is how do we engage the community in a meaningful way and I appreciate you being aggressive in and bringing this forward to us now um so with with that I want to also just ask for clarification in terms of how you were able to um come up with what you categorized as small development projects medium large and then significant like where where did that come from or did was that based on the input from the the community or did you just kind of how did we had a lot a lot of internal discussion with various different departments um just trying to decide what size made sense um if it's too small and doesn't require a discretionary permit it sort of defeats the purpose because there can't since we don't have any discretion we can't require anything from the developer so we didn't and we didn't want it to be something where um we developed notification fatigue so that we people were getting noticed so often that they just started ignoring the notices um so the the intent was to to find that kind of happy medium where they were going to be projects that people would would care about um and that they were uh not so small that that they there wouldn't be any meaningful input um and then and and then we just tried to you know fill out what well what's the biggest thing we have and then develop the medium size from that and if I could I would just add that at the same time we wanted to make sure we were building in policy language that allowed for additional levels of outreach if they didn't meet the thresholds in the policy there may be projects where um a a smaller number of units actually warrants a larger outreach effort and we've built in the policy language that allows the city to dictate to the developer that yes for this one we know there's going to be a lot of community interest and you're going to need to do these extra levels that would typically may be reserved for a large or a significant project for example additional question I have a follow-up question related to to this item about uh size and the the categories that are included here I understand the the rationale and appreciate the thought that's gone into this um but I have a question that I I really genuinely would like an answer to I mean is it really up to us to decide what projects will generate significant attention and make those projections I mean I think that the community deserves to have a voice in in what they're paying attention to so I'm a little bit concerned with looking at the 10 you know 10 unit minimum threshold and and I would like to hear more about that and perhaps the public well and that is partly um the function of that list if if we post that list and two days later we have you know 20 comments from the public obviously that is the project that people are interested in so if it is not one that would normally um rise to the level of of having uh you know the the required um noticing and community meetings that that would trigger it the other thing is that um like you we have a lot of communication with the public and we generally have a sense of when something's going to going to be when people are going to want to know about something and and when it is is not going to be important to the to the neighborhood um usually something that's in a neighborhood for one thing um and if it's a if it's a larger project that's along on a significant um location where there's a lot of traffic where people care you know something that people see a lot and care about then um we're going to know about that but we will be responsive to our comment to the comments we get from that list and so that's sort of the list is the is the failsafe for us um because there are a lot of people in this community that pay a lot of attention to what goes on in city hall and we expect there are going to be people who are you know the day that list is published they're going to go and look on it and if they see something that concerns them they're going to call us up and ask about it and that list will have the assigned planners contact information so that planner will actually be able to answer questions and and be able to make the judgment call of okay are people calling because they want to know about this project are they calling because it's more important than that and we need to have that community meeting thank you that's helpful but it sounds like what you just said contradicted what you said previously that if something you know isn't asking for variances is within you know all the boxes are checked that um they fit the requirement of building something we aren't we limited in how much we can tell that developer you know you can't do this you can't do that if they fall within all of the requirements if it's a planning application that's a discretionary approval okay so if they if if they don't need a planning approval if they just can go and get their building permit without a planning application then um we don't have any discretion on that one that's what i thought okay but something that falls out of that obviously this i just wanted to make sure that's what we're talking about here yes and i want to um lee reminded me that it has oh never mind okay he corrected himself any other questions from council members of the council microne yes on page um 23.2 it talks about the mailing radius and um um uh some members of the developers group felt that the mailing radius for all project types should be limited to 300 feet do they pay for the mailing or do we pay for the mailing they pay for the mailing they do yeah and what does that typically cost um uh i do you remember off the top of your head i don't know off the top of my head but there there is a uh i believe that we have a standard fee and it's sort of extrapolated across but i'm just trying to see like did they want less people to know about the project or i mean this is a community you know so i want the more people i know about it the better and deal with the problems early on um what but that also makes me think well who boxes of mail and um people don't read their mail and a lot of people don't so i'm wondering if there's other ways that we can put in here like is there a way of getting people's emails i mean i know we have a list now that we email people when they put their email on the list so we can't like i guess get the address their email address is there there's a specific okay there's there's several ways okay people can sign up for the community email email community meeting email to be notified whenever there's going to be a community meeting they can go on this list and um look at projects and if they see a project that they're interested in they can contact the planner on that project and sign up with the planner to get notifications for um that specific project so they don't want to know about all community meetings just about that project they can do that um and then uh uh if they are in the neighborhood and they can also sign up for um city council and planning commission and in fact any other any other of our advisory body lists so um there are a number of ways we um when we have community meetings and we have people sign up and and um we have a space for them to put their email on there and then we can we and again we did this for for this meeting for this project um we took the email from the community meeting and we made a list of that and we sent the announcement of this meeting to that list would you be in favor or are you um agnostic on making this 300 foot thing a thousand as you mentioned in the report some people said that or 500 or changing it um well if you look on the back of the policy at that the top green thing here we have um different radiuses for different type different sizes of projects so the small our normal public hearing radius is 300 feet that's that's our ordinance and it's also state law and then so for small we keep it at 300 medium is 500 large is 800 and significant is a thousand and I don't know Lee do you know of any community that does over a thousand square feet I've never heard of one I have not seen over a thousand radius and um that is um the something that we would do on a case-by-case basis oftentimes um if for example that captures everybody but a couple of properties on a block we would look at that and say well it makes sense to round out that block and that would be consistent with the practices and some other jurisdictions as well before you we're unsure what large means do you have a definition for small medium and large um we do uh small is I would add 20 to 24 housing units or um 2500 to 10 000 square new square feet of commercial development medium would add 25 to 50 housing units or 10 000 to 25 000 square new square feet of commercial development large would add over 50 residential units or over 25 000 square new square feet of commercial or industrial development and then significant projects are any proposal regardless of size or type that has the potential for significant city-wide interest it's on 23.4 of our agenda packet any other questions from council members this is so I notice under the community meetings um that we don't send a mail notice if there's more than a thousand recipients and that instead we resort to advertising in the sentinel um a lot of people I I don't know that seems like we would be missing a lot of people doing that um and it you know is there ever a time where you do your radius and you find it is more than a thousand people usually if it's close we'll go ahead and do the mailing it's quite expensive to send out is that much postage um and this is also by state law um if it's over a thousand if if it's over a thousand when you're noticing something you only have to advertise it at state you're not you're not required to oh it's in the notices yeah typically what we'll see is like a city-wide um policy or say we had some changes to the adu ordinance um we wouldn't necessarily mail to all 12 000 or so uh single-family residents however many it is that we've got um we would um say all right that is excessive let's put something in the paper but as Catherine mentioned if we do a radius and it's a thousand eleven hundred then we're going to take that in consideration particularly for development applications that have a more localized impact okay but you were saying that it's the cost of the developer to send that mailing right not the city it is but at the moment we have one um we have we have just the one fee for mailing so we have to develop and have city council approve wider radius mailing and and we have to figure out how much those are going to cost i'm not thinking of wider radius i'm thinking of the the numbers of people who would be getting the mailing and it says if it's a thousand or more we wouldn't be sending mailing and so that does concern me um because i don't necessarily think that you're going to capture as many people with an ad let's say in the newspaper and then you also have um at your discretion whether or not to use social media i think um you know perhaps there should be a requirement to use social media if we're not going to be sending mail over a thousand you know when it's over a thousand people so that's that's a really big concern of mine well do keep in mind that these are all posted on the site and um we also have the emailing and the posting on the the city's list of of projects so we're trying to hit this on on at multiple angles um the social media we don't the planning department does not have a well-developed program for notifying on social media as yet it's we we plan to do this it's not something that we have done yet and since we wanted to move forward we'll move this quickly we didn't want to promise you something that we wouldn't be able to do a good job of you know we don't want to start piece mailing this and then you know later figuring out oh that's how we should be doing it so so the intent is to to be using social media more but we don't currently have a sort of a template a way that we always do it are there any additional questions from council members before we go to public comment on this okay all right so this is item number 23 and i will now open it up for public comment each speaker will get be given two minutes are there any speakers who would like to comment on item number 23 um my i have several problems with this first of all i'm just really glad you're you're doing it and considering it and i think it's something i brought up in the listening tour um but i don't think it's strong enough and i think the categories are too big um you know your definitions of small medium large and everything because in the may meeting they the categories were defined very differently and much smaller so that um that handout defined it um small as i mean this is what the public got because i got this handout um small as um maybe this is a little too small one to two but medium was three to fourteen large was um 15 plus and um with a lot you know less commercial so these like medium is is huge here and um just as somebody who's been involved in some of these community outreach meetings like i said before and one of my concerns about removing the protections and the density bonus is like you can have these meetings but it always comes back to we don't want to burden the developer we don't want to make him give people bus passes or anything that'll make it you know it won't pencil out so if these meetings are really for the neighborhood fine but if it's a box to just check off and say we did our due diligence you know like the the one on water street which i'm sure you're all familiar with the you know the developer actually did initiate some meetings and that was great but in the end he changed the design he took away the pretty arches you know it's like so now it's a you know it's back to being you know and pretty you know it's not finished yet but if the if the policy has no teeth and the neighborhood really doesn't have a say you know i mean i think this should have been developed the policy itself with people like me and people who've been you know like pushing for this stuff for a long time it's it's still too developer oriented thank you next speaker please um my name is kandace from east morse kandace brown um well first of all it would be really nice to have this in the evening i had to take time off work to come to this meeting and obviously i had several items that i had to be here for but i think it would be really important to have at least one evening meeting for community engagement policy review in the case of other cities a lot of times when they do design review which is really an integral part of this it's done within a two block radius um it would be nice to also know how much these mailers are they're very simple things you can print out very easily with mail merge a very low cost to print out so i can't imagine that would be that expensive what maybe less than 50 it's the it's the postage that is yeah i know we can't i can't ask but that would be nice to know and also um it would be um important to align that with the densities of the zoning ordinance so if it's low it's less than 10 if it's medium or low medium it's 20 um if it's or medium it's third i'm sort of thinking out louder it's 30 to 40 depending on whether it's with studios or not um and then high density is 55 and that would be significant um these are not in any way aligned with the zoning ordinance which is kind of strange to me um when we do flyers in the community um we actually go just so you know at least in a five block radius um we also use social media we have email lists um we're not always as organized as we'd like to be but um we find that um in spite of all that people don't know about these things and we find it always interesting that that's not the case so we're always challenged to figure out a way to just reach out to people in general and i think that you guys are also but i'm just sharing that with you because the flyers are one form many people are not still on social media so although i would certainly support that as a requirement i think that's many people in our community are actually elderly and they don't use social media and they don't use it regularly as often as you might think um when we were involved with water street common project um we went through three community meetings and the first meeting was extremely contentious i mean extremely like um almost shelling matches it was very heated it was very emotional there were parents there talking about wanting to have you know housing for the developmentally disabled that there were other people in the community that were very upset about the impacts and there were a lot of parking issues and um the design was just atrocious quite honestly it looked like a prison and um there was no place for children um it just in no way was integrated into the the common space so finally um we had a second meeting and they provided three designs and people started to calm down and they started really talking about things and it there wasn't necessarily consensus but we started to align it the second meeting was very very important but it wasn't until the third meeting that we actually finally came to consensus and i just wanted to share that with you because i think that's an important part of the process thank you this item number 23 if there are any members of the public who want to speak please stand to side are there any additional members who want to speak to this item you want to stand to my left okay all right thank you hi my name is paul benjamin i asked that the city council give more time on item 23 for the exact reasons that our previous two speakers spoke up there really needs to be an evening meeting and far too many times the city council and the planning department have ignored the community this is really a community project we're talking about all the projects including water street the recent kayuga so kell avenue building these need to be about the quality of life there's long-term residents such as myself and we're seeing this lack of community impact and input there needs to be procedures and guidelines put forth before these items can be passed on already there's been quite a bit of staff debate on how to have outreach for the community it needs to go back and be worked on so there's real community support and outreach the orientation of each building is very important the design there's a lack of design here the guidelines need work thank you good evening it's really getting that late i'm calling i i'm talking today because i have concerns that who determines citywide interest for example in the 1024 so kell avenue this had tremendous community interest and yet the noticing was really just with the businesses and very limited in my view i did not know about that building going up even though i live just blocks away and that's because i wasn't in the noticing area i think there should be some great concern for buildings that are on the corridors that set a tone and i'm saying this in general i think it requires a greater amount of noticing because it really affects the the character ambiance of the town particularly as i said on the corridors and i think that there could be extreme detrimental consequences by putting buildings that are not complimentary with the community we want to support our community that's where we live that's where we walk to that's where we go to dinner at akiris and all these other wonderful east side restaurants and the wonderful shops we have there um i again i'm a bit dismayed that early the early noticing isn't really happening in the way and isn't being proposed in a way that in my view is really supporting the neighborhoods also again we need the design review thank you for livability on the east side okay so that concludes public comment unless there's anybody who wants to speak to item number 23 okay at this time we'll return to council for deliberation and consideration i just have one question so i know i saw it in the report somewhere and i can't seem to find it which did reference the community's involvement in things like design review early on where is that in here i read it's in the description of the community meetings okay thank you because that was an important piece of one of the things that well pause for a second thank you for bringing this back i'm really excited to see this this was the major push of the subcommittee was that we develop a process that was inclusive of the community and that we get that back to council as soon as possible so i really appreciate that we're hearing this today i'm grateful for the work that has been done on this and the comment in regard to the design i think was a huge part of what we heard in the communities that people want to have input on that in at a meaningful way and at a meaningful time meaning early on as soon as we possibly could in these projects so i i want to make sure the public's attention is drawn to that um which is basically phase two community meetings that's in that description right right okay perfect and i think that that does from my experience meet the um requests that we heard about the types of things that the public really wanted to have an opportunity to weigh in on so thank you that was my question any other questions or comments okay council member not much sure if i saw who's hand whenever i have a if you have a question okay councilor brown so um yes thank you very much for putting this together and you know i know that it's been a lot of work and uh going back and forth and thank you for listening to the subcommittee about this particular issue and trying to put that all together in a in a um package that um sort of got at um the areas where we were talking about community engagement all over the you know we were kind of all over the map so organizing us was much appreciated is much appreciated um and i so i think that's this that that um council member chase's question really got at my point earlier about wanting to make sure that this community engagement wherever it happens at whatever point that it is an iterative process that people that it is not just a one-way transfer of information to the public so they can um go home and like it or not like it and kvetch about it or applaud it right so um so i i do you know i i do want to follow that and really make sure that we get some feedback early on after you know as we go through this process to ensure that that it's like what's working what's not working you know do we want to change things in terms of the format for these meetings or you know you know other kinds of suggestions so i hope that we can find a way to make sure that happens um and i also want to say that i'm pretty concerned about the size design project size designations because i do think that um they seem to be um you know small you know we looked at an appeal on a 10 unit project uh at our last council meeting that was pretty you know it's pretty big project um relative to the neighborhood that it's um uh going to be located in and so i'd really like to see and i actually didn't have a chance to go back and look at the the zoning ordinance uh categories in terms of size but i do think that um you know i would feel much more comfortable with uh moving the outreach policy forward with an an amendment so i guess i'll make a motion that i would move the community outreach policy uh with the revision that we consider small medium large and significant according to the zoning ordinance unit size unit number for size um i you know i had kind of put some together in my head of you know small being perhaps five to ten medium um 11 i suppose to 25 um and then um you know and then i'm having a little bit of a hard time figuring out large versus significant because so i don't you know i mean i'm willing to entertain thoughts on what those differences might be um there isn't so each zoning district has it's allowed uses the uses that require a use permit and the general plan has things that are density based on units per acre that somewhat translate into the different zoning districts but this is a citywide policy it's not it's not based on a specific zoning district so i'm not sure exactly what the direction you're giving us is well the direction is primarily to reduce our concept of small medium and large and significant i thought maybe uh you know aligning it with our zoning ordinance in in the various neighborhoods would be helpful but if that's not then i can just say what i'm thinking so if for citywide you know five to ten being small medium 11 to went this feels a little bit um you know kind of just i'm just making this up but you know 10 to 25 would you prefer to give recommendations or have them come back with recommendations to us to modify this based on some sort of zoning criteria so it feels a little less arbitrary yeah i i mean i prefer that it not be arbitrary but i certainly my my um interest is that it's we're talking about smaller yes got it okay so that might be easier for you so that it's based on some sort of existing standard so that it's not just us kind of deciding on something smaller it may be challenging if i could it may be challenging if we're if we're basing it on a zoning standard the zoning standard would be different in different areas the general plan standard is different and so that was one consideration is you know is it the density that we're looking at and we actually decided to go with a physical number of units because in in some areas um it would have a different density allowed and other areas it wouldn't also just the flexibility that we included um was it was somewhat intentional to provide four differences in for example the the 17 unit project that we had just north of the catalyst you know um four stories three or four stories um 17 units you know would that really necessitate a community meeting you know maybe um it could but other other locations in the middle of downtown um may or may not um trigger a community meeting for you know 10 or so units um but i would just say that um having a specific number like if the council isn't comfortable at this point with the numbers that we have suggested in terms of 10 to 25 25 to 50 and over 50 then um having a reduced number is something that we can certainly use and um have for the developers and have for the community say this is what we're doing and we can report back and and let you all know how it's going after a certain timeframe so if i'm hearing you correctly you're saying to for us to create those numbers right now because essentially that's what is required well i would i would suggest if you if you all um based on your experience and feel for the community and and what has um been um perceived as a large project or a medium-sized project or a smaller project that you can go ahead and provide that direction i mean a policy is is fluid we can come back to you and say hey this is this is not enough we're getting smaller projects that really always need uh more community outreach or we're saying we've done five of these six unit meetings and no one showed up at a single one um do you think you know we should modify as as we should right i mean essentially that's how you would want to involve your policy but i i hear um i appreciate your point and i hear your perspective i too thought well over 50 probably it's already going to be significant at that point so i get i kind of get the scaling sense that you have but um so i think you know i if you want to continue with what your recommendation i'll just go ahead and i'll just go ahead and say it then okay so i i would move the uh recommendation to adopt the policy the community outreach policy um using an amended um requirement for and for under requirements and project definitions of small development project being five to ten housing units and then i can't even begin to do the math to extrapolate the square footage but if if you can do that that would just be based on the reduction to five to ten uh medium being um 11 to 25 large 26 to 50 or excuse me 25 to 50 26 to 50 thank you and then significant being we could maintain that um you know it could be large or significant as is a combined category basically because anything that's that big or and or smaller but of significant interest to the whole city would fall into that okay i'll second that question any other questions or discussion on behalf of the council for matthews and then yeah i appreciate lee that you said that policies are fluid because we'll learn from this um and sandy um downsize the um description of the different uh levels for housing units but not for square feet of commercial so um again it's hard for me to visualize do you have suggestions on that count do you think those definitions are still appropriate for the commercial i do okay i think that those definitions i mean if you think about 2,500 square feet um you know we get single family houses that are 2,500 square feet and and so um it if there's a location where a new building is going to present a fair amount of community interest we can um use those additional noticing techniques and take it from there um did you have a question yeah i'm just wondering if you could go over again the why density didn't matter somehow you couldn't compare the densities with um the numbers of units um this is a well it's a citywide policy and different zoning districts have different density allowances um so what would be um well we can just compare like we thought a lot about how the downtown compares with most of the rest of the city and you know two units in the downtown is basically nothing or five units in the downtown is nothing and if if if we're comparing it to the rest of the community the is there's just not a consistency so the the way the density in the general plan works is that if it's a particular zoning district it has this density but we're looking at a citywide so we're not looking at um it's an apples and oranges kind of comparison if we if we said um something that has a density of um 20 units and less then that would be saying in this zoning district we'll have this kind of a noticing pattern and in that district we'll have a different kind which is not what we wanted to do we wanted a citywide policy that addressed everything and and frankly you know uh in a single family or a low density district smaller is more important because um a small project can have a bigger impact than a small project where you've got a high density development on lease point of 17 units downtown i i definitely think a public a meeting neighborhood meeting would be appropriate so just just to to build on katharine's comment you know that 17 du might have been um 40 plus dwelling units per acre and so that could if we were doing it at a dwelling unit per acre category that could qualify as say like a large project but do we need to take all the same steps for a large project um for uh something there and and i think katharine was kind of hitting the point of if we had it based on densities then anything in the low density residential zoning district would get would get one set of criteria because there's a range of density that would go there anything in the next zoning district up would have a separate whereas you could have a large property in that zoning district and still be at um you know say 20 dwelling units per acre um but because of the area it could have a substantial number of units you could have 50 hundred units but if you're still at the 20 du per acre then you might be in a lower category of outreach okay question or comment are we at that stage i think so yeah we have a motion in a second so i just think this is a first pass to try and increase public notification and participation trying to make it relatively simple for the parties involved and um we can modify it going forward so okay so at this point it seems that we're at a time where we could take a vote on this item so all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed pass it unanimously with uh mayor traw's absent okay so item 24 and then we have public comment so okay jump in okay we'll go ahead and jump right in we got lee already up here cued up for item number 24 and then we'll do public comment following this item good afternoon again vice mayor and council members lee butler uh planning and community development director and um today i'd like to talk with you about ucsc growth and the impacts on sanikers and some things that we as a city can do about that um the council will recall that um following the um the measure on the june ballot they uh the council provided direction for us to um present to the ucsc long range development committee sorry long range development plan uh community advisory committee um the results of measure u and uh those were included in your packet showing a 77 passage overwhelming majority of the residents supporting that and so i wanted to as a means to set the stage quickly go through that presentation a little bit faster than what i went through it with them for uh you all but um just to give you a flavor of what we presented to them so we identified that this uh recent international study showed sanikers as the fourth least affordable place in the world to live when comparing incomes and housing costs so not a list that we want to be on and um we talked about the the various housing pressures obviously this is a great place to live with many things that attract people to live here and we've got limited land we draw tourists in and um short-term rentals and second homes are issues and silicon valley growth is undoubtedly a significant pressure on our community and of course ucsc growth is a big one as well and we're doing things to address every single one of these we're just focusing for uh this afternoon on the final one there the ucsc growth and what we can do so some of the stats that we pulled from the department of finance and the um ucsc stats um full-time students grew by about 6400 people between 2000 and 2017 the total beds went up by almost 3900 that's a lot of beds you know we we certainly appreciate them adding all of those housing but that that still leaves a significant gap over 2500 students that are out in the community looking for housing in that 2000 to 2017 time frame same time frame the city's population grew by nearly 11600 and um our housing growth we added almost 2200 housing units so let's uh pull those numbers together a little bit the population of the city grew by 21% but the student population grew by 56% and the increased student enrollment accounts for up to 55% of the growth in the city population between 2000 and 2017 that is a really significant portion now granted not all of those students are living within the city there are some that um are um off campus and and not in the city limits but nevertheless it gives you a sense of the scale of the student population growth versus the overall city growth when we talk about our housing stock we we did grow by 10% and that's the 2200 units or so that we added and the 2500 plus off campus students were competing for those 2200 units and I don't think that any of us believe that every single one of those students was in their own dwelling unit alone but nevertheless even if there were two or three or four of them that is still a very significant percentage of our housing growth that is is going towards students and that is an important component of our strategy for addressing affordability is the housing production and sometimes the growth of the students is working at odds with the housing production that we have if UCSC isn't keeping up with the housing production on their campus and then just as a fact um that the UC student population represents nearly 30% of the city population and one of the comments that we heard and discussed at that CAG meeting is noted at the bottom here and it was an important one uh important enough to add this note wasn't on the slide that we presented to the CAG but um we're talking just about students here and so when UCSC adds 6400 students they're also adding faculty and administrators and facilities staff and the families of those folks and and so there is an even greater impact than what we have identified right here when we isolate um just the the population of students that are entering our community. We also talked a bit about the costs and um the off-campus costs being lower than the on-campus cost estimates and that really serving as an incentive for many students to move off campus particularly if they're sharing rooms you can see that in the next two slides here where you know a triple is in the range of 11 or 1200 dollars um on campus and you know a 3300 dollar or 3400 dollar one bedroom unit if you had three uh students in there is likely going to be going except for maybe some of the most expensive places in the city it's likely going to be going for significantly less one bedroom unit going for less than 33 or 3400 dollars so again incentives for students to live off campus and it's reiterated in a number of their different dorm types and even the university town center here you can see a triple is almost 1100 dollars and that's incentivizing students to go out into the community we we conveyed the results of a measure you with 77 percent voter support and expresses the concerns that were articulated in that measure specifically in relation to housing traffic and water and we reiterated our position that we fully support the mission of uc to provide higher education in our community we appreciate the jobs and the cultural um amenities that come along with the university however there are impacts that the university has on our community right now and when we're talking about these potential plans for growth we first need to address the impacts that our community is already experiencing and we indicated that consistent with the council's direction we are willing to dedicate resources to protect city interest um we had a series of questions that um we would potentially get to and most of these were covered as part of the conversation without us us prodding them but um i wanted to to get to today the opportunities that we have to present the city interests and the first of course is our continued participation in the lrdp process that is proceeding right now and we have councilmember matthews and councilmember crone who are the council representatives there and i attend those meetings on behalf of the city manager as well and we have right now the lrdl rdp process the next step is going to be the development and the analysis of various growth alternatives that'll occur this fall and then in the uh the following that there'll be a preferred alternative selection in the spring of 2019 so based on that preferred alternative they will start developing the draft document and once they have that drafted document they will then use that for their seco analysis and they'll prepare a draft eir and that draft eir will get um public comments on it and they'll provide responses to that and then present to the uc regions both the final eir and the lrdp for the uc's consideration and potential approval in the summer or fall of 2020 so we're continuing to participate in that lrdp process um there are a couple questions on this slide that the council can consider one of those is resources dedicated towards additional communications with state elected officials and uc regions the next is whether not the the council uh sees it as something we should do to research coordinate and organize with other uc's regarding their current and or past lrdp approaches and then of course we will be commenting on the notice of preparation that's um the first step in the public outreach for the environmental impact report where they ask agencies what issues should be studied we'll be providing comments on that and then we'll be reviewing and carefully evaluating what comments should be conveyed on the draft eir um we did include in the agenda report that you know legal challenges are an option and i've got on the slide here that that is really to be determined and that is because you know we um genuinely want to work with the um uc system and the lrdp process to come to an amenable solution to the issues that we have and um if that does not occur then legal challenges are an option for us to pursue at this point it's too early to determine whether or not that's going to be necessary but it's something that the council should have on their long-term radar as a potential um issue um should the uh negotiations not get us to where we would like to be as a city that's what i have for you today and i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have i think i think i thank you and i i'm wondering since we're nearing the 530 if we can hold our questions to after public comment and incorporate them in our comments in questions if that works for the council okay so this time i'd like to open it up to public comment for item number oh would it be appropriate if we could stop at 530 and i think there's a significant number of people here who are just here for oral communication and not for this item i think there's only one person here for this item or a couple maybe okay we should we should hopefully have it i'm assuming we can probably finish it up within close enough to 530 okay but if it starts to go over there i'm happy to consider that so if any um member of the public would like to speak to uh the council on item number 24 uh please do so at this time and you'll be given two minutes to speak sure i'm john aired and uh chair clues so i've been involved in this issue ever since uh the last round of growth uh just a couple things i want to highlight here first i think it's it's admirable and should we're supporting it that the uc is doing this outreach with the community advisory group i think uh both council member matthews and crone have been active on that and i think that's been helpful in addition the university has done some community and neighborhood outreach they've just started that the first meeting was on uh just a couple weeks ago uh and was held at the Lutheran Lutheran church up on high street and there were about 25 people attended there wasn't one person that was at all supportive of the university's growth i mean it was flat out no growth and there were examples as to the harm that's already being done to neighborhoods to their neighborhood to their lives as a result of the current round of growth there'll be a second meeting on also the Lutheran church and i would recommend that you attend just to get a flavor at sort of the street level of what your citizens that you represent feel about this that'll be on september 15th from 10 to it's a saturday i hope to get more people um i i think this is all good the real question is what's really the difference what impact is this actually going to have a 77 vote the policy position of the of the city council the policy position of the county which also is to keep the level here as it is until we've had a chance to catch up with the last round of growth the university itself admits that they have not caught up with their last round of growth let me just say one last thing you know i'm pretty consistent with my two minutes so i think i'm going to stick to that i appreciate it everybody gets two minutes and i'm going to stick to that so thank you very much i hope we gear up thank you okay are there any other members of the public who would like to speak to us on this item at this time hearing none or seeing none will return to council for questions and deliberation council member crown yeah i had a motion that i wanted to put up if and i have a copy for uh i really want to thank lee for that presentation he did a bang-up job at um the cad meeting the uh the outreach group and uh i thought that one slide is so telling and it's and it's what's driving rental prices in our town when you look at the university town center and you have three people sharing a room upstairs on downtown it's $1,100 each that's $3,300 so we know that you know our folks in town are going to be pegging their rents at that you know a little bit lower maybe sometimes significantly lower but still the kind of space that they're living in but uh thanks thanks again lee for that um what what i was originally going towards um was uh maybe giving some direction to our staff to uh city attorney or to the planning director but then um hearing from a lot of other folks i thought it'd be great to do some outreach and have a meeting amongst some of the stakeholders that we've encountered at our um at our cad meetings including the board of supervisors student representative uh and and city council and um kind of develop a strategy with them and have the supervisors go back to their um board and uh council member matthews and i representing this group come back here with a with a unified strategy about how we want to approach this i know i spoke with the city manager yesterday and he said that we could look into some um you know hiring a staff person to head this up uh because it's that significant and would require uh some time but i would like to do that in coordination with as we're doing with social services with homeless issues right now with our board of supervisors so i'm just putting forward this motion that the city's representatives on the community advisory group tag community members matthews and crone meet with representatives from the board of supervisors and the committee to limit university expansion clue which mr erid represents um and the student union assembly president or or other student representative the work of this group will be to formulate that uh uh formulate a plan that will include an overall city county strategy a joint funding plan that includes city and county resources and a timeline that considers ucsc's long range development plan and tentative schedule this working group will return to the city council and board of supervisors with a recommendation of no later than um october 9th 2018 and i think one meeting will do it for this group i don't think there's going to be more than that to sort of formulate what maybe strategy that we could pursue on both sides well on four different sides i've uh put here and i'd love to hear um comments and from all of you and councilmember comments or but well i i do have a couple of comments and um perhaps um i don't want to call it an alternative motion but um i i do think that um the um you know i'm really in favor of uh uh developing a collaboration and a formal process for collaborating with the county i think presenting a united front and getting going as mr erd said is very much important and so i'm i agree um councilmember crone with your perspective on that um i wonder though about the timing i actually think that given this is a longer term process as laid out by the l rdp um uh committee or the l rdp process is going to extend into next year um you know i'd really like to see a working group of this council that um works with uh the board of supervisors and i would suggest councilmember supervisor coonerty just because the university is primarily within his district and i know he's expressed interest in this um to participate in that and then um you know have a longer term working group that perhaps draws on some of the um the community members uh that and community groups that that you've suggested and perhaps others to really roll up their sleeves and and put together a work plan and perhaps with an eye towards um you know hiring somebody in the future so you know i'd like to see how the maker of the motion feels about um perhaps not prescribing the the uh purpose and being open to a longer term working group that would um be comprised of the mayor two council members perhaps and working with the county do others want to weigh in i'd like to hear from yeah i i personally think a one-time effort to deliver a recommendation in a relatively near future um is probably less effective than an ongoing working group i like the idea of a working group this is going to be an ongoing project and i think the strategies and the possibilities may very well evolve over time um i think certainly coordination between the city and um county and specifically third district supervisor and um other community resources as appropriate um can help get us there i think in a working group we can have access to strategy development both formal and informal that can help us um be effective so i really prefer the working group approach um i appreciate the thought you've given to this um but i think we're gonna have to stay on it for more than one oh i'm not at all um thank you um again i i wanted to do it for because i really feel like this whole thing is moving it's even though you see that timeline that they're going to go to the regions and fall or summer of 2020 there's a whole bunch of things that happen before that and if they if they don't see the city as serious players in this um it i think we have to do that as soon as possible and would you envision in the working group a student representative as well as uh clue members i i would say that i'd leave it up this is why i think a working group in an ongoing group would be important and and ask the working group to determine who might be included and of course i mean i think it's very important that student voices is included in clue as a group that's been working on this and has a lot of experience i think that that makes a lot of sense absolutely i just want to see a longer you know some people who a group of people who get together and really are committed to doing that work over the longer haul and that's really my my main concern so you can go ahead and put forward that motion and well i mean i don't want to i didn't necessarily want to offer it up as an alternative to you because i think they're really you know i'll second it if you're you know you want to put forward the motion i just want to see exactly what it is um okay first of for clarification excuse me council member is withdrawing his motion and council member will now state a motion okay so um see here i have put it together i'm from broadening this whole group you know anybody's thinking about university city relationships i i'm very happy about because it's really important well okay so i'd move that the the city council establish a working group in cooperation with the county to develop a detailed strategy for implementing the policies of the motor approved measure you will just put it out there to make clear um to assure that the city is active and effective engagement with the university during the development of the l rdp and then the composition of the working group um would be the mayor and two council members uh member of the board of supervisors i don't know if it's appropriate to name the third county supervisor without him so a member of the county supervisors um and the working group would report back to the council um with recommendations for further action within four months but um obviously with you know updates in between i also think um council member crone your point about um let me see if i can it's in the motion i think that you gave us here um that the city's representatives on the community advisory group um meet with representatives um you know and sorry i'm losing the track here i want to be really clear before we vote um so the city's representatives of the community advisory group cag council members matthews and crone work with the university's um stated goal of communicating to the legislature and community the full case depicting the extent of housing and transportation crisis that exists in san jacuz affecting both community host and campus like so i think getting at some of the points that were in the power point that you've given us that that be communicated because i don't want to lose sight of that while a working group is so is that i'll second and just to clarify what's been seconded it's to establish a working group as described and to direct that council member crone and i stay engaged with the cag process are those the two components are we part of the working group or is that up to the mayor i think that i generally when these working groups or subcommittees are established then the mayor i think that's i just don't want to go outside of precedent there yeah the mayor would appoint but i was just trying to my motion i was trying to like do you know staff is are so over burdened right now i didn't want them to feel like they had to be involved also if we already had a group that was getting together i mean of course lee is but there are planning directors always you know welcome at any meeting too what i'm hearing is your interest in being the two representatives along with the mayor of that working group anyone who's interested can contact the mayor there you go okay in terms of the i am sensitive though to the question of staff time and i thought a bit about that but i do think that it if we're gonna have a working group that's that is ongoing at least for a certain period of time that it's we're gonna need whoever that group is will need some coordination i don't expect it to be until a whole lot of time but getting us together figuring out i don't i mean i know how to do a doodle poll but i don't get just coordination okay you know the sounds like that would be manageable okay so we have a motion in a second um any further discussion at this time i guess the only uh your power point was great will you share that and make it available just just the graph please it's it's available as part of this packet yeah why did i miss it thank you you put it up on the website it's very informative thank you yeah that was great yeah appreciate it i wasn't going to mention it but i have to mention something in regards to the housing numbers there are waiting lists for housing on campus the cost of housing on campus is not pushing people to go out and live in santa cruz we are full and so i just wanted to put that out there as a university and also the cost of housing is what it is is because uc santa cruz they cannot use and none of the uc's one cent from the state of california on housing and so when they build housing they have to go out to bid just like anybody else would and like a developer would finance and so um unless the state of california provides some sort of relief for the university to build housing differently those prices really won't change and and but i just really do want to stress that it's not pushing people out to not live on campus there's there isn't you know we've turned the triples into the excuse me the doubles into triples and the triples into quads so that we just need to make that very clear that there's not some conspiracy to send students to live out in the community i think it goes to the point that was raised that we want to communicate and continue to communicate with our state legislators and exactly and have and you know a broader conversation about the impact okay just follow up on uh councilmember neroyan i what the it's the economic conspiracy is what it is it's on campus you have and i work with students you have the students from poorer families first-generation students receiving financial aid and you have wealthier students and those are the ones generally who can afford to live on campus the middle-class students do not are not choosing to live on campus because of the prices they're getting a lot of um uh pressure from their parents you know to move off campus save money finish in three years so i i think there is a financial structure that's that's in place and you're right that there's a waiting list but there's only you know half or 60 percent of the students up on campus are getting fine you know have the financial wherewithal to pay those prices there's a bunch of middle-class students who aren't getting the same you know financial aid right but we we we don't have any less students living on campus because of it you know we don't have dorms sitting empty for the most part so yeah i just wanted to make that apparent okay definitely more more conversation to come for sure okay at this point i think it's a good time for us to take a vote uh so all those in favor of the motion on the floor say aye hi any opposed uh passes unanimously with uh mayor trazos absent thank you okay so that brings us right along to oral communications uh so oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda are there any members of the public who wish to address the council okay if so please line up to the right of the dais to my left you will each be be given two minutes to speak and i want to um provide a brief announcement about oral communications so out of respect to other members of the public many of whom are not accustomed to speaking in public i'm going to ask members of the public to please reframe from clapping from cheering booing hissing or other similar types of behavior that might discourage any member of the public from wanting to step in front of the microphone to have their voices heard before our council so uh maintaining that level of decorum depending on the amount of of time we might we may adjust the comment period uh lower than two minutes but for now it's going to be two minutes per person okay go ahead i'm for each of us hello i'm natalex dot kennedy at gmail.com uh the issue i want to bring up is dogs downtown because for close to 40 years we had a dog ban down on pacific a couple years ago it was supposedly repealed but it wasn't actually repealed it was just modified into no dogs after dark which we really need to repeal because whether it's eight in the morning at eight or night if you want to take your dog for a walk you should be allowed to uh dogs are people too i think one of the biggest things that led to this dog ban was uh you know defecation on the street dog owners letting their dogs run around off leash uh stuff like that and none of those have really been addressed i think one thing we need to do is we need to strengthen we need to increase the fines for if somebody refuses to clean up after their dog when there's a defecation on the street uh we need to um make it a lot harsher for people that let their dogs run around off of a leash i even had a good friend had a small dog on a leash uh got run down by a big gnarly dog of whatever sort but uh this this owner had to take our dog to the emergency vet and it ended up in thousands of dollars in vet bills so there's that uh no dogs defecating on the street no dogs on a leash off of a leash should be uh put there but aside from that we need to completely repeal no dogs after dark you know people have their dogs and they should but uh the way the city's treating dog owners it's it's driving people away i give the last eight seconds to the next speaker that's okay okay thank you next speaker then thank you all for your devotion to the public good it's a little arduous for you i know that my name is nicholas whitehead i'm a co-founder of conscience and the action a group that is very concerned about the availability of bathrooms in in the city area um i was interviewing uh a young man in a wheelchair not a motorized one he had a health problem he was in the loudon nelson park he told me that they won't let him use the bathroom at loudon nelson park so he has to spend 20 a week on adult diapers wow that really sank in um a short while later i was talking with a woman homeless woman who told me she'd been raped twice then her companion also a woman said she'd been raped and they're very vulnerable homeless women they would have liked to have permission to use the bathroom at loudon nelson because they felt safer in there instead of having to do it in the bushes or behind a tree or in some yard we i myself went to the loudon nelson center and asked to use the bathroom i was very nicely dressed they said no i said well unless you're attending a meeting here or an event here or a class um i said what about if i had a serious medical condition they said the staff they said no exceptions no exceptions based on age or handicap that's just nothing the rules they're restrict we acknowledge there have been problems with the bathrooms we acknowledge that but we don't feel that ordinary public especially those in great need should be excluded we've talked with the city manager he was very gracious to us we particularly asked him ever thank you very thank you your time is up thank you so much okay i might come again you're always welcome to email us as well next speaker please you'll be given two minutes i'm dr michelle merrill and i'd like to speak about the climate emergency resolution in my training as a scientist we learn to be cautious and conservative about our predictions we try not to overstate things and we always try to air on the side of minimizing drama however a new report out last week argues that the reticence of the world scientific community trapped in our otherwise healthy habits of caution and due diligence we tend to downplay the potentially irreversible and catastrophic impacts of climate change and that in itself is a threat that should no longer be tolerated if humanity is to be motivated to make the rapid and far-reaching transition away from fossil fuels and other emissions generating industries in the report david splatney and denlap state it's no longer possible to follow a gradual transition path to restore a safe climate we've left it too late emergency action will eventually be accepted as inevitable the longer it takes the greater damage inflicted upon humanity human induced climate change is an existential risk to human civilization we're already seeing effects worse than most of the public's published predictions there are wildfires and choking smoke that are not limited to california these are happening in the temperate rainforest of british columbia with brown skies scarlet sunsets and orange moon rises last week in seattle as a result it happened in tropical rainforest choking equatorial cities like singapore in life-threatening haze this stuff is nasty to breathe i've been in both of these situations there are now parts of the arctic that most models had showed we're going to be resistant to climate change the ice that we thought was going to be the last to melt it's melting now hanswe keem shillen over ahead of the potstem institute for climate impact research writes that climate change is now reaching endgame thank you thank you for your comments i appreciate it okay next speaker please pauline seals and sense cruise climate action network i'll be very brief there are many stories this summer about climate disasters i have a report here about ocean heat causing marine heat waves pushing organisms to the limits of their resilience and beyond causing irreversible changes global warming will make tsunamis more intense threatening global coastal cities red tide in florida of course it's florida so they say it doesn't have anything well they don't acknowledge that climate change exists but i think i know we're a whole lot smarter indian floods record floods biggest in a hundred years hundreds of people killed and there are many many other examples the the serious thing is because the earth is so big it'll take a long time to start cooling once we reverse things so it's very important that we get started as soon as possible so please consider the climate emergency resolution and now thank you for the opportunity to speak thank you for coming next speaker please dear council members and city staff and members o