the police department, city manager's office and city attorney's office, what was might appear to some as a blunt instrument, but it was really intended to narrowly address specific hazardous conditions that were observed in connection with these activities. So it was not just the council member Brown and then a couple of them. Yeah, hi, thank you, Tony for reviewing that for us. Because I do think there's, you know, there is some confusion there is a bit of a gray area and I do continue to have concerns that some of these actions that have been taken under the emergency order are seem to be targeting who not bomb and I understand that it's a challenging situation and we do need to be first and foremost thinking about public health and safety. And at the same time I do have some questions about the methods that were used the process by which those those actions were taken. As Tony and he said one instrument and it does seem like quite a one instrument and, you know, I just hope that we can remember that, you know, food and bombs is providing food survival gear and food to people who would not otherwise get it. And so I really just want to, again, put out my plea to try to find a way to ensure that they can continue to provide those critical services and do it in a way that's safe. And, you know, I just, you know, I'm just frustrated and I don't know exactly how to articulate it but I just feel like there's there's more of a conversation to be had, rather than just, you know, taking the enforcement track and kind of shutting off public spaces. And so I'll leave it there. I thank you for the clarification on legal authority. I guess I would just, I guess I would just follow up with that and I thank you, Council Member Brown, I appreciate your comments. I think this is also an iterative process. I think that as Ms. O'Hara outlined, the city staff has been attempting to work with Mr. McHenry to ensure that the service can continue to be provided so long as it's done in a safe and orderly way. And so I think that's everybody's goal here. And I also think that looking back on these past few weeks with hindsight, we will reflect on the actions that have been taken in and maybe we'll conclude that we could have done things differently or better, but we're also operating under very intense pressure right now to be as responsive as we can. And to keep the public safe and to also do so in a way that respects civil liberties and people's legitimate interests. I thank you for your comment. I'll follow up on that because I just want to make sure that folks are aware that I think with the Thursday before we were going to kind of move after we've been issuing notices to the people who were at the post office that they would need to move. I personally went with Matt Nathanson to go speak to Food Not Bombs about the food distribution and there's a video online where I was trying to see whether there were ways and how we can work together in terms of collaborations between the city and Food Not Bombs. Throughout that conversation, one of the things that happened was that when we had suggested Food Not Bombs moving up towards the Benchlands where we had one of our shell site and additionally there was more space for public distancing. At that meeting, one of the things that Food Not Bombs asked for was whether we would be able to allow them to stay at the clock tower for that weekend as they were able to establish a new food distribution site up at the Benchlands so that they can communicate to people and let them know that they would be moving. By the next day of Food Not Bombs when we tried to follow up on a conversation, they had another series of demands and that they weren't willing to move up there at that point in time. The conversation went on for some time and was pretty unproductive and at which point the communication between myself and Food Not Bombs seemed like it wasn't making any traction in terms of the collaboration between the city and Food Not Bombs. That being said, we still allowed Food Not Bombs to continue to operate over the entire weekend as we agreed to at the clock tower and then when the fences were put in place, Food Not Bombs moved up to the Benchlands as we had discussed and continued conversations were happening with the city. So I just want to make sure that it's clear to the public that we are trying to work with Food Not Bombs. That was back in March, Food Not Bombs is still operating and we're still trying to find ways to ensure food distribution to people who are most vulnerable in our community. So I don't want to seem as if we're picking on Food Not Bombs and we're trying to do is ensure that we're providing a space for them that we're providing clear sound regulations on how they can distribute food in a way that leads to the guidelines of the county health officer and public health. So that not only are we providing people with food but it's done in a way that's sanitary, that it's done in a way that's going to ensure that we're maximizing social distancing because as many people will remember as well, there was also the instance when Food Not Bombs kind of a rally after the shelter and place orders came out around Motel vouchers and that was clearly a violation of the county health orders where there was, you know, possibly close to 100 people within that space, that clock tower really putting people in that community at risk. And that is the one thing that we are trying to do with all the orders that we're putting forward is to increase health, to maximize health, to ensure that we're following the health officers guidelines to make sure that especially people in our homeless population are being cared for and we don't see COVID-19 breaking out in that population. So I just wanted to follow up on that Council Member Brown since I've been direct. Thank you. Can I just say one quick thing because I know there are a lot of people who want to make comments that just in response to that I do want to say I really appreciate all of your efforts to try to find an amenable set up for Food Not Bombs. But just in one other comment that I hope I can just impress upon everybody that, you know, I read the MOU, I think it was all totally reasonable. And I think that we could be a little bit more proactive about identifying sites where they can operate. I think that, you know, the Ventilands was a good idea and then it flooded right when they got the opportunity to go there. So, you know, I don't want to go into all the details, but I think citing is really critical and that's the conversation I would hope that you all could have. And this is also the key that you're out there listening. Thanks. Council Member Byers. Maybe, Martin, you could address that. At least a lot of my friends or phone calls I got assumed now that you have stayed in place for 60 days. First place, a lot of people saw it and they jumped to conclusion. So I'm assuming you just picked that, but you didn't have to come back to us, but would you just go over to the public that I hope is watching? Yes, yes. So the, we don't know what the current shelter in place order is in place until May 3rd, but we expect that that's going to be extended. We don't know what that time frame is. The state shelter in order doesn't have a deadline until further notice. So the intent here is there's just the 50 day parameter that's in the in the audience that says, you know, it's an effect for 60 days and then it has to be renewed. No, more than 60 days. So then, but however, if the emergency is concluded before the 60 days, then this would not be an effect anymore. So, and also the council would bring it up at any time to to essentially rescind the declaration if there's a need to do that. But we wouldn't normally operate if the emergency didn't exist if you want. Thank you. Pretty would last for 60 days, three week by week, as they have been and as they will as regarding the ratification of orders. I do favor that and I just want to go on the record. Let's be benign that the let's be realistic that the city, I believe, has gone out of its way to work with food, not bombs. Food, not bombs has been difficult, quite frankly, in some ways that the mayor has mentioned and others that I think are well known. And we got many, many, many, many complaints from the public at the time that there was a large gathering in the chat box and so forth, expressing the concern that that was violating public health orders and putting people at risk. That wasn't necessarily reflected in the latest slurry of emails, but that was certainly part of the executive orders when they were put into place. They were responding to what was perceived as a significant public health risk. And so, just saying that, I want to fully support the ratification of these and realizing also that we were responding in real time to a completely unfamiliar crisis. And I do believe people were making their best effort to put forward action to public health. I support what Sandy mentioned. Yes, to the extent we can work with food, not bombs to enable them to deliver food services in a way that is safe by all means. Let's proceed. That takes two parts. Malcolm Brown, did you have a raise your hand? I think second form vote. No, that was just I raised my hand, but then I jumped in. So thank you for lowering my hand. I would just like to say that, you know, we I know that people are really frustrated with the situation that we're in and want to move forward very quickly. I think that we're fortunate that we have so much access to technology that's really going to help us move more quickly on trying to, you know, contain COVID-19 move forward. But, you know, there's been a really slow response at our federal level and we're doing really well, but we can't just open up our community, even though we're doing well to business as usual, given that we will see a huge influx of people from other areas and we can put our community at even higher risk. The last time we saw a pandemic of this magnitude, it lasted for 36 months. And while I don't anticipate what I would hope, actually, I should say that we're able to contain this a lot much more quickly. It's going to take a joint global effort in order for us to, you know, really be in a position where we can get back to business as usual. And so in the meantime, I think we all need to continue to do our best to shelter in place. We need to continue to be patient and we're going to be following the lead of the state on this one. And so when the state, you know, thinks it's okay that we remove our emergency orders, I would anticipate that that's when we will, we as a community will also lift our orders. And we will be continuing to follow the lead of the state, which has done extremely well given its population to allow this pandemic. And so I'm happy to support this item. And again, to the extent we can work with food distributors in our community, there's a multitude of people who are willing to step up. I think that we should continue to work with those individuals. And so with that, I'll pass it back over to Vice Mayor Myers. Yeah, I'd like to go ahead and make a motion to approve the resolution extending the emergency declaration in connection with COVID-19 pandemic. By 60 days and ratifying confirming director of emergency services order numbers 2020-01 through 2020-06. I'll second that. So we have a motion by Vice Mayor Myers, seconded by the mayor. I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll call vote. Thank you, Mayor. Council member is Byers. Yeah. Brown. Yeah. Matthews. Yeah, I, but I want to register a no vote on exact ratifying executive actions. The first and second ones. But I think that they could have been done differently. Thank you. Matthews. Aye. Boulder. Watkins. Aye. Vice Mayor Myers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. Motion passes with numbers three, four and five unanimously and with council member Brown voting no on the ratification and certification of 2020-01 and 2020-02. I think the way that works is that the minutes money should just reflect that council member Brown expressed her opposition to items numbers one and two. I don't think it affects the actual register of the vote. Right. Okay. So we are moving on to item number 18, which is an ordinance amending Santa Cruz municipal code section 4.02.021, which identifies various city positions authorized to issue certification. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, this is an item you want to comment on. Now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff. Follow by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and return to the council for action and deliberation. With that, I will turn this over to city attorney Tony condati for the presentation. Thank you. You're coming to members of the city council. So I guess I have, I have heard that a number of members of the public have raised some significant alarm. So about this ordinance and. And I just heard it described as a massive unleash of city personnel towards. New enforcement activities. And so I just, I'd like to start by just clarifying that that's not what this is about. This is what I would characterize as a. Barely. Denyne housekeeping measures. It's really nearly just updating our municipal code to make it consistent with the current organizational structure of the city. So under the existing municipal core code enforcement of various codes and regulations typically done. By the department that's charged with implementation of the particular ordinance or the particular chapter section of the municipal code. For instance, the water department is responsible for enforcement of provisions relating to water service. Regulations that prohibit customers from manipulating their own water meter. The public works is authorized to enforce provisions related to source control for the sewer system or for storm drain. Finance department is authorized to enforce provisions of the municipal code relating to business licenses and transient occupancy taxes. The building department for building codes, etc. Finding department for land use and zoning issues. So that is why in the existing municipal code, the different departments have designated officers or employees who have the authority to issue citations for municipal code violation. I might recall that a year or so ago, the organizational structure of the city was realigned with between the parks and rec department and the fire department and police department with the most part rangers being moved in the structure or in the organization. Organizational chart from under the umbrella of the parks and recreation department to the police department and lifeguards were transferred from the parks and recreation department to the fire department. And so what this, the emphasis for this ordinance was to simply realign that authority in the municipal code to make it consistent with the current organizational structure of the vicinity at the same time to circulate a draft to the different departments to make sure that the specific titles of the positions that have enforcement authority within the individual department. That they are consistent with the actual organizational structure and I'm going to attempt to share a screen and share with me a second. Hopefully, I'll be able to get this up. 4.02.021 authority to issue notices to appear. Is that visible on the screen? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. So I'm going to just go down this and sort of without going over every minute detail. Some of this is just cleanup language. I'm just going to sort of go over real briefly what this is all about.  Tony, can I stop you for one second? Yeah. I don't know if this is on everyone's screen but I just see it zoomed in 0.02.021. Something must have happened to your screen. We're not seeing what you're seeing. Yeah. All right. I apologize. I'm going to try this. I think if you just zoom out, we'll be able to see it. Oh, my zoom is not responding. So I think what I will do is not sharing my screen. Try. Yeah. Try to stop it and then reload it, Tony. You're buying? That's getting it. Fine. Maybe we can take a quick break while we try to. What? A quick break while we try to figure this out. Okay. I think he's, it looks like he got it. You got it. Well, this is a different item. No, that's not the right one. Tony, do you want to email it to me and we'll get it up at this point? Sure. Code. Various fire officials that have enforcement authority, rather than have these individually listed, the code would be amended to say all sworn personnel in the fire department have the authority to issue citation. And then the Marine safety officer and beach life guards are moved from parks and recreation to the fire department as part of this ordinance. And then there's some clean up language to, for instance, adding recreation superintendent urban foresters and city arborists, recreation supervisors and aquatic war supervisor, golf court superintendent and park supervisors as part of this ordinance. The planning director in the planning department is just modifying this to make the authority consistent with the current titles of the different positions in the planning department police department. In addition to clarifying the specific title of community services officer, the ranger one to senior ranger and temporary classifications are moved to the police department or under the umbrella of the police department. And that is essentially what this is all about. It's purely just realigning the enforcement authority under the code with the current organizational structure of the city. And it doesn't increase the amount of enforcement that the city will be able to do. It also doesn't decrease it. It doesn't change it at all. So I'm happy to answer any questions or response to comments. And again, I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. It also doesn't decrease it. It doesn't change it at all. So I'm happy to answer any questions or response to comments. And again, I would like to apologize for the technical difficulties. Thank you. I'll bring it back to council for questions. Councilmember Brown. Thank you, Tony. Once again, I actually don't have a question because I got my questions answered in advance, but it made me think about just a quick comment. I really appreciate the clarification about what this is really a cleanup of our current ordinance and it's not, you know, an expansion of police powers. In this kind of instance, it would be really helpful to see that red line version in our agenda packet because I think, you know, for, for mostly for the public, I mean, council members, we can fall in or, you know, talk to department heads and others to get clarification on these things, but it leaves the public wondering and then communicating with us about it. So whereas if it had been more clear in this case that it was just a cleanup, it might not have been such a topic of conversation. So, but thank you for clarifying now. I had a normal practice and that was an oversight on my part. And I, and I just, you know, apologize to the members of the public that I have been misled or confused by what we were actually doing. Councilmember Myers. Do we have any sense of the number of citations or where they come from? Does anyone keep track? I'm just thinking the Loch Lomond being up there one time and a couple people got citations, right? They, so they, I was clear what they were doing wrong, but. Does anyone track? We maintain records of all of the citations that are issued in. There are requests for that type of data. And so it's on occasion last year in response to requests from the council to provide some statistical data on citations for various. Yes, that information is available. Thank you, John. I have a couple of other questions from council members. Right. Seeing none. Right now we are hearing item number 18 ordinance amending Santa Cruz municipal code section 4.0 2.0 2 1, which identifies various city positions, authorized to issue certain citations. If you're a member of the public, there should be some phone numbers on the screen. If you're watching from home. Please call in. After you've called in, please press nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. Time will then be set to two minutes. And you will be able to speak. It looks like Robert Norris from Huff has called, has contacted the city council early and will be given four minutes. And so Robert Norris. Please let us know when you're on the line so that we can give you the time that you've requested. It's accurate and inclusive in what he's saying, which, you know, I can't vouch for it either way. I'm concerned, of course, that the eighth order by Bernal included 11 categories, many with multiple members. But I mean, if it's only for enforcement of the actual business of that particular agency, and I would hope that that would be the case. And I would actually, I now I would assume it's the case in spite of what initially alarmed me about this, turned about it than I was. I would echo also, for other reasons, council member Byers, a question about the kinds of citations that have been issued in the last month and a half to people, not just for the coronavirus spacing violations, but also homeless violations generally, because this includes the safety of people in their encampments. So I would request the council, this be, in fact, be made public for those of us who want to see it and up to date so we can be reassured that homeless people are being given the kind of treatment that Susie O'Hara earlier assured us they were. I mean, it's a little unclear to me why there is a concern about doing this in a situation where the public can't even enter the council chambers. Many people probably don't know how to get into the public to make comments. I'm not saying on this particular item necessarily, but this item is one of many, some of which are real concerned to members of the public and they don't have access to them. And of course, lots of technical problems with actually getting this out, which I realize you're trying to solve, but they still exist. So, I mean, it may kind of lay the groundwork for Brown Act violations if people, the public is not have real access to this stuff. And I think it's, I don't know, I think it's important to leave the technicalities, the details and the housekeeping stuff insofar as you can and not imperial funding and so forth and public health safety to a later time when the public can actually be present. Thanks for the time. This is Scott Graham. I'm concerned with is this time thing for these extra people that are being deputized during this pandemic so that the city can collect more $1,000 checks from people that are violating this?  And I just like to say that I tried to get in on the last conversation. You know, I got in, I pressed star nine and I never got a chance to speak. So, this system you're using right now really stinks. I hope you help with something better in the future. We're going to continue to have these remote meetings. Thank you very much. Witness to this democracy. My name is James Julian Whitman. And in the interim, I, from the last time that I took notes on what Tony talked about as far as $1,000 fine, $500 fine, slap on the wrist, $250 fine. I've taken 30 pages of notes. I wanted to show anybody in the city council my notes. But here are my comments. You know, I wish that if I was saying something negative, I was saying it just to one person, but I'm not. This is herdership chain of command with every person in the city of Santa Cruz. And now even more employees have the, in the city, have an opportunity to bully any citizen they want. I will repeat. There are some major things going on with Earth's biosphere. And here we are focusing on stuff like this and people hiding. There's some stuff that needs to change. And the shelter in place is not helping 20 friends of mine with businesses in Santa Cruz and my business. And I'm sure, I don't know what's going to happen in 60 days. So anyway, I appreciate this democracy. I wish it were a little bit better, but it is what it is. Thank you very much. I'm done. Hello. My name is Elise. Can you all hear me? Okay. There's technical problems with actually viewing this city council meeting. I've never had it happen before with this computer. On this item, I'll bring it back to council for action and deliberation. And our council member wants. Yeah. I'm just prepared to move the ordinance amending Santa Cruz municipal code section 4.0 to 0.021, which identifies various city positions authorized to issue certain citations and made by council member Watkins. Second about council member Matthews. Any further discussion on this item? Seeing none. We'll pass it over to approval. Thank you. Mayor, council member fires. Matthews. Boulder. Watkins. Vice mayor Myers. Sorry. Hi. And mayor Cummings. That passes unanimously. Thank you, Tony, for bringing that to us at this time. Thank you, council. That we will move on to item number 19 on our agenda, which is the go Santa Cruz downtown employee transportation demand management six month program update and mid-year recommendations. I'm going to share my screen. This is flawless. Okay. So as I mentioned, this is on the go Santa Cruz transportation management program. An overview of what that is. And we have some council members who are new and weren't here at the time that we implemented. But the overall goal for the program is to make sure that we have a fair amount of information. We have a fair amount of information. We have a fair amount of information. And we have a fair amount of information. I thought we were good at the beginning. We have a fair amount of information. But the overall goal for the program are to reduce the drive-alone rate within downtown for employees to below 50%. And offer transportation options for employees that meet them where they are, recognizing that there's not a one size fits all solution. And finally to maximize the availability of our parking resources, recognizing that we're really in a parking crunch. 18 with the downtown commission on doing to downtown employee commute surveys, asking people what their preferences were and how they would actually like to shift modes as well as doing a lot of work to develop the overall downtown parking rate strategy. Then on September 11th, 2018 city council adopted our parking rate strategy, which sunsetted the business deficiency fee downtown increased permit pricing and set an overall downtown PDM budget at $300,000 per year. Following that up on February 11th, 2019, we came to council with our program recommendations for a Go Santa Cruz program and council ended up adopting scenario four with a $585,000 budget. We'll come back to that towards the end of this presentation. After that time, we spent the next couple of months working on executing all of the contracts and agreements and MOUs that were required to get this program rolling and then intentionally didn't launch our program until October 1st, 2019, just about six months ago now in order to make sure that we were through the summer season when we have a lot of transient employees in the downtown, as well as to allow for UCSC and Cabrillo to come back and be in session. And very importantly for those students who already have the transit passes that they get through their educational institution. An overview of what the program includes, and I'll be brief in this, knowing that you guys have had a very long day. We give transit passes to any downtown employee that wants them through a partnership with Metro. This is an annual pass, which is good on all local service. So everything except for the highway 17 express times. And then each month we pay Metro a flat rate and we get a analysis of the monthly ridership like locker cards. These are cards that are preloaded with $20. We have about 100 bike lockers located throughout the downtown and they offer secure bike storage. This directly addresses what we heard in our downtown employee commute surveys that many people had concerns about bike theft. They would be willing to ride their bikes, but it made them nervous to leave them locked outside. So offering a safe and secure alternative there. Benefits, something we're really proud of. The first of its kind commute trip production program in partnership with jump, we give downtown employees $2 off per trip for 60 trips in a 90 day period. This is based off the estimate that there is about 20 workdays per month. So it gets you your workday commute to and from work each quarter. At the end of the quarter, if you request another benefit, we'll give you another code and keep you writing. And then we give rewards. This is another part we're really proud of. If you log 10 carpool trips in our online commute management platform, we'll give you $10 in downtown dollars. If you log 25 alternative trips of any kind, we'll give you $10 in downtown dollars and we can also run special challenges like we did a fallen level of carpool challenge in the month of February. An important thing here is that this entire program is funded by the parking district that I had mentioned in our meters, our laws, our structures and our permits. And knowing that that's a sensitive thing for downtown businesses. It was really important for us to keep that revenue as benefiting to downtown employees and to invest in downtown dollars so that downtown employees have been frequenting downtown businesses. To get started, you can go to the link on your screen or citysandacruze.com slash go Santa Cruz. You sign up by putting in your name, your email address and your home and work address, you scroll down to the my rewards section and you select the benefits you want. And then someone, me or my colleague, Joanna, physically comes and delivers you your transportation benefits, your bus pass or your bike locker card and we explain and answer any questions you have. So many people ask questions about, you know, how do I take the bus or how do I know where the bus goes or how do I use a bike locker card? So physically delivering them, although it's very high touch as part of the program offers another opportunity to do further outreach and another benefit is that oftentimes when we go to a business to drop these off, the person that we're dropping them off for oftentimes isn't there, but one of their colleagues is. So it's another opportunity to do outreach. Overall program metrics to date note these stop at the end of February. We didn't want to give you a kind of skewed idea with post COVID analysis there. So between October and February, we had 999 downtown employees sign up for the program to put that in context. We estimate that we have just over 4,000 employees downtown. So it's about 25% saturation, which in the world of transportation is astronomical and huge. Of this, we've had 629 transit passes distributed, 242 jump benefits, 143 bike link cards and 390 rewards claimed. I'll go into these in a little bit more detail, but also there's there's some pretty extensive detail in your staff report. Whether key staff since October, Joanna, my colleague has been tracking her mileage as she walks around downtown handing out these benefits and she's gone over 110 miles at this point to distribute benefits. So she's pounding the pavement every day. Downtown employees have logged almost 14,000 alternative commute trips for almost 50,000 miles, which is two times around the world. Pretty huge. And we reduced 14.8 tons of carbon dioxide. The program where it's one of the cool things of having a commute management platform is that when people do put in their home and their work address, we can see their origins and destinations. And this is a really zoomed out version, but it's just meant to give you a general overview. We see most people coming from within city limits, Live Oak and Capitola, although we do see people that are coming from as far as Coralitas and into the Bay Area who are using our commute management platform. This gives us a lot of information about how we can inform future participants of our program and make recommendations. As part of our two downtown employee commute surveys, what we heard loud and clear was that biking was the option that most people were most likely to choose if they were to switch modes and knowing that so many people that we have participating are from within about a three mile commute shed, it means that biking is a really available option to many of those folks. We also are really proud that we've reached over 168 unique businesses in the downtown. It's been a really great way to do outreach directly in businesses, walk up, knock on the door, leave information behind, and then pretty immediately come back to deliver benefits as people are signing up. So we're excited that they're spread throughout the downtown, they're in all sectors from retail and restaurant to government, to office, to tech, to nonprofit. We have large businesses and sole proprietorship and we're really proud of the program reach. I'm going to go through each of the different elements of the program and give you just a high level overview of the data highlight. And at the end of this, I'm going to focus on Metro because that specifically relates to my program recommendations today. So in education and encouragement, we know that if we're getting more people that are changing their modes, we want to make sure that they know how to do that safely. So partner with Ecology Action, they posted five downtown urban riding workshops. They reached over 150 downtown employees and through these, they've also been distributing safety equipment. So we do light sets and 145 helmets. It's something I hear all the time in my outreach that lights and helmets are so huge and it's what the data plays out as well. And what we heard, because as we're doing these outreach workshops, they're live in person and we're asking people for feedback, both in a pre and a post survey. And the majority of people who are attending are beginner and intermediate cyclists who are really interested in learning more about how to ride safely. 59% of them are not regular bike commuters. People from riding is that they're fearful of riding next to traffic. And so we make sure that we talk about basic skills, where do you ride in the road, hand signals. And it's a really good program. I think we've gotten a lot of really good feedback there. As part of this program also, we do do outreach on all other modes that are included in the Go Santa Cruz program. So when you call ejections during the urban riding workshop, they're also talking about carpool and transit and jump and signing up for the community management platform. So it's a good way to do a lot of outreach. The biking, the bike walkers. We had a ton of interest at the very beginning. We distributed 143 cards. Of those, only 30 were activated and only 15 were used. Of those that were used, they were parked for about 975 hours. And one of the things here, we were looking forward to doing the next phases of our bike locker update to downtown. We recently put that on hold as we're analyzing what we do in response to coronavirus. But hopefully in the future retrofitting those lockers, we can do some more marketing behind the bike locker program and get more of those cards in use. For the jump program, we distributed 242 incentives. 140 of those were redeemed and 71 were used, so a higher percentage there. And an interesting fact there, we get a lot of information from jump. The average trip distance that was taken through this program was about one mile. It's about half the distance of our usual jump ridership. And it gives us a good, good grasp of who are the people that are riding, where are they riding. Likely many of these trips are errands, that otherwise would have been taken by car, going and grabbing lunch by bike, rather than taking your car. Or you live pretty close, and maybe you were driving before, but jump is an easier option for you. So we're excited about the benefits we've gotten back from that. Then getting into transit.  We are asking for a council direction to renegotiate our contract with Metro. Since October 1st, we've taken just shy of 13,000 trips, 12,978 to be exact, 629 cards, and roughly half of those are in use. An important thing here is that the year-to-date cost has been $129,632, and the average cost per trip of $9.99. When we initially brought this contract forward, it was a proposal by Metro that then we had council direction to enter into, we pay a flat monthly rate to Metro, regardless of actual use. So we would pay the same amount per month if we had one person ride the bus, or if we had 5,000 people ride the bus. It wouldn't matter, the flat rate. And what we've seen with the data is that we are not having program utilization that warrants the way that we've set it up. Going into further detail, our current contract, the flat rate is just shy of $26,000 per month. A year-to-date would pay just shy of $130,000. What I would propose doing is working with Metro towards an actual cost model. So if Joel on the street were to walk up to the bus and get on, that ride would cost him $2 per trip. If we had paid that $2 per trip since the start of the program, those 12,978 trips would have cost us roughly the same program to date as one single month of what we've paid. So my recommendation would be to work towards that. The caveats in this recommendation are that transit is an absolutely vital component of any program that we put forward and there's no scenario that I envision that we don't work with Metro on a partnership to deliver transit options for downtown employees. As part of this, the same thought into this program, we've done our due diligence in trying to get these passes out. I mentioned Joanna individually has walked over 110 miles throughout downtown. And despite pounding pavement, doing lunch and learns and outreach events and going directly to employers and being out at all sorts of other events and doing marketing, we just have not had enough people interested in this program to want a transit pass. As I said, we distributed just over 600 of them. About half of those have been used. Metro also didn't take on, as no part of it, they didn't add new service or expand hours or take on any significant cost in order to roll this program out. So changing our method of delivery wouldn't be something that they weren't getting a return on investment that they had made and I'm sensitive to that. And our contract does allow for renegotiation with 30 days notice. We did speak to Metro. I sent their CEO a notification on the 13th that we were going to be bringing this to council. And we've had them back and forth with him. I believe you've all received a letter from him as well. And as I understand, it's a tough time for Metro and it's a tough time for us. In the context of the parking district, which provides all of the funding for this program, we are losing over $600,000 per month in anticipated revenue. So we're looking at all options for how we save on costs. And this is one of the low hanging fruit options that we would still be able to deliver a transportation benefit at a more affordable rate to the city where Metro would still be able to get a revenue stream and downtown employees would still have access to transit. With that, my recommendation is to consider the impact of the first six months of the expanded Go Santa Cruz Transportation Demand Management Program for downtown employees and to direct staff to renegotiate the contract with Santa Cruz Metro. And I'm available for any questions that you have. Let me know if you'd like me to stop sharing my screen or to leave it up as well. For that presentation, I've been using, I just want to say that I've been using, I was using the jump lights and sign up for this program and really got me to change some of my behaviors and so I have a really great program to have and look forward to continuing these two questions from Council. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item that you want to comment on, we can change our screens to show the phone numbers. Now's a good time to call in using the instructions that will be provided on the screen. If you're interested in commenting on this, when we go to public comment, you'll need to press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And when it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. Before we go to public comment on this item. Sorry, can Claire un-chair her screen so that our screen can go up with the phone numbers? Thank you. Yeah. So at this time, are there any questions from Council member Brown? Thank you for the presentation and all of your efforts to work towards a multimodal alternative transportation for downtown and others, downtown workers and others. And I also do appreciate your effort to advertise and do outreach on the bus passes and kind of go with the notion that we wanted to make them available to anyone who is interested. I think the data is clear that we need to look at how we do this in a different way. And so I absolutely support doing that. But I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about I mean, you've detailed your outreach efforts. It was there and I know everything's up in the air because of the pandemic. But did you have in mind any particular goal for the number of bus passes that would be distributed or other efforts to move towards a particular goal? So that's one question. And then another question I have is about is there any amount available on the impact of parking pricing and transportation demand management to date? I know it's early on parking availability. Is there any data on that? Is there more parking in what areas? And then the last question I have is have you talked to anybody in the county about how they address the bus traffic situation because I think I have heard that they have been able to work something out with the Metro where they do pay as you go through like booklets of passes and things like that. So if you haven't, I think that that might be something that we could talk with the Metro about as well. Starting from the top, what our goal was at the beginning of this when we set out last in 2017, 2018, our goal, which was a stretch goal, was that at the end of this program we would hope to have increased transit ridership to 10 percent. We're starting at around 6 percent. The way that we're recommending changing that, changing how we pay for this program, would not change that goal in any way. My goal for this would still be to be able to deliver transit passes to all downtown employees, to still market the program, to still encourage people, to still help people change their mode. It would simply be changing the way that we pay for the program. And we could do that in the analysis we did for about a third of the cost of what we're paying now. The second part has been any analysis of our parking demand as it relates. I have not seen any drop in our parking demand, even with this. We still have a very long wait list at the parking window. That's something I didn't mention. Another way that we do outreach is that everyone that comes in to pick up their monthly parking permit, about 3,000 people gets information about our program and everyone on the parking wait list got information about our program as well. So we haven't seen a big impact there in terms of a drop in parking. Obviously, right now, we have a big impact because no one's coming downtown because they're staying home as they're supposed to. But prior to that, we weren't seeing much of an impact. Third, in talking to the county, I've not talked to the county, I've talked to UCSC. And UCSC has done a variety of different contracts with Metro, both flat rate and pay-as-you-go. There's pros and cons to each and generally you aim to make it that you provide transit in a cost-effective way to the group of people and you aim for the general cost per trip to be around the cost of actually taking transit. And we're seeing right now about a 5x above that. So to do a cost per trip that has a slight escalation on it so that Metro is able to recruit some costs for their staff time related to sending us invoices and sending us the ridership information, there are some ways there. But I can reach out to the county as well. But UCSC was pretty informative in talking about past contract negotiations. I have a couple questions and I just realized that I tried sending an email out but for whatever reason, I don't think it went out to you. But two questions. One, I know this came pretty early after I was on council last year. I thought I remember that when this came before us, it didn't seem like there was an ability to kind of pay for a trip at that time. Has that changed? It seemed like it was going to be a flat rate regardless and we expanded to all workers versus just a proportion of the downtown workforce. And so I was wondering if you could speak to that. Yeah, so when we came to council on February 11th of last year, staff had recommended scenario three, which included $100,000 for transit, roughly $100,000. And we would have bought essentially pay-as-you-go card so you can get 15 ride passes or monthly passes or single ride passes and given those out. With the way that we've worked it out, we now have, and some of you may have received your Go Santa Cruz transit pass. I don't have one handy right here. But those cards, Metro is able to track the actual usage of them. So each time one is tapped on the fare box, they're tracking that a Go Santa Cruz rider has got on. So at the conclusion of every month by the 15th of next month, they send me a ridership report. And being able to pay per ride would be as simple as saying, last month we had 6,000 riders, so we're going to charge you $2 times that 6,000 and we would pay that bill. So we do have the ability to do that. Okay. Thanks for the clarification on that. The next question I had is related to the jump bikes. I was wondering if you could kind of speak to how that contract was set up and just for clarification for members of the public that are we paying, did that contract put us in a position where we're continuing to pay them over time? Or is it kind of like monthly use? Can you speak to that a little bit? Specific to our Go Santa Cruz portion of the contract, correct? Yes. So for that we pay for each, we pay $60 for each of the jump codes that is actually redeemed. So if people request a benefit but then they don't use it, we don't pay anything for that. Only those that are actually redeemed we pay for. We have a not to exceed contract of $40,000 with jump. We're well below our contract authorization on that now. So we only pay for what's actually consumed. Great. So now, so the COVID-19 we're not paying into that at all. Yes, nothing happening. And as you know also as a side note, jump has pulled in all of their bikes at our direction to do that, to support the shelter in place efforts and to make sure that their employees and the public can remain safe as well. Thank you. Appreciate it. Vice Mayor Myers. Yeah, I just wanted to head a little bit of a follow up question on the so the eco, so the the passes that we have from the bus, from the Metro, can we keep those if we go to the page? Because I think there's value in having the data that comes from those passes versus a booklet that may, for example, you know, disappear in someone's backpack or get dropped on the ground. So then we can't something. Yeah, we've purchased something, but we really don't know whether or not it's going to be used. So, you know, does that trip also get tracked? I'm assuming because you gave us the mileage and the carbon offset. That that card is also getting tracked in real time for the travel distances and other things as well, right? I mean, it's not just the fare. Is it getting, are we, is that how you're calculating that? I'm just curious how much information we're getting from somebody having cards and the value of that. So two separate things to that. So we have our commute management platform and we have that actually in partnership with the RTC. We went in together on purchasing a software system that people can sign up through. We were the guinea pig and the beta tester. So we rolled it out very early and did all the testing there. And that's where people are going on and logging their trips. And so the distance is coming from people that go in and then self report that they took transit or biked or did that. And we have a carrot behind that where when people do report their trips, they then accumulate enough points to get prizes, downtown dollars most of the time or other raffle prizes from downtown businesses. So on the flip, on that side, people report transit that they've taken, but they generally underreport of all the trips that they've taken. On the other hand, Metro gives us actual ridership data from the fare box every month. So we know how many trips were taken, on what route they were taken, what time of day were they taken, how frequently was each card used, how many unique cards were used. We have really depth of data there. So to the original point, I agree being able to keep these cards in circulation would be a huge win for being able to monitor and manage the program. We also have the ability to turn these cards off and on. If people lose a card, we can turn that card off and issue them a new card. So ideally, I would love to be able to keep these cards in circulation. And simply change the method of payment that we're using under this contract. Yeah, and it would seem that there's also just real benefit, just like a UCSC student, you know, I remember getting my cards, you know, and so you get used to having this thing that gives you all this freedom and you're able to, you know, you're not worrying about whether you've got the money or you're buying this, you know, it just seems like the card piece is part of building a successful program rather than kind of using a different, maybe a different type of purchase. My final question was, are there funds needed in terms of the other modes that are part of the program? So for example, will some of these cost savings that we're going to do, will that help with additional advertising? Will it help with, you know, getting, logging additional more, you know, being able to provide more for jump bikes once we're open for business again in terms of things like that? So are the other, I guess my question is, are the other mode types, are those funds used up, you know, in terms of the program, especially if we're getting such a big hit on our parking, on our parking? Yeah. So that's a really good question. Last week, I identified about $100,000 in cuts from the overall program budget. Those primarily came from anticipated cost savings as the result of this item. Significantly, actually entirely cutting our carpooling budget, recognizing that on A, it's not allowed right now under the shelter-in-place order. You should not be carpooling with someone that does not live in your household. And B, thinking about transit and carpooling in general, even as we come out of a mandatory shelter-in-place order, psychologically, people that have any other option are not going to choose to ride with strangers for a long time until they feel like it's safe for their health. And so as we emerge from this and we begin to reopen downtown, the modes that we're going to be promoting most are going to be walking, biking, supporting telework, and promoting the mental and physical health benefits of that. We will likely see a rebound in the number of people that are driving alone to work, just simply because people are really struggling financially, people are struggling with employment, and they're really scared. So the parts of our program budget that we have tried to maintain as much as possible are those that support walking, biking, marketing, and education, which are the areas that we think will continue to see success as we come out of coronavirus and areas that we'd anticipate people needing extra support. Any other council questions at this time? Seeing none, I'll go to the public comment, and if we could get the numbers on the screen. If you'd like to call in, please call one of the numbers that will be appearing on your screen. When you have joined the meeting, you'll need to press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set to two minutes. First calling on the line. Yes, hello, can you hear me? My call was dropped earlier. We can hear you. Okay, excellent. This is James Ewing Whitman. I want to thank Claire for the depth of the information. I believe somewhere early in your commentary, you said people were concerned about bike safety. So I'll comment on that at the end. I come from a family of bike riders, my mother, 37. Over 41 years, she rode her bike 85% of the time to work, and sometimes that was 27 miles each way. I've never been a professional bicyclist, but I've been told by dozens of professional bicyclists that I made them look bad.  That's because my fellow neighbors in the mountains bad now bicyclists and that's a terrible way to die. You're not going to win if you get hit by a car. So my suggestion would be to really pay attention, be polite, and make sure that the motorists see you. So thank you very much, Claire, for a wonderful opportunity. I would love to ride my bike to work. Thank you very much. I'm done. Hey, next speaker. Hi, this is Matt Barrell. I currently serve as chair of the downtown commission. I'm not speaking for the commission just for myself today, but I encourage you to support staff's recommendation to authorize them to renegotiate the contract with Metro Transit. Thank you. Here. Good evening, council members. My name is Pierre Ken from College Action, and just like Matt said, I just also want to echo his sentiment to support staff recommendation to make this cost savings for this program. And then I also wanted to add that, you know, in terms of the TDM program and getting people to use fewer drive-alone trips to get downtown, this program has been a very successful, you know, Claire and her team did the necessary outreach. They use great incentives. They followed it up with an online program that's easy to use that people contract their, you know, more transportation trips with and then, you know, being from College Action, you know, we had a role in terms of doing the bike safety education as one other caller said is so important to have. And I would ask the council, you know, to kind of build on this. Obviously, we're in this pandemic and everybody's looking for less restrictions. And as Claire said to, you know, what are the modes of transportation, sustainable transportation that people are going to be, you know, more favorably towards with shelter in place and social distancing.  But look for funds that can support increased biking because it's a form of sustainable transportation that people are using right now to get fresh air to be able to de-stress from a very stressful situation that we're all in. So you can see in neighborhoods throughout Santa Cruz, the Santa Cruz families out riding their bikes. Otherwise wouldn't be, I've seen people walking their bikes up Bay Street. So that tells me that's a new cyclist.   Maybe we'll get doing an electric bike rebate program because that's the way to get people riding bikes more and think of ways to increase biking. Thank you very much. Hey, this is Kyle Kelly. I just wanted to note for biking, I would love to see more of the roads closed to cars, generally throughout the city, like I would say before, for people to be able to bike and walk more without having to be on narrow sidewalks or even areas where there's basically a lack of sidewalks.  And I'd just like to say that behavioral change is pretty difficult in terms of getting people to change their modes of transportation. But, you know, one thing that's really great to see coming out of this program is at least, you know, there's an interest with people who signed up to receive the resources and that, you know, although some of our numbers are low, we've, you know, there's a lot of carbon emissions that we've been saving and a lot of people are getting on board with this. And, you know, we actually all wish that we could have had more time to develop what kind of been installed by COVID-19. But I think that as we move forward the way that, you know, this is going to be something that will really help us continue to reduce our carbon emissions and get more people out of their cars and into other modes of transportation. I guess the other thing I'd like to say is just that, you know, I think it's important.  And to the extent that we can, you know, renegotiate a contract and get to this, you know, single payer system, it's really, as Claire pointed out earlier, it's going to be advantageous for our community because we're likely going to see a lot of people who don't want to be crammed on the buses just out of concern given, you know, the impact of COVID-19 and how it's transmitted. So to the extent possible, we can continue Metro and encouraging, given our current situation and given the use pattern, I agree with staff that we should, you know, renegotiate a contract and so have to support this. I'm sorry, Council Member Watkins, Council Member Brown and Council Member Matthews. And thank you, Claire, for your presentation. I think one thing we can definitely take away is there's a lot of really great successes to celebrate and also knowing that we need to make modifications moving forward. I think, honestly, the mayor really just highlighted a lot of my thoughts about where we're at in this particular moment and the direction to go in. So I, for the rest of the time, won't repeat that, but I share that same sentiment and I'm prepared to move the recommendation as presented. Can you guys hear me okay? It's my internet, it's on my internet. Okay, perfect. And that is, I know you can have the recommendation up. I think it's the same that I have in my agenda report. I'm happy to read that. So the recommendation that I have is to consider the impact of the first six months of the expanded Go Santa Cruz Transportation Demand Management Program for downtown employees and to direct staff to renegotiate the contract with Santa Cruz Metro. And I think it was implied that it will go in terms of a reimbursement for ridership. I'll second that. So we have a motion by Council Member Watkins to accept that recommendation, seconded by Council Member Brown and then Council Member Brown and Council Member Matthews and Buzz. Well, I've already made some comments and would echo some of the additional comments from my colleagues. And also just to say that, you know, this is an iterative process. We, you know, it's going to take time to really see the real long-term benefits over the long term. And we are in a time when things are kind of seem to be grinding to a halt, but I am confident that all of the work that has been done already and, you know, your efforts will continue, will begin to see those efforts will pay off and our alternatives will be robust. Compliment to driving and reducing our CO2 emissions obviously is like a huge, huge goal for us. And this is, you know, one way that we can support that. So thank you. Yeah, I'm happy to support this as well. To support, to my mind, it's been amazingly successful and had an incredible impact in the first six months. The beauty is, in my mind, it was well thought out all the research you did two years ago on employee desires and practices. It didn't just fall the hook to the sky. The work that was done with adjusting the parking rate and engaging partners between psychology action. There have been so many components that have helped put this in place. So I think it's been well thought out, well promoted, well documented, and really enthusiastically embraced. And what I specifically, the partners you've worked with is looking how to make it better all the time. We understand we have a finite amount of resources. It does take a while to change habits, but I appreciate that your interest is in the program. So congratulations. I went to one of the bike workshops. I'm not a bike rider, but I was so impressed. The turnout, the question, the impact on the people who were there. So I think, and I also know that you and your team have gone out and individually met with business owners, with employees promoted it actively through the downtown employee business duration level. It's been so impressive. So good work. Keep going. Thank you. That's very nice. Yeah, Claire, and thanks for spending time with me on Monday to bring me up to date. So this is an easy vote for me to make. I thank the council and the whatever council, the last council for taking this on, because it's been something talked about for years about helping the employees downtown not drive their car. So I'm excited and glad to be part of it now. It's Mayor Myers. I just have a question, maybe, or consideration for the maker of the motion. I think I've heard a little bit more of a deeper potential direction, possibly that the staff would like to explore, which is and I see some real benefit to this now that I've learned more about the cards and sort of how they function within the system. I'm wondering if the maker would be willing to potentially add to the motion and direction that the actual cost model as presented by staff be pursued in the negotiations with Metro. Is that appropriate staff at this point in time? Yeah, that would be ideally I would like to go with the actual cost model as a way that Metro be reimbursed for all the trips that they provide and I'd be willing to pay the full cost rather than discount it right there. And downtown employees still have the same level of access and we have a much more controlled level of costs on our end. And I'm saying this with full disclosure that I'm the Metro board member as well. So I am fully aware of the ramifications on Metro's budget especially in this year. And I would like to see if we can also add some type of cost allocation for Metro's needing to bill us, needing to run the data, things like that. So I think you had a figure of around $2 but I'd like to see I don't think it needs to go to $4 a trip but some kind of cost recovery and I also just my intent in this is really to as anything with council member Brown mentioned you know this was a pilot we're learning as we're doing this. So I mean I don't look at this revision of the contract as a necessarily a stake or a pullback I think it's just a reflection of not only the trends that we were seeing and the trends that were predicted by your original analysis but also reflecting obviously the obvious issue right now which is the COVID-19 restrictions and probably very likely changes in behavior ahead. But in general I think this is a program to council member buyers comments. This is a program we want to keep building and we want to see success from. So I would just see if the maker of the motion would entertain those changes. Mike Myers will you please repeat the language you'd like to add I'm sorry my internet cut out for just a moment. That's all right. So I believe you I believe you follow the staff recommendation. So I would make the motion the original language is consider the impact of the first six months of expanded go Santa Cruz transportation demand management program for downtown employees and direct staff to renegotiate the contract with Santa Cruz Metro with by amending the payment clause of the contract to reflect an actual cost model with the allowances for Metro for Metro cost. Yeah that sounds good. I accept you certainly. Thank you. Yeah and if I could just say yeah I would accept that so I thought that was kind of implicit in that because it's laid out in the staff report but I absolutely support going that route. So it's a friendly amendment made by Vice Mayor Myers which was adopted by Andy Brown or Council Member Brown seconded the motion and Council Member Watkins removed the item. Are there any further questions or comments? Hearing none I'll turn it over to the clerk to call the roll call vote. Thank you Mayor. Council Member Byers. Matthews. Aye. Boulder. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Vice Mayor Myers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. unanimously. Thank you. And we'll look forward to seeing the 1000 negotiation process. Thank you.  For members of the public who are streaming this meeting this is an item you want to comment on now is the time call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council who will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action. And I'll just mention to the public that we're going to put the phone numbers on the screen again after questions from council members so that you all can have an additional opportunity to see those numbers and call and pursue the share of life acting finance director to provide the budget update. Mayor I was going to do a brief introduction and then turn it over to Cheryl. All right. Thank you very much. I was just going to do a very brief introduction and kind of a picture overview and then Cheryl will do a presentation where she'll review the specific impacts to the city and then the recommendations before you. But just to kick it off very briefly as you all know really what's driving our budget these days is like many other things it's the COVID-19 pandemic. And it's something that is affecting every single agency in the country right now and probably in the world. And I just want to point out that it's important to recognize some sort of big items around the impacts. First that the physical impacts that we're getting from the COVID-19 is different in many ways from past economic downturns. For example the immediate the impacts are more immediate the economic and social impacts are more at the shelter at home the essential businesses only that are operating and the unemployment is growing much faster than it would during a recession. On the other hand the state is in much healthier physical position than it has been in the past when we've had a recession. And also we were in a point where we were projecting you know stronger local revenues when and this started and so we were in a relatively positive physical position starting off. Also overall cities are now more or less dependent on state funds than they used to be and so that helps. And then also on the flip side the human capital infrastructure that we have in place because we were in a relatively good place both locally and at the state level provides that mentioning the support to respond to the pandemic. Nonetheless cities and there was a recent survey that was done by the California cities that quantified all of this but cities are bracing for really a nearly seven billion dollar general fund shortfall over the next two fiscal years and you'll hear about ours. And this shortfall will grow by billions of dollars known as a dollar for us if the stay away or I'm sorry the state in place home orders are extended into the summer months and beyond. So these numbers can change. And then all cities as I mentioned regardless of size and geography are being impacted so we're not alone. And certainly there's also the fact that the cities that are more severely impacted are those that have a high dependency on the sales tax and the hotel tax. And from the survey over 90 cities in California report that they're considering cutting and furloughing city staff or decreasing public services as a way to address this or to take both actions. And so really every city is having to respond and we're not in the exception there. So before you are well you'll hear will be recommendations on how we can begin to respond to the fiscal challenge that we're facing now as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. So with that I'll turn it over to Cheryl for the presentation. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, good. Thank you, Martine. Good evening, Mayor Cummings, Vice Mayor, Mayors and Council members. I'm about to give you the update, our budget update as we see it at this moment. So could I have next slide? We're here today to request that Council authorize and ratify the fiscal year 2020 budget saving measures direct staff to develop a fiscal year 2021 budget with $6 million in spending reductions. Also direct staff to closely monitor the events and impacts associated with the COVID-19 shelter in place mandates, measure those impacts and report back to City Council in May. And also establish a budget committee comprised of the Mayor, Vice Mayor, one Council member to assist with the review budget scenarios and proposals that may have to be considered in between the fiscal year 2021 budget release and adoption and during fiscal year 2021. Next slide. Okay, our agenda comprises of a forecast, projections, shelter in place, zip revenue impacts, budget saving measures, and then our next steps. Next slide. Thanks. In regards to our forecast, the COVID-19 recession as Martine had said is different from the great recession of 2008. And that's primarily due to an unknown key component, which is the length of the shelter in place mandate. In addition, necessary and vital data for forecasting is not yet available. Next slide. We prepared a forecast for you that incorporates the following and we anticipate the easing and end of shelter in place mandates in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021. In addition, we're projecting major general fund revenue declines about to 25% in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020, continuing through the first two quarters of fiscal year 2021 and then followed by a rebound in the last two quarters of fiscal year 2021. Next slide. Here's our unknowns. Although we're predicting the easing or easing of a zip in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, this may be extended. At this time, we don't know if the city will receive state or federal aid and we can't project the time needed for the economy to recover because the amount of time is dependent on the length of the shelter in place. And lastly, we're impacted by an unknown future shelter in place mandate. This slide here represents our five-year financial forecast. And I'd like to start by letting you know that all forecasts are always created with a reasonable degree of uncertainty. But cities and counties agree that we've never been faced with an uncertainty to this degree. That being said, this five-year financial projection is based on current information. And we're pretty confident at this time with the current information. Again, that information might change. It's changing at a faster degree than we've ever experienced before. So if you look at, we ended fiscal year 2019 with almost a million dollars in surplus. But now with the shortfalls that we expect in the fiscal year 2020 in our major revenues and other revenues, we're projecting a $10.4 million deficit at the end of fiscal year 2020. Again, and at the end of fiscal year 2021, we expect a $6 million deficit. And then in fiscal year 2022, a $3 million deficit. And as the projection goes, we expect that we'll start being, we'll start having surpluses beginning in fiscal year 2023. But they're modest, as you can see. Next slide. This is a six-year fund balance projection. And again, the previous five, the deficits projected, have the following impacts to the city's general fund balance available, I'm sorry, the city's general fund balance. Again, the city ended fiscal year 2019 with a positive $2.7 million fund balance. Unfortunately, due to a projected loss of $10.4 million at this fiscal year end, we're projecting a deficit fund balance of $7.7 million. And also, cumulative losses are projected to continue through the end of fiscal year 2022, where you'll see our projection of a negative $16.7 million in our fund balance, in our general fund balance. And that's unless we enact budget saving measures or receive aid from either the state or federal government. Next slide. Okay, this is an impact to our major revenues, our major general fund revenues. And the major general fund revenues that are in this slide are property tax, sales tax, utility tax, and transit occupancy tax, or TOT. It gives you a visual impact of the projected shortfalls of three of the city's four major general revenues. And that would be sales tax, utility tax, and TOT. We're not expecting any COVID-19 impacts to the city's general fund from its top source of property tax through the next two fiscal years. But the total impacts to the aforementioned sales tax, utility tax, and TOT are expected to fall short of original projections in the amount of $10.1 million in fiscal year 2020 and $4 million in fiscal year 2021. And you'll see that V-shaped dip. Okay, next slide. Okay, in summary, the city is not projecting any negative impacts to property tax revenues for the next two fiscal years. A 25% decline in sales tax for fiscal year 2020 and a 20% decline in the first two quarters of fiscal year 2021. And we're bounding in the last two quarters of fiscal year 2021. And even though we're projecting a rebound in the last two quarters of fiscal year 2021, sales tax revenues for 2021 actually project a 17% reduction from sales tax revenues that we budgeted for 2020, fiscal year 2020. And in TOT, the shortfall represents a 13 in 2021. The shortfall represents a 13% reduction in TOT. These are the budget-saving measures that we're hoping to enact in fiscal year 2020. And they include, first, the hiring freeze is actually already in place. And we also plan to draw down from reserve. And finally, the city departments have been instructed to first spending. These are the fiscal 2021 possible budget-saving measures. And since we're facing a year in deficit in fiscal year 2021 of $6 million, the city is prepared to implement the following budget-saving measures. Hiring freeze will continue. And we will reduce personnel costs and expenditures. We also may defer transfers from the general fund and we're actively pursuing reimbursements and loans. Next slide. As Martine had mentioned, most of the cities are enacting the same budget-saving measures and they're in the same financial position. But cities also need to need from the following, from the state. They need to, the state needs to establish a city revenue stabilization fund. The state needs to provide stimulus funding. Set aside CARES Act funding for cities with populations under $500,000 and create a financing vehicle for cities. These are our next steps in the fiscal year 2021 budget process. We plan to release a proposed budget on May 1, 2020. Fiscal year 2021 budget hearings will be held on May 12 and May 13, if needed. And we expect to adopt the fiscal year 2021 budget on June 23, 2020. We also anticipate checkpoints to return to council in September, December and mid-year, but in the mid-year budget in February. In addition to assist with the review of budget scenarios and proposals that may have to be considered in between the budget release and budget adoption and as we head into the new fiscal year, it is recommended that the city council appoint a budget committee comprised of the mayor, vice mayor and one council member. Next slide. Oh, there they are. Next slide. Staff recommendations authorize and ratify the fiscal year 2020 budget-saving measures. Direct staff to develop a fiscal year 2021 budget with $6 million in spending reductions. Direct staff to closely monitor the events and impacts associated with COVID-19 shelter in place mandates. Measure those impacts and report back to city council in May. And then establish a and again establish a budget committee comprised of the mayor, vice mayor and council member to assist with their view of budget scenarios and proposals. I think that concludes my, oh, I'm sorry. Next slide. What questions do you have? Presentation. And I guess as we all know, as we continue moving forward that the open place is really kind of impacting our community financially, but what we're ultimately, you know, charged with is to also save lives under the oath that we also as representatives from the city. And so, well, it's unfortunate that we see these cuts. I think that it's important that we know that as we see these reductions in funding and losses that we know that we're doing it, all of this is happening because we're trying to save lives in our community. So with that, I'll open it up to council members with any questions that they might have. Council member Browner. I thank you. Thank you for the updates. And yeah, it's pretty daunting to look at the numbers and try to wrap one's mind around how these cuts are going to happen. So I just wanted to ask because the staff report provides kind of a high level of generality of what's going to need to happen and that's understandable considering the unknowns and just the timing. But I'm wondering if, so I'm so one thing I'm wondering is when will we be identified when the may the budget is is released? Will there be some there? I imagine there'll be some messaging, but it'd be nice to get some of that detail about where where the cuts are actually happening for I think for the public to understand that as well. I'm hoping that the budget committee will work on some of those outreach efforts and pieces to help the public understand what we're up against. My question is we don't have any real sense of what the state or federal government might provide in terms of assistance. I understand that, but I'm just wondering if there's been any kind of tracking of, you know, projecting what that might look like in terms of, you know, female reimbursement and or other stimulus efforts that have been kind of under discussion at the state and federal level. We actually have a we're projecting if if we if we receive aid from the federal government it's estimated to be either six to eight million dollars and but that is there's a lot of controversy over that. So that's still being discussed. One of the issues is that the federal government doesn't want to provide the cities with a bailout that they feel will be spent on pension costs. However, the city has taken measures to make sure that we're we've we've projected our pension costs and have good structural cuts to be able to handle those in the future. I'm just going to add to that. So with respect to female reimbursement, you know, we do expect that we, you know, we're documented like we do for every emergency. We're documenting our expenses and hope to get reimbursement. However, there's usually a long lag time and so it could be a year or more before you receive reimbursements. So it's not something that we can rely necessarily for immediate assistance. I have to say though that at the federal level there is some movement there. We've more recently heard that McConnell is actually now open to including funding or assistance to states and localities in the next stimulus package that's coming from the federal government. So that's looking a little bit more hopeful. Again, don't know exactly what that'll be, but that's certainly better than it was just a few days ago. Of course, if that happens, then we'll come back and look at what that might be and what the impact will be. So yes, you know, essentially there's going to be three parallel processes that we'll be moving forward with. One is to develop a budget that anticipates these potential reductions. We'll bring it back to you in May during budget hearings to kind of we'll try to include it in the release budget, but certainly in May we'll have an opportunity to discuss those and present those to you. Secondly, you also are provided direction today during closed session regarding employee discussions with our employee groups and so that process will continue. And then thirdly, we'll be working with the budget committee on reviewing options and scenarios and then bringing those also back to council. So there'll be multiple processes going on at the same time here really quickly to bring back the changes that we might have to make in options as things develop. The other thing I should just note too is that obviously we don't know when the shelter in place order will be completely lifted. There is some indications from the governor that they'll start to be eased, but it'll be phased and so things will come back relatively slowly it looks like. So we'll have to try to evaluate that and determine what the impact of that will be for us. It varies by jurisdictions. Jurisdictions have different characteristics with respect to their sales tax base, for example, versus their other revenue sources. And so we just need to really analyze it on a pretty specific basis as far as what our sales tax mix and what those restrictions that are eased or changed and how those would impact our particular situation. The direction that we're being asked to give does anticipate cutback even within the next two months, the direction to department to see for or illuminate projects. So I think they said we need to get right away. And then going forward, we'd really should hear which I disagree with you. That's just the broad brush is the really tough choices that are going to come in the budget process for a year. So frustrating. I mean to have thought six months ago we were looking surplus and seeing how capital improves. Unfortunately, one of the issues I know that we've gotten correspondence on in the last few days has been the future of the city, the downtown, the merger of the two constitutions of that. That I'm assuming will be one of the things we discussed in the upcoming budget discussions. Is that correct? Making that in this fiscal year or next or both? How do you see that shaking out? I had an opportunity to follow up and talk to Economic Development Director Lipscomb about this yesterday. And the effort needs to happen and start off pretty quickly. If we want to get it done this year and have it be effective within the current year assessments. So waiting till May, this would be too long, I believe. So it's just a matter of dedicating the resources to do that. So in my discussions with Bonnie, she mentioned that we could do it. We could assist with that. It'd be some trade offs relative to our staff having to change priorities. So I asked her to put those down and communicate those to council. And then we'll have a conversation about those trade offs and whether to move forward or not. I know there's an interest on the part of the DTA to move forward with those. I think we're certainly very responsive to wanting to do that. It makes a lot of sense. However, it also does have fiscal implications for the city and that our assistance go up. So there's the staffing resources to move forward with putting the bid in place, but also there's also the cost implications. But we can, at a minimum, get started with the process and then those decisions will come forward to you. There's a number of times it has to come forward to council for approvals and directions as well. Well, I have Bonnie's on the line. Maybe she can add actually to it. I just realized she's on the line. She's probably better equipped to answer the question. And just because I understand your staff capacity, there's a sound background to speak to. Yeah. I want to go ahead, Bonnie. Great. Thank you. Good evening, mayor, members of the council. Bonnie Lipscomb, director of economic development. Yes, I think given the tight timeline, I think even before you've made the decision as a council as it regards to the budget and the deficit, we're going to need to move pretty quickly in order to meet all of the requirements for the actual assessment district, which includes three hearings, you know, petitions to property owners. So we can commit that time for the next few weeks and assuming that we'll move forward on that. And then when you make the decision, that will really be the stopping point as far as the budget and deficit when we get to the budget hearings in May. So we can commit that time for the next few weeks with the assumption that, you know, we would all like to move forward if we can financially support it as a city. From a capacity standpoint, it is a big lift at the city. So we'll be redirecting some of our business response. One of our part time staff members, I'll move her on to and we're all on COVID response. So I'll move one staff member back to that effort so that we can move forward and we can do that for the next few weeks. And if you then approve the budget commitment, which would be a minimum of 160,000, it could be as large as 180,000, depending on the public benefit element. And we can go through that more during the budget hearings. But from a capacity standpoint, we can make that work. And we're committed to continuing on this path at this at this time. I just want to add, thank you, Bonnie, because you guys all worked so hard extra effort on this. Thank you. They're working hard. I'll move her on. This is a reminder of one last question from Cheryl's comment. Just thinking about the possibilities for getting some kind of relief from state and federal government. Do you know if there's been any discussion about getting some relief from paying into our PERS obligations, the pension obligations, because I know we have worked on an accelerated timeline to meet those obligations. And the change in the system that PERS kind of hoisted on local governments was that was a big hit. And it continues to be it. I'm just wondering if there's any discussion about the PERS board or some authority at the state providing some temporary relief there. There is a concern at the people of our rates going up because of their investments are they're falling short. However, we won't see any of that for another two or three years. So what we've projected so far as our obligation for PERS is it remains intact. So at this time we don't know what those impacts are. What I've heard through the league is there have been some discussions around at least trying to contain any immediate potential increases that might occur. So there have been some discussions around asking PERS to at least maintain the current discount rate or PERS rates so that we don't see significant additional increases about what we already are facing. So those are the discussions that I'm aware of, but there may be more along the lines of what you're suggesting. And the state would and the state would have to step in with CalPERS to do any to help them with that. Vice Mayor Myers. Yeah, I just have a quick question and then I'm prepared to make a motion unless if that's appropriate. Did we take public comment yet? No. I don't think we have correct. Okay. Sorry. Tracking things. My question I guess is regarding sort of the well I guess just inevitable, but I think it's important for the public to understand for the community to understand the severity of need for our capital improvements that we keep we keep pushing back. And you know, these are facilities that our community uses every day. And so, you know, these are these are our community centers. This is our swimming pool. These are the things that really as a resident you you see that decline in in those in the both in the facilities as well as some of the just the conditions and things that that need repair and maintenance. I guess my one request would be that, you know, as we work our way through this that we, you know, we don't talk ourselves out of, you know, trying to get back on track with some of some of that future funding in terms of whether it's a revenue source or potentially we just don't know what the feds or the state may do. I mean, there could be bonds that we take advantage of who knows how we put everybody back to work. But I just want to just make a statement that, you know, we don't want to lose track of that of those capital improvements because some of them are are are greatly needed as we all know. So and I'll be prepared to make a motion after after you receive public comment. Thank you. I had a quick question and maybe this is for the city attorney that he's on the one one of the recommendations or sorry, not recommendation, but far what the staff expressed in the presentation was a need to like a need from the state. And I was wondering would it be appropriate within the motions made that we could direct the mayor to write a letter to our state representatives kind of asking, you know, what those specific asks that the representative presentation. The big matter of what's being discussed tonight, I don't see any problems with that at all. Thanks. Presentation and just show those asks those items that we may need to put from the state. Lawrence got Thanks. Yes, Laura. Slide 13, sort of state representatives, kind of outlining the use of these, with their where, and again, begin to think about it after the back-up session. Absolutely, that makes sense. And were these recommendations that came from the League of California Cities? Yes. Okay. I think it seems to me almost natural that the common core recommendation to come out of the League of California Cities. city could almost be automatic for new to our state people. So fundamental on on the part of all cities that we hardly need permission for you to do that. I know you're doing with our federal people so meeting with them telling them what we need and and there with the program. So doing that and then just keeping us informed of the progress that you made. I had a follow-up question for also for the long routine and I'll get you know kind of like a baseline of where the cuts can come from that we could share with our federal representatives because it's out of one of the comments is that of our federal government think that you know they shouldn't fund cities because we're going to spend it on you know the spend the funding on pensions but then it's where those you know cuts would go would come from and how the funds from the federal government would be used appropriately and not for the funds of pensions so that we actually have raw numbers to show where we need to support. Absolutely we could definitely do that. Yes. And because I'm just thinking you know a lot of the wildlife as we as we continue conversations with our federal representatives that we can understand the timeline and whether we can get something to them I think it would be helpful and making me stronger. Yes absolutely. Yeah it's it's uh we've we've uh adopted a budget a balanced budget for the last fiscal three fiscal years so we've shown ourselves to be fiscally responsible we've taken measures to uh to reduce our CalPERS expenditures and and we've we've made a lot of we've made great strides in improving ourselves to be financially responsible and we can prove that we continue our conversations with our federal representatives we can no excuse for other members of that was mistake sorry for the comments uh from CalPERS members at this time um we're gonna have uh for members of the public who are streaming uh there's if there's an item if you would like to comment on item nine now it's time to call in using the instructions on your screen if you were wanting to comment on the fiscal year 2020 and 2021 budget updates related to financial impacts of coronavirus shelter in place mandates after you call in you'll need to press star nine on your phone to raise your hand when it is time to speak don't hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set to two minutes so oh wow fourth time I've done this before my name is James Ewing Whitman I have a Facebook account where I post a lot of stuff what's going on with our economy is called a black swan event Adam Bercotta did a really interesting video that I posted on March 31st at 5 30 a.m so I made a list of about 70 other documentaries but it seems like if anybody were to look at my Facebook I'm James Ewing Whitman in particular a black swan event it describes what's going on this is a cyclic activity that happens every 90 years the last time it happened was the stock market crash of 1929 and the United States didn't get out of that until world war two this issue is substantially worse we are in a major crash so thank you for your time I'm done thank you any next person now on the line hi this is Scott Graham I think if you're going to ask any of the city staff to take a 10 percent cut and pay or something like that that it should start at the top the city manager and all of the department heads should be willing to double that and have to then take a 20 percent cut in their pay in order to ask the people below them to take a 10 percent cut and pay the other thing I wonder is um you know the last time the stock market went down I don't think any any city or county went after CalPERS for sitting there and watching the money disappear and uh is there any thought of doing that this time to actually sue CalPERS and say you guys are mismanaging all these funds which is costing us dearly we can get through this we'll step up and offer cities and counties a little bit of you know some crumbs here and there to help us get by but this is really you know a serious issue here is to where the funding is going to come from if all our tax money drives up thank you thank you mayor Cummings and council members my name is Abra Allen and I am the interim executive director for the downtown association and I'm calling in reference to the um PBID or the property based improvement district that was mentioned earlier um in the context of the budget I just wanted to start by thanking Bonnie Lipscomb and Economic Development for their willingness to help move this effort forward by now most of you have probably received many letters of support from our business and property owner community and if they didn't believe and if we didn't believe that this PBID um could truly be pivotal in the rebuilding of downtown after this crisis we certainly would not be pushing to move it through at this moment um so I really appreciate all of you and your consideration um as we move forward with this process thank you um members of the public who like to speak on this item I'll bring it back for action and deliberation and I think I believe Vice Mayor Myers who said that you're prepared to make a motion on this item yes I am I'll go ahead and move the item um the staff recommendation um and a motion to authorize and ratify the fiscal year 2020 budget savings measures uh direct staff to develop a fiscal year 2021 budget with 6 million and spending reductions direct staff to closely monitor the events and impacts associated with COVID-19 shelter in place mandates measure those impacts and report back to the city council in May and establish a budget committee confessions and Mayor Vice Mayor and one council member to assist with the review of budget scenarios and proposals that may have to be considered in between the fiscal year 2021 budget release and adoption and during fiscal year 2021 I'll add just an additional item to that motion to um both the budget committee and city staff to track state and federal legislative efforts and advocate on behalf of the city as appropriate for uh state and federal um release and uh recovery fund that's about to put on a amenable to the mayor and is that a spice incident? Vice Mayor Myers seconded by council member Goldner um and I think that yeah that also is appropriate that we continue advocating and like writing the letters in the part of that is writing letters to our legislators in the part of it as well so the discussion on this item in on will ask the uh clerk to call the roll call I was just acknowledging that Vice Mayor Myers incorporated in her motion right I was just clarifying that that your part about the state representative in that one slide is included in the motion right I believe so because Vice Mayor Myers you were saying to advocate on behalf of the city for the federal efforts state and federal yeah I was trying to capture kind of the extent whether state or federal in keeping um and advocating I think in in addition to writing letters um you know we may we may do other things such as um communicate the Congress directly um the webinars you know there's it's the pathways unclear so I think just sort of capturing it as advocates advocating um and and doing that uh advocating for along those lines of state federal funding is that helpful? Just one other quick question before you you take the other the other item action item was uh I'm not sure whether you uh the appointment of the third member to the committee by the mayor or does that take council action? It's up to the city council you can uh defer you can uh delegate that to the mayor or you can make the appointment whichever you prefer. I'll just say I'm comfortable with the mayor and the vice mayor determining who the third? Yes well I was also going to hand I think it should be a mayor's appointment and of course working with the vice mayor makes sense. If I could just chime in I agree that's the way it's been done in the past uh with this committee and and many others but um with the budget committee certainly for the past two years that's how it's been done so I think that makes played by the mayor in consultation with the vice mayor. I understand how that will work. Councilmember Byers. Hi. Matthews. Hi. Brown. Hi. Boulder. Hi. Watkins. Hi. Vice mayor Myers and mayor Cummings. At this moment in time we are going to move into our world communications period however prior to that we had some technical difficulties early in the day and the public was not able to make comments on our consent agenda items or item number 16. So at this time if there's any member of the community who would like to speak on items from our princess agenda which is items numbers four to the 14 this is an opportunity for you to call in and make comments on those items. After comments on our agenda items we'll move on to comments on item number 16 that was on our agenda today and after comments on item number 16 we will then begin our communications. So um you are streaming and watching this meeting uh this is the time to call in using the instructions on the screen. Once you call then please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it's your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set for two minutes and so as I mentioned before currently we'll start with the items that were on our consent agenda items numbers four through 14. In comments so I should hang up and call back. I'll just keep your hand down for now. Seeing no members of the public who would like to comment on our consent agenda items if you would like to comment on item number 16 which was the introduction for publication and ordinance amending sections 3.08.030 and 3.08.100 of an adding section 3.08.091 to the Santa Cruz Municipal Code to establish regulations for the use, award, and evaluation of best value project delivery methods for construction projects from the water department. If you'd like to comment on that item please call it now and press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. Seeing no members of the public who want to comment on item number 16 we will now move on to oral communications. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting if you want to comment during oral communications now is the time to call in. An instruction should be on your screen as follows. Call one of the following numbers if the first number you dial is busy continue to the next number until you get through. You can call in at 1-669-900-9128-1346-248-7799 1-301-715-8592 1-312-626-6799 1-646-558-8656 or 1-253-215-8782. You'll need to enter the meeting ID number 940-6659-8281 and when prompted for a participant ID please press pound. Please make sure to mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note that there is a delay in streaming so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device you may miss your opportunity to speak. If you are interested in addressing the council please press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand and when it's your time to speak prepare the announcement that you have been unmuted. We request that you clearly and slowly state your name before making your comment so we can accurately capture it in the meeting minutes. However it is not required. You have two minutes to speak and um Robert Norris is on the line or when he called and he has requested four minutes on behalf of HUB and so uh when Robert Norris is on the line please make sure to announce yourself so we know who you are. Yeah I think that Robert Norris is on the line can you hear me? Yes we can. Okay City Council essentially unanimously support the City Manager's uh decree attack on Food Not Bombs masquerading as a health problem or a spacing problem and so forth. Suzy O'Hara has darkly raised questions about congregate eating places but has no worries apparently about the 500 to 600 she says aren't properly dispersed to motels outside now compared to what Food Not Bombs provides. O'Hara has pretty words but omits specifics unanswered questions I asked this council two weeks ago how many of those crammed into unhealthy shelters have been offered the option of a motel room how many have been tested for COVID-19 we heard that there were negative tests for those who were tested but we weren't told how many were tested was everyone who requested a test given one how much of the FEMA and house key money has been spent and what are the medical vulnerability criteria is it not obvious for example that those outside who die on average 20 years earlier are heavily more vulnerable if not protected they become transmission vectors do they not what about those outside the COVID-19 Petri dish shelters the people outside not just those in the shelters crammed in how many of them have been offered testing resources bathroom access fresh drinking water these are not rhetorical questions these are specific requests for information from the city and county that have been ignored out of the hundreds of thousands available how much of this money is being squandered on salaries and administration the big questions are really well the specific one is how much money is being spent on a daily basis to provide food survival gear trash pickup porta potty or bathroom servicing laundry and shower access and electrical recharging capacity basic survival needs for the overwhelming majority who are currently without shelter please specify the services being made available and their costs in each of these categories Susie are you listening please if you are take action and respond to these questions also indicate how much of the money available is going for salaries offices another administrative overhead 600 people sheltered that sounds good but almost all are in congregate shelters this is not specifically not recommended by the CDC we know about the san francisco outbreaks or that prompting the supervisors there to demand the mayor use FEMA the room key and other funding to open up motel rooms for 4,000 or more people o'hara smilingly assures us we have housed 27 people out of a population of 1,000 to 2,000 homeless folks here continue to be ignored why isn't the city commandeering motel rooms to deal with a public health crisis and reduce transmission risk now not hopefully as Susie o'Hara is endlessly full of hope and I continue mentioning Susie not because she's a bad person but she is the person who mouths these excuses and figuring out how to help these those with vulnerabilities she claims only 27 people who are over 65 are outside and multiple medically vulnerable this defies my common experience medically supported detox quarantine facilities etc are fine but in the meantime you their voices in ways that can actually be heard even in the safe distant comfortable homes of you policymakers the idea that congregate shelters are okay if you have an adequate staffing is an interesting claim but how much money is left how much of it has been spent on the staffing bathrooms I think that's my is that my cue just up thank you and answer the questions please next speaker you're on the line yes hello my name is James Ewing Whitman I have two minutes someone I'm going to quote somebody that said the pathway is very clear um we're the earth biosphere is having some serious issues and there's a lot of scientists that are writing stuff I wrote down while I was waiting 47 names of people that put on productions some of them put out put out hundreds of productions I'm going to mention three Dane Wiggington number 223 I published uh well he published on November 16 2019 I wrote it on my wall April 24th 2025 37 a.m. Dane Wiggington also published something very important on April 25th that I published at 3 50 p.m. I'm almost done Dr. Tom Cowan aligning with life energy I published April 24th 2020 8 p.m. that can be found on my facebook under James Ewing Whitman I've also been quite critical of Mr. Bill Gates I published something on his blockchain theory April 27th at 8 p.m. he took you know what he took Joe DiBarto's 1960s work he did something very scary with it I'm concerned for Santa Cruz and the rest of the planet that's it thank you very much for your time and I appreciate all of you I'm done thank you all right next speaker hey uh I just wanted to say thank you for doing this on zoom I'm realizing this is this is probably more accessible to a lot of the families that you usually can't get on or come to city council meetings I'm probably gonna let people know because maybe it'll be a little bit less intimidating even if they hear the usual suspects at least now people people could dial in tune in and uh make a comment thank you all thanks all for being here thank you I would say the the first major political problem the United States has is that the actions of the corrupt and moral rich and powerful including co-conspirator and neighbors in government are mostly unaccountable to the people the second major problem is that the dissatisfied the resentful the ungrateful the oppressed have fallen prey to the allure of a utopian fantasy of a revolution abandoning principles of individualism liberty and other major principles our most successful nation of all time was built on these are the socialist communists and leftists their idea that some totalitarian central authority can have a contract with the people that if the people only gave up their liberty free will and obey the supposed all-wise beneficent government everything will be taken care of and end all suffering historically this practice of eliminating dissent different opinions and centralizing economic control has been a one-way ticket to bad economics death and even more suffering the socialist the communists and leftists have it wrong and what is needed instead is to restore accountability of our government what is needed instead of this division of politics where one side tries to get 50 plus one vote to dictate politics to the minority instead we need to all acknowledge that laws should only be changed when there is pervasive widespread agreement so mistakes can be avoided and only incremental positive change takes place this takes both equal liberal and conservative voices in rational dialogue i am so proud of the people of Santa Cruz that they have held two council members accountable for their actions which did not represent the pervasive opinion of the people i hope that they will hold accountable or reward other members as appropriate in future elections and council members should take note the public is waking up to their responsibilities to make the council accountable so far i don't really see council recognition of that at all but november is not that far away if one sided leftism was so great or okay thank you you're hi thanks finger call this is eric rodberg on the uh marie vacay community power payment deferral for two months um what the mayor didn't mention is that it's being paid for by raising the rates for um the next six months and um they're coaching it in different terms for an effect that's what they're doing they're raising the rates of all the entities that are deferring payments be it um creditors landlords pgne any other i haven't heard of a single other utility that has the gall to actually raise the rates in exchange for a deferment i would like city council to push back on that i i think it's wrong especially since this is a public agency that leads me to my next point which i wanted to circle back to the natural gas prohibition that you guys passed last week i understand the need for urgent action to prevent further climate change i actually have a photovoltaic array a solar thermal system and i drive a battery electric vehicle that's what be means um vice mayor myers not that technical definition that mr hurley gave but um my point i think there was a lot of misdirection on staff's park i think we need to do this in a smart way and and what my major point is that we don't have a renewable grid not even close and that by increasing the load the electric load what you're going to end up doing most likely in the short and medium term is increasing greenhouse gas emissions because we are heavily reliant on natural gas for electricity and so while i support the the other point which i think was sort of glossed over is i think this is a very very consequential change and even if i'm wrong i don't think that most of the citizens of Santa Cruz know that this has gone down it wasn't covered in the press at all and it's really not an urgent thing and i would really urge you guys to take another look at this and bring it back it's disgusting once the lockdown's done thank you okay again i would like to let members of the public know that this is all communications and it looks like we have one last one final speaker with us at this time so if you'd like to call in now it's time to do so uh the phone numbers should be on the screen in front of you and after you call in please press star nine to raise your hand and we will acknowledge you and give you two minutes for public time for communication next speaker good evening this is scott graham um the thing i was wondering about is when is the city going to have some sort of uh document ready to say this our strategy on working with the homeless people out there to make sure that they don't get COVID-19 there was an effort made of a few council meetings back to actually agendize such a thing and that didn't happen and it seems like the city is dodging this entire issue of like what is there what is the strategy and i'd like to see something come forward um other than that the other thing i wanted to say was about this meeting um because every council member is using a different computer or whatever they're coming through differently um council members of matthew's you you break up a lot um some of the people are very their voices are very distant you can hardly hear them the other thing is lighting uh most of you have really poor lighting you have the walls are backlit so your face is in the shadows um there's a lot to be done with lighting justin seems to be the only one that has good lighting and that may be because he's a photographer um so maybe you guys need to like work on this a little bit and possibly the city could issue you a common computer so you're all using the same system so you're all coming through in a more clear and concise manner thank you goodbye but there are no additional speakers and so we will conclude all communications and before we go tonight i just want to remind folks to visit both the city of santa cruz's website and the county's website for more information on COVID-19 including an information on a homeless response and so with that i will adjourn the meeting and thank you all all the council members and staff for your time today and thank you members of the community for joining us we'll all get through this together um thank you very much