ore I do the evaluation process. But I can do this one if you want. Go ahead. All right, I gotta get back to it. And I can't read it on this screen. So now I have it on their screen that. Okay, so are we on 11? Amanda, are you there? Sorry. No problem, we're on number 10, five, number 10. We still are on 10. Okay, just wanted to make sure because I see Justin's name under this one, but I'll do it. In terms of the, some of the, sorry, I wasn't prepared for this one. I'm prepared for the next one. So we did talk about how this project could really meet the many of the city's goals and also intersect with some of our other plans that we've developed as a city. So our climate action plan, obviously is one of them. I'll just, you can read them, but the downtown plan, I think, which calls for additional affordable housing and the mixed use project model. I think that it's really important that we think about also the work that came before. So for us, it was very important to do that. So we looked at the library facilities master plan as well. We looked at the housing blueprint recommendations and those were clearly with respect to affordable housing and leveraging resources for affordable housing on public lots, on city-owned lots and it was a part of that. It also, and the general plan, so we wanna make sure that we're in compliance there, but then it also does meet some of the parking districts longer-term operational goals, which has been, I think, an issue for quite a long time with public works and our parking kind of shifts in our parking program and moving to this model of shared parking model. So I think overall, I'll just sum up to say this is, this will be creating and re-investing in our community spaces with a new modern library, obviously consolidating surface parking lots, which I mentioned for higher uses and also implementing the council strategic plan of entitling new workforce and affordable housing units in the downtown. That is, for me, one of the key components. And so that is the rest of the goals. Do you wanna move on Amanda, to the evaluation process? Thanks. Okay, now I have to look at the one where I can read. I'm sorry. My computer just doesn't let me look at these things. So I guess I'll just say that for me, I wanna start by saying this process was very rigorous and really involved. I was so pleased to be a part of it. It really was an effort that took a lot of work on the part of staff. We had architects and many other experts come in and talk with us. We received feedback from stakeholder groups, kind of over the course of the process, as well as at our June 2nd meeting, where we got input about the evaluation matrix itself. So these were kind of the list, this is the list of the criteria that we use for evaluating. It's a little bit challenging or it was, I'll just say a little bit challenging to sort through how we would characterize each of these criteria. And we really tried to take the input that we received both at our June 2nd meeting and also in feedback we received from the community via an online survey. And that's included in the agenda packet. So you've all seen that, hopefully. And so you can kind of see, I won't go through the rankings of the various criteria, but you can kind of see through our process where we came out on the criteria that were listed here and where each of the projects stood. And we did renovation, and then option C and D because those were sort of different. There were some minor differences there with respect to the criteria. So I think I'll leave it there. Yeah, just really want to reiterate the quality of the process. I learned a lot, I think everybody was really dedicated to getting us to a decision about getting the best library we can get. I think everybody's committed to that. And so I'll leave it there and I'm happy to answer questions about, or any of us I suppose, about the evaluation matrix later. And I think Justin and I are supposed to tag team, possibly the next two slides. So Justin, you can add in here as you see fit. So our process, as everyone can see, was very rigorous as Council Member Brown said. I think also of note was that we did bring in a number of experts as well to help us understand the different options and some of the questions we had. We had a municipal finance expert come in, for the housing expertise we brought in to understand opportunities as well as how to put these projects together specifically if we went with the mixed use projects that we brought in a lot of programmatic expertise that way, even that we're outside of our immediate city staff. And what we really did after we did our evaluation was really took the time to think through the project again and really think through what are the kinds of things that we may want to change or adapt about the project that was originally recommended in 2018. You see our subcommittee recommendation here. This is also was in the agenda report. And just a couple of things of note that we did specifically want to call out in the recommendation, which wasn't in some of the work that was done previously. Most notably, we felt it was important to set a minimum amount of low income dwelling units that we wanted to see in the affordable housing component of the project. So you'll see in our recommendation number two that we call that out specifically. So we are putting a sort of design standard or a design expectation out there. Additionally, we have reduced the parking garage to a restriction with no more than 400 spaces for that garage. In looking at everything, the actual sort of garage parking, excuse me, garage, library, housing, mixed use item that was sort of supported by the original approval by council had not really fully ever been designed. And so, but really reacting to the concerns of the community about all of the goals previously discussed by council member Browne, we felt it was important to identify the 400 parking spaces as sort of the goal to meet for the garage itself. And then finally, we fell through a lot of the community comments and a lot of the office hours and all the other communications we had with folks that we wanted to be consistent with the existing heights in that immediate area. And so we are also recommending that the total height of the building not exceed the height of the University Town Center development. And if that isn't possible, based on all these various objectives that we are trying to achieve, especially notably the affordability of units that the 1010 Pacific would be the standard that we would design to. So those are some of the major recommendations that sort of changed sort of the outcome of what the building would become. And I'll go ahead and hand it off to Mayor Cummings for the final recommendations as part of our presentation. So is there one more slide? Yeah, I'll reiterate to the amount of time that we spent engaging with members of the community to really understand what the community wanted to add. Obviously between the two options, there's the weighing of what services we could provide in the library and then also considering the other additional needs that people in the community really want. And I think that kind of speaks to what Sandy discussed earlier and how this meets a number of our general plan goals and the goals of many plans we have here in the city. And personally, when I first was even campaigning and heard about a six-story parking garage on top of the library, I wasn't happy with that. But I think that this, and I know that regardless of what outcome happens tonight, that there's still gonna be things that people don't like about either option. But this option definitely seemed to meet a lot of the needs within the community. There were a lot of concessions that were made. And it seems like this might be the option that could have the, you know, the... It's not, we're never gonna come to a perfect solution, but this one at least meets a lot of the needs of the community. And so we're gonna, the second part of our recommendation is to authorize staff to proceed with the selection of an owner's representative to manage overall project implementation and a competitive RPRQ process for selection of the design-built project team. We're gonna direct staff to work with the selected owners, representative and design-built team to initiate the community outreach process on project design based off preliminary option D concept delivered by group four and to return to council with the preliminary project design options for consideration. Prior to the start of construction of the mixed-use project, we'll initiate a public process to consider reuse options of the current library sites, including affordable housing, community commons and other public uses. So this really tries to get to some of the other options that were raised by members of the community. Direct staff to provide a report to city council at the earliest possible time, but no later than three months containing the detailed financial information regarding each component of the mixed-use project, a work program and timeline for implementing the affordable housing units, library and parking garage to include a public engagement process, generate the schematics showing the integration of the library, housing, parking and commercial use components. And then number six, direct staff to re-engage with the farmers market and move forward with council direction from June 12, 2018 to execute the agreement to develop a design for current downtown farmers market on parking lot seven, located at the corner of Cat's Heart and Front Street. And if I could have the next slide, we will go ahead and close out the presentation so that we can answer questions from our colleagues and hear from the community. So I just wanted to, on behalf of the subcommittee, I want to thank everyone that has gotten up here to this point tonight. Specifically, I want to recognize our library director, Susan Nimitz and the library staff who have been just incredibly helpful during this whole time on top of a lot of other things going on, as we all know. So thank you, Susan, and your staff for all your work. Our economic development staff person, Amanda Rotell, has been amazing. She has worked really hard to make sure that the community input has been well-structured and valued and presented to us immediately and has really just done a stellar job of being the staff for this process. I want to recognize my colleague, Mayor Cummings and Council Member Brown. I really enjoyed working with you on this important project for our community. And I believe we really all each brought perspective to the table and we're very engaged and wanting to hear from each other. And I just think we, I just want to personally thank you for the process. I think it was really great. Our public work staff was instrumental in helping us understand some of the opportunities around looking at both sides as well as location of the parking garage. And I also want to just recognize all the community groups and individuals who have taken the time to contact us, come to a meeting and engage in this process so that we could come to a conclusion that is based on significant information that we have made available to the community. And that was really our goal at the beginning was to really try to answer those questions that people didn't feel like they had the information for. We also had excellent consultants in municipal finance and library design that helped us. And then finally, I want to recognize the members of the Downtown Library Advisory Committee and their continued involvement as individuals to help us understand the broader value of libraries to communities. And I can't close this out without really reflecting on my experience when I went to the opening of the Fulton Library, the new Fulton Library in February. And it was an amazing day. And there was kids that were 20 deep waiting for the doors of this library to open up. And it was something that I think we hadn't seen in a long time in terms of the celebration of the civic building. And Scott Valley had done their work a few years earlier, but really exciting to see the community really wanting to use this new brand new library facility. And if you haven't been up there, it's a place that you really wanna go see when the libraries do reopen. It's got amazing, beautiful art in the building. There's chairs that resemble birds nests for kids to climb into. There's a really neat little cozy fireplace for reading. And then a wonderful outdoor patio with giant rocking chairs that people can sit in and read. And that's on top of all the thousands of books and resources that the community gets to enjoy there. To top it all off, there's also hand-blown glass butterflies hanging from the roof and that just makes the whole space feel really magical. And I think that Selton is one of many of these libraries that we're all engaged in right now as a community and we've chosen to renovate and rejuvenate and rebuild and construct new brand new libraries in our community. So the other people we need to thank is ourselves, the voters, because we've passed Measure F and it is one of the largest investments into the families and citizens of Santa Cruz County. So I wanna recognize the voters and what we've done. Really, this has come down to really recognizing that we couldn't divorce the library decision without really understanding the impact that it provides for a whole downtown. And which is really starting to change from not just the place to work, but actually a place to live. And with this decision, the council is really being strategic and accomplishing multiple things with a single project. We're gonna get a vibrant library. We're gonna have an anchor tenant for downtown because libraries have been shown throughout the world to become quite a draw for visitors from all over the world. And I would anticipate that we, since we have visitors from all over the world, this library will do the same thing. While those visitors are there, they're also gonna shop and eat and do other things in our downtown. So this is a really anchor project for our downtown. We're gonna consolidate our parking instead of a single surface lot throughout the downtown. We're gonna stack a few on top of each other and we're going to have a more efficient use of our urban core by doing that. We're also gonna find a permanent home for our farmers market, which has been a desire for that long-term and well-loved to co-organization and feature in our downtown. And I just wanna recognize that really, this is a culmination of years of planning, community engagement and thoughtful consideration. And I think it's just an exciting moment that the council gets to take action on this tonight. And I look forward to creating a library and a housing project. We can all be proud of them. So thank you for everyone that participated in this and we'll turn it over to Dr. Mayor Cummings and the rest of the process. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. And at this time, I would like to see if there's any questions from the other council members, council members or buyers. It's referred to as a mixed use project, but what is before us, I think is just the library. And we haven't approved the garage yet and we haven't approved the housing yet, yet the conditions speak to those. So does that, in fact, approve the garage and does it, in fact, approve the, so I'm good. I thought maybe I've missed something, but usually you have a mixed use project and you have all three of the components and you look at them together. First thing I looked at when I went to look at the drawings, the beautiful book on the library and it never showed the parking garage on top of it. Now I hear it's not on top of it's beside it, but this just hit me tonight when I was looking back at that beautiful, that wonderful display of the options and looking at it. So it just confuses me that we're approving all this, but none of the other two components have even come for the city council's approval. And it's a big deal. Most, so many of the letters refer to the garage.  And I'm just one of the conditions in fact to me just as well, we approved it, something I don't know. So maybe I don't know who can answer that. This question about planning, city planning and downtown planning without really anything in front of us to approve it. So if you want to respond? I mean, I'm happy to hear from my colleagues. I can take a stab at that council member buyer. As you can see, the recommendation is what we have brought forward is really the recommendation for it to be a design build process that would basically identify those three components. So it would be a mixed use building that would include the library, the 50 low income, minimum of 50 low income dwelling affordable housing units and then a parking garage that would be limited to 400 spaces. And then all of that under the direction to achieve compatible building heights with the preferred building heights at the town center. So we... I understand that. Yeah. Right. Our recommendation is to basically move forward with a mixed use project, which would then be designed following the solicitation of a qualified status consultant. And I'm happy to have our economic development staff jump in if needed. Or Tony, I don't know how to comment, is city manager. Yeah, I can help here. So what you're doing this evening is approving it conceptually, the mixed use project. And then that initiates the process of the design. There'll be environmental review. There'll be the land use process. And there'll be a number of decisions that come back to you as well as contracts for services, architectural services. So the whole series of decisions and actions that the council will have to take in the future. This is just moving forward with the initial phases of it so that we can begin that process of hiring the architects and the various consultants that we need in order to get, take it from a concept to design that the council can then consider. Then you'll have also a set of the plans that then we can put out to bed. We also have to look at the financing side of it and how to do that, just the housing component. So all of the things we've put together and brought forward to you. I don't know if Bonnie wants to sort of add to that. But today it's conceptually of designing and moving forward with a project that includes these elements to a library, parking structure, and a housing element to it. Oh, that's a huge help. Thanks, Martine. And I think from what the words you use, the other two components will go through rigorous environmental review and design and public hearings and et cetera. Yes, it'll come back together. It will be one project with different elements. But yes, it'll all come back to you. That's very helpful. Thank you. I think we're clarifying maybe for the public. The images that are on the screen right now, these are schematics that were developed when we were doing the analysis. The actual building is yet to be designed and it would include as suggested in our motion or in our recommendation that a robust community engagement process would be key to that and with various aspects discussed during that period of time. And I would add that there's also associated decisions that'll come back to you around the farmers market and the other portions of the recommendations here. So those also will require future actions to budget for that, to move forward with design, for example, as well as the vacated building and the future use of that building. This is Amanda, pre-flow management analyst. One more contextual piece. We did a number of study sessions back in 2018, one specifically on the parking and another specifically on housing and then a third one, I believe, on the larger downtown picture. And I think as a council member, Meyers or vice mayor Meyers said sort of spoken to, there was a lot of unanswered questions specifically about the library, which is why we really dove in and looked at these two options. But a lot of that conversation happened sort of in the build-up to the September 11, 2018 decision. So just a little more context there as well. Thank you. And also just to clarify a little bit more, while it's a conceptual project that you're proving, there are some criteria that you are defining here. Those are under item one and you see A, B, C and D.  With respect to the housing and the number of units, with respect to the parking and the parking, with respect to height, and with respect to how the library is located. So those are, again, while it's conceptual, you also have created some parameters around the project. One other question if I may, mayor. There's some reference that the money has to be spent from the bond measure. And these planning, these other two components are certainly gonna take a couple years, I would think, maybe a year. Are we okay on that? I can answer that. Yeah, I have you. It's yes, yes, yes we are. We have knowing that the project that we have a conceptual approval, we can develop the financing plan and then issue bonds accordingly. We can begin to use them per the bond requirements and also to leverage them in the best possible way. So we should be absolutely okay with the financing and the bond measure. Great, because I know that has been brought up several times. I think delaying it for a long, long time would be problematic, but at this point I think we're okay. That's one, and one thing to that, which I think is the public is aware, because there was a lot of concern over the library getting buried under a parking garage, whether there's gonna be market rate. And I think that by kind of moving this conceptual design forward, given that we, the evaluation that we did realizing that the site was gonna meet the library needs and that we didn't wanna see certain, this become certain other types of projects, but we're really trying to ensure that this is gonna meet the most community need and have the most public benefit. And so this can move forward the way that it is currently right now. Another thing with regards to the parking, there was a lot of concern over having that embedded within the building and that not being able to be converted and by putting it adjacent to the building, if there's a need to demolish that parking garage in the future, it provides us with an opportunity to demolish parking and reutilize that space should we not want parking in the future. So we just, I think that throughout this process, we try to do the best we could to incorporate all the different needs of our community and really try to strike a balance. So I'll move that. So there are any other questions from council members at this time? Seeing none, I'm gonna open it up for four groups that reached out extra time. The downtown commons asked for four minutes. The campaign for sustainable transportation asked for four minutes. The Sierra Club and the library will also receive three comments or the amount of information that we've had as it was laid out earlier by Amanda. We're gonna only have one minute per individual for public comment during this time and we're gonna try to limit the amount of time we're on this item so that we are not going deep into the evening. The council's been working since nine a.m. We've received a ton of public feedback. And so with that, we're gonna go to public comments and also if you are calling in to speak to this item, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. You will be unmuted and after you've been unmuted, you will have one minute to speak to us on this item. And I don't see any of the names of the people who called in for starters. And when if you are John Hall, Rick Nott Blondinati, like a prisoner or Gene Brocklebank, please let us know when you've been unmuted so we can give you the extra time for your group. You're on the line. Combination Library Parking Garage, it's kind of doubted like a bit of a silly project. But this presentation has assuaged my concerns. We can't really hear you. If you can speak louder into your phone. I was just saying that this presentation has really assuaged some of the concerns I had about a combination library parking garage. It doesn't really look like that's what it's gonna be. It looks like it's gonna be a library, also a parking garage, and also some housing. I guess my only critical comment is, how did we decide on this size of housing? Why not more housing units? Don't we need more housing units? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, you're on the line. Hi, can you hear me? Yeah. So my name's Sean Cutler. I am for city council as libertarian and I fully support this. Hearing none. Next speaker, you're on the line. Hi, this is April Welch. I've been a resident of Santa Cruz since 83. And I just found out actually about this whole proposal because I've been out of the area. And I guess my main concerns, it looks like that the allocation is for 27 million. And I would assume that it's gonna be a lot more costly than that. Secondly, I'm very involved with low-income people in Santa Cruz County. And I have not seen that the low-income housing has really been effective. There was housing that was built around the corner from the Sycamore low-income housing that was supposed to be low-income housing. And it didn't happen. So I really have some concerns about that. I really feel like that the location of the library and the preservation also of our downtown heritage trees is something that I haven't heard that to be addressed at all. And also displacing the farmer's market to the backside of downtown as opposed to being in the center of our town is feels really sad to me, so thank you. My name is Joy Schendeldecker. I've lived in Santa Cruz for five years. And I just wanted to comment that while I want an improved library and more affordable housing, I'm concerned that this isn't the right project at the right time in the right place. I think that we do not need more parking garages in our town, the investment in them and the return on them is not worth it. I also don't want to see the size of the farmer's market reduced. I think we need the footprint that we have now and in this time of coronavirus when we get to socially distance we need more open spaces for outdoor community events and essential services rather than less. I also think that we need to create a green commons, not take it away. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Am I on? Am I speaking? Hello, am I speaking? Okay, my name is Elise Caspi. I have been following this Measure S since the very beginning. I'm a community activist. This entire project is very typical of the city government that we have right now. Cynthia Matthews, Martine Bernal. It's what you call a sleight of hand. When Measure S was sold to the public, it was sold as a remodeling project of an aging library system, including downtown. The 27 million is geared to a remodel. This whole plan about putting a library with a garage on the site of the farmer's market is being forced upon us. The hallmark of this project since the very beginning is what I continue to see here. I just also want to say that I've been to as many of the community meetings with the architects, Jason Architects, the affordable housing guy here at the police station meeting. And it's all the people on the site of the farmer's market. And yet it continues to get filled as all you did all this community outing about the enormous majority of people that are against this project. And that's because it has been a bait and switch to Cynthia Matthews, Martine Bernal. The whole idea of parking department had a dental consultant that... Oh, hello. I'm a student hung up. Okay, well, we'll move on to the next caller. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, thank you. My name is Bob Morgan. I'm representing the Sierra Club. I'm an executive committee member and chair of its transportation and political committee. I'm stepping in for Michael Posner tonight. So, Cap, I just want to make sure that the Sierra Club was given three minutes. I just want to make sure that they had that time. Thank you very much. I probably missed coming to not take three minutes, but thank you very much. As I mentioned, I am stepping in for Michael Posner tonight. He's had a family emergency and he gets, he cannot share these comments. We collaborated on this statement from the Sierra Club. Since 2016, the Sierra Club with upwards of 6,000 members countywide is on record opposing this excused project. We reaffirmed our opposition in May of this year. We support Jason Architect's rebuild design of the current library. It can be started tomorrow. Based on the city's own parking data, presentations and presentations for parking consultants, we are unconvinced in adding another garage to our current parking inventory is needed in downtown. And also that building a garage is not in alignment with the city's climate action plan. Instead, this project continues promoting the use of fossil fuel vehicles, increases traffic and decreases on-site, on-street safety for both pedestrians and bicyclists. We promote transportation alternatives, transit, ride sharing, multimodal transportation and a walkable downtown. And our position aligns with the Sierra Club national transportation policies. We ask that the city council have a full public airing of the recent Nelson Nygard downtown parking study released last year. Both the council and city residents deserve to have this comprehensive study openly reviewed. We advocate for affordable housing on other city-owned blocks, not lot four, our last largest unbuilt public space downtown. The proposal does not meet the 2017 general plan to keep a village character on Cedar Street. In correspondence with the city's health and all policies ordinance, we want to see lot four enhanced as a green public space for residents and visitors. Yes, Eric, the Sierra Club would collaborate with the city and work hard to make this public deposit the downtown commons for all. We ask the council honor the will of the voters who approve measure F. It is clear that voters approve the measure, believing that the 2014 library master facilities plan outlined the current library project. We want to build the current library application. In addition, Mr. Poser wanted me to share that he sees the Jason Architects rebuild proposal given the overwhelming support of Santa Cruz residents to rebuild the project as analogous to the desalination issue some seven years ago. Namely, the decisions affecting all Santa Cruz residents were made without transparency. Now and then, the Sierra Club respectfully asked the city council to put this question to the voters. The Sierra Club chair asked that the council put this important decision on the ballot and let voters decide. Thank you very much. We appreciate your hard work, councilor. I figure you're on the line. Hello, this is Kristin Sandel. I'm the local engagement coordinator for Extinction Rebellion Santa Cruz and I'm speaking to Poser's project. We all want affordable housing. We all want a library, but linking these things to a new parking garage that we don't need contradicts the city's own climate action plan. It's not a good use of space or resources, especially in light of the increasingly severe effect of climate change. We instead support the creation of green commons. Also, what assurances can the council give that there will actually be affordable housing in this project? My understanding is that most developers simply pay the in lieu fee instead. And if you can require developers to build affordable housing, then why have most developers been allowed to simply pay the fee and not build affordable housing? Please don't continue forward with this project. Thank you for your time. My name is Kalai Herrick. I've lived most of my life in Santa Cruz. My parents moved here when I was a baby in 1970. I would like to express my dismay at the proposal to define the library with a parking garage that may or may not be needed. Mayor Cummings mentioned that because the newest just next to parking garage lightly from the library that the city wanted to take it away, the parking garage later, then that possibility has a complete base of money at the current time. Please remodel the library where it is. Use the expansion possibilities of the old Sentinel parking lot and keep the lot four as open space. Our downtown and attractive and livable and enjoyable place to be with the farmers market and a room for events. Thank you. Hey all, this is Kyle Kelly. I just want to say thank you so much for putting this all together. I'm really proud of the city for putting this together and especially to see Justin, Sandy, and Donna come together to move this forward. My only kind of addition to it is that the number of affordable units is set to a particular amount while lowering the limit or you know, lowering the keeping the height limit down. I hope that it doesn't make it so that family units can't come in. And then, you know, if you restrict it too much, you're going to end up with smaller units and smaller unit sizes, which makes it harder for a lot of the families that are commuting in to work in Santa Cruz and really should deserve a chance to live here. I also want to note, I'm also a Sierra Club member. I'm a big Santa this project. It matches the national intel policy and I'd really like for people to see the forest for the trees in terms of what we do for mixed use. Thank you. Hi, it's Rick Longinati and I sent in some slides to Bonnie. So Bonnie, could you let me know when you bring up your slides? Hey, Rick Longinati, we've got great community goals that we agree on and I'd like to persuade each of you one thing tonight that we won't succeed in reaching these goals unless we stop expanding auto infrastructure. The next slide please. The financial cost of auto infrastructure, it's clear that every dollar spent on parking is a dollar that could be spent on affordable housing or other community benefits. So if you consider the savings from not building this garage, which staff say is set $87 million, we could build a lot more affordable housing than we can with the money in our housing trust fund. So ironically, the good intentions behind the affordable housing on this project is going to wind up with a lot less affordable housing than if we didn't build all the parking that we're talking about. Next slide please. Some plan considers providing open space a priority and that's a social equity issue. Apartment dwellers in the downtown need outdoor space like everybody else. Next slide please. I really wanna get across to you that building a garage goes against the concerns met with the planning and downtown commission in 2015. At that meeting, Janice Rhodes told the commissioners reading from the middle paragraph, no agency will make enough on user fees to pay for all that new parking space. All three of us professionals and all my peers in the industry have become very conservative, maximizing existing inventories before we step out into that arena of financing new resources. And she says you put all those things in place before you consider doing a new garage. Next slide please. The council heard the same advice. Patrick Siegman revealed a little-known fact that according to the city's annual parking census, parking demand has declawed 2008. Significant parking surplus that the city currently enjoys is slightly reduced by the loss of surface parking spaces and new development. So it's not accurate what I'm hearing a lot of people say and it's not accurate to state that we need a garage to replace surface parking spaces. The plan comes out before you consider building a new parking structure. I had no idea at the time that staff would never bring to the council's attention. And this is the elephant in the room tonight. I believe that the most important issue before you tonight is not the library or garage or housing, it's the public trust. You make your decisions through an honest process. I've heard the word robust going on tonight. This has not been a robust process regarding parking. I want to invite you to try a thought experiment, a friend or a family member whom you trust to be honest with you. And imagine calling up this loved one and telling them this to prove a multi-level parking garage. The problem is that we have a downtown parking strategic plan, but we've never seen it. What do you think I should do? Thank you. Dean Brocklebank, speaking on behalf of hundreds who are part of the Don't Bury the Library campaign to have the downtown library restored and upgraded to become a first class library in both function and form. We're looking at two projects tonight. One is funded, the other is not. Both projects would result in essentially the same smaller library of about 30,000 square feet with the same amount of collections because the mixed use project is not yet funded. Director Nemitz's option D actually starts at 29,660 square feet. The as yet not even designed mixed use project must be funded and built before the library can be added as a tenant in that structure. The roadblocks for the complicated misuse project are enormous. Meanwhile, the delays inherent in that project threaten to diminish the secured measure as money due to the decreased payback period of bond debts. The city is facing a $10.4 million general fund deficit. City Manager Martin Bernal recently stated, quote, we do not have enough data and knowledge about our immediate future to make reasonably adequate projections. The level of change and uncertainty is extraordinary, end quote. With a vote tonight to allow our standalone library to remain at the civic center, design and planning can start tomorrow while creating fundraising by the public could continue during the construction process to provide desired enhancements. The public record on this matter is clear. By 5 p.m. today, over 560 letters were received by council with more than three to one, that's 434 to 135, favoring renovation of the library. If the message had been a 50-50 split, it would have identified the proposal before you as merely controversial, but with more than three to one opposed, you have been given a clear mandate to vote no on the mixed-juice project. We respectfully suggest the city play it safe financially by voting on a motion that can provide all three vital services that are important to the community, housing, parking, and the library. Simply give the city manager and all needed departments direction to do the following. One, immediately start the process for renovation and renewal of the downtown library in collaboration with Jason Architecture. Two, inventory and prioritize city and private properties in the downtown area for the purpose of building affordable housing with parking. Three, place lot four in reserve for five years, allowing its continued use as a parking lot and weekly farmers market with a strong possibility it may become a beautiful downtown commons. Thank you. And may you band to get around? Let me just say something. That car is not small.  We suffer truly. But here's the thing, I've never had any trouble parking whatsoever downtown between, and this really kind of adds in to what people were saying about this not really being, we don't need more parking. So between that and my satisfaction with the current Santa Cruz library, I have something I want to stand as proposed development. So this project will create a needed extra parking with so-called affordable housing that is most likely going to end up being market rate and therefore not really do anything to drive down the obscene cost of housing here. And we decided this was more important than addressing the multiple demands deep on SCPD. Y'all close stack on one of the biggest movements of modern history to push forward 400 parking spaces. Do you realize that that is about the most tone deaf thing that has happened in this meeting since someone suggested giving the police merit badges for not shooting people? There's so much that I could say about this. The fact that we're moving the place not only used for the farmer's markets but also where our pride parades are usually our pride festivals held. But really out of time, let me just say this. If I put those past, I'd like to represent that those badges is Michelle Bozak from New Jim Crow. Thank you. Good evening, this is Jesse Briscoe with Plumson Builders. I'm a development project manager. We send in a letter of support for the mixed youth downtown library proposal. We just want to highlight that as experienced builders starting from scratch versus trying to remodel and reuse the library, it's much more difficult. We're able to reuse the library and be more efficient on the parking lot. It would be an easier build and you wouldn't run into a lot of unknown costs. Again, we just like to highlight that the parking is going to be, there currently it's a parking lot and the new parking lot or parking structural replace that parking. Again, we feel the location is much more central. It'd be more symbiotic with the downtown vision to have the library mixed youth and parking structure and you know, there's a debate regarding what type of vehicles will be parked there but we've seen a paradigm shift with hybrid, electric, alternative fuels. So we support overall and the oriented development in favor of the committee's recommendation. Thank you. Thank you for calling in. If you could turn down whatever device you're listening and I'll help to reduce the background speaker. I'm on. Thank you. Catherine Herndon, Santa Cruz City resident.  This is not what we voted for with measure F and you all know it. Please do not betray us. Keep our beloved library building in its own present cherished location in the Civic Center. Hire Jason Architects to renew it. As they have shown us, they can do so well. Vibrant downtown is popular at City Hall. Concrete garages are not vibrant. They are dead, deadening. A vibrant downtown is where we save all our big trees, cultivate a beautiful green commons on lot four, sidewalks to make them decent and good looking. Affordable housing now. We would like to commend and thank the subcommittee for its year-long diligent and exhaustive evaluation of a multifaceted choice. We support the subcommittee's recommendations to council. We hope all council members will say yes to each of the recommendations. Please vote yes for affordable housing. Thank you. Can you hear me? Thank you. My name is Lisa Ekstrom. Thank you guys so much for your time and all your work. Almost all of you have mentioned community engagement. At every meeting I've attended on this matter, going back to DLAC meetings, the sizable majority of public opinion has been against the new parking garage or mixed use project. Over the last couple of years, the emails to the city council and library subcommittee have been overwhelmingly against this project. And that was in spite of a nonstop, well-funded professional PR campaign to sell the new structure to the community. This is in spite of having heard the various and changing arguments for the new structure on lot four many times over. During all this time, I've seen almost no recognition from the city and council members that your community is largely against building a new enormous building on lot four. In the light of all this, how are you representing us? How are you recognizing the voter? Measure S would never have succeeded with voters if the current plan had been presented. Thank you again. Comment that I voted for the library. I did not vote for a bigger project. And I fear that if the city council goes forward to this mixed use project or money to be passed, voters are gonna reject you because they won't trust you. Cummings and members of the council, my name is Martin Gomez and I'm president of the Friends of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries. We have nearly 1000 supporters and five chapters throughout the county. I wanna thank the council for the thoughtful consideration about this downtown library project. I'm speaking in support of this project. Downtown library will serve as the hub for programs and services for the entire 10 branch library system. It'll also be a source of community pride for the city of Santa Cruz. As Vice Mayor Myers mentioned, Fulton library has already achieved that goal and we would like to see this library in downtown Santa Cruz mirror some of that pride as well. This will be an acre development project that addresses housing, retail and parking issues for the city. On behalf of the Friends of the library, we support the recommendations of the subcommittee and urge you to vote to approve their recommendation. Thank you very much. You guys hear me? I'm Peya, I'm part of Youth for Climate Justice and I'd like to express concern about the climate impact of the potential parking garage. No matter what decision gets made about the library, it's crucial that we prioritize the environmental impact as much as we can. The biggest problem with the parking garage is that it is a parking garage. We need to work toward the future without gas powered vehicles. Yes, currently driving is the only way that many people have to get around and taking away parking won't actually fix that problem. We can just ignore the very real problems caused by driving and the potential for an unnecessary increase in driving from a parking garage. According to the IPCC, we have to get at least a 45% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. We are nowhere near that mark. So the question becomes, is this really the way to get affordable housing and a renovated library that brings us closer to a livable future? I sincerely hope that you will take into account the carbon impact of its use, as well as the construction of the building for the sake of everyone's future. Thank you. Well, speakers have already spoken well to the environmental problems of increasing car infrastructure, even when setting sure that we don't need more parking and that the world keep me in the Lord car driving. I want to speak to the floor that I voted and thousands of voters about it from the library that would not have voted if it was for this project. And so in addition, I voted for Mayor Cummings because one of his major platforms that can't be was that he was going to put this project. And so this feels like another example of the type of politics that makes people politicians or nothing matters in this chapter in the city. Well, you're in charge of this chapter and in charge. I just want to say, I just want to say one more thing. Please, I just want to say that it's actually good for the community and not just development for the government's sake. I'm speaking on the line. Hi, this is Reggie Meister again. I just find it hilarious that the only four people who called in to support this plan, one of which was a radical right-wing politician, another was a YINB organizer and the last two have personal conflicts of interest. Why even reach out to the public? Do you care about what we say about the library? Do you care about what we say about defund?  It doesn't matter how many of us show up, how many of us write letters. I just don't understand the point of this process. I honestly wonder if housing is being tacked onto this garage specifically to take advantage of certain fast-tracking benefits that housing gets with the environmental review process. I don't know what to think about this project and how it's being handled. I don't know what to think about how police reform is being handled. But honestly, I would prefer, and I think most of us would prefer, if you renovated the library in place and didn't waste more of our money, look at that new library in an 87 million dollar garage and you instead of public housing, not this measure-o condo crap that you're probably planning here and you use the police budget to fund it, act you defund police. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Covington, city council members. My name is Alexia Garcia and on behalf of the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, I'd like to express our support for option D of the proposed downtown library mixed-use project. Option D addresses several goals outlined by the community, including addressing current infrastructure problems, allowing for potential greener infrastructure and maximizing affordable housing. And that housing initiative supports the construction of housing in our region that all types and income levels in appropriate locations near existing jobs, transit and services. Through our climate change initiative, we also advocate for the construction of transit-oriented housing development and climate resilient infrastructure. Mixed-use housing near existing public transit like the proposed project will decrease vehicle miles traveled. For these reasons, option D is in alignment with our housing production and climate change resiliency goals. And that further supports staff's recommendation to include at least 50 units of affordable housing on site in order to maximize affordability and sustainable land use. The city has an opportunity to expand library services while also addressing our community's urgent affordable housing needs. Please vote to maximize community benefit while preserving and extending this important public facility and approve option D. Thank you. And next week is on line. Hi, hello, my name is Oscar. Thank you again for being with us here. I know you mentioned you've been here since 9 a.m., but so have many other people have been here with you, although you may not see us. We are here to speak out on behalf of our opinion against building this mixed use of the library. I think in reality it should really be called misuse of money. You talk about 50 units for affordable housing. How does that even look like? Who gets to pick? Who are those 50 people? And then you sell it as having a solar panel and being environmentally friendly, is that pretty much it? And I also wanna let you know that we are on unceded territory of the Alwasa speaking UPI tribe, the Amamutin tribal band. This is stolen land. Where were they in the engagement plan? Where was the land next engagement group? How are they being impacted? And the pictures that they show of the future building of the library, it doesn't really represent what the downtown library already looks like. The last time I walked in there and it's been like that for a while, there's a lot of houseless people using all those resources. How come they're not really being represented on those images? It doesn't look like that. Business class people, professionals working in the library, I've never seen that type of crowd every when I go in there. So I just wanna keep the difference of their minds until impact. Thank you so much. Hi there, this is Stacy Balls, long-term resident at Santa Cruz. I voted for measure S and I voted yes on measure S because I wanted a renovation of the library. I did not vote for a parking garage. And if I knew that voting yes would have gotten me a parking garage, I would have voted no. We don't need a new parking garage. The city has plenty of parking. Every time I go downtown, I find parking, no problem. I have never not found a parking space close to where I'm going. We are steering the climate crisis in the face. It is the existential crisis of our time. It's worse than COVID-19. And you guys are prioritizing a parking garage so that we can have more single-use car trips. I know you say like, oh, we'll eventually have some housing downtown and then people will need the parking. But if you're so keen on mixed-use projects, you can certainly build some parking with the housing if it's actually needed. In the meantime, you should do parking mitigation and make sure that people are prioritizing not driving so that we can reduce our carbon footprint. Mayor Cummings, I voted for you. I supported you. I was excited about you being on City Council because I thought with your PHD and environmental science who would stand up against this, it's gonna be hard for me to support you in the future. Next week, I'll be on the line. Hi, I thought a lot of people brought up some great points about the parking structure. It really is a cause for concern when we're talking about climate change. I also agree. I always find parking downtown. I've never had a problem with that. On top of that, I really wanna stress that if we're creating low-income housing, I think it is the job of the City Council to be on top of making sure that happens. As far as I know, the 1010 Pacific Apartments, those are supposed to include some low-income housing. None of those are affordable. None of those apartments are affordable. So when you create low-income housing, it really is important that year after year, there continues to be the same amount of units that you proposed in the beginning for low-income residents. That's about all I have, but thank you. Thank you for your reading on Zoom. The Civic Auditorium could have been used for this, but instead you hide behind your computer screens. This is terrible. This should have been a public meeting, not a Zoom meeting. This is a very important decision that's gonna be made here. Garage idea come from. Well, that whole scheme came from because the Taco Bell Arms condo units have enough parking for the number of units. So what the city staff said, well, we'll just build a parking structure and that way you can send your overflow cars over there. Well, why are we paying for some developer's parking lot? That's crazy. And then when that parking structure was met with resistance, they said, oh, well, we'll just grab the library in there and then people will like it. Well, when that didn't work, then they sprinkled in affordable housing. Who wants to live in a parking structure?  Housing in a nice place, not inside of something that looks like a prison. Just a minute. Hi, sorry about that. My name is Barbara Lawrence and I'm a school librarian in Santa Cruz. And I know many of you on the city council. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak. I support libraries and I supported Measure F and I asked my community to support it with me. I voted to improve the libraries but I didn't vote to build parking. A parking structure downtown is an entirely different issue. Please do not inflate these two projects. In reading over the language of Measure F, I feel that including parking is a misuse of these bond funds. I support the Jason architecture remodel. I reviewed the design and it fulfills what I want to see in the library. I think it's sad that an important civic project like the library would be diminished by putting it in a parking structure. I'd like to look forward and make Santa Cruz a livable city and move ahead from outdated projects like this parking structure. Please put this question to the voters so there's transparency and voters who voted for Measure F do not feel that they've instituted or swindled. Thank you very much for the time. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. My name is Chelsea Coray. I am calling in to oppose this project. The last thing that we need is additional parking as someone that lives near the development that is being built on 350 oceans. I can tell you that it is incredibly inconvenient. It is an eyesore and the minimal housing that will be affordable that is going into that unit paled in comparison to what you're saying is gonna be projected here. You will not be able to fulfill that. Keep our spaces open. Leave lots for open. If we are really concerned about social and economic issues, you should address the ineffective police response. We should not be spending one-third of our general budget there. Redirect it. Thank you. Defund the police. Okay, you're on the line. Yes, my name is John Golder. I'm a 36-year resident of Santa Cruz and I'm with a city building inspector. I've been in construction all my life. I've been listening to all the comments here. As a city building inspector and solar designer, I think opposite to C&D residential units will not serve the climate goals very well. They'll be virtually impossible to even naturally cross ventilate and require air conditioning entirely. I think it's unfair, if not illegal, for you guys to do a detour around measure-S funds. And I'm in full in support of all the opposition to spending that money with the parking needs. I think the parking needs need another closer look as the effects of COVID-19, the vacancies and business closures will be happening over the next several years. No one has mentioned that the parking garage is a security, actually qualifies as expected since because break-ins are worth the impossibility to check even with security cameras. And I'm down town commissioner, one of seven of us. I have contacted each of you, but I did want to just reiterate those of you that know me well know that one of the mantras in my life is reduce, reuse and recycle. And when I analyzed this project, all of us in this community clearly want affordable housing. All of us clearly want a wonderful library. What there is extreme controversy over is parking. And I've just started my term on the downtown commission and clearly one of the main issues for us is examining parking. And it's very clear to me just in the first several months of being on that commission that we do not necessarily need 400 more parking. In fact, the analysis that I've seen shows that it's highly unlikely that if we build it we'll actually be able to pay for it from user fees unless we jack them up so high that it becomes even more of a problem. So I guess the real question and I understand from a political perspective how it seems like it's not a bad idea to just move this down the road and see if we can get all three of these done properly and for a fair price. And I understand that that may seem like the palatable political approach. However, clearly. I'm sorry, I don't have to cut you off because everyone's been alarmed and I need to continue moving through. But thank you for your comments. Next speaker. From making a connection earlier between the need to defund the police in order to reallocate the funds towards city projects that would actually provide services to our community. The library is the most robust social service we have for a house of community that we should defund the police to instead renovate the library and pay for significant amounts of low income housing units in the city rather than spend it on parking. Thank you. In general, these options C and D suffer from the usual misconception of the purpose and guiding principles of the city government here. The council is always more interested in their version of leftist social justice worrying than the principles of the city providing city services to serve the pervasive many theoretically hopefully potentially everyone who pay the bills in exchange for these services. A permanent selling of the public property airspace above the library to serve perhaps 50 units of people who after all are still gonna be paying rent is not as favorable to the pervasive public good as retaining public ownership of an improved public property designed as a commons market in parking. Selling airspace is permanently selling a public property to the benefit of the few and the developer. Also three words, ain't we broke? How can you consider anything that isn't fully funded at this point in the coming depression? You know, the one the government caused. I have no problem with more parking in general or cars and problem with affordable housing. Got no problem with a newly renovated library as to what all three of those actually go together in one space at some unknown price for any time. I doubt but the city's staff proposal seems ill timed and a SJW sell out of public property. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, next caller. My name is Bo Dunn. I'm a 21 year old, financially independent young person living in Aptos calling against the mixed use development project being proposed downtown. I've worked at the Crucio building and so I'm working remotely there. Very close to the library and to the lot in question. And I get a lot of enjoyment out of going to the farmers market there. Of course, when we're not in the pandemic, I also see the proposal. I moved to Santa Cruz inspired by the environmental attitudes of the city bodies and I'd see increased parking, especially unneeded increased parking as very lacking inspiration towards what the city meant to me when I decided to move here just a year ago. So I am against the mixed use project for environmental reasons and the farmers market. Hi, this is Brett Garrett and I want to say first, do not flood the library. This project is in the middle of a flood zone. Lot four is in the middle of a flood zone. It's six feet lower than the existing library location. The group four drawings show the library right at the ground level. It will flood. I don't know when, but it will flood. Second, I want to say that I oppose the parking structure. And third, I want to say if you do go with the recommendation, I think the 50 units requirement for affordable housing is rather weak. The guest commentary from Vivian Rogers, she promised 60 to 120 units, so why settle for 50? And you could also specify a number of square feet. You could specify an income level that it needs to be affordable to someone with very low income or extremely low income. So I do oppose option D, go with option D, please thank the affordable housing requirement. On line to speak during public comment. Where is any democracy right now? Now I'll get on the topic of the library. Use the bathrooms, to use the internet, to use the computer. What are you gonna do when people come?  It will raise your hand and you'll be able to speak on this item. So next caller. If you urge your support for the mixed use project, support that you were limiting the height of the building to match some adjacent buildings. The housing is such a need in our community that make it allow one story higher than the adjacent building. A little more affordable housing in our community for those who so desperately need it. That's been the resident Santa Cruz for seven years. I voted for the renovation of the library, but I did not vote for a parking garage. If the vote was between the library renovation or affordable housing for the homeless, I would have voted for that instead because there are homeless families in our community that are in a constant threat of police violence. As you may know, Santa Cruz police department arrests has 98% more, or has more misdemeanor arrests than 98% of all California police departments. They also use more force than 23% of all California police departments. We have a homeless population that is prevalent and this issue will only get worse unless we prioritize affordable housing. There are homeless that I've been arrested for committing nonviolent property crimes because these are people, human beings without life necessities. And it's a dangerous situation for them and this is what we need to prioritize. Thank you. You're on the line. It is me. I can't even answer questions. Good evening. Oh, good evening. Hi, my name is Nadia Peralta and I'm a, is it double that you hear me or can you hear me well? We can hear you well. If you are getting an echo, turn down your, whatever device you're watching the meeting on and then just speak to the phone. Thanks, my friend just helped me with that. Yeah, I'm a Santa Cruz resident and I'm calling with an opposition to the project. I want to reiterate a lot of the great things that people already said about I voted for measure S, I would not have voted for measure S if I had known that this would be the case. I thought that the young man who pointed out that this is unceded territory that belongs to the watchtower saloon people is extremely relevant in this and that the images for the library really didn't represent the people who use the library. It would be so wonderful if these measure bonds somehow worked for public service works that really improved houseless and housing services and then it worked on the existing library as we have it and turned the space a beautiful place. I feel like my time got cut short because of Zoom and that's also really unfortunate and it's unfortunate that we can't meet properly. And I really encourage all of you to do the right thing because they don't think you're doing the right thing right now. My name is Elizabeth Conlon and I'm calling to voice my strong support for this project. I think the two most important parts of the mixed use library project is that it is the best plan for the library. The current downtown library has 1,000 visitors a day and if we renovate the library, that will be close to them for two years. Secondly, housing, we all acknowledge it's crucially needed since it's a city-owned land, this will be affordable housing and we should zone it for more and to address the environmental concerns that people raised. I agree that climate change is the most pressing issue we face and that having density downtown is ultimately the best for the environment. So with that, I strongly urge you to vote for the mixed use library project. Thank you for your time. Good evening, Mayor Cummings and council members. Thank you for holding this meeting. Unfortunately, it's not in public and I wish it would be, but I wanted to recommend on behalf of the Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce and our 600 members and 23,000 employees countywide that we support the project in the downtown, the mixed use project. It brings affordable housing that is necessary. It brings transit, bike and pedestrian first approaches and next to a transportation hub and it expands opportunity for local residents to live in the downtown and work in the downtown. It's the right thing to do for Santa Cruz. It's the right time to do this and I hope that the city council will move forward. Thank you. Thank you. This is Robert Singleton, the Santa Cruz County Business Council and I just want to speak in favor of this project for a lot of different reasons. If you just look at the potential of this project from an affordable housing perspective, we do expect to get between 16, 120 units of affordable housing. That would be the single largest affordable housing project that our city has built since the Great Recession. So I want to keep that in mind. We also not going to be built in a vacuum. We expect around 500 new units of housing in other places downtown, whether it's Laurel and Pacific, Front Street and Pacific, Calvary, first off going to be developed. The new metro center is going to be developed. All of these can be community facing. All of them are going to have an affordability component and sadly they do require parking. I would be happy if we decided we want to reduce parking limitations for new development. I think most developers would want that and I think increasing the height to allow for more units only in the conditions that are affordable is also a worthwhile endeavor. The library is an ultimate form of public comments. It's accessible to everybody. It's information. It's community space. It's services that can be available to people. We've been through four years of process. I've bought your work so far and I encourage you to support this project. Next speaker on line. Hi, this is Darius Mosini. If you took the largest, most powerful supercomputer in the world, infused it with the most powerful sophisticated AI software in the world, it would pop out this project. This hits all so many key needs of Santa Cruz, affordable housing, a renovated library. I mean, the current one is completely unusable by young folks, given it's become, a lot of homeless folks are there. It's not very inviting. It's not as scary. So this project looks, you know, they'll track young people, which is really where, you know, good values and learning to start with a robust library. And second, of course, I'm not gonna say affordable housing, but there's nothing more to say about it. We need it. But third, all these folks being very short-sighted in 20 years, half of the cars or more will be electric. Having a parking garage allows a center for charging. So this concept of climate change and so forth is actually mitigated with a parking garage. Thank you. Yeah, final. Hi, I'm a student studying urban planning over at Stanford University. I want to go ahead and say that first of all in Santa Cruz County, 48 units for every 100 extremely low income residents, there are only 48 units for every 100 extremely low income residents in Santa Cruz. The second thing is that in 2018, nearly 2,100 of all 3,500 renting households in the county were considered cost burdened. Of those households, nearly a third paid over half of their income on housing within the city of Santa Cruz. There's a desperate need for housing. And in the last rena cycle, the city of Santa Cruz only built 43 units for low and very low income households. That's out of a 298 unit lead need. We are in the midst of a housing crisis and systems are prioritizing their nimbyism over building housing. Maybe it might be because it's housing that doesn't go towards that. There wasn't a parking garage instead of nimbies complaining about too many parking spaces. We would have nimbies complaining about too little. There comes a time when elected officials must choose between making the popular decision and making the right one. I'd encourage you to make the right one, the right one and support of this project. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next speaker Yonalana. Hi, this is Matt Ferrell. I'm vice chair of the downtown commission. And I wanna thank the subcommittee for their courage and diligence in bringing this recommendation forward to the council. I think that the library at this location will allow the system to have 19,000 more volumes for users and provide better services to vets, the homeless and other people that currently have services at the existing branch. And finally, I think that affordable housing and shared public parking are important needs that need to be addressed in the city. This project will not add to parking. It will replace parking that's going to be lost as part of redevelopment of the south portion of downtown. Thank you. Thank you, Yonalana. This is Ed Fry. I wanna encourage all the members of the council to think about what might have happened in all of the lobbying efforts that Cynthia Matthews has carried out. Has she poisoned the well? All these experts that you've consulted, did she get to them first? She's not supposed to have any influence whatsoever over this project. And yet the word is that she has been lobbying secretly for months. So I would suggest you inquire of her exactly what she's done to encourage this project because there's a real strong purpose behind the law that disqualifies her from voting. And that is that she should not be able to take advantage of her political strength and office to build her own state. Thank you. Speaking on behalf of downtown commons advocates. Yonalana. Thank you, Mayor Cummings and council members. Tonight, you really have two alternatives. John, I'm gonna pause you for a sec. Bonnie, I just wanna make sure that John has the four minutes and find John's number on here. One alternative, an out of scale box takes up all of lot four. It eliminates 10 heritage trees and relocates the downtown farmers market to a smaller interior location. The library itself gains the aesthetic appeal of an airport terminal concourse and creates a more dead streetscape at the heart of downtown. The last best chance to create a great public space would be eliminated. Hundreds of downtown commons advocates strongly oppose the lot four project. We advocate the alternative. First class downtown library that solidifies the civic center where it has been for 116 years with one demolition and reconstruction. Affordable housing built on city owned lots elsewhere than lot four. Park and demand management instead of an unnecessary costly parking garage and creation of a downtown commons on lot four with the primary farmers market. Unfortunately, the lot four project has become a scapegoat to atone for central failures of city government. Failure to deal with our housing crisis. Failure to create a homeless navigation center. Failure to create a vibrant downtown for businesses in the community. Failure to require developers big box projects to provide their fair shares of affordable housing and required parking. Conversely, because city planning has failed Santa Cruz Santa Cruz must build another failure. There are two big interrelated problems. First, the subcommittee evaluation matrix shows that in comparison to the basically shovel ready civic center library reconstruction project the lot four project is less likely to be completed before the library bond deadline. The lot four project faces unpredictable planning funding environmental review and political challenges. Second, as you've seen the public is overwhelmingly opposed to lot four development. But what about affordable housing you asked? Lot four is not needed for affordable housing. Money not land is the obstacle to developing affordable housing. One thing really calls me about the proposed project the makeup for the library funding gap quote unquote air rights of $50,000 are to be charged for each unit of affordable housing. As a proponent of affordable housing I want to see every dime of income from affordable housing fees used to leverage the development of more affordable housing units. Affordable housing money is money for affordable housing. It's not money for the library. We can do it all. We can raise money to make up the funding gap for the downtown library where it belongs to the civic center and its main entrance moved to face city hall with adjacent parking with outdoor patios for the children's library in the community room. Its efficient floor plan will eliminate currently wasted library building space reduce operating costs and provide as much public user space as we have now. This will be a library for the 21st century and a civic investment in our community. When the library is reconstructed the civic center when we build affordable housing elsewhere we can transform lot four into a much needed public space to anchor downtown businesses and community life. We can build the pavilion for a permanent farmer's market on sunny Cedar street and we can create a downtown commons there to be ringed by restaurants, cafes and businesses for public events and concerts or meeting old friends and making new ones. We can reverse joining Mitchell on paving the parking lot to create a little more paradise. Thank you for listening. I urge you to vote no on this resolution. Hopefully you can hear me. Thanks for posting this virtually. I really love the virtual commentary. Hopefully we can use it to get in the future even when COVID is over. I wanted to say I'm a young adult. I grew up in Santa Cruz in terms of background. I am soon to have a child or a young family. I do own my own home. I think this mixed space project is a great idea. It's a great path forward. It makes me really excited for the future of our community. Projects like this are exactly what I expect to come out of the city and I am very strongly in favor. So I hope you vote yes for the work that we proceed with this project. I really hope to see this, especially having a young child and being able to go downtown and see this project in action in the next few years. So strongly in favor. Thank you for your time. And I want to oppose this project and I want to identify several key reasons. It's it proposes a relocation to a multi-use construction construct that has parking we don't need an affordable housing it could go elsewhere. It's been packaged through a planning process that's been laced with representation and incompleteness and the evaluation matrix of 53 supposedly comparative criteria totally lacked priority weighting or any analysis of risk or secondary effects and implications. As a person who was a 30 year CEO if my planner or planning consultants had brought me this, I would have said, you know, you got to refine this and you got to sharpen it. This is not the basis upon which any experience and competent governing body would normally accept as adequate foundation for sound thoughtful decision making. Thank you. Hello, my name is Candice Brown. The public trust is at stake with its decision and so it's imperative tonight that you vote no at stake is good governance best practices and actually the issue of whether this project is even totally funded, which it is not. Those numbers have not been totally revealed to the public. It's not been completely transparent and ultimately the voters did not vote for a mixed use project when they voted measure S. The public trust is at stake and it won't be violated with a vote yes tonight. You must vote no and we must bring this before the voters to make final decision. It's that important. Thank you. Little rough for seven, two, five, four. You are on the line. Can you hear me? Okay, thank you. Yes, I've been listening intently and I noticed that only of, yeah, you are only saying benefits of the project and no loss, the loss of possibility of an equitable public space and the Civic Center. We do not shatter the Civic Commons forever. This triangle will forever be weakened and damaged with the library pulled out. For 116 years, the library, city hall and Civic Auditorium worked together to set energy for our city. This is priceless and cannot be replaced. A 92 year old woman who came to the pop-up demonstration of over 60 people standing for the library to be renewed and rebuilt and redone at its current location said her mother was the head librarian when that building was constructed. She did not want her work to be forgotten. Let's create a place downtown people will love and protect. That is definitely not a library in a box or anywhere USA project. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I just like to say that what our city needs is not another 400 car parking garage with a handful of barely affordable units, rather a plan to dismantle our racist and wasteful police department and make significant reinvestments in public housing, expanded mental health care and social services for our low income residents. Thank you. Thank you. Cassandra Brown. And I've been a resident here for 29th since 1997. And I would strongly wish that the city council vote no on this proposal. I agree with John Hall, all that he said. I do not want an unesthetically or non-aesthetically beautiful library, the library where it is, be more beautiful and renovated where it is. And I want us to keep the trees, the heritage trees and the farmer's market and lots for a plaza and to consider other places for affordable housing. And it just doesn't make any sense to cut down beautiful trees in time when we have climate change and to make for a parking garage and to have a library below a parking garage. I'm an avid reader, I'm a writer and I'm a landscaper. And thank you for voting no on this project. Public comment, we're gonna bring it back to council for action and deliberation. I was wondering if it's to council by some reminders, but I didn't wanna see if we could have some time to address some questions, but I'll acknowledge Vice Mayor Myers first and then I can save my questions for after. I'm fine, yeah, thank you Mayor Cummings. I'm fine if there's additional questions that need to be asked, I'm happy to wait. Okay, I just, there's a lot of questions that came out of the public comment and I think it will be good for maybe staff to provide some clarity. And so I wanted to see if we could have our economic development director join us because there's a lot of questions around how to make or maybe the same manager could speak to this, but there's a lot of questions about how we can make the affordable housing work and what's the potential for increasing. And I just wanna let members of the public know that the 50 units is not, we're not restricting the affordable housing to that. So I think that our objective is to maximize the rate of affordable housing on this project. And so I'll turn it over to our economic development director. Very good. Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. This is Bonnie Lipsom, director of economic development. The affordable housing piece, we actually today earlier at council approved two grant applications to actually increase our funding for affordable housing. And if you do approve this mixed use project tonight that includes affordable housing, I think the 50 units that's in the recommendation is our starting point. I think one of the reasons we didn't include or the actual conceptual design said it could be up to a total, I think of 110 to 120 units is that we wanted to bring back to use some options of affordable housing and potentially and also combining that with market rates to get offset some of the other costs of the project. I know that one of the speakers was really concerned about air rights and that the affordable housing would be subsidizing and that's not the case and that's not our vision for this. It's the market rate units that would be subsidizing the affordable housing and potentially also subsidizing the library component. The affordable housing, we have funding set aside at the city and we have a short list of affordable housing developers that are ready to move forward with the city on a project. So with the opportunity to develop the land for free for affordable housing and to be able to apply with the city as a partner on low income housing tax credit and then using and leveraging our affordable housing trust and we feel confident that we're going to be able to move forward on the affordable housing component of the project. Thank you. And I'm happy to answer any additional questions. Thanks. The next question I had was for maybe somebody from our public works on transportation department could answer because a lot of questions came up around parking and this idea that we're going to create more spaces when the meetings that we've had and have suggested that the parking because there's a number of locks that are coming offline. So I was wondering if somebody from transportation and public works could speak to that. Locally, I'm the transportation planner with the city. I'm the, yeah, it looks like I'm taking this one. I'm just checking. So related to parking, some of you council members were on council during the time that we went through an extensive public process to look towards our future parking needs. I haven't got any, you probably don't, but I'd reference the September 11th, 2018 council session that we went through where we did an extensive analysis on the supply and demand and the rate of parking in order to project forward if this would be what we needed and how we would pay for it. At that point, we were modeling off of the 600 space parking structure and we found that that even with aggressive transportation demand management strategies through our gross and increased program would be insufficient to meet our future demand. So under no scenario, do we have a planned parking supply that's going to be in excess of any modeled demand, but it will be something that is a step in the direction of addressing one component of our overall transportation system in tandem with supporting our other multimodal transportation programs. The presentations that we received is a number of lots that are supposed to be developed and I was just wondering if you could point out those as well or if you could speak to. Yeah, absolutely. Amanda, I don't know if you have that graphic handy if you're on, if not, I can't. Which one, Claire? The graphic that we show of the planned lots that are coming offline. Oh yeah, just give me a second to pull it up. Just one second. Okay, thank you. I'm sorry, on my Zoom I need to use my non-city-length side of my computer, so I don't have that file handy. But yes, we do, overall when we went through those various presentations, what we had identified was that there in the next 10 years we considered our pipeline of projects of where we are planning to see the demand increase. Thank you, Amanda, for pulling this up. So here you go. So the orange lots that you can see here, which are sprinkled throughout downtown, but mainly in the southern half of downtown, are lots that we anticipate coming offline in the years stated. This is about two years back, and so some of these have moved, but we still do feel confident in the fact that these lots will be going away, moving from north to south. Lot two is behind 1547 Pacific Avenue, which is just finishing construction now. It's a Swenson project now. They owned it, and we had been renting it from them for, I believe, a dollar a year for a very, very long time. So those 19 spaces will be coming offline there, fully offline now. As we move south, the Calvary Church lots, that's 106 spaces that we sell 120 permits in. Those we do anticipate that that project will become part of a future housing development there. If you have questions on that, I believe Bonnie Lipscomb can likely talk more about that. Lot 23, which is the corner of Laurel and Front Street, was contributed as part of a future mixed use housing project there. So that will, when that project goes to construction, be coming offline. Across the street from Lot 27, which is on the other corner of Front and Laurel, that we lease and we would anticipate that at some point in the future, we estimated 2025, our lease would not be renewed because there's a better and higher use, namely housing of surface blocks within downtown. Lot 12 is adjacent to Metro on Pacific Avenue, just south of the Metro Center there. And the city council did decide in years past that this lot would be dedicated as part of a future mixed use affordable housing project on that site. And then finally, Lot 22, which is 25 spaces, which is on Front Street, about midway between Laurel and Soquel, was privately owned and the city maintained it. And when the NIAC property was sold, that property was also sold. So we'd anticipate that that comes offline as well as part of a planned housing development at that location. I hope this was helpful. The key thing to remember as we look at this is that the blue that you see on your screen, those are existing parking structures that the city has over time since we formed our parking district has bonded for to create parking. And about every 10 years we created a new parking structure. So we're planning for the future growth of downtown and the intensification that supported our downtown recovery plan, which has now been amended to be our downtown plan. If you notice in the southern portion of downtown, there is no consolidated parking facility. And it's one of the areas that we have a lack of parking and with the majority of the lots that are coming offline, being in the southern portion of downtown, creation of a consolidated parking facility in that location is part of the overall parking strategy for downtown. Great, thanks. I guess Bonnie, could you let that economic development director, could you provide an update or just provide any information on Calvary Church and some of the other housing that's supposed to be going into downtown? The Calvary Church is a private lot. We do have an extension, a current extension on that lease for another year. They have indicated, they have selected a developer and indicated that they will be moving forward with a housing project on that site. The planning director and I probably about a month ago met with the developer and they're refining some of the aspects of that project. Sort of the level of affordability, how much affordable units, some of that is still being developed. They're looking at some of the new legislation that's passed that may hopefully actually end up with more affordability in the project. So they're looking at that, they're looking at parking requirements. And one of the things actually they did mention was the fact that if we were developing parking across the street, whether or not if they develop affordable, would they be required for parking? And one of the latest pieces of legislation that passed actually allows developers not to build parking with their projects if they're doing all affordable. So I know that is one of the things they're considering. I don't know if, since we met, I think that was last month, if they have made a final decision on that. But that is one project that will be moving forward. There's a couple other projects downtown. One of the projects that we're moving forward on will be coming back to you next week. And that's with a purchase sale agreement to purchase the last piece that we need to assemble with the three parcels that were dedicated to the city for affordable housing development last year. And so we'll be bringing forward to you a project for an 80 unit affordable housing project just south of the Metro project next week in both closed and open sessions. And then there are two other projects on Front Street that are each, I think with the density bonus, essentially 175 units a piece on Front Street. And they're going forward with the mandatory, a minimum 20% affordable housing. However, they do the density bonus, that number will change. And then there is the project with Anton Development to purchase from DevCon the project on lower Pacific. And so that project timing is still, I know that they resubmitted for some of the architecture. So our planning director, Lee Butler, may be able to give a better sense of the timing of that particular project. Oh, Lee, you're muted. Sorry, thank you. Good evening, mayor and council members. Lee Butler, the planning director. And as Bonnie was mentioning, we've been in communication with Anton Development. They are doing some revisions to the project between Pacific Front and Laurel. It contains the parking lot, the public parking lot behind the former Taco Bell site. And we're expecting that they resubmit in the coming months. And they're hoping to break ground sometime early next year at the latest is what they're targeting. And then I had a question regarding, quickly we might be able to bring back recommendations from a nonprofit developer because I know there's been some conversation with non-profit developers and projects throughout town. So I guess how soon could we have somebody come back or we could have an idea of getting like an RFP out and getting some feedback from affordable housing developers to whether or not they can make this happen. Yeah, mayor, I'll answer that one. We did put out an RFQ last year for affordable housing developers and received responses from nine different affordable housing developers. So we have a short list. We've given them descriptions. It's the same group of developers that we were planning on using for the Metro phase one and two. However, we told them of other projects that the city had downtown and did list the library as a potential project in the future. So we can put out an RFP pretty quickly and get a response back on affordable housing developers that are interested. I think with the fact that the city is contributing the land and additionally, potentially some gap financing, I think we'll have a pretty robust response. I wanna see some other hands up. So I'm gonna defer some of my questions and allow other council members to speak. So that's Mayor Myers. Thank you. I have one, just one clarifying question for I guess probably the public work staff. So where as clear as possible, we will not, it's my understanding. And again, I appreciate all the public comment that we've had. And I do wanna follow up on this one question and one comment that we've heard a lot tonight. My understanding is that the parking garage is not going to be built with measure F funds. Is that correct? Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to in the sort of interesting time and to maybe get into a discussion around action with the council. I was intending to put a motion on the table, but I don't know if there are additional questions of council. I wanna be respectful of our process. So I don't know if there's other questions. I know council member Golder, I don't think we've heard from her. So I don't know if she has questions or additional comments, but I'd be happy to put a motion on the table so that we can begin to deliberate. Thank you, mayor. Council member Brown, Golder, and then Byers. Yeah, thank you. I do have a couple of questions that are kind of more in the weeds related to the recommendation that's both for us. And I think for Bonnie Lipscomb mostly, you get all the questions. So I'm wondering about the timeline for, you said you think you can move through sort of getting an RFP out and potentially securing an affordable housing developer. What kind of, what's the timeline do you think on that? It would be nice to be able to kind of get that back in the fall or as early as possible. So I'm wondering what you're thinking is on the timeline there. That's one. And then another question that I have for you is about what would be the kind of procedure for applying for project-based section eight vouchers for this project? Would that happen with the developer or when would that decision get made and could we build that in? Those are the two I have for you. I think the other is for Tony. Yeah, on the timeline for the developer, we could definitely do that this summer. We actually, and I don't believe Jessica with our housing manager is on this evening, but we have been building calls regularly from the affordable housing developers that are very interested in any opportunities that might be coming out from the city. I think they recognize just with our past experience and projects and with our partnering with the city, they have a better chance of getting those low income housing tax credits. So they're definitely very willing partners. So that's, it's very feasible for us to come back to you after the summer with some recommendations on your selection of a developer. And regarding section eight, we would definitely, we could actually look and apply now for project-based vouchers with the housing authority. That's something that in general, we're in contact with the housing authority fairly regularly on this. And so I think that will likely, particularly if we're committing to, and I believe that there's a desire and a commitment to do that to very low units, that will be a good fit for the housing authority. So that's something we can do as well and bring back to you. Great. And then my last question, it may be for you as well, Bonnie. The question came up in some of the discussions I had over the weekend about the feasibility giving preference to a particular group. So for example, downtown employees as part of the project, I mean, is it possible to give that kind of preference? I feel like I've heard different things or I just maybe, I haven't been able to quite interpret what we're allowed to do and what we're not, so. Yeah, if we're using any of our affordable housing trust fund funding with the source of that, some of that funding coming from federal sources, we can't preference that for city employees. However, it is income eligible. So city employees that meet the income requirements of course are encouraged to apply on the market rate side. And some of that could potentially be workforce housing. That's something we could look into, depending on how we structure, if we end up even doing market rate units, I don't know if that's going to end up in the project at all. But depending on how we structure that, if we do an air ride steal, that is something that potentially could be negotiated with the developer. Thanks. And then Council Member Byers and then Council Member Watkins. First of all, I want to thank my colleagues, Council Members Brown and Vice Mayor Myers and Mayor Cummings for working so hard on this complicated issue. And so I appreciate all of your thoughtful analysis. And I just have a couple of questions and I'm not sure who can answer them. But one is, I think everybody knows that I would love to see a more pedestrian bike friendly Pacific Avenue and greater downtown. And so I'm just wondering how many surface parking spaces there are just along Pacific Avenue and schools were to be potentially eliminated for all or part of the day or at some point in the future, how many spaces could be replaced in a parking structure? If anyone knows, I don't know if anyone knows now or could tell me later. Yeah, we could get back to you on that number. I think there's about a hundred spaces on Pacific itself. There are 800 meters in the whole building. Oh, okay. And then, thank you. And then my follow-up question kind of piggybacks on what Council Member Brown asked in that for the affordable units, and I know you can't discriminate, but is there a way to ensure that the residents that would be moving in would be members of our community already, like living or working in the county and not just applying, getting on a list and then moving here for the affordable housing? Not that I don't want people to move here, but I just wanna support the people that are already here, if that makes sense. Council Member Golder, I would need to defer that question to our housing manager. We haven't specifically restricted to residents before. I mean, primarily that's the population that we're serving, but I would need to get back to you on that if we could have a preference, potentially for local residents. We have been successful and we've stood legal challenge in the past. For example, the Tannery Art Center Project is one where we had an artist preference. When we built that affordable housing, recognizing that we really had a need and we're losing a lot of our creative community. So we successfully had a preference for artists. So it may be possible to have a preference for residents, but I would need to get back to you to confirm that. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Byers, I think you were next. I don't see your hand up there anymore.  A little blown away that we're not, no one's talking about the library. All these people, well, quite a few people spoke about parking, but Martina, I have a question for you, City Manager. And I'm looking at the recommendation. So right tonight, we are, the motion hasn't been made yet, but I'm assuming it has been. It's called the Mid-Use Downtown Library Project. But am I correct, tonight we are, yes or no, on the library project. Well, there's a series of recommendations and actually before you. Yeah, and they do parking and they do, yeah. Right, right, and they all involved a project, a mixed-use project, which has these three different components in it. And then there are very specific actions that you're taking around each one of them, but the project is a whole. So what you are, assuming this is what the council brings forward, you are directing some pretty specific actions around this project that is intended to include a housing component, a parking component in the library. And then within those different aspects of the projects or parameters that are recommended within these recommendations. And so far as the library is concerned, the parking is concerned, the housing is concerned, and they're outlined here before you, as well as processes with respect to the engagement process with the community, with respect to, well, also with respect to the farmers market, with respect to the old building, if the existing library building and the process for community engagement with respect to that. And then also with respect to some of the steps that will be coming back to you, such as a work program, a timeline, a financing plan. So there's a whole number of actions in here that really involve this project, which again is these three components, the various steps to bringing it back to you and the various features of each of those components. Now I understand these, I have no issue with them. That's why I think a lot of the people ended up talking about parking and housing. Yeah, and the library process will include a, there's been some engagement process already, but there'll be more engagement process to design and to really flesh out how to specifically how I'll be laid out and all its various features, including the arts component of it and all these other features. I don't know if Susan wants to sort of weigh in on some of those pieces of the library and some of the features. Yeah, no, I totally understand that. I just want to be assured that the housing project and the parking project will come back full blown, a project, environmental review, public input, public everything as we're doing with the library. Yes, because it's one project. So it's all gonna come back. It's one project with all of these things. Because they all have to relate. Two more components have to come back. And they interrelate from a, the individual financial perspective. So they all go together and they all have to come back together. They can't really separate them necessarily moving forward. But we will come back as, two will come back. We'll done the third or we've done the first and two left to come back. Well, all three will come back to you as a project. So the next steps with respect to the project which includes all three elements, all three elements will come back to you before you as a project includes these three elements. And those will continue to come back to you. Okay, I think I got it. All right, good, I got it. Thank you. I'll come back when I want to make some comments. Council member Watkins and then Vice Mayor Myers. Yeah, thank you. I too will reserve my comments, but I just also want to echo what Council member Golder shared which is just appreciation and gratitude to the staff committee for your hard work over these past months, 12 months a year, really engaging the community on what I've known as a challenging topic. And so I just, I know that you've done your due diligence and I just greatly appreciate your work. I just have a quick clarifying question and I apologize if I didn't hear it when you did the presentation, but in terms of the timeline, and I know Council member Brown brought this up, what was the timeline associated with sort of the farmer's market being relocated and or a sort of a temporary location for them while this could potentially be underway? And maybe that would be, I don't know who, could it be Bonnie or I'm not sure. Yeah, I think Bonnie may have really connected so much as needed. Sure, we've been keeping in contact with NACH and a few of the members of the farmer's market board and I'm actually going to their next board meeting and Council member Watkins, I know that you are sit on that board meeting as well on that board from the Council. So maybe we could set up a meeting and discuss kind of where we are in advance of that meeting as well. Over the last, I'd say a couple of months, NACH has met with independently, I think at least one or two developers who are interested in development on lot seven. And so there are some interesting ideas out there for the farmer's market. Of course, we had done that work in 2018 for the farmer's market on that site and having some just sort of conceptual rendering. The farmer's market is very open to discussing a permanent home. And I think that's their primary goal is to locate a permanent location. And NACH recently spoke at the last meeting, public meeting for the mixed use project and shared that one of the most important elements for him and for the farmer's market is to be able to have that permanent. And he recognized that lot four has, of the city owned lots, has the greatest development potential from a mixed use perspective. So he is definitely willing to work with us and does have some concerns about the lot seven site. However, we've also had some discussions with the adjacent property owners and may be able to expand that site to include some additional land, which is pretty exciting. And there's some opportunities to also have that nexus with the development on one of the projects that has that 60 foot public right away that connects up to the Riverwalk. So there's some really interesting aspects being able to expand the public space around the farmer's market that connects to the Riverwalk that we're all pretty excited about, including the farmer's market board. So we have the meeting with the farmer's market board in July and we have set aside funding. It's been in our capital improvement project budget for a couple of years now to move forward on the farmer's market piece. So with the direction that you give us, we'll be able to move forward on that with the board. Thank you, Bonnie. And to clarify what I think I know, I know those conversations are coming and just from that work is obviously just a dire goal. And the hope would be and the commitment is that we won't also not have a look into them in that process of acquiring a permit let's say to commit a site for them. So I know that's part of it. And that's what it is. I'm glad my colleagues had additional time to kind of talk through some of the specifics. I'd like to make a motion to conceptually approve subject to appropriate environmental review and the required permit process and give direction to staff. I'm getting a lot of feedback. I don't have anything on in my, and give direction. Okay. And give direction to staff to proceed with the design and development of a mixed use project on parking lot four by adopting a resolution with the following provisions. To relocate the downtown library to the ground floor of a mixed use project on lot four include an affordable housing project containing a minimum of low income dwelling units which should be targeted at the lowest levels of affordability including section eight vouchers. And hang on one second. I'm looking at my notes here. Special programs vouchers or other ways to achieve the deepest levels of affordability with the discretionary permit applications for the affordable housing component of the project to be submitted no later than the start of construction of the library. Include a parking garage with no more than 400 parking spaces which will provide the required number of parking spaces for affordable housing units associated with the mixed use project and replacement parking public parking spaces in the downtown area. And the restrict the total height of the building not to exceed the height of the university town center development or if this is impossible the development at 1010 Pacific Avenue. I would add to that specifically if additional height may provide more additional affordable units. Number two in the motion is to operate staff to proceed with selection of an owner's representative to manage the overall project implementation and a competitive RFP RFQ process as soon as possible for selection of a design build project team under, sorry, I'm just gonna move this up. Under item number three in the motion is to direct staff to work with the selected owner's representative and design build team to initiate a community process on project design based off of the preliminary option D concept developed by group four and to return to council with preliminary project designs for consideration. Number four is prior to the start of the construction of the mixed use project initiate a public process to consider reuse options of the current library site including affordable housing, a community commons and other public uses. Number five is direct staff to provide a report to city council one to two months following the selection of the design build team containing detailed financial information regarding each component of the mixed use project be a work program and timeline for implementing the affordable housing units, library and parking garage to include a public engagement process. The general schematic showing the integration of library, housing, parking and commercial use projects components, excuse me. And then six is direct staff to re-engage with the farmer's market and move forward with council direction or updated information to execute an agreement and develop a design for the permanent downtown farmer's market on parking lot seven located at the corner of Cathcart and front streets. And just one brief, quick comment on sort of as we start to work through this. My support of this mixed use project really relies on the outcome for the library. And I understand the frustration and the really the very compelling argument to not build more parking to support more carbon into our atmosphere. And there's a lot of good arguments of why we essentially should not be doing this parking lot but I think at the end of the day what really influenced me is really the quality of the library that we will achieve by providing this mixed use project. And specifically the effects on not having a library for two years, the impacts of not having adequate life learning and adult services with a smaller library, the loss of collections up to 19,000 items in the collections, the loss of our local genealogy and local history aspects. So at the end of the day, trying to be respectful of the voters to get a proper library and a solid library for our community that's really influencing sort of my interest in making this motion and in support for this project from my colleagues. So I'll stop there, thank you. Okay, so we've been motioned by Vice Mayor Myers to move forward with the recommendations that have been provided to our package today. House Member Watkins. I'll go ahead and second the motion. And I just have a few really brief comments, if I may. When I guess I'll just, I'll go back to just showing and expressing my appreciation to you all on the subcommittee for your, just your hard work on this to really get us to this place to as Vice Mayor Myers pointed out to get us to a really a library that is fitting for our community and is in alignment with what the voters sought when they voted yes on Measure S. And as we've heard from our library director that libraries are really just pillars of inclusion and equity and information and free access. And as we evolve and there's digital access it's critical in having a 21st century library. So with that and with a sincere appreciation to the community, to the subcommittee and to those who got us to this place this evening I just, I will happily second the motion. To the motion by Vice Mayor Myers, seconded by Council Member Watkins. I wanted to see if the library director could just step in for a second because I will say that what got us to this option was the fact that we compared the two options that we had, the renovation versus the creating a new library. And what really stood out as we were doing the evaluation is that we were gonna lose a lot of programmatic capabilities at the current library site. We were gonna lose square footage. So just wondering, and this ream heart of this new library option actually maximizes our ability to meet a lot of the goals that have been set up by the voters than previously and had come up in many public conversations. So Susan, I was wondering if maybe you could speak to the two options and kind of what you gained from the second option or what you're gonna lose if you would go with the renovation. I've never been very fond of the renovation in that I think Abe Jason architects are wonderful architects, but they clearly articulated that we really needed $7 million more to do the renovation. And that the kinds of things that they were taking out were going to have significant impact on the ability of the library to function. I think the biggest would be the loss of print collection. I know we're moving to digital collections, but I still believe that there is a strong role for print play over the next 20 to 30 years, particularly with children, but we have found that print collection still maintain high usage. I was really sad to see how much the adult services were reduced in the renovation. We do all sorts of adult programs, everything from ELL programs for new immigrants, legal aid, tax assistance and services for people experiencing homelessness, as well as a series of arts and cultural programs that I think are central to make a vivacious aging community have educational opportunities throughout their lifetimes. And those were greatly going to shrink in the remodel. And then I just think that the multi-use building and its site created some new opportunities for us like the zoning issues. When we did the community survey, hundreds of people really talked about safety issues in the downtown library, and our mission is to really serve everyone. We do believe we have a mission to serve the people experiencing homelessness, but we looked nationally at how libraries were managing this. I think our best example was Madison, Wisconsin, and they really created zones in the libraries and entrances and exits for different patrons and the urban nature of the two sort of frontiers. On the street, really gave us some opportunity to do that. The other thing was the old facility wasn't gonna allow us to do a lot of the green updates that we had hoped to do, like have solar panels. But last and not least is we would have been closed for the renovation for at least two years with no budget for a temporary space. And the truth is there would be costs associated with the staff and the collections, regardless of whether they were recognized or not. This way, we'll be able to keep the library open the entire time and simply move to a new site. This is my understanding from the presentation that this could be a lead certifying, help us mitigate it. I'll just say briefly before moving on to my colleagues as well, is that given the impact of COVID-19, one thing that concerns me as someone who cares about the environment and works on climate issues is the fact that many people are likely not gonna be very interested in getting into mass forms of transit. So I don't envision that we will be packing people on the buses similarly as we did previously for students who are wanting to go to campus. And I also believe that as we're moving forward, a lot of folks are gonna transition to electric vehicles, which I think is great. And I'm hoping that the infrastructure we can provide would actually support more electric vehicles that have a lower carbon footprint on our environment. But I don't think that in the next 30 years, we're gonna see a dramatic shift in people moving from cars into solely using multi-mobile forms of transportation. And I would hope that we could go in that direction, but I think that by providing some additional parking, but not very much, it's fairly minimal, given that we'll have a lot of lots coming offline. My feeling is that as we continue to see drivers get to use that there are other lots that we can also consider taking offline to reduce parking over time, if that is in fact about what needs to be, just to climate change is commuting, and we are not affordable housing prices, which is why I think that these components that we can get out. The library meets our community standards that we are providing some more parking for the lots that are coming offline, and that we're providing housing to really make sure that there's a good opportunity and a lot of help and benefit of a huge amount of parking here. Yeah, actually, now that you've brought, and I can ask her some specific questions. Many of the people who spoke tonight were willing to do fundraising. Did the architectural firm, I was out of town through that whole thing and not around, so if I had been, I probably wouldn't know the answer to this. Were they just given this budget and could you design something within this budget? But if we were able to have another 10 or 15, $20 million, could we meet many of the goals that you articulate are so important, and I agree with you on the library. I know all those programs are extremely important. So did they look, or did you stop at the $27 million? We did, in both cases, look at some of the ad alternates we could add with additional resources. I would say that our budget's still very light in the multi-use building as well. We're spending about $600 a square foot. Our other libraries are coming in at almost twice that. So I expect we will do an extensive fundraising even out of that campaign regardless of the project. Talk about, when I moved to town, I went down to the Carnegie Library and of course it was demolished and the public library moved over on Grant Street to some empty building and they ran the library there for over three years. It is possible to, something would have to accommodate it, absolutely. It's not impossible that you just find another. And then you've got Gault which is less than a mile away. So people do have access to a library. So it's just, I think back the day I moved here and that was happening and I watched it all. Believe it or not, it's been 50 years so. But yeah, it is hard. I've also run a temporary library. I just would say it would have a cost and the cost would be probably a half a million.  I'd rather spend it on the project. And Catherine, can you shift either I don't know if it's on your end if it's still a lot of the literature like it's coming straight into. I'll turn it off in a minute. We have a motion in a second. So I thought I could make my comments and I need that light on to see. Obviously then. If you can shift your screen a little bit because. Oh, oh. Is that better? Yeah, I don't need the screen. Is that better? Yeah, it's a little bit better. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Yeah, now we've got the motion. I'll go ahead and make my comments. Okay. And I'm going to read it because I've got so many quotes from the bond measure that I want to be very specific on it. Four years ago, voters approved a $67 million bond measure whose stated purpose was to modernize, upgrade and repair local libraries across Santa Cruz County. The argument in favor of that ballot measure outlined its purposes as follows. Upgrade, outdated inadequate electric wiring, replace worn, tacky, leaky roof, improve spaces for programs serving all ages, students, seniors, young adults and community groups and ensure fully accessible libraries and programs. Most of the 18,080 people sitting voters to approve that ballot measure might have reasonably expected that the city's portion of the bond money would be used to upgrade the main library across from city hall. Very few of those voters I think could have, could never predicted that the upgrade and repair money would be used to construct a brand new library and the multi-use parking garage elsewhere. Even though the language of the measure included the power to construct or expand library facilities where necessary, I believe that very few of those who voted to approve this bond measure think that removing the existing library to another location is necessary by any stretch of the imagination and I certainly concur with that. Convenient perhaps for those who intend to construct a new downtown parking garage, but necessary, that's a stretch. Surely with millions of dollars available to spend, it is beyond, it is not beyond our capacity to find ways to modernize and upgrade our main library in the current location, even if it's necessary to store the books and maybe the people during the library rehabilitation. This would be in complete accord with the intent of the original bond measure. I've been a professional librarian my entire career. To me, a library is more than a building with books. It is one of the oldest and most prized institutions that can grace a community. Our town, our main library has occupied that area for over a hundred years. Not, and I will not be able to vote to move it because I don't find that it is necessary. So therefore I will be voting against the motion. Thank you. Council Member Goldner. This has been a super complicated issue and we can't even get consensus here at the Golder House around the dinner table. But as I think about it, and every day I work at Santa Cruz City Schools and we strive to ensure like our mission statement that demographics don't determine outcomes. And I heard a lot of people speak about the unhoused population that uses the library. But I also want to speak about the children that use the library and like the causes of poor literacy among low income children are complex but access to books is one of the biggest obstacles and perhaps the biggest opportunities. So I think making books available to children, especially from low income backgrounds can have significant and it can have like a profound effect and can help us dismantle this, you know, systemic racism that we've been talking about all evening and can really contribute to a student's academic literacy skills and academic potential. And in Santa Cruz City Schools, we have got about 7,000 students from K-12 and none of them were able to vote on this measure. And as a reading teacher, like I have to argue that a modern library would be a resource not only to the children of the community but for children of the community for generations to come. And it would show that we have, we're leaving a legacy of people that value reading and learning and research and equity. And so it's not just like a gift to us but to our children and our great grandchildren as well. And so I also love the idea of the outdoor dining and pedestrian access on the mall and that started in response to the COVID-19 crisis. But the more I think about it, like a flat parking lot seems to be the most inefficient way to park cars. And then I think about the farmer's market and I think that I hope that that can move and find a permanent home. And I know we're kind of like expanding the footprint of downtown. And so I don't think we're moving the library from the center of downtown. We're kind of relocating where the center of downtown is and hopefully like expanding along the river levee and making downtown bigger and more beautiful and robust. And so I got a ton of outreach from people in the community in favor or against this project. And the opponents of the project are very well organized and it appeared to have like a lot of time. But with some people that I've had to actually reach out to because they're, you know, my constituents, they're busy and they're young families and they don't have time for the level of civic engagement, but overwhelmingly they were in favor of the mixed use project. And so ultimately I think I'm in favor of the project because ultimately there's never going to be a solution that's going to make everybody happy. But we do need more housing. We need a modern library. We need more efficient urban parking. And I studied the Santa Cruz Public Libraries Facilities Master Plan from 2013-14 and the mixed use building with an option throughout the entire process. It's not like a new idea. It's just being like sprung on us. And so I keep hearing from the community that we want pedestrian and bike and friendly downtown. And we need more affordable housing but then every project that comes forward I hear people saying, yeah, but not here. And so I'm not a politician. I'm just a, I'm a teacher. I'm a mom and I'm an active member of the community that wants to support the businesses downtown. And not everyone has the luxury to walk or bike downtown. And I'm optimistic that the garage will include electric charging and bike parking and provide parking not only for the residents of the housing but also shoppers and workers downtown. And so I think with this project we can get the biggest bang for our buck. And I've lived downtown and I've worked downtown and parking was hard for me. And so I think the more flat parking lots that can be eliminated and built more efficiently I'm for that. And I've heard the design is yet to be determined. So I get kind of like cringe when I hear people say it's gonna be ugly because we don't know it could be a beautiful building. And I would hope that in the planning with a robust art council that we can repurpose those trees that have to be removed and they can be removed and they can be made into like beautiful furniture or art that can be used within the library. So there's my soap bar.  Thank you, Council Member Golder, Council Member Brown, Council Member Watkins. And thank you. So I do have a few comments I wanna make before the vote. So this is not a decision that I have made easily. I have been really pleased to participate in the subcommittee process, which I think we sort of naively thought we were gonna get through in about three months or so. And it's taken longer than that, but I don't regret spending the time and really diving in to kind of all the angles we could come up with and getting as much information as possible. And I'm really pleased to get to the point where we could bring this recommendation of the council tonight. You know, I'll just reiterate that I really believe we did our best to achieve an inclusive and thorough process and engage the community on the library programmatically, citing wise environmental and social equity criteria. And there's a lot of difference of opinion in those areas about what would best serve our community. And yeah, it just really was a pleasure working with Mayor Cummings and Vice Mayor Myers on this. And I wanna give a special shout out to Amanda Rotella. She is amazing. And you know, moved us through this process and helped us kind of track and curate the information and organize our activities. And you know, it just was like so helpful and just a really pleasure to work with. Susan Nemitz as well for, you know, just really caring about the library so much. And that really, you know, kind of rubbing off on, at least on me in the discussions we had. So I just really appreciate it. And I think everybody involved really does want the best library for our community, the best library we can get. And so, but I also will say, you know, I've not been a supporter of the mixed use option historically. And what got me to consider being a part of making this recommendation was, one, a sense that the council, it was moving, you know, pretty crystallizing support around the mixed use project. But also the possibility of a meaningful contribution to our affordable housing stock.  It will continue to be. So that's it. I'm glad that we were able to kind of move in the direction of hopefully getting some meaningful affordable housing in terms of the number of units and the level of subsidy to allow for very low income residents to access those units. And so I worked, you know, I worked to build in some conditionality around that. And I'm glad, I think we have a better proposal as a result of all the work that we've done. But I still, I have to say that there's so many unknowns and so many variables about how this could work. You know, where will the funding come from? What would it compete with other affordable housing projects that we are planning in the downtown? And so moving through this process has really given me th