We're going to call tonight's meeting to order. Can we start with a roll call? Council member Story? Here. Council member Brooks? Here. Council member Bottorff? Here. And Mayor Peterson? Here. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. This is a plight of the United States of America and to the Republic for which we stand, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Tonight's meeting is Cablecast Live on Charter Communications Cable TV Channel 8 and is being recorded to be rebroadcast on the following Wednesday at 8 AM and on Saturday following the first rebroadcast at 1 PM on Charter Channel 71 and Comcast Channel 25. Meetings can also be viewed live from our city's website, cityofcapitola.org. Our technician tonight is Ben Thompson. Thank you for being here, Ben. As a reminder, please turn off your cell phones during the meeting. And if you come for a public comment, please sign your name on the sheet at the podium to confirm a spelling for the record. We're going to move on. Item two is presentations. We have an update from Santa Cruz Metro. Operating budget this year is $50 million. That's up over the past year, primarily as a result of new revenues from the Pesadilla line. We employ about 300 people. We own a 98-tricks route in three-year buses that run on 26 routes and, of course, 41-star transit vehicles. Our service has been counting the entire population of about 160,000. We provide about $5 million in trips per year on a regular service and about $72,000 on the air transit and on the military service. 60% of our annual ridership is UCSC students and faculty in Cabrillo College. So that's always interesting. And if you recall the last year, we worked in the I-50, so that number is still a little bit. So more local staffs, a couple of local staffs. If you survey people riding our bus, say it's Capitola Mall boarding and aligning it from a fine of 60% of those are residents of Capitola. You're with the Capitola ridership. As I've talked about the last couple of years, we've been working towards any stop. I'm looking at their smart phone to tell when their bus is coming. This is not new technology, which is late to the beginning, but it is coming and will happen this year for processing and installing it as we speak. As you might recall from last year, I talked about our need to replace a lot of our fleet. That number has gotten a little bit better, but it's still pretty high. It's still up around 50% of our fleet. We have held together some resources to buy a number of buses in this next year, but right now we still need to do this. Finding strategies to our capital committee to figure out how to navigate our way through that. Just to give you an idea of the size of the challenge if we were to replace our buses, those buses with compressed natural gas buses, what we call CNG buses, that would be about a $38 million proposition. If we did so with electric zero emission buses, that would be about a $50 million proposition. So CNG bus, about $750,000 a piece, pretty sizable proposition. Now to that end, we also have orders for Protero zero emission fully electric buses. They are soon to be started to be built, and we hope to have those here by their now revised date, which should be June of this year, and then it'll take some time to accept those, and then also to train all of our operators on those. So we're targeting right now with the June delivery date, putting one in service across the county in the fall of that first goal. So those will be exciting, they'll have a really nice, fresh, sustainable looking theme on them, and you won't be able to miss them when they go down the street, so look for them later this year. As you're aware, and I no doubt following the Unified Corridor, the metro combination metro RTC team has been studying their corridor and has been moving various throughout the county to obtain input and feedback. On the goals, ah, there we go. We ready? Start over, Alex. Okay. Next year. There we go, all right. Why miss the first part, please? I love it, hey. All right, so back on the Unified Corridor, metro team and RTC team are working together throughout meeting with focus groups throughout the county and holding public hearings to solicit feedback on the kinds of performance measures and metrics that should be used to evaluate the transit options in that rail corridor, and I know you follow that closely. As you know, that corridor runs from Watsonville Pajaro all the way into Santa Cruz. Last week, the team met with the planning and public works staff from the various cities, and then what is happening is the culmination of this process will bring, will come together with the RTC staff making a recommendation to the commission on the preferred alternative targeting January of 2021. So that one's getting a little bit closer too. You may have followed us on the bus on shoulder discussion. We're continuing to advance the environmental clearance for the bus on shoulder in coordination and actually in collaboration with our lead partner agency, the RTC. We're excited about that, and if that environmental clearance process goes well, then they'll integrate the bus on shoulder into the auxiliary lanes, and eventually that will help to speed up our bus service between Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, and Watsonville. So we're really excited about having a bus move while everybody else has stopped in gridlocking. We think that'll be a good marketing, and hopefully attract a lot of people to the service. You no doubt have been following your own Capitola Mall and what's going on there as we have. Our staff has met with the developer, Merlon Geyer, in November 2019 to discuss the relocation of the transit facility there, and the discussions continue to be ongoing, and sorry, we've also coordinated with them on the relocation of that transit facility from sort of the 41st Street frontage over to an area by Macy's and Cole's, in which we would access off of Claire's. So that's ongoing discussions about how to do that. And then we're also talking about the possibility of additional stops on 41st and Capitola. With the potential of 600, maybe more units going in there, we think it's a great opportunity to capture more ridership, and especially if you consider the fact that we have five different routes that go through the Capitola Mall Transit Center. It's pretty exciting for us. Also, Metro staff has met with the City of Capitola Public Works to discuss the city traffic signal secretization project on 41st, as well as for us to try to understand how that will affect traffic circulation, and especially with the mall redevelopment in the transit center relocation. So as you can tell, a lot going on between Metro and Capitola over the last year, and a lot of really good things happening with Metro. Watch for those buses. That is just gonna be exciting to launch zero emission fully electric buses. What a great thing. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions? Yes, Council Member Story. Thank you, Alex, for coming and giving us that annual report. I was excited to hear about the bus on shoulders. What timeframe? Do you think that that may actually be hitting the shoulders? If you promise not to hold me to it, we're looking at about a two-year timeframe to get there. Two years out. And hopefully that will be all away from the existing auxiliary lane to 41st. Excellent, yeah, okay. And I don't know if you noticed what we're doing. It's a little bit of a different sort of hybrid bus on shoulder. That bus will operate in the auxiliary lane, and then when it gets to an overpass, for example, there'll be a patch of asphalt for us to continue on through and then on to the next part of the auxiliary lane. So that's how this one's being structured. So that would be continuous. Maybe there's one follow-up, I'm curious. How will you keep other people from using that lane or getting in your way? We won't. By design, that auxiliary lane is general public use. But if all goes well, that auxiliary lane will keep moving or move at a faster pace than traffic in the mixed flow lanes. And we'll just continue to go on through. We're not looking to speed through there, just to move at a better pace than the traffic in the mixed flow lanes. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Question? Thank you so much. Thank you too. I'll see you again next year. Take care. All right, we're moving on to item three, a report on closed session. When we're gonna be coming to public comments and just a couple items, and then you'll be welcome to come speak. This is specific to this report. Absolutely, I'm gonna refer to the city attorney. My understanding is we need to wait till the public comment section, correct? That's right, this isn't an item on the agenda, but you'll have a chance to speak in just a bit. And you can speak about this item. I don't understand any item on the agenda. People are allowed to comment on. And this presentation is an item. You can comment during public comment. We aren't at that portion of the meeting yet, but we'll be there probably pretty quickly. Well, this is about the Metro. You can comment about the Metro during public comment. Why not? I don't understand. This is presentation now, it's an agenda item now. I'm a regular bus rider. We would be happy to hear your comments about it during the public comment section. I heard you repeat that, but there's an unusual procedure. This is an agenda item. All right, we're gonna move on to item three, report on closed session. Direction was given to staff on the first item, the conference with the labor negotiator. On the anticipated litigation, direction was given to staff. There is one item on the agenda, on the open session agenda related to one of those items. And direction was given to staff on the liability claim that item is also on the agenda. Thank you. Item four, any additional materials? Yes, we have three items. One for item 10A, and two for item 10B. There are copies on the dais and at the back as well. Great, thank you. Any additions or deletions to tonight's agenda? No additions? Staff has no changes. Thank you. Okay, now we're on to public comment. So now is the time for any member of the public to address the council on any item, not on tonight's agenda. Your presentations will be limited to three minutes per speaker. We do ask that you sign your name at the podium if you would like it spelled correctly for the minutes. Are there any members of the public that would like to address the council? If you would, it's say people address during the public comment, all the items on the agenda, then it would be clear. I believe you are in error on this, but I will continue. Sam, we're gonna ask that you address the council directly during public comment. I am addressing everyone who can hear me, everyone. I received as a bus driver, a writer, and it's very uncomfortable for me with all the cell phone use on the bus, all the wifi, and that the Metro is promoting a carcinogenic device of the World Health Organization, labor, violence, radiation, and the same category of carcinogens as led in DDT. And just because it's popular doesn't mean it's safe. I'm so old, I remember when people were smoking everywhere over the food and the markets and it was just acceptable. This is worse, it is more toxic, it's more insidious, and it's very disturbing that common sense and corporate propaganda seems to prevail over common sense, and I find it not appropriate for what public entities should be doing to protect the public. I received last week a copy of an article from Arthur Fürstenberg of Cellphone Task Force and he's with 5GSpaceApil.org. The article titled The Honey Bee's Plea and cites how when 5G was installed in Australia and this beautiful garden he has quotes from a woman who had heritage trees, lots of bees and flowers, two months after the 5G microwave technology phase array went in, all the insects are gone, none are there. She dug into the earth, no earthworms. This is an existential threat, the 5G and it's an intensification of the damage that has already occurred from wireless radiation technology since the telecom act of 1996. Everything needs to be done to stop this. I will give you copies of the article and urge you to sign on to the 5G appeal and very, very disturbing that local officials are promoting harm, known damage. Thank you, hello, welcome. Hello, thank you, good evening. My name is Becky Steinbrunner, I'm running for county supervisor in the second district and it's a real pleasure to be here before your council tonight. There are some things I do want to discuss with you and your audience. I very much appreciated the presentation about the Metro and one question I would like to ask having come from now two successive public outreach open houses with the regional transportation commission about the transit corridor alternatives analysis for the rail corridor. A friend of mine has told me that you can get a conversion for existing buses, you turn them into a high rail bus and each conversion costs about $10,000. So that's one suggestion I made for the alternatives analysis is to use existing metro buses with this retrofit that is comparatively affordable. And I'm really interested in hearing how Metro will interact with the rail corridor plans when whatever is decided comes out. Comment must be submitted on that scoping session by tonight, I believe at midnight, today's the last day. I'm also excited that a hydrogen fuel cell passenger train is coming to our county. It's been postponed to October, but again at the live oak meeting which was incredibly well attended. Maybe you were there, I just couldn't see you, there were so many people, but I did have the good fortune of meeting the man who is promoting the hydrogen fuel cell trains and asked him where the route would be. He said that they're hoping and probably you know this but it was news to me that it would be on the Santa Cruz side of the Capitola Trestle. I would like to ask that your group try to encourage that spot to be moved a little bit more closer to the Jade Street Park. I think that will be a better gathering place for it and better parking. I also wanna command you on your government academy. I found it on your website quite by accident, but what a treat to have a city government really working hard to help people understand government, not only city government, but how it interacts with the county. So thank you for doing that. I wanted to observe, but I was not allowed. I was told members of the public would mess it up, but I really wanna commend you for doing that. And lastly I wanna just say that I have been observing cell tower on that 200 Kennedy Drive, it's within the city limits that has been within the last year very much extended and expanded. And I was a little concerned to hear that there is no program for monitoring the EMFs at cell sites in the city. And this is now due to get even more antennas, so I would like to encourage you to do some monitoring and make sure that those living and working near are not harmed. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Jennifer Isaac Gonzalez and I'm a parent of a student in Soquel Union Elementary School District. And I'm here this evening to briefly talk about measure V that I'm sure you've heard of. Measure V is on the ballot which is coming up in March, which is a very exciting ballot. And I assume we're gonna have a lot of voter turnout. And I just wanna ensure that it's not lost. It's extremely important that we gather extra funding for our schools and it's vital to our community, which we're all a part of. This Saturday we're going to have a precinct walked at 10 a.m. in the Monterey Park. And the more our community knows about measure V and what it's for to support our teachers and our programs and the schools that our students and family members go to, the better because last time we lost by a horrifically tiny, tiny amount of votes. So when I say every vote counts, I mean every vote, even 54 votes counts. And if you have any questions about it, as a community member, I'd be more than happy to answer them. And just thank you so much for your time tonight and I'll put my name down here. Thank you. Is there any other member of the public that would like to address the council this evening? Hello, welcome. Hi there. My name is Gabrielle DeMariano and I'm here on behalf of Dante's Community Dental Care. And the reason I am here is because of the Capital Community Grants program that's going to be discussed. And I just wanted to thank, on behalf of Dante's, the city of Capitola and the leaders of the Capitola Community Grants program for all of their support over these. Excuse me, this is the item not on the agenda. Oh, I see. Thank you. Is there any other member of the public that would like to address the council? On items not on tonight's agenda. Seeing none, we will move on. City council and staff comments. Does staff have any comments? I don't think we do this evening. All right. Council comments. Any comments on this side? No, I apologize for missing the closed session. Thank you. No worries. We're glad you made it. Glad you did. Comments? Yes. Vice Mayor Brooks. Yeah. I just have a couple of comments. The first is to acknowledge the city of Capitola. We received an email from the county of Santa Cruz's health department letting us know that because we created an ordinance or a ban prohibiting flavor tobacco, our letter grade went from a D to a B plus. So that was just really good news. Just with that small, that small thing we did. Well, I don't think it's small, but. And then today I attended the CJC, the community justice committee and learned about two grant opportunities that our city can possibly be eligible for. That I'd like staff to look into a little bit further. That was released today to prop 64 grant. And that's funds for the outreach to community members and schools regarding cannabis. And then the other one was released by the DOJ as a grant for just more outreach for vaping. So those are two things that I believe our city can apply for. So thank you. Thank you. Any further council comments? Yes. Okay. I'm sorry, a little out of sorts here. So let's see. I heard you speak at the strategic plan update for the COE and you were great. So that was a great, great event down at the mall. And it was very informative to me about what our county office of education is planning and doing. And I know a bunch of students here and county office of education has a lot to do with many of the programs that you are involved in but not directly. So if you're interested, go to the website and you'll find out some of the things that the county offers. The other thing on the RTC, I forgot to mention this when our Metro person was here, but the RTC recently made a decision to extend the bus on shoulder program, but it's in an evaluation phase right now. And this would extend it considerably past 41st, Park Avenue, et cetera, down to freedom. And the beauty of this is that it'll make a unified system starting at the Strangler, we call it the Apsis, Strangler and the Freedom Boulevard area all the way up. And so this is evaluation right now. It is a departure from Measure D. And the reason why I'm bringing it up right now is because it's a departure from Measure D, I'm gonna ask that we put it on the agenda and have a staff person from the RTC come here and explain the rationale why this is a benefit to the county of Santa Cruz and in particular to Capitola actually. So I'd like to have that added to the agenda. I feel it's important because it wasn't in Measure D we made a finding at the last RTC meeting, Ed was not there, but I remember this discussion, a lot of the public took exception to it, but I think it's important for us to get back to the public to explain why this measure was extended. Thank you very much. Yes, please. Question, clarification, would we be better to have a presentation rather than put it on the agenda? I would like, yes, I would like a presentation. Yes, thanks for the clarification. Yes, yes. Just as we just had from Metro, I think in general people will agree that a unified system going from as close as we can to Watsonville all the way up to Santa Cruz is a benefit, a unified system. Just having bus on shoulder for a certain segment in a way doesn't make sense because there's a whole rest of Highway One that needs to be connected to that. So this is a study phase right now and if it passes the study phase, I think we'll find a way to make it funded. Thank you. Thank you. All right, there's no further council comments. We will move on to item eight, boards, commissions and committee appointments. Council member Bertrand, you have an appointment to make the finance advisory committee. I'd like to make a public statement here. This time we had three highly qualified people applying for this position. It was a very difficult one for me to make a choice. I met with each person. I asked each person to, well, one has been on the committee, but the ones that haven't been on the committee, I asked them to meet with Jim, which I felt was very appropriate because Jim is our finance director. My apology actually is to each one of the candidates because I've had a recent family emergency that's been taking up my time for almost over a week now. And I've missed everything here in Capitola and in Santa Cruz and been mostly up in San Francisco in the hospital. So I was not able to talk to the people I did not choose and I really feel that as a major oversight. Capitola depends on volunteers. It depends on people in this community stepping forward and contributing. And so those who offered to contribute but weren't chosen, I wanted to explain to them directly. So some people may be surprised about my performance. I really think it was very poor on my part. But my nomination is to Laura Aliotta and I don't know if she's here, but if she is I would like to have her come up and introduce herself. She's on the Art and Cultural Committee right now. I've had extensive conversation with you. I think your background is gonna be well-fitting for this position. Hi, so I'm Laura Aliotta and I serve with Sam on the Art and Cultural Commission which I've really enjoyed. And recently got to select the bands for the summer which I'm really excited about. And so I'm also attending the Academy for the city government. And I've found that also very interesting being in the neighborhood for over 20 years just learning more and kind of seeing my town through different eyes. So I put in my application for the Financial Advisor Board and I work for an accounting firm, mostly in taxation. And I had an enjoyable conversation with Jacques and as well as Jim. So I look forward to participating in a new area of the city. Thank you for accepting this position. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I have a question. Sure, a question. Do we need, will she be staying on both Arts and Cultural and Finance now or do we need to backfill Art and Cultural, the position? They can serve both. Okay.  It's not a conflicting position. Is she gonna stay on both, Jacques? She's not my appointment to that, but... Laura, are you willing to stay on both commission, continue on both commissions? Okay, fabulous. Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you. We talked about that and it didn't seem, she's contributing in wonderful ways in the Art Commission also. That's great. Thank you. Wonderful. All right. We're gonna move on to item nine, Consent Calendar. These are items that will be enacted by one motion in the form as listed on the agenda. There's no separate discussion unless members of the public or city council members request specific items be pulled for separate review. Is there any member of the public that would like to pull any of these items from Consent Agenda for separate discussion? Seeing none, is there any member of the council that would like to remove anything from Consent for separate discussion? Seeing none, we will entertain a motion. Motion to approve Consent Calendar. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries unanimously. We're gonna move on to item 10, General Government Public Hearings. Our first item, 10A, Community Grant Strategic Plan. And Madam Mayor, before you begin this item, I wanna make an announcement that the Community Action Board is a recipient of the Community Grants. My wife does good work with the Community Action Board, but the price that I have to pay is that I have to recuse myself from this topic under the FPPC rules. So I'm going to leave the room. Thank you. Thank you. We're just waiting a minute for those wondering until Council Member Story has left the room. And we're back. Good evening, Mayor Peterson, Council. We're here to talk about the review of the Community Grant Program and review of the program and review and the recommendations. And the City of Capitola contracted with Optimum Solutions Consulting. And we have Nicole Lezen here to give the presentation on the results of that study. Great, thank you. Nicole? Good evening. I'm here representing Optimum Solutions Consulting and Nicole Young. A little confusing to have both Nicole's. And I'm Nicole Lezen. I'm sorry, I'm struggling with my voice this week. So I'm glad to have the amplification here. I'm going to go over some of the information from a report that we've presented. The presentation tonight will follow the report that's also part of your packets that you've seen. And I will concentrate more on the options for the Council to consider, but I will go over our process and the information that we reviewed for you to have that as well. And in the interest of time to also have some time for your questions. So as you know, the City of Capitola contracted with Optimum Solutions Consulting to conduct this review of the community grant program. And we looked at the application process, the reporting process, how the awards were allocated, and also had a chance to talk to both Council members and some of the current grantees and also to people from other small cities that are doing community grant programs as well to see what we could learn from them. The activities that we reviewed are from the 2018-19 cycle. So it covers $258,000 in grant funding that includes both the general fund and the children's fund, covering 31 agencies and 40 different programs. So a lot of scope to cover. And as I mentioned, our process included interviews and reviewing materials, talking to people in other cities. And the presentation options that we'll go over here are based on these sorts of inputs. So I won't dwell on these, but some themes that you'll hear both in the report and in our presentation are that the community grant program is highly valued by recipients. It does provide a mechanism for addressing community needs in partnership with community-based agencies and organizations, but there are questions about which needs and how those needs can be prioritized. There's also a fair amount of variation in how the applications are completed. So while the Council has achieved a goal of simplifying and streamlining the application process that is very much appreciated by applicants, it does sometimes lead to some variations in the information that you have available to you to evaluate and compare applications for funding. So based on all of these themes and the interviews and document reviews that I mentioned earlier, we'll present some options to you for consideration. But first, we wanted to just give this overview of the funding allocations that we did look at. Oh, sorry, well, maybe we won't. Can we get staff technical assistance with the PowerPoint? There we go, nevermind, we'll focus in. The magic of the escape button. So the funding allocations, as you can see from this table, just making the point that the majority of the awards are first relatively small amounts, and that becomes relevant in some of the information that I'll relay to you about the feedback that we got. So first, to start with the strong points, the strengths and benefits that were revealed to us in the interviews that we had both with council members and a sample of the grantees. As I mentioned earlier, the opportunity to address community needs through these grants so that health and well-being and quality of life in Capitola could be improved, and the idea of a partnership between the city and these organizations that are funded. The ease of the application process was also mentioned, especially by grantees. And even the small grants, which are the majority of them, are highly valued, especially because the city, unlike some other places, did add a COLA increase to these grant funds, and the multi-year option for these grants was also highly valued since organizations only had to apply once for multiple years, so that helps with budgeting and also reduces the burden of applications. But along with any strengths and benefits, of course, there's always a flip side with some challenges and areas for improvement. So in terms of addressing community needs, we did hear both from some council members and some grantees that there was some concern about funding not being particularly tied to a systematic assessment of community needs and priorities within those needs, which made it difficult at times to answer questions about how this grant funding is actually improving the lives of Capitola residents and whether the grants were aligned with a sense of high priority needs or gaps. In terms of the application process itself, while there was appreciation for the simplicity of the application process, which I know was an effort that had been made in the last round, there was some concern that particularly by inviting prior grantees, there was not as much room for inviting in new applicants or other kinds of ideas and innovation. There were some grantees that even though the process with Streamline still had questions and needed clarification about both the application process and the reporting process, in our report, in more detail, we made some recommendations for some changes in wording that we thought might help clarify some of the request for information. And one example of that is that there were some questions about asking for the number of people served without context for that. So for example, there might be a smaller number of people served but served with more high-intensity services and so that might be hard to compare to somebody who, to an agency that serves a lot of people with a lighter-touch service. Not that one is better than the other, but just that the number alone doesn't necessarily convey that. We also reviewed applications and reports and found that, again, not uncommonly, there was a lot more attention to outputs and methods rather than the results of the work or the outcomes of what the agencies are doing. And there were also considerable variations in how people interpreted the budget questions, particularly the proportion of funding as whether it was part of the overall organizational budget or a program budget, so what the denominator might be. Because of some of the variation that I've just mentioned, it was difficult to evaluate and compare applications one to another. And there were also some questions about the funding allocations to organizations that might generally be serving people outside of Capitola. There are probably some rationales for that kind of decision. For example, people who work here and live elsewhere or vice versa, but it just wasn't clear from the application questions and responses. We did hear some interest from council members about potentially changing the funding allocations and distributions. There were also concerns about, as with any competitive grant funding program, that larger organizations sometimes have a built-in edge because they have a larger grant writing staff or more experience with grant writing. And there was some concern that that might edge out organizations that are smaller or don't have as much experience with applying for funding. And then there were also the children's fund allocations. There were some questions about how that would work in the future if there were any of these changes made to the application process and to identifying priority needs. And some similar questions about reporting as applied to the application piece. So requests for some type of template or guidelines that would make that reporting a little more consistent. So based on all of that, and again, there's quite a bit more detail about this in our report, we presented three options for consideration and you can see the middle option, option two highlighted here. The first one is to maintain the status quo. So basically to leave the system of community grant programs as it is and not make any changes. That's definitely an option. It would have the advantage of not requiring additional resources or causing a concern about any changes. On the other hand, it would leave some of the issues that were identified as challenges unaddressed. And another option is to eliminate the community grant program altogether. The other small cities that we talk to as part of this process find this very challenging as well. As one city manager mentioned to us, we feel like we're acting as a philanthropy but we don't have the staff and the resources to do that. So it is, it's relatively rare for small cities to take this on. So that's an option as well or to have a different way of allocating the funding for longer term contracts for example, which is what one city did. But we focused on this option of trying to take some incremental steps to improve the community grant program as it now stands over a period of one to two years. So I will go over some of the suggestions for what's included in that option. And it includes several incremental steps that increase in complexity but also in benefit from what we heard from what you were trying to get out of the community grant program and continuing it. So I'll go over each of these and then we'll have a chance to hear your questions. So the first option is the simplest which is to revise the application process so that more uniform information can be obtained from applicants. And we have some specific suggestions in the report that go into a fair amount of detail about where exactly in the application process some changes could be made, but they include looking at the numbers of individual serves and the focus on Capitola residents in a more explicit way, looking at the use of grant funds within the city of Capitola and focusing on different kinds of outcomes than just counting services or outputs. We also made some recommendations about clarifying the budget so that there would be some comparable, similar responses in the application. And then potentially looking, asking more questions about how the proposed program or service matches a need which would require identifying some community needs and we have some suggestions about that as well. A more complex step is to use a data-driven process or approach to identify and then prioritize needs for the city. So there are many options for using data and fortunately a lot of those have become much more accessible and will continue to do so. So we have the option for example of DataShare Santa Cruz which was launched last year with support from the Community Foundation and the Health Services Agency for the county and the Health Improvement Partnership. And that's an option for obtaining data at the census track level and I'll have a couple of examples to show you but that's just one example. So that can yield information by different age groups, on different aspects of community well-being that you see listed here and other demographic characteristics or gaps such as income levels or social isolation. This is very small on the screen but there are larger versions in the report and the four on the left side are all captures from DataShare that are easily obtained with search parameters. So you can look at for example the percentage of people in Capitola paying more than the third of their income in rent and compare that to both the county and to California overall. There are many, many indicators available that way and then there's another example there from an organization called Broad Street that does similar sorts of things, compiling data on standard indicators and comparing them to other places and to state trends and you can also see whether your figures are going up or down in a particular trend line. So those are not difficult to obtain just some examples for you. Another step in option two if you choose to pursue that would be to use the data and the idea about prioritize needs to look and reassess the funding allocations in different ways. So there could be some way to balance or redirect the funds among the existing grantees to stagger funding cycles in such a way that new grantees could be incorporated over time. There are also options that we learned about in other cities for tiered funding models that would divide the funding that you have available into different categories. So there might be some smaller annual grants very similar to what you're doing now and then a smaller number of larger grants that go for a particular issue and those would be multi-year grants. There are always options regardless of what you choose to do as you're doing now to have some separate allocations set aside for one time sponsorships of events or to track needs that are emerging and that weren't known at the time of the application process. And then all of these could be done in ways that apply some criteria to review and score the applications in a more systematic way. And some of the criteria that other places have used and that might be applicable to your own process are alignment with the needs that you've selected or prioritized in organizations track record and prior or proposed contributions to making Capitola a better place to live. The specific service to Capitola's population or the city of Capitola or addressing the needs of vulnerable populations or needs that are currently not being met and leveraging funding in different ways because the amounts might be relatively small so you'd wanna know how they're being used in conjunction with other funds. And there are many ways to do this but the organizations we looked at assigned different weights to these sorts of things and then scored the applications against these to arrive at a ranking of the applicants. And then finally there's if you pursue option two and identify needs and use a data driven process and criteria there are opportunities to align the city of Capitola's priorities with those of other entities in the county including United Way, the community foundation of Santa Cruz County first five these are all organizations that are looking at different ways to align their funding more broadly. So it doesn't mean that there's a prescription of you can or can't fund certain ways but just to try to get the idea that everybody's moving in the same direction or attacking common problems that everyone is grappling with across the county. Sometimes that takes the form of co-investments but more commonly it's the idea of we share this problem or need and we're going to try to address it in different ways together across the county. So that's why we recommended this middle option between maintaining the status quo or scrapping the community grant program altogether because we think it has potential to unlock a lot more opportunity both for grantees and for having results from this funding. And this is just a last summary of the steps that I've just described. So again from the easiest to the more complicated and I'd be happy to entertain any of your questions. Thank you. You're welcome. Are there any questions from council? Sure. Questions? Questions? Anybody? No? It's back to you then. Oh geez, sorry. I mean to put you on the spot. I'll call the comments, not questions. Have you seen other jurisdictions take on these steps based off of your recommendations and what did that look like? Did they have staff come back and were they able to successfully do that at the city level or did they have to branch out to organizations like yourselves? We saw a combination of using outsiders or doing things internally. The tiered funding model that was mentioned here is from the city of Hillsborough, Oregon and they did an internal process through their finance committee. They had three people on a committee who I think looked at some other models and they've shared their materials with us and would be happy to share them with you as well. I love that. And was there a reason that you combined both the children's fund and the grant dollars together since one is a dedicated funding model versus the other? Was there a reason you did that? We were asked to look at them together. Oh, okay. It was part of our charge. Gotcha. But you're right. It's set aside for that population but my understanding is that within that there weren't additional needs identified. Correct. Okay. That's all I have for now. Thank you. All right. Yes. You made some comments about the benefit to Capitola as opposed to the benefit to the community at large. How do you see that in terms of moving forward that dichotomy between Capitola as an isolated entity or Capitola as part of a larger community and the programs that we support in a way are integrated in the larger community. Not just focus on Capitola. We definitely see Capitola embedded in a larger community and all of these geographic jurisdictional borders are somewhat fluid. People move in and out for various reasons both to live and to work. So some people move day to day and some people move in stages over a lifetime. And as a county we are all together in this area and trying to make it better. But there are unique aspects of Capitola. I think you heard earlier from the metro discussion about there are things that pass through here or are unique to this physical location and yet they're profoundly affected by things surrounding us. So it's a hard question to answer without a specific example in front of us. But I think that there are ways to balance both of those things. The uniqueness and the focus on this community but also taking into account the larger context in which the city of Capitola is geographically, socially, economically embedded. So you talk about co-investing, I think you had a term. That's the term. So in a sense that's a different level of criteria. It can be. How would you define that or how would you look at that? So their co-investing just can be each organization, let's say a foundation or a county agency. In Hillsborough's case they made a concerted effort for three years to address housing and homelessness. So a lot of different organizations are pooling their resource on that one issue that they see as most urgent right now but they're not braiding their funding or pooling it in a formal way. It's just they call that co-investment. We're all investing at the same time at different levels but on the same issue in different ways to try to make progress on it. That has a lot of sense. To some extent we're gonna have to have a mechanism to come together on that effort. Absolutely. With the co-investment effort. Absolutely. And how would we see our program if it's option two or whatever option? How would you see that going forward? Is there some prior examples? You're talking about Hillsborough but you didn't explain how they did that. Do you have a sense of how that could be done? I do. Hillsborough did process internally and they were moving towards that for some time. My understanding is over a period of years because they didn't feel that the effort they were investing in doing a competitive process every year was worthwhile with getting them results and it was taking up a lot of time. So there are many different ways to do that but I think any of those options whether you're co-investing with other jurisdictions or not requires some kind of further discussion internally about setting priorities and the criteria by which you might focus grant funding. So if you take those steps and step two at some point there's going to have to be some kind of discussion, prioritization, checking assumptions and rationales for what you all think is important. Doesn't mean it couldn't change over time or and it might be more than one thing. Hillsborough happened to focus on one thing but that's a process that requires time and effort and discussion. So. A question that's related and city manager maybe I should address just you. So I'm talking to one of the grantee, one of our recipients may mention to me that we have some agreements that basically is a maintenance of effort agreement. So for instance with the RTC perhaps where our money is helping the overall effort to succeed. Is this something that you could comment on? I mean, in a way this is sort of like what she's talking about. We have these agreements already. I'm not aware of them. So this is something that I'm just sort of learning about. Well, I think the simplest answer is is there's numerous items that we've cooperated regionally to do together with the other jurisdictions whether it's regional transportation funding, obviously collaborate with Metro. We've heard the presentation earlier from the Metro Board about how we regionally provide a busing services. We do the same with libraries. We do the same with 911. So there's a lot of regional efforts that are done cooperatively with the other jurisdictions where we're all aligned and working together either directly together because we've formed a new government agency or just in an aligned fashion. So I think notion of sort of co-investment could be done similarly, whether it's directly sort of a single effort that we all pursue together or we just do it in alignment. How do you answer that point where we, I mean, I haven't been in a discussion where we've talked about that at like the finance committee or here at the city council. Is this city staff discussions across the county and various boards or agencies? I'm just trying to get some ideas on how this works. So are you just asking specifically towards this community grant, community grant effort? I mean, I think that what you could do if you were interested in pursuing something like that is asking staff to come back with what would a model be to better integrate with the overall, you know, other efforts taking place throughout the county with community grants. So the following discussion will probably get to something like that. Thank you very much. That's my questions. Thank you. Additional questions? No. All right. Thank you so much for that presentation. You're very welcome. We will move on now to public comment. This is a time for members of the public to address the council on this item. Please feel free to line up at the podium and along the wall there and you will have three minutes to address the council. Hi. Welcome. Hi. Let's try this again. So eager last time. My name is Gabrielle DeMariano and I am with Dantes Community Dental. And I'm here to thank the city of Capitola and the leaders of the Capitola Community Grants Program for all of the support over these last years. I also want to thank Nicole Lezen and Nicole Young for reaching out to us during this process for feedback. Dantes values the city's support and looks forward to the opportunity to continue this partnership as a community grants program evolves. Your support has had a direct impact on the residents of Capitola. Because of you, we have been able to provide 479 uninsured Capitola residents with comprehensive dental care through 1600 visits in the last year. With your continued support and our new clinic opening in 2021, we will be able to serve more patients and increase access to vital dental care, making a healthy community for all those who reside in Capitola and also throughout the greater Santa Cruz County. So I just wanted to say thank you and support this program. Thank you. Thank you. I believe we need to wait for questions until after public comment. Yes, after public comment, we can come back to more questions. Thank you. Hello, welcome. Thank you. Good evening, mayor and city council members. My name is Lisa Berkowitz and I'm representing Meals on Wheels, a program of Community Bridges. I first would like to, on behalf of all of the Capitola seniors Meals on Wheels serves, thank you for your many years of support. Reviewing the city's community grants funding process, as you know, will require council members to identify, review, and prioritize community needs, a tough job to do. As a program that serves the 60 plus population of Capitola, I wanted to share with you early in your review process some of the significant changes in the aging population. I have a chart prepared by the California Department of Finance that it's a chart prepared by the California Department of Finance and the projections outline the increase in the statewide 60 plus population from 2011 to 2018. Turning the page over reveals that an even larger increase in the 60 plus population for Santa Cruz County. Equally as important as the information for the council to be aware of is the fact that 65% of the seniors we are now serving are living at or below the federal poverty guideline. And this represents a significant increase in the number of low income seniors we're serving in the program and a significant decrease in their capability to donate for services. Additionally, please note that we feel omitting the question that asks what would be the impact of Capitola residents if this program is not funded, limits the council's knowledge, frequently cuts made from a single funding source, impact service delivery across the county. So obviously it's important information the council would need to know. And lastly, excuse me, a note from a Capitola senior that we received on 46th Avenue who summed up the importance of the meal she receives. Decisions are easy to make when your health is intact, your wages are intact, and your daily life moves forward without fear of being able to feed yourself. That is not the case for myself and many others on the program. We need that food. It's not an abundance or a free ride. It's our daily regimen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hello, welcome. Hello, good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Kirk Ants. I represent Lifeline, a program of community bridges. And also Lifeline is the designated Consolidated Transportation Service Agency for Santa Cruz County. And first of all, I'd like to thank you for your many years of funding and support to Lifeline and partnership with your help. We're able to provide paratransit service to low income elderly and disabled residents of Capitola to medical appointments, dentist appointments, pharmacies, VA hospitals, and out of county transportation to medical specialists. So the transportation is very important to them. Also in review of the grant process, Lifeline is really in favor kind of of the status quo because we know it and it's easy for us. But on behalf of community bridges, it looked like there was a suggestion of possibly removing one of the questions from the application, which was the question that states what would be the impact to Capitola if this program is not funded? Community bridges would like to suggest leaving that in there if it comes to that point where there's an option to make a decision around there. Because ultimately this question is critically important in making the case of what the impacts would be if not funded. So we'd like you to consider that. And thank you again very much for your support to Lifeline and community bridges. Thank you. Hello, welcome. Thank you. Good evening, mayor and council members. I'm Helen Ewan-Storium, assistant director for the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County. And like many others, I want to thank you for your thoughtful review of the community grants process and your ongoing support of community organizations that provide vital services to members of Capitola and the larger community as well. We're our current grantee serving Capitola households with rental assistance to avoid eviction and homelessness. So your support is really critical in terms of providing that stability in the city. We greatly appreciate your multiple year contracting process with your colas. I think that's been a really critical process and element of your process. And I hope that continues in any changes. But in reviewing the report, we definitely support elements of option two with some incremental changes in the process. And specifically, any streamlining of application for clarity and standardizing reporting is always appreciated. As noted in the report, you do help support a lot of different organizations with small grants. And I think anytime we can reduce the amount of time that we spend on applying a reporting for a grant and devote that time to providing the direct services is really appreciated. So we certainly support that. Like others, I support continuing to have that question about what would be the impact if services were not provided. I think that's important for you to see that in your evaluation of funding decisions. And then also one of CAB's core values is equity. And so we certainly support an equitable distribution of funding resources to meet community needs. We also support an alignment and acknowledgement of other jurisdictional funding processes like core and others while also hoping that there's some flexibility for some local priorities, kind of similar to what Watsonville's process is. So I would really encourage you to look at that. But given all that, I really think that a lot of the current grantees are going to meet those elements, you know, supporting different needs in the community that are critical. And so we really want to encourage you as part of this process to also consider increasing your overall community grants program funding in order to meet all the needs that are critical for the city. Thank you very much for your support. Thank you. Hello, welcome. Good evening. My name is Keisha Browder. I'm CEO of your United Way of Santa Cruz County. And I want to first just commend you as a city for taking the time to really assess your community grants project. We can all just do business as usual because it's easy. It requires a low level of commitment. But for the city of Capitola to take this time and be intentional about looking at their process and learning ways that we can improve it, I want to take that time to commend you. I thank you for supporting 211. You may not know, but our 211 term, 10 years old, on 211, makes it easy, 211. And so we just really, truly thank you. About 4% of our calls, we have about 4,000 calls that come in a year. About 4% of those calls do come from Capitola. So I am here to say that please count on and lean on your United Way. We have data that can go into granular work. We can look at the city. We can help you identify those priorities just with our data as well as data share. So I am here just to offer our help that you don't have to go and pay for more research. We have the research. We've done it for you. So just know that you can count on your United Way to help you with identifying those priorities. Definitely keep that question in because it's a very serious question about the impact if you don't continue funding. And as a United Way, we were able to look at the data that we create here with the community assessment project. And we were able to identify youth success, looking towards more prevention work as our priority for the next three years. And so that's what Nicole was referring to. Also our partnership with CORE, with the county and the city of Santa Cruz. So I am here to offer help and talk to you about co-investments and what that looks like because United Way is definitely doing that here in Santa Cruz County. So count on us. You don't have to go by research and data. We already have it for you and we can help you with this process. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, welcome. Good evening. My name is Leila Bratovich and I'm the Executive Director of the Conflict Resolution Center of Santa Cruz County. So I really want to support everything that Helen and Kisha have just said in terms of the report and continuing the funding of the agencies. CRC is one of those agencies that does receive the small grant and it does make a lot of difference. So for us all of that funding, even the small, the large, all of it really makes a difference and the COLA additions to it is really appreciated and especially in the terms when a lot of the other grants and funding do not account for that at all. So thank you for doing that and thank you for also evaluating and making sure that the funds are being used in the best way possible. So as you know, Conflict Resolution Center offers mediation, Conflict Resolution Services, training for all of the residents of Santa Cruz County. We've served just over 3,000 residents in the past, in the county for the past year and out of those 3,000 or just over about 10% are from Capitola and those go from, we have mediation at the small claims court for the affordable divorce mediation. We do a lot of our, most of our Capitola mediation are around with seniors, with homeowners association, with senior living situations, with family. Also we've seen an increase where a lot of our mediation are about the elder care by their also elder children. So it has been a very interesting shift that we've seen over this past time. This last year we were also participating and it's nice to see all the friends here with so many partners here in community law enforcement dialogues where we had a circle here in Capitola. I was part of that circle. So it was great to see the Capitola law enforcement part of it all with community, with engaging with youth, looking into different ways how we can not just as the city of Capitola but as the county as a whole because yes, you're right, we cannot separate ourselves, we are part of the bigger picture wherever we're from. So I'll come another time and talk about a new project that we're just getting started with the neighborhood courts. And I'm really excited about that as just getting off the ground. And so you'll be hearing more about that as we're coming up. So thank you very much. And I really hope that you continue supporting all of our community grants and you still need to come to our training. Yes, you remembered. Thank you. Hello, welcome. Hi, thank you. Well, I introduce myself. I'm Creighton Mendevan, the executive director and directing attorney for senior citizens legal services. And we serve Santa Cruz and San Bernardal counties. We serve about 6 to 700 clients a year for direct legal services and approximately 100 of those come from the city of Capitola. I wanted to talk about things that I wanna make sure that you consider in this process. One is the core evidence-based process does not work at least for our agency. They want evidence-based and studies based on it. And they want double blind studies. To the best of my knowledge, there are not people who don't know that their attorney's giving legal advice to the public and comparing that to attorney's giving legal advice. So when we went through the evidence-based process, there were no studies for us to work with. And we do what we do because it works. So we help people over 60 with housing issues, with access to their public benefits and elder abuse prevention. Another thing I wanted to talk about is longer funding contracts are wonderful. We're a very small agency. We have a budget of about $300,000 a year and we're serving 6 to 700 clients a year. We have three staff. So I as the executive director, if I'm being pulled off to do applications and reports, any way you can streamline that process to allow me to help more of the seniors in Capitola and Santa Cruz and San Benito counties is wonderful. Any way that you can simplify the application, I am all in favor for it. And clarification of the process is very much appreciated. I also wanna talk about the safety net. The concept of moving the funding to larger agencies and cutting out smaller agencies, we're like a safety net. And if you start removing strands of the net, people fall through. And that's my big concern, at least with the one look out of it just to moving to larger agencies. Communication with grantees is always helpful and in the last process, we lost $2,000 in the process to allow people to get a COLA increase, which we got a COLA increase, thank you for that. But our loss of $2,000 negatively affected us. And I can't say that we helped less people because we lost money, because we just keep doing it. But it does affect our retention of staff, how we can pay our people and our ability to keep quality people so we can keep doing quality services for you folks. Thank you. Thank you. I stopped before the phone, okay. Hello, welcome. Thank you. Good evening, mayor and council. I'm Tim Bratton at Gray Bears. You know, this is, I've just learned about this process. I favor everything that's been said. I think streamlining the application process is great because I do also wear a lot of hats at Gray Bears. We operate with a pretty meager staff and about 500 volunteers that we have to manage and keep happy every week. I think for what we've seen with the core process and what we've learned as an agency, I think is important because it gave us some way to evaluate our work. It made us look at the way that we provide service, it created ways that we can improve the services that we offer. And it gave us a way to create outcomes that are reasonable. Are people better off? Are they eating more fruits and vegetables from the bags that we deliver but to about 300 capitol residents every year? Do they feel better? And are they able to save money on food costs? Those are basic needs that we provide that are really clear and really easy to understand. And part of our work is also volunteerism, about 45 capitol residents come to our agency every day and donate in the last grant period, about 6,000 hours of service. And in that work, they rub elbows with other people, they create relationships and friendships, they create support systems, and they get to have breakfast and lunch and take home groceries too. So a lot of what we do really addresses where those who are on the edge of poverty live and are one expense away from calamity, essentially. So we're addressing those needs and we're really grateful for the work that we've done together with you for all the years that you have and all the agencies that you support here. We look forward to the process and working with you in the future. Thank you. Thank you. I wanna thank all the people in our community who are with these organizations helping those in need. And Tim Bratton, I've heard you interviewed on the radio. I know the Gray Bears really is the wonderful organization, senior citizens' legal services. I had wonderful help from them at one time with someone who was on my property that wasn't pleasant and senior citizens' legal services did an excellent, excellent job. I often ask why is there such hunger and homelessness? What is the matter with this picture in one of the wealthiest nations on the planet? And I have a visual here. I'll give you. Feeling sad and depressed and you see a young medic with the stethoscope around his neck and a clipboard and it says are you anxious, worried about the future, feeling isolated and alone? You might be suffering from capitalism. Symptoms include unemployment, homelessness, hunger and the list goes on. Feelings of depression, loss of free speech, cultural decay, revolutionary thoughts, death. And I think of every time I pay taxes, and I've read from War Resisters League, over half of our tax dollars are siphoned out of our communities to go to the exorbitant military budget. I don't like what our country is doing militarily with over 800 military bases and killing poor people in other countries for profit of the war industry. So we need to have a structural change. I don't know how to do that. So we don't have so many homeless people, hungry people, unemployed. And I will leave you with this. I know you're doing all you can do, but if thankful you could do if that money were staying in our community. Thank you. All right, is there any other member of the public that would like to address the council on this item? Seeing none, we're gonna bring it back to the council for a discussion and a vote. Council member Brooks? Or Vice Mayor Brooks, excuse me, sure. I'll go ahead and start. I appreciate everyone coming this evening. It's always a pleasure hearing about all of the programs in our community and all the exceptional work that you do. I get to see it out there in the community. It's a beautiful thing. So thank you for showing up tonight. With regards to the presentation, Nicole, thank you also. I agree. I think that it's important that we find balance in how we distribute the funds throughout the community. I think it's important for a system to be created by our council members to prioritize our community needs and we're missing that. I'm particularly concerned about the unmet needs. And that's the biggest gap here. We are doing so many great things. We're funding so many great organizations so far and have done so for a very long time. We just aren't sure where those unmet needs are and I feel where we grapple with that. So by setting a process in place would really help us move in the right direction or at least I believe that. And more importantly, not duplicating things that are already taking place. There was mention of core and I'm not sure if that's the process or but I know that other organizations and cities and community members are coming together to ensure that we're not duplicating needs and really stretching those dollars to the fullest to benefit all of our community members. So a couple of things that I heard. I'm in agreement with the option two for I think that is a starting point. I would hope that if I guess I can start with a motion and then we can go from there. I would like to see staff come back with a more meaty process that there was several steps introduced an option to but for you to come back on what that would look like what that timeline would look like. I would really like for us to utilize United Way and their free services and that data that they already offer. So we don't have to pay anything in addition from what we've already done. And see if we can actually utilize staff's time in setting those priorities with the help of United Way. I think that we can update the application though immediately based off of the information that Nicole gave us this evening. There was plenty of feedback there that I think we can just move on that without waiting any further. And thank you for noting the question. Nicole was that question being answered somewhere else in the application process? Is that why you took it away? I know I'm halfway through a motion. I'm sorry but let me just get clarification before. Yes thanks for saying that we did feel that that was captured in another question about the methods and tools that were used to measure impact and it was duplicative to ask it twice in two different ways. That's what I thought. So I don't think there would be a need to do that. Maybe we can look at editing if again you can come back with if in fact that question is being answered in its entirety so that we're not losing anything there. And to possibly examine once we set those priorities I just want to say that for us to pull out that dedicated children's fund. So once the council sets those priorities that we look at those funds on a separate separately. So that would be my motion with all those things. Do we have a motion? Do we have a second? I'll second that with continued discussion. And that's all I got. Further comments? Council member Batur. Sure yeah. Thank you for those comments Vice Mayor. I appreciate everything you said and I do want to thank all the groups that came here tonight. You know the history of this is that we've been struggling with allocation of money for probably at least four years that I could think of. When you think about where we're at right now there's option one which is as maintain the status quo and this really wasn't working for us because we just keeping the same groups not allowing anybody else to come in allocating the same money every year. Really we weren't sure that it was doing with the best for Capitola and it maybe didn't give some groups a chance to get in and we realized that the most important thing or not the most important thing but one of the most one of the important things to the groups was that consideration of continued funding and we appreciate that. I can tell you I'm here tonight not to vote for option one which has maintained status quo and it's not to eliminate. So we're all I think in agreement that's why second of the motion for option two but option two is very broad at this point and when you bring in a consultant there to give you options and that's what we're here to do tonight is to try to whittle that down. Even within the four options in option two there's many bullet points which I feel what I'm gonna do is I'm compelled to I'm gonna send a written letter to the city manager to give input about the things that I do that I have feelings on because some of them I think are gonna get us closer to that goal which is at least what I believe because I sat on the committee with the mayor a couple of years ago to try to sit down and go through each individual person we provide to which is pretty broad I think it's over 40 and find out which for lack of a better term which group was the biggest bang for the buck for the citizens of Capitola and there's just some services are provided that we cannot go without and I'm not trying to I don't wanna pick those out at this time but there's very important groups that exist and there's some that maybe not so much and we just wanna make sure that we're giving our citizens the best look we can do for that. I do out of this process I do believe that our application process does need to be streamlined there's five items here that I'm gonna talk about that Nicole brought up and Nicole thank you very much for the time you spent and I'm not sure if it was you I talked to on the phone or the other Nicole okay good all right thanks for clarifying that. The application does need to be streamlined that will help us just and make it easier on you I believe it makes it easier when you do that. Identify priority need based on community level indicators absolutely that's where we wanna get develop a weighted checklist that's good you know the considering of the tiered you know what something was brought up tonight and this is this is a reality check for us you know every time we come up here with any project it's always easier for us to make that project better by throwing more money at it and you know one of the things says you know we can we can do that with community grants but the reality of it is is you know capital has some challenging times coming up you know we're getting ready to do a great big mall redevelopment which we hope is gonna put us in a prosperous position down the road the sad part of that is is that for a period about two or three years they're gonna tear down the mall which means that we lose revenue of over a million dollars a year for two or three years so you know when you say that it's sensitive to you when you lose an allocation think about us you know absorbing a million dollar loss a year which puts us in a situation where we can't be very generous when we're trying to do that because we're just trying to pay the bills at home to keep the lights on so I think you need to bear you know be aware of the fact that we're gonna be struggling for a couple years and I think we all remain optimistic that the big move we're making with the mall is gonna put us in a better position moving forward but that's one thing that I worry about but that kind of gets off the topic but I just want you to know that we all take this very seriously I take this seriously I appreciate the efforts that the consultant did it kind of puts it more on us to give our feedback we can all come together I think we're you know this motion will probably pass with option two and I think what we're all gonna try to do is work really hard over it says here for the next one to two years to come up with a good program and I'm excited that we have finally got to this point where you know we spent a little bit of money got some input stimulated us and collectively I think we're gonna end up with a better program that works for the citizens of Capitola and for all the groups that I believe are here tonight so thank you for coming and speaking to us. How's the memory return? I almost can't add a lot but there's a lot in here that in my sense is fairly general and there's a need to put it in context and the reason why I say in context when this process started at least on the county level there was a report that said okay we could go to a need space assessment which I read or we could think in terms of sort of like what Creighton was talking about and you just can't figure out based on data how this is positively influencing society and so he spoke from the standpoint of senior citizens legal services. I was able to connect a person who is at a mobile home park who is being bullied by the owner of the mobile home park and this particular mobile home that this person had was basically her life savings and she needed to sell it so that she could get in a home and have care for the rest of her life whatever that might be and it was this legal services group that came to her aid and enabled her to sell this in opposition to what the owner of the mobile home park won. A lady came here and talked about dientes. I know an individual homeless person that for all intents and purposes you thought he'd gone in a multiple number of fights. He didn't have any teeth. He just looked horrible. He actually got some services from a dental agency, not dientes. This guy lived up somewhere in Mendocino but it was someone I knew and it turned out that he was a civil engineer. He got his teeth fixed and he was back on the job building bridges. Someone mentioned that the services that we help support help a network of things that keeps our community alive and in many respects, capital is unusual that we pride ourselves in trying to keep this network alive by contributing perhaps in a small way to some agencies and larger way and other agencies but it helps keep our network alive for this community. For those especially who can't afford to do things on their own. So when we come up with our criteria I'm looking for a way to see how these agencies benefit short of whatever data that has double-blind behind and stuff like that which is actually very expensive to do. I was on the senior council for many years and there was two PhD statisticians on that who were just, they couldn't believe that this was being asked of many of the organizations here because there is not a base of data that shows what you could compare to to see what you could be doing better. There's many ways that you could say that doing these kinds of statistical analysis don't work especially the load on the organizations in terms of staff time and expertise. It's just not there. But there are cases where it does make sense. Tim just talked about how his organization has benefited, extraordinary from this effort. So I think when we come up with criteria I want to balance. I hope that we look out from the standpoint that there's some places where evidence-based whatever works and there's some bases where just dealing with the network of people and the needs of people, those who just don't have as much as we have. And so I hope that when we come back in the next one or two years and think about what our system's gonna be, we try to create a balance between different ways of evaluating organizations and recognize sometimes it works just because we're helping people. And sometimes it works because we're actually helping someone get out of the rut of their life and improving themselves. I'm gonna vote for option two but I'm also looking forward to how our staff is gonna help us develop some more definite programs and options to help out and carrying this option forward. Great. I would like to thank everyone who came out tonight and even those who aren't able to be here in person. The work that community programs do to support all of our community is incredibly valuable. And I really can't say enough good things about community organizations and nonprofit organizations. And we are just so very lucky as a community to have you here doing the work that you are all doing. I really can't add much that wasn't already said. I think option two is probably the best option for incrementally improving the system that we have now. I support the motion but I'm gonna seek clarification on it if allowed. I have some concerns about using any one organization's data to make all of our decisions, especially if that organization is a grantee, one of our agencies that receives our grant funding. I'm wondering if our city attorney can provide any guidance on that, on if we would be making decisions based on data provided by one of the individual organizations that would receive our grant funding if that is, I don't wanna say if it's legal, is it recommended? Or I believe that the data, I mean, for example, I know that we reached out to our grantees to get information just for this recommendation. So clearly using information from our grantees is a great idea, but I'm wondering if using just one grantee's data set and data information is wise. Let me take a stab at it rather than city attorney and an ethical chivalry if I missed something. So first off, what I would suggest is with the work plan is we would develop a work plan for how sort of chart a path forward for how we might begin to implement option two. And we will include a couple of different options about different paths to pursue, whether there's in-house resources, whether we use lean on a non-profit for assistance, whether we get some proposals potentially from other partners to do the help. In terms of what data are gonna be used to underlie that, I wouldn't worry too much about, I don't think the United Way generates a ton of sort of original data. I think they often will coalesce data from a lot of different sources. Their community indicators project is a great example of that. They're pulling data from a lot of different places. It's not data that they just collected. It's data that maybe the county pulled together. And so they have information, but I think I would personally, I think it's fine to use data from, they're more of a repository, if you will, than actually want to do a lot of the data collecting in most cases. Okay, great. Thank you. That clarifies a lot for me. I appreciate it. With any additional comments? Yes. Yeah, that was a point I wanted to comment on too. So thank you for bringing that up. Senior council does an extensive survey as well as United Way. There's many different sources of information. And so in that one particular source would bias something, you know, I would not like that, I have to admit. So I would like to have your plan moving forward, take into account a lot of different perspectives in terms of what information we've posted. All right. With that, we have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you all for coming tonight. Thank you. Okay. Yes. Can we bring council member story back? All right. And we're just going to take a moment while he returns. I appreciate it. Ask it. Okay. Glad to return the favor. I caught you in mid-pore. I know, I should have asked if I could. No, you really just ordered. I know. All right. You say it over and over again. I don't need your word, I go over. I don't know about you. Just like a tree. I never used to drink water. Who's this guy? Recognize you. Oh, that's right. Welcome back. Yeah, well, y'all, that's right. You've only been gone so long. All right. Quite a while. All right. So we're going to move on now to item 10B, consider proposed recreation strategic plan. Mayor Peterson, council members. The item before you tonight is the recreation division strategic plan. So in February, council approved funding for a recreation strategic plan project. Blue Point Planning, a consulting firm, was chosen to facilitate the development of this plan. Originally, that consultant, Mindy, was planned to be here to give this presentation tonight. Unfortunately, she spiked a pretty high fever and is unable to be present. So I will be conducting the entire presentation. So with the proposed plan, it would begin with the upcoming fiscal year 2021. So to go into the process for this plan was took place over a span of six months. It involved with the consultant's facilitation. We established a core team. That core team was comprised of a number of capital staff as well as community members and stakeholder groups. That core team met, did an orientation call to kind of discuss and give ideas as to where we wanted this plan to go. And then with the consultant reviewing all of the data that we had available as well as information from the core team given in a meeting, did a review on the existing conditions of our recreation division. And we started to work on developing some visions and goals and identifying the needs, gaps, and opportunities. That core team then took a lot of that information and started to outline those goals and strategies that if the plan was approved, we would start to implement. So the ultimate goal of this strategic plan is to create exactly that, a roadmap for the recreation division in order to provide what the community wants and needs. It also allows us to understand better how we might be able to maximize the use and functions of the parks and facilities and identify programs that we should maybe grow or add based on those community needs. And then one of the things that was also identified is to be able to establish partnership connections and efficiencies with city and community services such as events, parks, and the library and ultimately have that be a tool to communicate those priorities to the community. So with that as kind of the ultimate purpose, the first place that that core team along with the consultant started is to review the mission, vision, and values for the recreation division. The mission was a modification of something that had already established, but we incorporated intergenerational as a key point of this mission and we also incorporated supporting health and wellbeing into this new mission statement. And the vision, which was an entirely new aspect of the division, provided to the goal that was to focus on being a progressive division that would evolve and be responsive to the needs of the community. Identifying the values of being community oriented, being collaborative with partners and within the city, striving to be innovative, ensuring that we are an efficient division and also the important piece of being affordable to the community. And so from there, we started to develop four different goals and each goal had a set of strategies. So I'm gonna go through each one of those goals and touch lightly on the different strategies. So the first goal as we began that conversation, the core team and the consultant looking at the information that came out of the survey that we had circulated, we really started to identify that there was an opportunity to develop some efficiencies in order to be a more effective umbrella organization. So goal one, efficient and effective umbrella organization with the idea that we would have the organization provide programming in parks, events and recreation that would be resourced, efficient and effective. And so some of the areas to develop better efficiencies were identified as such. So for one of them would be to begin to incorporate or to evaluate the relationship with the city events and the recreation division and start to in coordination with the Arts and Cultural Commission, figure out if there is efficiencies to be able to had in that process as well as to develop a process for incorporating parks programming in conjunction with the Public Works Department. Whereas a lot of people already assume that recreation deals hand in hand with parks and so to intentionally have the programming of parks involved in this plan. Also to evaluate the division's role in the issuance of special events permits with the in coordination with the police department. A lot of times members of the public call us first in order to do their special events permits and this is one of those things that we've identified could have more efficiencies built in. And then with that in building that new or idea of building that new division would be to then incorporate the addition of events parks with the organization of clear job titles and resources to support those activities. And then of course the establishing budgetary parameters for that new division and needs for fundraising or grants or other general fund allocations. So that's the goal, the first goal. The second goal it was to be affordable and accessible. So with the intention here was to annually update and refine recreation programs and events so that they to ensure that they were balanced, relevant and affordable and accessible to all community members regardless of age, socioeconomic status or ability. So the first strategy to implement for that goal would be to establish a cost recovery policy that would enable more access and this would have multiple different facets to it such as fees but also scholarship or other areas for funding. Explore the needs and roles of a community advisory group in order to ensure that we're staying in touch with what the new programs that we would be offering and if they were maintaining that goal or vision to be relevant and to stay progressive. Expand and develop those relationships with educational organizations outside the city and hopes to promote internship opportunities as well as increase availability to team programs and then to optimize parks, facilities and other pilot partner locations to pilot programs throughout the city and systematically evaluate and update programs and offerings to ensure that they serve the community as a whole. For the third goal would be to maximize the facilities. So for this one by 2022 would be to complete an assessment of all city recreation and park facilities, prioritize renovations, additions and ongoing maintenance to maximize function and flexibility to support the division's missions. We had the core group that core team as well as along with the consultant had a lot of conversations about what opportunities we would have regarding facilities and being able to really optimize a lot of that. And so the strategies that we had discussed about discussed would be to start off with inventorying the existing facilities that we have and conduct that needs assessment and then from there prioritize those facility upgrades to ensure that we are supporting the programs that we offer and to improve the efficiencies and broad and sorry, broadened services to the community. And then finally to identify and help develop any additional park facilities associated with other resources or new development. And then finally, our fourth goal is the partnership piece. So with this goal by 2020 to establish agreements with the school district library and other organizations to secure the use of facilities and shared use to expand the ability to provide a range of services. And really, we already have a lot of really great strong partners and this is building continuing to build as well as creating the opportunity for new partnerships. So to cooperate with the school district to establish a long term MOU regarding the shared use programming of city and district facilities to establish an MOU with the library for programming and use of those facilities at the new library. And then to foster relationships with other public as well as private recreation events and park providers and amplify opportunities to serve residents. And then finally to ensure that there is funding with partners and in order to have the benefits and shared resources of those cooperative services. So my recommendation for you would be to approve the five year recreation strategic plan. And at this time, I am happy to answer questions. All right. Is there any questions from council? Yes, council member story. Thank you. So we've been asked to approve the five year strategic plan. And I was just wondering then in your mind, what does that mean? Does that kind of commitment does that put the city into? So the plan at this point is that kind of collection and analysis that the group and the consultant put together and so approving this strategic plan is kind of that springboard to yes, we agree that this work is relevant and we'll make our division strong and please begin. So that it is starting the intent of these goals and strategies in order to ensure that we're going in a direction that is what the community desires. And at some point, if in any evaluative process, we decide, actually, this isn't the right thing built into the strategic plan is to continue to do that analysis to ensure that with this intent, we are trying to still be relevant and provide those services to the community, working with the partners and working within the city for those goals. If one, if I may go on, yeah. If one of the strategies are to prioritize facility upgrades, is that a commitment on the part of the council to prioritize that over any other budgetary needs? No, I don't think so. The that language specifically was very thoughtful in trying to identify and choosing the word prioritize, because within public works, there are a lot of different things to take into consideration. And in relationship to the programs that are happening in relationship to the current status of where we're at, because it may be three years down the road, to look at that list and make those priorities. I don't know if Steve or Jamie wants to expand on that at all. That's okay. I mean, either we're prioritizing or not. And it sounds like it's saying, we're not really committing that this is going to be the council priority in terms of our capital expenditures, budget. So it's not a pre-commitment. It's not a pre-commitment. I think the best way to think about this is, it's laying out sort of work plan items for recreation in a direction and trajectory for Nikki and the team to be working towards in and of itself adopting, the plan doesn't bind us to any future action. It's really just laying out a general trajectory for different work items and things to come back to the council. Okay, thank you. They're in reference to the art and cultural commission and the events with Parks and Recs serving as an umbrella organization over those events that the Arts and Cultural Commission has, is putting on, has put on for many years. Mine is saying is that has not been presented to the Arts and Cultural Commission. This concept and therefore they've had no opportunity to give feedback on it at this point. The same thing with Public Works as Public Works and the Police Department given feedback on their roles in this strategic plan. So regarding the Arts and Cultural Commission that was brought to my attention today for the first time and that was not my understanding. So I do apologize for that miscommunication. But regarding Public Works and the Police Department, they are aware of setting this intent with the strategic plan and are on board to do the work. Okay, and I think my final question is there's many of these strategic goals, my mind have budgetary cost and has there been some thought of a budget being proposed to this or is that going to follow after we adopt this plan? Because my sense is I mean when we were talking about Public Works and I mean you are the Parks and Recs I mean that kind of makes some sense but if we're going to be putting on more programming in the parks to me that means staff, that means more Public Works, follow-up and attention which means more general fund. And so I think an important follow-up to this is it needs to be to have some budgetary projections about what are we really proposing here in terms of how it's gonna impact the general fund. And as well as about making the programs affordable for the community that also the corollary to that is that it means more of a general fund contribution from the city of Capitola. So we already put in a little bit over 300,000. So is there going to, is the follow-up to this going to be a proposed increase in the general fund contributions to the Parks and Recs division? So in short, yes. Like I said, the intent of the plan at this point is to create the next work plan for the division, for the next five years and you're exactly correct. There's not the kind of micro details of a budget because in order to get there, a certain amount of work would need to be done in partnership with city departments and other partners within the community to really identify what it is that we are then going to do and from there, a lot of those details that would then come out and materialize in budgets that you would then hear. Thank you. Questions? I have a couple of questions. You mentioned a cost recovery policy. Can you elaborate on what that means? Yeah, so this came out of one of the broader conversations in the core team where since I'm new, particularly not in my history, but of a known history, there's never been a discussion as to what is the intent for our recreation division. Are we trying to be balanced? Are we trying to, what is that ultimate goal? And to kind of do that analysis of recreation division as a whole, where what are the fees producing and as we grow and change where we're going with that. So to have a intentional decision that this is what we're committing to and this is kind of that guiding idea of what our budgets are gonna be and our resources, how they'll be used. Okay, yeah, I had similar concerns as like council member stories about the feasibility of these priorities and really resetting you up for success or resetting you up for failure by agreeing to this plan here. You mentioned conducting a needs assessment. So I hear that and I'm thinking just more and more money. Do you feel that the outcome of this is setting you up for success and that this is really sounding like a really expensive plan to pursue? That's interesting, I wouldn't have considered that perspective. Do I think that this is setting us up for success? Yes, I do. At this point, I feel that this plan is really setting the intent in order to do the evaluative work in order to ensure that we are able to hit goals or evaluate that these goals are not meant for the division and for the city. So short answer, yes. Did I miss a part of your question? I feel like you did. No, I think, yeah, it just, thank you. That sums it up. Questions? No? Questions? So you just sort of recently found out about the community, excuse me, the arts and cultural community, right? So I was wondering how you're gonna address that in a sense or a stakeholder and they represent many long-established groups, the events that have been long-established here in Capitola, which are considered by many an important fabric, part of our fabric here. So maybe you don't have to say it right now because you're just finding out about it, but I would like to see some reach out to the cultural commission, some reach out to some of the groups, all of the groups that have been instrumental in the spirit of Capitola, the various festivals that we've had for many, many years. And also considering that the number of volunteers that those efforts represent is immense, right? So I have full faith that you will do that. So I would like you to take the time if you can to explain a little bit how you got to the point of realizing that a strategic plan was needed and how you feel it's gonna work for the department in the next couple of years. Just maybe, you know, when you started here you must have felt something that needed to be attended to. And so I'm thinking, my question is an effort to try to give you a chance to say what you saw and why you wanted to do this. So when I started working with the city a little over a year ago, I entered into the division with the goal set before me is let's try and figure out what we are able to do. That the division had been operating for a number of years at kind of a status quo for a bit. And we've had the opportunity with changing in staff in order to figure out what we would be able to do. And it is helpful to have guidance when you're making those plans. And so ultimately when I started off trying to have with the strategic plan it was with the goal of providing for the community what they want and working and identifying working with partners within the community so that we could be efficient. So a plan is a excellent place to start with the work. In order to just outline this is the work that we need to get done and be able to report back and say a year or two this is the work that we've done and have a clear understanding that these were the goals that we are all agreed upon. It's a very organized effort. All right, any further questions? No. Okay, then with that we're gonna bring it to the public for public comment. Now is the time for any member of the public to address the council on this item. Hello, welcome. Hello, good evening. My name is Michelle Kennedy. I'm the assistant superintendent of business services for the Soquel Union Elementary School District. So I'm so happy to be here this evening. I had the opportunity to be part of the core committee that put this plan together. And it was a wonderful experience in my 25 years of public education. I've worked for an institution that has a five year strategic plan but I've never actually been part of creating one. So this was a great opportunity and I just wanted to let the council know the thoughtfulness and the time that Nikki and her team and the consultant put into doing this and getting a lot of input from all of us on the core team. I appreciated the effort and I'm here on behalf of the school district as well to let the city council know our strong desire to continue partnerships with the city. One of them I'm very happy about is the one at New Brighton, our after school New Brighton's after school program is doing very well. The kids seem to be happy. I have the fortune of getting to see the kids out my back window from my office. That's always a lot of fun. So just wanted to let the council know. Thank you. Any other members of the public? Hi, welcome. Hi, I'm Laurie Hill. Didn't know about this until late last night. And although I am an art and cultural commissioner, I can't speak on behalf of the commission. I'm not, I don't have the role of the chair. And the chair just had just several questions with regards to art and cultural commission. And thank you, Nikki, for reaching out to me. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the kinds of questions that the council asked about the strategic plan. Very simply, my governmental career, my 35 years of government started in recreation. And my first job was cost recovery programs. That said, they never save anybody any money. They help generate money to cover appropriate costs. And I totally get that. But don't save anybody any money. And also to the point of working with the school district, my first job was with the city of Nevada. And they had an amazing working relationship with the school district. We didn't have any facilities of our own. And we programed the entire community through working with the school district. And it was just a dynamite relationship. So there are a lot of things about the strategic plan that I think are really good. And Nikki, you've been here for just over a year. You haven't been through too many of the budget processes around here and really the hard arm wrestling that goes on. Because there are a lot of competing priorities. What you don't see on your chart up there was, you know, you don't see the added division that is necessary to add to the recreation department in order to support some of the broader encompassing activities, particularly with regards to special events. And I would like to see a little more dialogue around that. I'm a leader in doing community events. And there are several more like me out there that would like to know a little bit more about it because the strategic plan just didn't really spell out, you know, what was going to be embraced by the recreation department and what was going to be left through some other process. So that said, thank you for going through this effort. There are a lot of it that I would embrace immediately. And at the same time as a total strategic plan, I think it needs to sharpen its pencil in a few areas. And I would like to have and make sure that the stakeholders have had a chance to closely review it and comment. So thank you for your time. Thank you. Any other members of the public that would like to address the council on this item? Saying none, we'll bring it back to the council for deliberation and a vote. Commons, member Batoch. Sure, I'll start off. First thing I want to say is, Nikki, this is long overdue, okay? I'm a little put off by some of the comments tonight. I've seen the city be fractured with the way it delivers recreation for so long. And with the hiring of Nikki, I think we're beginning to find you in recreation realize this is the correct place to pick up things like special events that we dumped on the police department, which doesn't belong in the police department. Police department should be a sign-off to make sure that there's no problem or conflict with those, but those special events should fall under something like recreation or they were in the city manager's office or Larry did it. We just said, Larry, you're the catch-all fix this, okay? Which wasn't the appropriate place. So I'm excited about the strategic plan. I'm liking that this is picking up events and things that we do that we just didn't have a place to put them and we're putting them all under one great word umbrella. With regard to strategic plan, I remember I got on the, I started velocity before I was on the commission, but I ended up on the general plan committee because it was the general plan, which what is a general plan? It's like a strategic plan. It's not how we're gonna do anything or how we're gonna pay for it is where do we wanna go? And I think what this is is a vision of where do we want Capitola to look at something? Just like we had the begonia festival on the beach. It's like, wait a minute, the beach is a park. It should be run by parks and recreation just like when we run junior guards, it's on the beach. And we have artists set up in the Esplanade. It's in the Esplanade Park. So this to me just makes common sense about where we should be going. What's gonna come out of this is is what Nikki's gonna do after we adopt a general plan or a strategic plan, which says where we wanna go is how are we gonna get there? And that's gonna be an action plan and that's gonna be where the money comes in where ultimately everything that happens happens with this body voting to whether they wanna endure something or prove something and move forward with it. When I started, my political career in this town was on the parking commission and that's, we have five or six commissions that I had got into a philosophical discussion a few months ago that I have to remind the commissions because the first thing I did when I started receiving these letters from the Art and Cultural Commission was, commissions serve at the will of the council. Let's not lose sight of that. Even the Planning Commission serves at the will of the council. We appoint them. We entitle them to do and make decisions about building in the city. And I appreciate all the hours and the diligence that all these commissions put into it. These are people that love what they do. When I was on the parking commission, I loved making decisions but it all came under the guidance of the council directing them. One good benefit of the Art and Cultural Commission is, is we've tied that to a building fund where they generate hundreds of thousands of dollars that the Art and Cultural Commission has been able to turn around and put beautiful art throughout this city. It's one of the most beneficial programs that we have. But nonetheless, it's like, I got into a discussion about, we want to refer the Art and Cultural Commission to look at something and it's like, well, we have to ask them. It's like, no, no, they work for this council and you need to be clear about what your role is. And just like when we're up here and we vote on something, our role is to make a decision that we feel is most beneficial. And when some comment, Laura, you made a comment about it. You just heard about this. Well, I just heard about this. This is just on the agenda. I read it for the first time. I look at it and go, where are we trying to go? What's this all about? And I realize this is a common sense thing for us to take all the loose pieces that are hanging around the city, put them under this umbrella, use them in a place where they appropriately should be because all these things we just say, well, who's going to do this and who's going to take care of this? And this to me is where we should go. This is where it belongs. You don't want to have operations happening in the city that somebody in the city manager's office is making a decision one year and then somebody else, somebody else the next year. So I'm excited about this. I think that we're definitely going to want input from the Arts and Culture Commission. We're going to care about what they think about. But to me, all the events that happen in the city should be under some umbrella. And if it ends up being that that's the recreation department, then that's a perfect place for it. And everything that happens, every event that is approved to happen in the city comes to this council. We approve the event calendar every year. So it isn't like something happens that we don't have input into, but we want to use our bodies and we want to be efficient to see that all these different departments, public works, Steve Jesberg should not be working on, whether we're setting up easels in the park. That's not, he should be making sure that the grasses mode and the sprinklers work and that the park is capable to handle these operations. But some of the things that we did were probably just not being done in the most efficient way. So I'm taking my hat off to this program. It's long overdue. We need a motion to, what's the recommendation? We need a motion to adopt, make a motion to, I'm going to make a motion to adopt the strategic plan. Thank you. Is there a motion second? Continue discussion? Yeah. So I was on the committee and we're coming up with a stakeholder group. I think we missed a beat there, but I have full faith that this will be recovered. And that says a lot about how I feel about Nikki. The reason why I asked the question was, we hired a new person here and they immediately saw that there was something missing. And if you're going to be effective in what you're going to do in any particular effort in your life, having a plan that's structured and organized. And in this case, many people were involved in putting this plan together. It's reached out to major stakeholders. As you've said, Michelle, it's been successful at New Brighton. It's helping a lot of kids, getting more engaged. Leadership is one of the aspects you're pushing. These are good things. We haven't done this. We've neglected this. And now we're going forward in ways that we are going to make positive impacts on a different segment of our population, different demographics of our population. Since Kristen and Yvette have come here, we're swinging towards trying to identify how we could reach out to our youth and we have some money to do it. And I think this is a wonderful combination, having a plan to do that with the recognition and the drive that the city council would like to see carried out. I'm all for it. I'm not worried that some groups weren't approached initially because I know you're going to do it now. That's how I feel about it. I'd also like to say, my first involvement in the city of Capitola while I was on the Recreation Committee, and it was just very bland. We didn't do anything. We didn't have a plan. It was just looking at the budget each year. And there was no drive for new programs. There was no outreach to different groups that would potentially want to be involved in creating new things in the Recreation Department. Nothing, period. So Richield the last, well, you might know, Lori, Richield the last city manager said, you know, there's just no use for this. You know, why spend time doing it? So it was discontinued. So there is a proposal here to explore a new aspect of a committee that would make this strategic plan more meaningful to the people in Capitola. So with this kind of program, with this kind of plan looking forward, I think there could be a use for a new committee like that and reaching out to other people in the community that would like to be involved in improving our Recreation Program. So, it's all positive to me. So thank you for doing this plan. Appreciate it. May I respond? Yes, please. Thank you. I don't see how we can adopt a strategic plan when one of the major stakeholders have not even been asked to participate. Okay, the Articles Commission has not been presented with this plan given the details of what it means. And it doesn't say to consider or discuss, it says plan for and incorporate the city events into the parts of Recreation. So I know some of you care like the top-down approach. I don't care for that. I think that if you're gonna have a plan, you have everyone an opportunity to give their input into it before you pass it. These events are not just loose and floundering around in the city. They're being well-run by volunteers at almost no cost to the city. And now you're just gonna tell them they're gonna come under some other auspices without even hearing from them before you do it. So there's a lot that is good in this city. It's not just this plan, but I think that's the one major failing. And I don't see the reason why in honor to the Art and Cultural Commission volunteers, we don't just delay this so that they can study it, meet with Nikki, talk about it, and give us back their input. There could be some great synergies that come out of that, but you don't know because there's no specifics in here. So this is not a guiding principle. It's specific marching orders. So that's the one issue that I have and why I'm not gonna support this motion. I think this needs to just be put over. It doesn't start until the fiscal year 2021. There's an opportunity to honor everybody's input who may be impacted by whatever's gonna come from this plan. It's unclear to me. So I'm also concerned about that there's no budget projections in this plan. There's obviously budget implications, but we're adopting something and saying, well, the action plan's gonna come later with all these dollars attached to it. And we may or may not see whether we can fit that into our budget. Well, I think that that's putting the cart before the horse. I think you need to have some sense of what the expenses are going to be before you adopt it. Have staff spend all the time developing now these concepts which have monetary costs to our general fund and have it come back and us realize, oh, my word, we have many other priorities we can't possibly approve. These additional staff, either in public works or parts and wrecks, or if we have a downturn, I just heard that about them all being shut down, we're gonna have significant budgetary constraints over the next few years. But we're adopting a plan that is going to impose additional costs on us without us even knowing what those costs are going to be. So it seems to me worthwhile to spend the time to study it a little bit further. I don't see the need to rush into this plan at this point. And I think it should be fleshed out a little bit more. And so I'll just leave it at that. And with that, I'm not gonna support the current motion. We have one more council member who hasn't spoken yet and then we'll come back around. Thank you. Vice Mayor Burke. Thank you. You know, I appreciate everyone's input so far, I think I'm actually in agreement with council member's story on this one that they're all stakeholders should be talked with before being included in a plan. I think it's really important that we receive, they receive that kind of opportunity. I believe in plans. I think it's a great idea. We're in dire need of something like this, but the one element that's missing here is receiving feedback from this group. Council member Batur made a really exceptional point that we are the leading force in this. We are the ones who make the decisions and everything comes to us. But with that aside, I think that this group should be given an opportunity to give their input because they're clearly laid out in here. What does that mean to them? You've had that public works and the police department had that opportunity and it would only be fair. In regards to the budgetary piece of it, plans are plans. I think it's a five year plan and a lot can happen and that would be a hard piece to really capture. So I don't necessarily think that that's necessary to add on to a five year kind of visionary strategic plan. But what I would like to see come back possibly from staff is to examine shifting the dedicated children's fund under the umbrella of the parks and rec department and how that could possibly offset some of those costs. We're already funding early education and youth programs that this could be a way to mitigate some of those incurring costs that could be under that program. So not necessarily that we can tie that in but at a later time or in addition to, maybe we can see that happen. That's, and I want to be clear that that's not just the plans. The current funding that you guys have, this is to enhance and to create additional program that we see in this plan. So I'm not in, I would like to see this come back to us. That would be my request here. Are you making a substitute motion? Yeah, if we can have this plan come back after you receive feedback from the Arts and Culture Commission. I'll sort them out. You already seconded the first motion. I don't believe you can second the second motion, correct? I'll second it then. Okay, so we have an initial motion and a second. We have a substitute motion and a second. Also on the floor, still following procedure as of now. Roles of, okay. I have a question. Yes. So my question was going to be for Nikki. How would you think of putting this off and reaching out to an expanded group of stakeholders, specifically the Arts and Cultural Group? Well, so I feel like that ultimately the plan is the intent is for me to start that work, right? I guess they were not part of the core team, but there was communication about those events. And what I would do if this was approved, ultimately what I would do is begin that works, reach out, talk about this process, evaluate what makes the most sense for the city and the recreation division. So I feel like that that work, the intent of that work is what would happen one way or another. I have another question, city manager. So ultimately we approve whatever happens in this city, including the budget. We have a recreation budget. So if there's anything new that comes out of the strategic plan, it's going to be proposed in that budget. Is that correct? Yeah, I think that's a fair characterization. Okay. The other question is the city council has approved art and cultural events and there's a whole list of events done by the chamber and events done by the BI in the foundation. So these things have already been approved. I don't know anything about that we keep re-approving them every year. What's the process? It seems to me that they've been going on forever in a sense, you know, how do we deal with that? So I'm going to answer your question in two parts. The first one is, you know, I guess, I guess I think a key thing for us all to understand is, and you know, it may just be a question of wording I think in this policy is, this policy isn't proposing to do anything, this policy or this strategic plan when we're talking about these new collaborations, anything we're not already doing. So this is basically taking, you know, we have a person in the city manager's department who provides support to art and cultural. Maybe they should live in recreation. We have a person in the police department who oversees and quarterbacks the special event permits. Maybe that should live in recreation. So this isn't a question of doing something new. It's a question of kind of where we put the bodies and how we organize them to provide the best overall capacity and support for those different entities. So this isn't a question of recreation is going to like take over the old begonia festival and organize it, that's not at all, just so we're clear about what we're talking about. To go back and answer your question a little bit more forcefully or directly, you asked about this history of the special events. So special events come in two flavors. We have the minor special events, which staff can approve. And those are relatively small events that have fewer attendees. And then we have the majors and those are all the events that we know. The majors, if they don't have changes can be re-approved by staff every year, year to year. We do an annual report in November. We summarize, here's what happened this year. And then at that point council members can say and we identify if there was any issues with the special events at that point, then you can pull a special event and say, you know, fireworks this year were a real problem. We have to take a harder look at that special event permit at which point it would come back to you. And then any new major special event would come through council. Yeah, so ultimately it's up to us. And as far as I'm concerned right now, is it true that these events are standing fine? If there's any changes, you'll come back to the city council. That's correct. Okay, so I want to give my faith to the process here. And I fully appreciate the effort and I have total faith that it will be carried out. I do not think that this is a city that's going to ignore the other aspects that are strategic partners in our community. And I think this program is going to start reaching out to all of them to try to see how they fit in. But on the other hand, I go with the sentiment of Sam in event. If we take a period of time to reach out to the art and cultural and the other groups that are putting on events in this city, would that hurt this process? Would this be something that would dampen the effort? Do you feel that it would have benefit that you could incorporate into your strategic plan and reflect some of the issues that might come up? Okay. Yeah, sure. I think the intent of that work is to get that piece done. So, yeah. Okay. So what was the substitute motion? Post-pone the adoption of the strategic plan until it has been presented to the Arts and Cultural Commission. I'd like to add an amendment to that. And that's it. And there was a piece about the youth funders. That's up. We'll come back with that. Yeah, they'll come back, yeah. Okay. So I'd like a timeline on this. A question of clarification. Can an amendment be made to a motion that is already seconded a different motion? Yes, it can be a friendly amendment. So the person who made the original motion would have to agree to the amendment. You made the substitute motion. The person who made it. Right, so would your amendment be to the, it would be to the substitute motion, right? Right, so Vice Mayor Brooks would need to accept the friendly amendment. I assume that's what you're offering is a friendly amendment to the substitute motion. We would then vote on, if that's accepted, we would vote on the substitute motion with the amendment. If it's not accepted, we would vote on the substitute motion with that. Well, if it's not accepting, you wanted to make another substitute motion. We might vote on that. We vote last motion to first. Okay, thank you. So, I have one. You know we have three motions on the floor before you need to start voting, so. Let's just stick with who, guys. Let's just stick with who. We're getting there. I hear what you're saying, Jacques, and I too would like to see it come back as quickly as possible. I don't set the agenda, our Mayor does, but I'd love, I mean, I'm sure Nikki will be on the phone as soon as possible with the Arts and Cultural Commission to have that discussion. So, you bet, with two months? I don't want to set a time because I don't set the agenda. I don't think I'm, I don't know what's coming up on the agenda, but I would favor it coming back. I think Art and Cultural's meeting in April, so I think it would probably be either second April or a May meeting that we could bring it back up. Okay. Yeah, so I don't. We actually have a meeting March 10th. Okay. No, and we have a retreat. Has that been scheduled lately? One second. The retreat's been scheduled. It was a request to put it on the April agenda by someone who wasn't going to be, I said we'd put it on a future agenda. Someone had requested it be April because they were not going to be in attendance. Okay. And that's the only reason it happened. And I do want to make it clear. It was my oversight, not bringing it to the Art and Cultural Commission. We actually had a representative, and I just didn't do that. And let me be clear that I'm not asking Nikki to go to Arts and, and they get to just say, I don't want to be part of this. I want to be clear that this is just presentation to them, receive some feedback, some clarity on, on what this is. Because again, I'm fully behind this, this plan. I think we just have to do our due diligence and give them an opportunity to be presented with the information since they're in, in it. So I just want to be clear about that. Okay. Well, I, I'd like a time definite and Larry, can you suggest? Well, so most likely if it's approved, it'll be, it'll be discussed at the April meeting, which is the second Tuesday. I don't have that date. Okay. Two months. Yes. Okay. It's not going to be a March meeting. There is. March 10th. That was very interesting. It's not going to be there and asked, asked it to be postponed. Okay. Before we move forward, I just want to, I just want to acknowledge first, have you accepted or not the amendment to your motion, to your substitute motion? No. I need, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So there's no motion. Okay. We're still, that's fine. Then we're still in discussion and council member Botchorf has been waiting patiently to have an opportunity to speak while we've all been kind of going back and forth. So I'm going to ask us to, to come to him now and then we will continue our discussion. So unusual for him to hold himself. We're back. What's going on here? I just had a question. Take a cue. Of councilman's story and that is, who do you consider stakeholders in this situation? You said we want to reach out to stakeholders. Obviously, Art and Colts Commission is one. Who else do you consider stakeholders? The only one, well, there, there are many stakeholders referenced in this. Many of them were part of the 14th. So they had an opportunity to participate. The Art and Cultural Commission, I view to be the key stakeholder which did not have an opportunity as a group to participate. And this seems to have a major impact on them. So to me, that's the one I'm concerned about. Now the other, I mean, the two other that are referenced are Public Works and the police department, but those are internal affairs of the city. The city manager can coordinate the most efficient way among all the departments about how they should be organized, how they should be delivered. And I don't necessarily receive that that needs to have a policy, strategic plan. So now, I would normally maybe like to hear from the police chief about his feelings about this. But I assume that the city manager is gonna be representing his interests. He's not here tonight. And as well, then he's representing the interests of Public Works. So the key stakeholders who are community individuals who are impacted by this, that's the piece I think they need to have an opportunity to hear this and to be able to at least be introduced to it to, and maybe they will have all come together and realize that there can be some great benefits here that they will embrace. But I think there needs to be an opportunity for that to happen. I'd just like to make a comment like that, thank you. Sam, thank you for that position because I need to understand that. And I think what, well, again, what we come down to is a fundamental disagreement here on philosophy. And the number one thing I wanna make clear here is this is not an attack on the Art and Cultural Commission. This is about an organizational chart is really all this is about. This is the city manager meeting with his staff that being Public Works, community development, all of his staff to come out. How do we run this city better? And I'm sure that that Nikki just didn't come to us and say, this is a plan that I wanna do because I came up with it all my own. This is probably something that came up in a staff meeting that came as a presentation about recreation needs to expand. We need to bring our city together so that things function more smoothly. It was definitely awkward for the police department to run events. And I believe this is a plan for us to move forward. That's why it's a strategic plan. And following when you come up with something where it's gonna go, that's when you talk to people and say, how are we gonna do it? How are you gonna be impacted? But I wanna remind the council that eight months ago, this council abolished the parking commission without even talking to them. This is a commission that serves for the city. I didn't do that. Okay, then 12 months ago or 16 months ago, this council abolished the parking commission without talking to them. Commissions are valuable to the city and they serve a function. And I do not wanna minimize. I'm gonna tell you ri