w a recovery home um I think this town really needs something like that where um we're not just fighting homeless against the community because we're all one we're all one um but coming up with a solution and so um I'm living there for the last two years um because of um the pandemic and um um the fire and stuff like that I kind of found myself you know right there in the middle and since um kind of having that not as an occupation but as a lifestyle of you know bringing recovery or bringing um hope back to people um that's kind of what I've been doing for the last two years and it's been you know slow but surely um um baby steps but uh people are picking up their own trash right now when last two years ago that they just were laying in their own filth um now that's not every individual but it's one out of 10 and when you know that's that's that's remarkable to for me to look at um so um I was just trying to address if there are some vacant homes that are you know about to be foreclosed or whatever maybe we can get them donated or or I mean there's there's I'm sure we all can come up with some solutions and I'm just going to let you guys know that I can be an applicant or an avenue um um because there are people um I can have at least 150 people backing me that um that are trustworthy um that can help you know bring this community back to where it's supposed to be we're a strong community we have a lot of tourists that come and and we're in the public eye so um we can we can show them that you know it can be as possible and there's lots of opportunity thank you so much our next member of the public is virtual phone number ending in one seven zero five go ahead and press star six hi can you hear me yes hi there great um well this is Eric robergen I appreciate staff's hard work and the fiscal impact before we also appreciate council member browns um desire to get more accurate cost estimate but I like um carol polemus I'm disappointed that staff didn't re-examine the revenue estimates I think we need accurate information on both costs and revenues and um there's some confusion confusion between what an exemption means and what a house is doesn't have to pay the tax if it's occupied or in use for at least 120 days exemptions are for houses that are not in use for 120 days but they still qualify for some sort of exemption so what staff is they started out with um all the homeowners exemptions they looked at the residential rental inspection program they looked at the short term regent short term rental registry and that they from that they got a number of potential of 1069 houses that were not in use for 120 days and from that they said well they estimated arbitrarily in my view 34 percent to 66 percent um would qualify for one of the exemptions even though they weren't in use for 120 days now the problem with that is 1069 homes there there are not by by their methodology there's going to be a lot more homes that are actually in use for 120 days that aren't captured they for one reason or another the homeowner didn't take the exemption they're rentals but they're not actually on the rental inspection program um whatever there's a whole bunch of different reasons in my limited time I can't go through them I did write you a pretty extensive letter so I hope you can look at that I think it's really important that the public and council understand numbers accurately and I I get that the proponents want to get they don't want excessive costs in the fiscal impact report and that's that's good that's appropriate but we also don't want to have we might have a realistic estimate of both costs and revenues and I really feel like you got maybe council got a little bit on staff case because some you know the proponents really wanted to lower that cost number down but I think it's really important that you look at both of them both the cost and revenues so um one point of comparison is Vancouver a city a major international city that has a population 10 times the size of Santa Cruz the last year their official report they had about 1600 homes that were paying their tax I think it's really unrealistic that you know we're going to have anywhere near the number I mean we're against the size of Vancouver and we don't have the international traffic that Vancouver does so just that as a benchmark if we were anything like Vancouver we'd have 160 empty homes so you know I really thank you the time the timer has gone to take a closer look at the revenue side as well thank you very much thank you so much for your comment are there any other members in person that would like to speak to the empty the revised fiscal impact report for the empty home tax initiative petition okay we have one more hand virtually uh I see the name I am watching you go ahead and press star hello but the ODS empty homes tax seeks to impose a so-called tax actually a huge fine by the approval of a majority of people who aren't affected by it imposed on a tiny minority that hasn't done anything wrong in a democratic republic minority rights should be protected against the unaffected majority but the backers of this aren't really democrats they seem like socialists and want to be communists we didn't get the message of the people when that other vicious attack on private property measure and miserably failed the sure sign of a bad government is that it is more concerned with politics than running a city delivering quality efficient service to the people that a city council member is involved is a stain on the city and a betrayal of american principles as I said in my letter to the sentinel oakland is regarded as the seventh worst-run city of america and this measure is more extreme read i want to be bullied totalitarian state than theirs whatever you write as a financial analysis be sure to make it crystal clear this can cost the city and perpetuity for sure if when revenue doesn't provide a five percent of the cost i suspect these few second home people aren't that dumb and will figure out ways to avoid paying an astronaut six thousand dollar fine even if the properties are rented out i suspect it won't be to a single proponent of this measure because i doubt any of them can afford the rent on these types of second homes and those who can have choices that are not exactly street walking any money generated will benefit the few probably subsidizing attracting poverty and increase the government dependence trap which is always a trade-off downside of a welfare state it's communist in nature a system that has always led to misery and more poverty it is also pure theft i don't take the homeowner exemption myself your revenue estimates for sure i suspect are off by one home anyway thanks thank you for your comment uh our next that there's a phone number ending in six nine five nine go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi there hi this is lin renshaw with santa cruise together dot com we are running the campaign to oppose measure n please go to our website to get a yard sign and learn more about this i want to talk broadly about this measure n it's intrusive extreme and punitive it creates new bureaucracy and cost it won't lower rents or reduce homelessness measure n will invade the privacy of every homeowner it requires every homeowner to register with a government agency measure n creates a public registry of every homeowner and enables random audits only by registering and proving that you live in your home can you avoid a six thousand per household tax even residents living at home will face penalties if they mistakenly register late or fail to comply with random audits by the new requirements every day you're late you're liable for misdemeanor and a thousand dollar fine these criminal penalties are extreme and wrong addressing affordable housing and santa cruise needs to be done and it isn't easy this device of measure won't build meaningful new housing and will settle us forever with something that won't work please everyone listening vote no on this poorly conceived household tax it creates more problems than it could ever solve thank you okay it looks like that concludes our public comment for this report i'm just making sure those are all the attendees with their hands raised yes okay um so at this time thank you in addition to the public comment we heard just now five emails were sent to city council at city of santa cruise dot com on this item and thank you to marisa gomez assistant director of finance um we received the revised fiscal impact report that was presented and uh are there any other comments uh from council go ahead the council member brown so i had a question are we at being asked to take action to receive this report there's no action there's no action okay um so i just wanted to clarify that because i i think that as i've said the um numbers on the costs could be reduced considerably and realistically um but i i i want to ask a question now because this keeps coming up and it's not actually um wasn't on the agenda but because a member of the public spoke to it and i've heard that argument made um in the next door universe and in the santa cruise together universe um about the um public registry the invasive public registry and so i wanted to try to get a sense um i know that wasn't really this was a fiscal report um but based upon your and maybe tony this is a question for you sorry to put you on the spot um nothing in this ordinance the way it was written um suggests the establishment of a registry and so i'm just wondering if you can help me understand where that that um concern that's being expressed or asserted as fact is coming from my understanding is that there's an annual report that homeowners are required to submit i'm not sure what the registry reference is to well a member of the public said this will create an invasive expensive um inappropriate i can't remember the short standard word she uses um registry um and there's no registry i mean i was involved in writing this um and i'm very proud to have done that because i tried to make it happen through the city council and if that had happened some of you all may have had more of a chance to be involved in the crafting of it um but that didn't happen and so we went out to the community um and sorry i just had to say that um but i want to get clear about this now with the i mean while we have an opportunity to speak about it on the public agenda because my understanding was a registry you know when when uh and i'm also i'm very much supportive of that but that's not what we're talking about here and when uh two council members current council members um previous councils were trying to work on a registry the costs were considerably higher than that so i guess i'm just really trying to understand um if we if you could if that is your interpretation or not i'm not familiar of with a with a registry component of the measure there's an annual declaration that will be maintained on file by the city and some database but um not not to my knowledge a publicly available registry and i think we would consider that um similar to the way we consider sales tax data and other data that thank you generally not be there thank you just wanted to make that clear i will just say it's six o'clock we have a time certain oral communications so um we can wrap up this item and okay thank you very much for that report again and i see marisol i don't know if you're still there thank you very much for the presentation thank you okay good evening and welcome to our six p.m. session of the august 23rd 2022 meeting of the santa cruz city council and i would like to ask the clerk to please call roll councilmember calentary johnson hi oh here here sorry hi i'm here golder here Cummings here brown here meyers here vice mayor watkins here and mayor brunner present thank you uh okay so at this time uh we will go into oral communications and then we will have a short break before our final item so oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on today's agenda for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if you wish to comment during oral communications now is the time to call in an instruction should be coming up on your screen oral communication is an opportunity to speak to us on items not listed on today's agenda and you can raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature in the webinar controls on your computer you will then have two minutes to speak members of the public who are joining us here in person today please line up to the right side of the dais you will have two minutes to speak and we ask that you sign in to ensure correct spelling of your name at the front of the podium however it's not required please remember this is a time for council to hear from the public we are not able to engage in dialogue with each member of the public but when we are able we will address questions after oral communications at this time i will look to our virtual attendees if there are any hands raised and i'm not seeing any i see one okay i will go ahead and start with the name i am watching you okay the uh the statements council made justifying the proposed hire hotel and vacation rental taxes last meeting when reexamined are not just weak but they're lame like two broken legs you said the city's taxes have always followed the county taxes of course this is irrelevant as hotel taxes vary by city from three to fourteen percent around the state vary within the county and the rates in reality are paired with what the market can bear without burdening businesses pricing in a competitive landscape who takes the risk not you but our businesses do if it turns away any tourist customers whatsoever uh no to you saying it's only tourists that will pay also would you be lowering rates if the county did insert the lap track here you said it's needed to make a level playing field whose playing field our hotels could be enjoying a competitive advantage over the county with relatively lower rates and installing a permanent tax disadvantage to short term vacation rentals compared to hotels at the highest rate in the state is the opposite of a level playing field you said it's been 10 years since hotel taxes were raised taxes and fees based on price unlike many forms of revenue are 100 percent inflation protected when sales or prices go up tax revenue goes up and it has a lot how nice for you meaning the city i ask how often do you think taxes should go up what like every couple years perhaps the socialist and communist would say yes because for them the governor's never big enough or expensive enough thanks thank you i will alternate here and invite the next person here in person to come to the podium thank you hi i'm pat colby um i got a legal from the senior lead attorney at the national law center on homelessness she's like one of the experts that gets quoted in big media name is tristia bellman i work closely with her and i've talked in fact my brother and i got her connected with lily graham of disability rights and the northern california aclu so i'm sure you're going to be hearing from them soon um the reading of martin versus boise which too bad the city attorney isn't here because he's giving you improper information says that it has to be legal indoor shelter to be exempt from being from violating martin versus boise it has to have proper facilities that does not include porta potties um and then the next word i'm going to say that i haven't well two words that i haven't heard anybody bring up because i don't play in the local arena here i go to the feds and i go to the big media and i go to agencies like tristia bellman's national law center on homelessness because they actually have the right data and they actually have the facts um civil rights those camps that you're proposing violate so many civil rights i can't even list them um locking people in and not allowing them the right to move freely is a major civil right i know that people that are in housing would never allow you to do that to them that's one civil right that's an example um also locking people there should be different camps for different levels of people unlike um miss mires said not every homeless person and i'm so tired of reading this is a drug addict or a mentally ill person those are the minority of the homeless population i was homeless from 2016 to um 2019 and i saw what the homeless population made up of and my facts and my observations go hand in hand with the national law center on homelessness thank you for your comment our next member of the public has phone number ending in 1705 go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi council this is eric roug begins i'm um i wanted to address the issue of the hilltop apartments i am a uh named party to the 2008 conference of settlement agreements which settled all litigation between the city of the county and private citizens against the ucsc regarding the long range the 2005 long range development program one of the provisions of that settlement agreement was that the university was required to notify the city and county before purchasing any in-town properties um and apparently with the regents purchase of the hilltop apartments they fail to do that so i believe they're likely in violation of the 2008 csa also it looks like they're violating the tenants rights in various ways such as um constructive evictions and uh which you could ask the city attorney what that means but they're not they're effectively forcing people out by you know making unreasonable demands on them um potentially violating the city's relocation ordinance violating the tenants right to um the quiet entitlement and various other things also i'd like to say the university as a whole all this controversy you know what kind of the infighting within the community um about the high cost of housing the high cost of rental housing nothing the city can do is going to actually move the needle significantly the only thing that can move the needle is getting ucsc to drastically lower its rental prices on campus and what they've effectively done is divide the city divert attention away from their own culpability for example if you look at the current housing prices on campus for apartments not dorms so this is housing only not food they're currently charging $1,256 per person per month for four students to share a room in an apartment that's $5,000 for a single room in an apartment that has more rooms outrageous i want you to i'd like the city council to actually take action so that um number one whatever hilltop uc has violated with hilltop get your legal department to look into that and also Eric thank you your timer is up our next member of the public is here in person go ahead and speak yeah my name is Keith McHenry and i just got done visiting with people waiting for the van to go up to the armory and to overlook or whatever the new name is and um they say there's virtually no room there already right now um that makes sense uh as pat had said the really martin versus poise makes it clear that it should be indoor space paul lee pointed out to me paul lee loved the paul lee loft in case you had heard of that place um the uh says it really all the 5,000 people living outside in santa criss county um would be required to be to not be in violation of martin versus poise to be placed inside shelter space adequate shelter space the other thing that i hear constantly is people um are kicked out of the shelters uh one friend paula she uh i was hoping she would make it here but she's not feeling well she lost all of her belongings when she went to help her mom she came back the uh shelter threw everything away we had to give her a new tent and everything to set her back up i just ran into a woman about two hours ago at new leaf who asked me where the women's shelter was she wanted to move and go inside to a shelter you call the number that you have provided uh in your letter to the community there were no shelter space there there never is any shelter space so i gave her another i gave her a pup tent and i sent her to the you know like to try to camp somewhere safely near the levy but as you know the police will remove her to the benchlands which is now it's it's incredibly beautiful community there but it is also at least 350 people maybe up to 500 and so they're uh um you know any plans to do any we've had two years to house everybody nothing has happened in those two years and we have millions and millions of dollars has just got pissed away into space thank you thank you for your comment our next uh member of the public is here in person welcome hello um my name is jack ronald rigas and i just wanted to address um uh in march of 2020 i was in austin texas um i had moved there two years prior to get away from a toxic relationship that kind of followed me and bit me in the butt because uh the person i was getting away from falsely accused me of something and because it was domestic um the charges were dropped but the case stayed and the domestic or um the department or uh the district attorney came and got me i guess pretty much they they they ramped the district attorney they went with it so i had a two-year-old warrant um that came on march of 2020 i guess there was a um upgrade anyways i got a knock on my door they showed me a warrant that was two years old they housed me in austin in travis county uh just to send me um for 14 days and the extra dotting me to santa clara just to release me homeless transient so they took me and they made me homeless and then that was a monday and that saturday it was shelter in place so for for a whole week i tried to comply and then then there was this pandemic and i was forced outside nowhere to go no one answering the phone and they told me to build a shelter so i came home i came to santa cruz and i built a shelter and then i got a bulldozed and and lost a little bit of remains of um of what i had that was brought with me to california but everything went out the door the other day um we were fortunate to have electricity down in the bench land um and sometimes we have to run extension courts which are very expensive i've seen um uh four members in uniform whether police or fire department i believe it was police but they uh they cut um our extension court saying it was a fire safety because it was in the fire um lane but then they left exposed wires um again i'm not trying to fight back and forth i'm trying to come up with a solution um those vacant houses um the the ucsc students um we can have um i mean the clubhouse itself in a place in capitol we can have hostels you know and still um um offer um other sources to the homeless to like work on board and stuff like that i mean there's lots i mean i have lots of ideas on what's going on it's been two years i've been sitting here at home and then making a home with this in this community and i mean i know you guys are eager and they're eager so i just thank you you thank you our next member of the public here in person hi welcome my name is elise casby i'm here today to speak about the really um sad and quite tragic consequences of um the extreme measures that the elites are imposing on our economy and our republic here in santa cruz the situation is really grave um we have almost nothing left of our democracy we have a situation where a sizable number of our long-term residents are being impoverished they're being hunted down by police they're being left to die outside um something just happened to my mic but this is this is a very serious time for those who are concerned about things like the slavery trade that happened this the um the eventual uh well the situation that happened for decades and years and years and years that led to the holocaust we are watching the same thing happen we have people who are very very poor without wages that can sustain any kind of rental housing really any kind of stability and we are watching the elites essentially dance on these people's bodies and graves i have been watching it at this city council for so long the shutdown of the democracy is not just things like the legal but illicit recall that took a fairly elected progressive majority and and eradicated it and supplanted it with a far right group but the use of big money the use of lies such as we're used against our fairly elected people and the vicious use of demonizing poor people is what is leading this country to ruin and you all are part of that problem thank you for your comment our next member of the public here in person members of the community including the city council but most particularly the people who bothered to show up here today thank you for showing up and i'm thank you for being concerned about the folks who can't show up in the benchlands who are there um i'm i spoke earlier about the benchlands issue and hope other people will pick up from where i left off or just give your own feelings about well what do you think should be happening and what isn't happening and how the council can help this is a different item than an agenda item if you're looking for resources that people in the benchlands need what do they need what should this council be giving them that they aren't doing and that hasn't been passed this afternoon that's the question i have and i think that perhaps people might want to talk about it particularly people who live in the benchlands this is the body that can make those decisions if not today then in two weeks or they can authorize the city manager to take action or perhaps he's sitting right there he's the fellow next to the man in the business suit he can make those decisions he seems to be interested in essentially deporting the entire benchlands segment by segment without providing any specifics about where people are supposed to be able to go or how many people are actually there now we've heard estimates from keith but no estimates specifically clearly from any kind of census in the benchlands so that's a concern i have and i hope that people will talk about it because i'm pretty much talked out i've distributed a flyer which i'll give the city council which has to do with their policing or should we say they're unleashing the police which you're going to be finding happening in the benchlands soon if only in a very controlled way because i'm told by mark evilleth our our good bailiff here that the police department is understaffed if that helps to stop the benchlands removal i say that's a good thing thank you for listening everybody if you did and my apologies for subjecting this to you if you already know about it okay um hold on one second please our next member of the public for oral communications is virtual and i see phone number ending in six eight seven one go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself can you hear me yes welcome okay dairies most of me in here just a couple of quick things as a landlord strictly one that rents to a lot of section eight tenants i'm pretty concerned about the what i consider redundant or duplicitous excessive application fees that tenants have to pay to various property management companies or basically the same credit report for background uh report i i'm voicing you're concerned i don't have a crisp solution i just think that there should be some kind of clearinghouse we should look at perhaps with the county some type of means of for anybody that has had college uh fit that apply to college there's something called the common app for college i'd like to see something like a common app for a rental application to reduce these you know make these fees more manageable some of these folks are spending two hundred three hundred dollars in pursuit of an apartment and like again for lower income section eight folks that's just that's just um out of reach second unrelated uh to this is i just recently came aware of a program called cat c-a-t-t at the oakland community um assessment and transport team i think this is a very similar program to the cahoots in uti in oregon one of my tenants uh is took a job as the emt in oakland and she has relayed some of the successes of this program there's basically uh emt with a social worker uh crisis worker and they travel around the city in these nimble little suv to respond to um suicide crisis alcohol i mean a lot of this a lot of these various problems that we have in this town i'd love to see something like that to establish thank you thank you for your comment our next member here in person thank you for your patience hi my name is lee miers i'm a 45 year resident give or take a year or so um working poor most of the time i i want to speak because keep mchenry brought up the fact that he was uh speaking to people waiting for the bus to go up to dale aviega park in the shelter um i want to speak to that because i've been working poor i've done a lot of camping i've consistently and forever been able unable to use any of your shelters the idea of getting people to line up at three o'clock in the afternoon giving up their lives giving up what may be the only part-time job they have as obscene and in the original bell versus boy z case that became martin versus boy z the department of justice issued a friend of the court brief on behalf of the uh plaintiff homeless people part of the document basically reiterated what um the plaintiffs were saying that dude you don't have any place for us to sleep it's a human need we got to sleep sometime and the second part of the document which is what really trashed everybody's camping laws was they spelled out exactly what a shelter isn't and one of the specific things that they listed was special access is unacceptable i come from new york originally new york at least in the barry has real shelters you can walk in 24 7365 there's a bed waiting for you maybe a meal or something like that the idea of having to give up your life to go to a shelter panders to institutionalization and i resent it thank you for your next member of the public is here in person for oral communications welcome i'd like to say that i second the um the caller before that brought up the excessive fees for lease renewal personally paid $125 to renew my lease this year i paid $125 just to renew my lease this year which i thought was excessive i can't really see how they can justify that about my reason for being here today is i'd like to just support ksc a radio that's given me a lot of um as an older adult it's been like a second family to me having the the friendship of the hosts at the radio station the company of am radio their night and day including news and current events and shows that i can call in to and participate with um it's really meant a lot to me um i just don't know what i do with that to be honest uh living alone being being single person and um i know that they're up for consideration because they're having problems regarding this extended um patio concrete patio around their building that is impending impeding on the natural wildlife and that's up for consideration about being removed i just want to support i'm hoping the city council will perhaps make the right decision allow leniency in this their decision making and consider um the great service this radio station offers to us and hopefully won't terminate um our enjoyment of them in the future thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public um is here in person welcome um hello my name is angela flin and i um have been homeless over the years quite a few times i've been homeless for environmental reasons which um i am electro sensitive i have a very hard time if there's a lot of wireless radiation many people while it's estimated anywhere 3 to 30 percent of the population have this condition many of them are homeless because we cannot tolerate living in houses that have too much wireless shelters also are not an option for us because of this i've also been homeless because of dangerous living situations very nice neighborhoods nice homes but very unstable people on drugs i've had to flee those situations and been homeless because of that um i have not lived at the bench lens i do walk by there and it seems like a pretty calm safe location i have one homeless friend back in um venice beach and he calls the typical government response to homelessness whackable basically a homeless camp opens up it gets whacked down opens up over here gets whacked down opens up over here gets whacked down i mean having the bench lands is not an ideal situation but it has provided a lot of stability for a lot of homeless people and given them opportunities to have community and relationships i would love to see more services provided i mean showers they're at site is so crucial for people to be able to get clean every day you can't go to a job interview if you're not clean it's just you're not presentable there's so many blocks for being homeless and you know i've had to struggle through many of these um i'm not here to really offer the solution because i don't have it but there is one thing that i borrow this sign that i saw on the windowsill do you feel loved and i feel like the bench lands provides that feeling for many homeless people that is not something that thank you for your comment okay we are moving through oral communications and oral communications is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to us on any items that we're not on today's agenda hi welcome thank you good afternoon hey my name is amberlee and i've been living here for about six seven years now um i uh was born up north in mendicino and i've been homeless off and on for the last 15 years um i'm also a resident over at the benchlands and since i've been here in sanacruz i've had many many different homes that have been either full dosed i have to move constantly and it's really nice to have a stable place you know and i think for anybody a stable place to get up in the morning and have your things is i mean throughout the whole day it i'm sorry i'm having a hard time take your time it provides a means for the whole day to be productive if you don't have a stable spot you know you're not as productive and right now the bench lands every single day i'm worried that i'm going to get kicked out within a day or two i'm a gardener you know and so i like to plant things like this and i've done that in each of my homes and um and it's okay i just want to mention as well that you know no matter if the people you know the home use community are many there are drug addicts there are non drug addicts there are you know people that have mental illness i would just really appreciate you guys if you could maybe um have a place for us to stay you know and um thank you okay we have oh okay thank you hi there my name is Mike White side and i'm originally from Lodi i own four pieces of property in Lodi and i'm a landlord but here in Santa Cruz i don't think a police officer could afford a home in this this area i mean a new police officer comes to work in Santa Cruz you can't afford a home i don't know if all of you can afford a home i know i'm not able to but the reason i'm here is a horrible divorce the Vince lands gives me some type of uh security i mean i know there's bad people down here good but then probably every one of your guys's neighbor excuse me one of your every one of your guys's neighborhood there's a bad person around we i might have a few more neighbors than you know bad than you do but um it's really all we i have right now and i'm sure most of these people here too um you've got to open your eyes so nobody not too many in it and within 10 years i don't think they're going to be too many people from this maybe even country owning in Santa Cruz because of the price you guys's price is like i looked in the paper the other day and it was like 1.6 for a house at five where i'm at i mean it's outrageously priced how are we ever supposed to get ahead and then this go to a camp and you can't go you can't leave for more than three days a month how are we supposed to get a job a job when am i supposed to work two hours then get back to this camp because i can maybe get a hot dog or something you know that's just you're being unfair you're being unrealistic i mean if your own policemen can't afford a home in our area how are one of us going to that's all i have to say thank you thank you okay um so that concludes oral communications and um council members um we can respond to um or ask questions at this time um there were a couple comments brought up um that were related to an earlier report on the agenda um some of those questions were answered and um for the um the the person who spoke from Mendocino um hopefully there's connection we have outreach workers out we received report and their outreach workers out there connecting county has a mobile office out there connecting with everyone for an individualized rehousing plan so i hope that you're able to make those connections and feel free to contact our homelessness response team if those connections are not happening um but we do have shelter spaces that already people have been um offered and are occupying and um we have more that are coming um up at the armory in addition to what's already there so um are there any council members that were there any other items uh council member coming i did have a question um one i'm just curious for and i should have asked this earlier but um since we were more talking about financials i have been getting contacted by another person who's experiencing homelessness and they want to know like what's the best way for them to get connected to resources because they do have access to resources can you stop your outburst please you've had your time to speak excuse me it's not your time to speak you're silencing my voice and i don't appreciate that please leave it's time for you to leave i'm asking i'm asking you to leave can you please remove him thank you okay so can you rephrase your question please it's just one of what resources we can yeah thank you for that question council member comes okay thank you we will be taking a break but i'm trying to get this question answered and then we will we've been in city business since uh 10 a.m this morning i understand there are folks here for the next item so but we do need to take a 20 minute break um before the next item so that information is available on our city's website through the free guide as well as contacting uh larry and walley our homelessness response team and we also have an outreach team that's on the ground every day and available uh to to help connect folks with resources thank you for the question thank you without an answer and go ahead one more question go ahead and that's that's not related to that but a member of the public and tony were um stepped out at a moment mentioned that um in the 2008 comprehensive settlement agreement the ucsc was supposed to notify the city and county when purchasing any new properties in the city and i don't know if that happened or if there's any way we can kind of look into that as possible violation of the comprehensive settlement agreement i can look into that my gut reaction to that question is that the the comprehensive settlement agreement was superseded by the adoption of the 2021 lrdp and so it's no longer in effect but i can double check in on that and report back to the council thank you thank you okay at this time we will take a recess and we'll be back here at seven o'clock thank you okay is the city clerk ready thank you okay we are back from a short break thank you for your patience and waiting we are now on agenda item number 21 objective standards for members of the public for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from council we will then take public comments and return to council for deliberation if you are here in person when public time for public comment is you can line up to the right of the dais in addition to the public comment we will hear on this item 149 emails were sent to city council at city of santa cruise dot com and at this time i would like to welcome to the podium lee butler director of planning and community development i have sarah noisy and matt van also listed who i believe will be joining us virtually that's correct thank you welcome thank you very much and good evening mayor and council members and lee butler director of planning and community development and i'm very pleased to provide an introduction tonight to our package of objective standards for multifamily development including changes from planning public works and parks and recreation along with rezoning consistent with the general plan and some additional miscellaneous zoning code updates such as fence and accessory building regulations the long-awaited objective standards represent the culmination of nearly three years of work council authorized staff to seek grant funding for this in october of 2019 we secured that grant funding through the state selected a consultant and kicked off the project itself two years ago we've done a significant community outreach for this project which increased the amount of time the project took but made for a more inclusive process and better outcomes in terms of modifications that we made to the standards along the way in response to that community the planning profession is changing rapidly right now and for good reason inequities created and exacerbated by historic zoning principles have been known for decades and changes at the local and state levels bolstered by recognition of the issues at the national level are attempting to address those issues and while the challenges associated with inadequate housing production have been acute in california for some time the rest of the country is unfortunately seeing many of the same problems that we've been experiencing across our state and here in the region looking at the planning profession you don't have to go far to see that the national focus has shifted here are some of the national headlines from the american planning association just in the last month housing under production impacts majority of the us planners can lead the zoning reform movement how state judiciaries battled exclusionary zoning and the list goes on tonight our team presents a step in the right direction for addressing these issues the zoning reforms respond to recent state law changes they help ensure that we can maintain a high quality urban form as we grow they provide more certainty for the community developers staff and decision makers they promote more housing production and more housing choice through that higher degree of certainty without increasing density above what is currently allowed and i'm going to dwell here on that and a couple of comments that we have heard from the community that were in the materials that the council received so first i want to repeat the statement i made a moment ago the proposed changes allow no more development intensity than what is currently allowed this was commonly misunderstood in many of the comments that we received i realize this is a really confusing point for the community and that's very understandable someone can easily look at our zoning ordinance and say the zoning ordinance says that only 40 feet are allowed here and these changes are saying for example 55 feet so how is that the case that we're not increasing density as part of these proposals the answer is that state law requires cities to allow development intensity that's called for in the general plan and our zoning standards don't allow for that intensity so developers right now can disregard those standards they can come in and propose a height limit that is substantially taller than that 40 feet even though the zoning ordinance says 40 feet is the max so right now developers actually have broad discretion to make standards fit their projects instead of the other way around the projects fitting our standards as an example a developer can propose a project at the maximum intensity allowed by the general plan and show that they need for example 65 feet in height to accomplish the project and the city could have a hard time denying that project or reducing its size and one thing that these objective standards do is it sets our standards to where the building heights and setbacks are consistent with what is allowed by the current general plan based on careful analyses of hypothetical development projects those are the test fits that the planning commission discussed multiple times starting back on january 7th of 2021 and that were discussed with the council at the november 30th 2021 study session adding zoning standards that match what is actually allowed for a project increases transparency for all stakeholders the standards also provide the city with the ability to require varied roof forms building recesses high quality materials and various other design improvements things that we only have limited abilities to do under our current codes and regulations the proposed standards also incentivize conformance with the rules through a more streamlined process for fully more conforming projects and i want to dwell on this for a moment as well because there is a lot of confusion in the community related to this notably multifamily residential projects of any size have this exact same permit process right now administrative approvals in the rl and rm multifamily zoning districts that process has been in place since at least 1985 the proposal would apply the same process to mixed use and multifamily projects in commercial districts nothing in these changes would allow for or suggest a ministerial process a ministerial process is one that does not require a discretionary permit one that only requires a building permit and one that does not have the california environmental quality act apply what we have suggested is a administrative approval which is very different from a ministerial approval so i wanted to make that point clear as well and a small subset of projects could potentially have that administrative discretionary approval if they are fully conforming with the standards and if they don't meet one of the many other triggers for a public hearing those public those public hearing triggers include density bonus requests which nearly every single large project is proposing a density bonus why because just by the fact of meeting our inclusionary affordable housing standards that they have to meet they already qualify for a density bonus so nearly every single large project already is going to trigger a public hearing just by virtue of that density bonus request but there are other triggers as well a map any four sale units would trigger a public hearing also public hearing triggers include coastal permits land development permits historic alteration permits variances slope development permits and various other permit triggers so while this is an important piece to our work the procedural change associated with the administrative process is not really a large change and i want to also point out that even in that process if someone does choose to pursue that administrative process the community meeting procedures remain in place and that is a better forum frankly for getting community feedback and having community dialogue than a public hearing process where you've got a limited ability to have some of those conversations i'll also note that appeal opportunities remain in place so any administrative approved project can still be appealed to the planning commission and their decision can be appealed to the city council just as is the case with our current process in the rl and rm multifamily zoning districts the council and some community members may recall that we had this exact scenario play out at um 418 pennsylvania where we had an administrative administratively approved project it was appealed to the planning commission and then those three units ultimately were appealed to the city council so taking a step back again these changes represent one of many steps that are needed and many more or are forthcoming we have zoning reforms called for as part of the climate action plan that the council will consider next month and we'll be doing a deeper dive into how we can affirmatively further fair housing as part of our housing element update process that will that's kicking off now and that will certainly call for many additional policy reforms i also want to point out that just about every recommendation we have in this package tonight was supported by the planning commission with all commissioners expressing support for almost the entire package of changes as was done in the staff report our team will detail in their presentation the few items where the staff recommendation differs from that of the planning commission so at this point i will turn it over to our team who will walk you through the process we went through and some of the key standards that were developed our senior planner sarah noisy was the project manager for the objective standards and she did an excellent job working with the community and our consultants on this i want to send out a special thanks to her and our consultants urban planning partners who will be represented tonight by alissa chung and linette deus and our consulting urban designer christin hall who all did really great work on this project they'll also be joined by travis beck from parks and recreation and nathan win from public works who will be represented who will be presenting objective standards related to their respective roles and senior planner catherine donovan will also present a series of minors on ordinance amendments that were incorporating into the same package our principal planner matt van wa is here as well as various other staff members who are available for questions we have a lot of information to cover there are 80 slides please get comfortable we have this this is going to be over an hour of presentation from this point so that we can cover all of the information that is included in this package so i will turn it over to sarah thank you thank you lee um can everyone hear me yes thank you wonderful okay i will go ahead and share my screen right over here so lee just did a great job introducing our team um that's going to be presenting we're all going to be sharing the presentation to some degree tonight so um i'll start off by going through this agenda of our 80-ish slides and we'll start off with some background talking about the state law the council direction that brought us here today existing condition with the city's general plan and zoning ordinance that lee already sort of introduced for you then we'll get into the design and development standards for multi family housing which really is the core and the heart of this project what really drove us to bring all of these things together um then we'll talk about the development review process amendments which lee's introduced as well and really go through the details of how what is changing and what is not changing as part of the recommended proposal then we'll run through the mixed-use zoning zoning districts and other zone district amendments that are included um as well to the to the districts themselves that sort of to incorporate the objective design standards we'll address the planning commission recommendation then you'll hear from Nathan in public works and then travis about street trees um then kathryn will talk about our other zoning ordinance selenia zoning ordinance updates um and address environmental review and then i'll come back to wrap up with a conclusion talk about next steps and um present our staff recommendation so starting off with background so just broadly speaking this project was initiated so that our zoning ordinance the city could comply with the state law for housing development review which has greatly curtailed um the subjective process that we've been accustomed to using with our design permit um so our design review process that we have in place now just really can't function under the current state law in the way that it was designed and intended to so um the goal of this project was to bring our ordinance in line with the way that we're allowed to review projects and make sure that we can still have design standards in place we also have direction from the council to reconcile this mismatch between the general plan and the zoning ordinance and i'll explain more about that in a little minute we also have direction to not alter the pattern the land use pattern at this point in time um our last direction from the council was to um proceed with the zoning ordinance amendments and consider if there was any utility after this after we have these these amendments these zoning amendments in place that there was still um need or utility in pursuing an amendment to the general plan land use pattern um and then you know have objective review standards rather than relying on our subjective development review findings that we've had in the past so just to remind everyone the council direction to which we are responding at this point comes from October of 2019 to move forward with establishing mixed use zone districts and objective design standards for housing and embark on a very broad public outreach process and then in august of 2020 we also got direction to contract with urban planning partners upp to create these objective development standards and then to invite the planning commission to outreach events and incorporate updates to the planning commission so now i'm going to talk to you about how um the state law i'm sorry my cat is joining me um i'm going to talk about the state law um that brings us here to to sort of needing that direction and then i'm going to go through the our um community engagement process and our outreach process and show you um how that worked so um lee mentioned that there had been some changes to state law so they are there are two main bills that create the housing crisis act and the housing accountability act um and these have been updated they have been updated even at the beginning of 2022 and i think there and there's some more legislation in the pipeline that would make some further additional amendments to these um to these sections of the state government code so essentially um cities all over the state must allow the development of housing so parcels warehousing isn't allowed use they must allow housing to be developed the standards that we apply to that housing must allow for that full capacity of the property to be developed and that capacity is locked in as of january 1st of 2018 so whatever the planned capacity was on january 1st of 2018 that's the capacity the number of units that we have to accommodate on that site so um the state also addresses when there is a mismatch of zoning or general plan and in some cases the zoning might allow slightly more development or that in our case locally it's the general plan allows more development on certain parcels than the existing zoning um whichever is greater is the one that we have to accommodate so um subjective standards can't be used to limit the amount of housing um shall not reduce the intensity of land use and that reduction of intensity of land use would would include reductions to height density a floor area ratio which is a measure of total building volume or square footage relative to the square footage of a piece of property um or lot coverage or they could also reduction to intensity could include increases in setbacks or open space or minimum parcel size so all of those things um you can see would kind of have an effect on how much housing can be built the state is saying if you're doing anything like that you're going to need to show us how you're increasing something else um on the parcel to ensure that we're still accommodating the planned amount of housing so that um responding to all of that state law is really a big part of our purpose with this project so um what you see here in the purple box is the quote from the government code about the definition of an objective standard that includes no personal or subjective judgment it's verifiable to a reference to an external and uniform benchmark and it's available and knowable by both the development applicant the public and the public official prior to submittal so it's important that we have these published it's important that they be measurable and it's important that they be as objective as we possibly can make them um and i think we've done a pretty good job but as you will see there is some there's some trade-offs when you try to make things truly objective it's hard to make them site specific and that's one of the challenges that we've been kind of grappling with so broadly speaking our purpose here is to provide a clear objective and measureable standards for multifamily and mixed use residential development that's consistent with the character of Santa Cruz while also ensuring that new housing development is economically feasible so um we are interested in ensuring that new residential development contributes positively to the urban environment to the built environment and at the same time we understand that there are um certain things that we could impose on projects that would really make it so hard to build housing that we could fall behind in terms of actually meeting our obligations under rena and meeting the needs in our community for housing at all income levels um so our community outreach um process which i'll get into next really prioritized sustainability affordability eclectic architectural character and high quality materials and details and so this this process of these objective standards really focuses on the physical form and style of development um rather than specifically on the density because that's really established already in our general plan and as we mentioned we are not doing anything here that changes those densities or development allowances that are already established and in place based on the general plan land use designations um so what we're really talking about is design we have a lot of standards that already exist in our code that apply already to all development and the place where we haven't had written objective detailed standards is really around design because we've relied on this design review process with a set of 10 findings that we just can't use in the same way that we intended to when we created them so going back to fall of 2020 when we sort of kicked off with our consultants we started this project with um a zoning and economic analysis we did um some technical analysis which are called test fits and Kristen's going to talk about those in a little bit where we basically take you know some examples of some existing real physical sites and try to fit the development capacity that's allowed on to them and just see how it how it works out can we meet the parking ratio you know can we fit this number of units how tall does the building have to be in order to make this work um so that kind of analysis then we got started getting into our community engagement process which my next slide goes into more detail on that and then based on that community engagement process and combined with the test fits we started to develop these objective standards and draft them together and then um we released the public draft in November of last year we came to your council with a presentation at the end of November of 2021 you may remember that we also went to the planning commission and received input from them both at that time and at the with the test fits and we had presented also the community outreach approach to the city to the planning commission and got some feedback and insight from them on that as well so November of last year we brought the draft standards to your council to the planning commission and to the public and started gathering input and feedback and reactions to those standards and got a lot of really great um comments and um requests and you know information from folks and we were able to incorporate many of those things there were also many of those things that are already addressed by state law by other sections of our code you know we had a lot of folks sending us comments you know they're really concerned about health and safety and yes we are also concerned about health and safety and that is all very heavily regulated and um taken care of by our building codes and our fire codes which are not being changed at all by anything we could do here with zoning so um we did put together a set of responses to all of the comments so folks could you know see their comment and see where where we either made an adjustment to a standard or where it was already covered by an existing standard or where you know some of these standards some of the suggested standards we got just really um wouldn't fit in given the other goals that we have of our project so if that was the case we explained why that wasn't going to work um and so that was uh we presented that to the planning commission when we went to them with this package in June so that was an attachment to that letter of June 2nd or agenda report um so actually got this feedback we've refined these standards and now here we are doing public hearings so just to zoom in a little bit on community engagement because um I did excuse me I did um read all the correspondence that came in and I do um hear people that they are um didn't feel like they had a chance to get involved or really understand this huge packet of information and I do understand that this is the large amount of information and it is very technical and so we really did what we could to provide lots of opportunities for the community to ask questions provide input and you know really get involved and get into these standards because they they are quite technical and they are quite detailed um that was something that came out of our community engagement is that um Santa Cruz really wants to preserve that eclectic style and um they like to um what am I trying to say here we have a community that's very interested in details I think is what I'm trying to say and so there are a lot of details that are in this package so um starting back in winter of 2021 um we launched our project website we um you know also had our two meetings at the planning commission first with the engagement strategy and then with our first set of test fit analysis um and then in the winter to the early spring we had um a webinar our first um outreach event was at a webinar called designing Santa Cruz for all where we really helped people understand a lot of the history of zoning which is um not all of it very pretty I mean there's a lot of our existing land use patterns that um um really entrenched a worldview that I don't think suits Santa Cruz very much anymore and so we wanted to help people kind of understand that history so that they could understand why is why is planning staff always pushing for multifamily housing why do I only hear planning staff talk about meeting sites for multifamily housing and pursuing density a lot of that has to do with the history of zoning and what we understand about the ramifications of creating exclusionary zoning in so many neighborhoods across the nation so we provided that that webinar in both English and Spanish in the spring we created that content it's on our website um following sorry following that um event our next big outreach event um effort was a survey to define community character and um we got over 800 responses to that survey it was a really phenomenal response rate and and it was like it was not a short survey this was not a five minute survey this was really something where we asked people to really pause and think about what do they want their urban environment to look like and what are things they care about when they're walking down the street and we got really fantastic robust feedback from that tool and it um really helped us put together with our technical analysis and start writing some drafts of standards and then because um we collected demographic information as part of that survey to make sure we were getting a representative um response from our community and that we were hearing from all of our various demographic groups and then we filled in the gaps with focus groups where we hadn't heard from enough students young adults under 30 um low income households our Latinx Chicanx community renters specifically we wanted to hear from and then also east side residents so we had initially scoped three focus groups but as we were looking at the responses it seemed clear that we wanted to really make sure we were hearing from people who were likely to live in new housing that gets built so that was renters and then um and young adults and then also um we wanted to make sure we were hearing from folks who are going to be living close to some of the more intense changes and so that was east side residents so we made sure we had a focus group with those folks as well and that provided us with really like more detailed and nuanced information and feedback that could really help us like shape those standards that we had kind of started putting together based on our technical analysis and the survey information um so then as we were further refining we had um when we were releasing our draft standards to the public we also held a focus group with um housing developers they're the ones that are going to have to respond and use these standards so we want to make sure that they're clear that they understand what's being asked for with the various standards and so that was really helpful in in helping us clarify some of the language that we had proposed or like the way that we were requiring certain things um also we knew that that was a big amount of information and I I heard this from folks in the um in the correspondence that it's just so much information yes it is so much information and that's why we wanted to hold you know a community meeting a launch event to launch the draft standards they were available for public comment we had a public comment um web survey available on our website for four weeks and and during that those four weeks we held office hours twice to make sure that people had a chance to look at the standards get confused come ask for help ask to understand why we would be proposing something or what the end goal was and like how they should respond um and do all of that and collect all of that feedback before we went to public hearings so um following the the office hours in the winter of 2022 then we have spent the um the spring and the summer really refining things making sure it's consistent throughout our zoning code bringing in these other sections from parks related to street trees from public works relating to sidewalk and public realm and underground utilities just making sure that all of that can be consistent and integrated throughout the code and now here we are at public hearings we went to the planning commission um and in two different packages we split this package so that the planning commission can really take a deep dive into each of them and so we had one hearing at the beginning of June and another hearing at the end of June that that one at the end of June ended in tie votes since it was actually continued we had a third hearing in July um with the planning commission and I'll talk about the recommendations that came out of that um a little later Sarah just one quick clarification the office hours I believe were winter of 2021 not 2022 you're right sorry yes winter of 2021 because they were yes they were before the end of the year you're right thank you but yeah so we wanted to make sure we did that twice different times of the week different times of the day so that folks could check in um you know sort of regardless of what their um family and work needs were so um a little more detail here in getting into the um various phases of community engagement I mentioned our first phase was this educational component so we provided this in English and Spanish the recordings are available on our website and so to introduce the project explain the need for it and then provided a lot of historic and our current context for housing policy and zoning and talked about this concept about racial and economic segregation that can really result from zoning and the zoning patterns that we have created over the last you know 100 years suburbs and single-family homes are a big piece of that and um I won't give you a whole a whole explanation of red lining and white flight and we did kind of go into that with the community so you can link housing to long-term health outcomes as your council is well aware and so there have been lots of bills recently in California specifically relating to increasing housing production and then also affordable units and those are related but separate issues so I just want to show you a couple of the slides that we had used in that presentation so when we're talking about um zoning patterns and um land use patterns in Santa Cruz um we want to talk about our general plan which in 2012 was adopted and intended to focus development into certain areas based on those areas being close to transportation choices um existing jobs and existing um commercial corridors with services for residents so those areas are shown here on this map this is these are the areas when we say there's a mismatch between the general plan and the zoning code we are referring to these highlighted parcels on this map um and then we're also looking at um standards through the objective design standards that would apply to all multifamily housing and there is um low density residential rl and mid-density residential multifamily residential rm throughout the city and the state law has really reduced our discretion as we've mentioned and then we're also thinking in everything we do about equity and social justice and zoning can seem very neutral we talk about it in a very detached and analytical kind of way but history history shows there's really a disparate impact of how zoning has affected different um populations so I just want to show these two maps you have seen these before um this is a generalized zoning map of the city of Santa Cruz the areas shown in yellow are single family neighborhoods the areas shown in brown are multifamily both our medium density multifamily and our low density multifamily um the pink area is mixed use downtown so that's our existing zoning is um you know sort of that's what's identified there and then the lighter pink color are our commercial and industrial areas um and then the next map that I'm going to show you is based on the 2010 census we don't quite have the detail yet from the 2020 census to update this but I would be interested to see how these patterns have shifted um but this next map shows one dot per person of the population of Santa Cruz and it's colored based on race so this app is available on our website um you can you can get it there and blow it up and spend some time with it because I understand this is probably really hard to see on your screen and I'm just going to flip back and forth between them a couple times so you can see I want you to watch lower ocean and beach flats and downtown so here you can see that those areas are brown they're zoned from multifamily development and you can see that they just turn orange in this next image so orange represents this is the classification system that the census uses so they use the term Hispanic um that shows both that that um Hispanic communities are highly concentrated they live in denser housing and then they also are limited to certain neighborhoods so being limited to certain neighborhoods we're lucky in Santa Cruz that all of our elementary schools are great schools and you can see how having patterns like this where there's highly concentrated pockets of certain exclusive races can create inequities between communities and challenges for households so um in talking about housing whenever we talk about housing um folks want to talk about the whole of housing policy and that is indeed wise and I just want to center this project and end our every discussion about zoning within this broader context of what is complete housing policy so complete housing policy talks about protection so that's about um protecting households and people from eviction protecting mobile homes enforcing their housing law housing vouchers so subsidies that go to individuals and households it's about preserving existing affordable units so that's affordability restrictions and deed restrictions that are either permanent or very long term it's our inclusionary policies that create those deed restrictions replacing units if they get lost and legalizing existing units so that they can stay in the market and hopefully stay at an affordable rent and now zoning is part of the production component of this three-piece pie and permit streamlining the density bonus the regional housing needs allocation that comes through our housing element all of those are related to the production of units so all of these things are needed to these create a complete housing policy and what we're dealing with with zoning and with standards for design deals with one piece of this larger pie and the availability and affordable housing affordability of housing are related and we have a challenge with both so California ranks 49th out of 50 in the nation in terms of housing units per capita the only we are exceeded only by new york and housing production has to be one piece of this answer about housing availability and affordability we have Santa Cruz residents every income level we need housing production at every income level and we all know it's hardest to produce housing at those lowest affordability levels and that's where we have to start looking for other tools to add into there because they need subsidy they need those tenants need protections in those very low income households so this project is really centered in again production and responding to state law that comes out of the state seeing a shortfall of 1.8 million housing units between 2018 and 2025 that that was that their estimated production need and we are not close to meeting that at this point and but this is the number that underpins those rena the numbers that we're all seeing come out throughout the state um and while this project does not create new development capacity or density we do feel and believe that creating objective zoning standards can smooth the production can shorten the development timeline and make it easier to produce the housing that we're already zoned for so that's really the goal with this project so in phase two we were talking about defining and measuring community character um and collected input through a survey to form draft standards so we had our survey out in March we did our focus groups in July and got really great input and feedback so key findings were um a desire for corridors to have active ground floors so shops restaurants um just generally activity front door stoops for you know residential units that are on those corridors um if it's residential on the ground floor um there was a big preference for architectural freedom and variety over creating like a really strict standard like a Santa Barbara style standard where like everything has to look exactly one way um people really like the mix that Santa Cruz represents there were our priorities for impart apartments that we heard from people renters and low-income households especially concerns about security access to sunlight and a strong preference for private open space over um shared or you know sort of community open space within apartment developments and then of course a lot of support for affordability for livability in the housing stock and for access to nature so I just want to show you a couple of slides you've seen these before too um some of the results from our survey so this was a question about um the heights of buildings that would be uh necessary on ocean water and so Cal so the test fit analysis that we did that Kristen's going to talk about in a minute um showed that we need at least four stories to make that development capacity really fit so we wanted to hear from the community what are you ready to accept in those locations and so this blue this blue oh goodness sorry this blue segment um it shows folks that responded with four stories five stories six stories no maximum or something else and and most of these something else answers were something less than four stories um but so to me when when I look at this I see that there is um you know pretty good support for um accommodating some additional height in those neighborhoods and in those locations in order to create the housing that we've planned for okay another one of the questions we asked was about you know what are the most important things to include with new buildings even if maybe that does increase the cost of them and the two standout um answers to that were architectural details so variation reform bay windows you know juliet balconies things like that um or ground floor shops and restaurants and there was really strong support for those um for those key components oh I got these out of order I'm sorry oh I guess I added this slide twice I'm sorry about that so um we got really great feedback from our surveys and it really helped us figure out what was important to folks and how do we define that community character what are we looking for so then we moved on to phase three shaping and refining so we collected feedback and responses from our public review draft um we came to your council in November we came to the planning commission in November we got really good feedback from all of you as well um we held our office hours we had our web platform up and and gathered input and feedback there so that helped us really hone in on a couple of things so we had um some mixed feedback about active uses versus residential only buildings and commercial districts that wasn't something that there was like really strong opinions like one way or the other we did hear loudly and clearly from folks concerned about development impacts on neighbors so massing at height shadow concerns about privacy for next door neighbors we had a lot of comments coming in specifically about dark sky lighting in neighborhoods and then looking at neighborhood buffers and looking for additional open space amenities so additional things that could qualify to be included in the required open space on a project and then our feedback from from our developer focus group was really interested in creating some more flexibility around how we defined what an active use is for those ground floor you know commercial style uses and then cleared up help help us clarify some language around um some of the standards that we were proposing and then there was some concern about the private open space ratio um that came out of that meeting and now i'm going to pass it off to christin hall our urban designer to talk about um the analysis that we did and then the standards themselves these design standards that we wrote for um the multifamily housing and how we responded to those community comments thank you so much sarah can everybody hear me yes yes thank you so much uh do you want to go ahead and go to the next slide hey we already got through two more of the 80 um thank you so much uh again for hearing about all the work we've been doing tonight and just to pick up from where sarah left off she mentioned a little bit about these test fits that we had done um and this was really a way just to understand what are the constraints that exist right now in housing production where are the pain points and how might we use the these objective development standards as a way to enable more production of housing on lots that haven't seen that development so um we looked at two sort of we looked at one sort of typical site which is the one on the bottom here Santa Cruz has a lot of these smaller lots which are quite difficult to develop um and they're constrained by the narrowness um and also by things like parking ratios and so we're just trying to understand when you put together parking ratios and setbacks and far and all these very sort of technical aspects of what's allowed to happen on the site what might you end up with um what might it look like and how might it look economically um we also looked on at a larger site which tend to be uh more economically viable to build on just because you get economies of scale on larger sites so that's the image on the top there and we you know did all of these based on market assumptions that were given to us by our economists who did a survey of all the units that have been delivered in the last 10 years what are typical unit sizes um market rate rents that are our current in Santa Cruz and then they um analyzed a number of development scenarios looking at what could you do within the full envelope what could you do within the height limit and then what could you do if you met the most efficient um building design which might which is typically exceeding the height limit because again uh efficiencies of scale economies of scale um next slide so our findings were kind of four key things the first is just that small sites are challenging so you know where you have more height or far those places are more likely to develop because they can provide more units that but they have the same fixed cost so the cost of land is the same but the amount of units that you can put on it increases um that's just kind of a basic fact in development that happens in most cities that these small sites are really difficult um for larger sites um what we found is that projects have to be at least four stories in order to achieve the 2.75 fr that's allowed so you know to summarize that the the existing height limit is generally lower than what the density limit would allow so if you are able to go up to the density limit you would need more height in order to achieve the number of units that are actually allowed um by that density the third point um mixed use is more challenging than residential only developments and that's partially because and retail requires much higher levels of parking than other types of uses so um restaurant uses for example require eight spaces per thousand square feet which is significantly higher than the you know one and a half or so spaces per thousand square feet of a unit um retail also doesn't generate as much revenue as other uses so when you are able to rent out a unit versus retail um you are able to get much more revenue per square foot and then the last point is just that these scenarios where we had higher density were the most financially feasible so you'll see more developer interest insights that um have the 2.75 fr plus density bonus and this is why most of the projects that have been coming forward have been density bonus projects because that's the thing that has actually enabled these projects to become more feasible uh financially feasible next slide please go ahead so i'm going to talk a little bit about these um the development standards themselves and just a few thoughts kind of on the overarching organization structure of them sarah mentioned um that a lot of our feedback was from residents on about how you know neighborhoods are in Santa Cruz are really characterized by eclecticism which makes it difficult to create a set of standards that really regulate the look and feel of buildings in a way that's consistent right because the buildings aren't consistent and so how do you think about regulating buildings when this sort of eclecticism is really the character of the city so one of the things we found is that neighborhoods are distinguished by the relationships of the buildings to the street and to each other and not by specific architecture so you'll see a lot of different architectural styles in a neighborhood but in that neighborhood the things like the street width or the size of the lots or the setbacks are all kind of more consistent and that's what creates the character of those neighborhoods and those things already exist in the zoning code so we weren't and that's actually what's regulated why the buildings looked the way they do and so we didn't want to touch those things except in some cases to make it a little bit easier for buildings to be built and then there's also kind of two more specific types if we wanted to narrow them down of neighborhoods which are the corridors which are these more intense development areas they have more height more active uses particularly at the ground floor like retail office uses things like that and then the residential neighborhoods which are characterized by a lower intensity you know smaller buildings and a lot a lot more landscaping and again that just to the point about the kind of eclectic style of Santa Cruz throughout we'll show some of these little word on the street bubbles which were incorporated into the design standards and this is just kind of showing a little bit of a flavor of the what we the responses we heard from individuals about what they think about Santa Cruz and how it should look in the focus groups and in the surveys so we heard in these commercial corridors 67 percent of respondents to the survey preferred an eclectic building look over uniform one we asked them specifically which one do they prefer and they said eclectic we also heard this quote Santa Cruz is about uniqueness and being different like there's nothing that's exactly the same in Santa Cruz so again just more to that style the way the document is organized is we have sort of three key points there's the topic area which is the title of the section and then there's a bowl which tells you the intent behind the standard so if you know there's some question about how to assess the development proposal for findings this is how you would understand the intent and then there's the standard itself which is kind of lays out the quantifiable or kind of clear rules about how that that goal needs to be met so for example if we take neighborhood transition the goal is to create a transition between new development and existing neighborhoods and provide privacy for current and future residents and minimize potential shading on neighboring residents and then there's all the kind of quantifiable standards that come with that to achieve that goal which is what the planning staff would be reviewing when they look at a proposal yes sorry thanks so this the goals and students themselves are broken up into two sort of categories we have a list on the left and on the right on the left are all the items related to site design and on the right are all the things related to specifically building design so we want to think about how you cite the building on the site in order to create things like walkability what are the types of uses you're creating how are you reinforcing a pedestrian environment and then in terms of the building itself you know what are the specifics around the the roof form or the material etc the things that are highlighted in orange here I think so I'm going to share with you today and a little bit of detail about specifically and I just actually we didn't have a slide in here about maximum building length but we did include a standard about maximum building link which was specifically designed to encourage buildings that are more sort of apartment buildings that are more house shaped and you don't have parking inside of them have parking on the lot in the back because those are a type of building that are specifically understood to be more affordable by design and this is based on research that's been done by Optikos in California so you can see there's a number of ways we're trying to enhance affordability just through the way the building is designed itself and trying to support that kind of building design so going through these we'll start with parking location and screening and the goal here is really about minimizing the visual impact of parking we don't want to walk around a city and see parking everywhere so we required that parking be wrapped by habitable spaces facing sidewalks what does that mean that's like for example on the bottom image here you can see that street is lined with shops instead of parking garages so it's just that you have to put the parking towards the back of the building and then also surface parking has to be buffered by landscape and we have specific requirements about how deep that landscape needs to be how dense it needs to be things like that and the image on the top here gives an example the next one is landscape and buffering and you know we heard from folks that landscaping is really part of the character of Santa Cruz that it's a really green city this is something people are proud of and wanted to see more of and so the goal here is really to enhance the urban forest provide shade and help soften the building massing and also just to reinforce the character that we find um throughout Santa Cruz so in our districts we're requiring landscaping the front setback in commercial and mixed use districts we're requiring projects to provide straight trees and planted areas along the public frontages and on the right you can see two images of what that would look like um and we also require that this landscape be compliant with wheeler standards which is about um water savings so we're trying to create landscape that's not going to be very thirsty on the next slide um this is about neighborhood transition so the goal here was to create a transition between new development and existing neighborhoods this is something a lot of community members were interested in exploring and um actually surprisingly um the development professionals the developers we talked to also felt that this was a really important thing to include um because it helps them be better neighbors and helps clarify you know how they are going to minimize impacts on adjacent neighbors so um what you can see here is the diagram is hopefully pretty self-explanatory where you have a rear yard you are required to have a setback off of that shared property line and then starting from the third floor there's this 45 degree plane um that transitions the massing back away from adjacent properties so the idea here is to minimize overlooking of adjacent properties to minimize any shadow impacts and just to have a better um transition between kind of higher density corridors and the more residential neighborhoods um the next slide these are two elements that work together so this is roof form and building modulation and the idea with roof form is that one of the things you do see throughout Santa Cruz is a more kind of human scale pattern where you have buildings that are broken down with these different roof forms a lot of times you'll see gabled roofs you don't see a lot of um kind of like long uninterrupted flat roofs for example so the other thing that helps make a building feel more human scale is to break it up into a number of smaller pieces or you know planes and you can see in the images here how we're requiring that buildings are modulated meaning they move in and out at a certain rhythm um and these two things work together so the roof forms align with the modulation below it to help break up these larger building scales and make them more elegant and more human scale and more appropriate to the character of Santa Cruz um on the next slide ground floor design um we heard a lot about wanting to have walkable neighborhoods where you could go shopping for your local you know groceries or be able to get a haircut and maybe things like architecture firms don't need to be located on the ground floor offices so um wanting to really support that walkability of these local businesses and then also provide privacy for residents the other thing we heard is um developers really wanted to be able to put residential uses on the ground floor in places where it was appropriate where there may not be a lot of foot traffic because you know retail is struggling into require new retail in places where it may not be successful it may mean a retail space with a vacant so um we have a couple different approaches here for different places where we uh have where we require commercial uses we're requiring them to have a higher level of transparency and so you can see in and see what's going on and you can have eyes on the street um we're requiring those non-residential uses at the ground floor only in commercial districts where it's appropriate to maintain that commercial character and then residential uses at the ground floor where they occur have to be set back or elevated from the sidewalk as you can see in the lower image here where you have these setbacks and stoopes it creates this kind of nice intermittent zone where neighbors can meet and hang out but also it feels like a little bit more sense of privacy around your front door you're not opening the door read out onto the sidewalk um on the next slide we also had a standard about building materials um and really the the key here is that um building materials should be high quality and durable and reflect the existing character of Santa Cruz and this was something that was mentioned frequently in our survey really responses where we had an open areas you know to invite people to share any concerns um this was also a big topic of conversation at the planning commission where there was conversation about adding a standard specifically for windows to not be vinyl but to be wood which is a higher quality window um or sorry not a requirement to be wet just to not be vinyl um so the way we approached this was to provide a list of appropriate materials um so if you are you are you if you're proposing to use any of these materials you can be approved but if you want to use a material that's unlisted that would require a design review permit um again prohibiting the vinyl windows and then uh we also added a standard for how living walls um these green walls like the one in the bottom right here could be applied um you know this is yet another way to kind of bring more character more of this green character into Santa Cruz um the next slide is about lighting we had so much outreach from folks who were really interested in dark sky standards um and this is really about making sure that you don't have a light a lot of light pollution and there already exists a lot of lighting standards that have been used around the country that we could pull from here so um really the goal is to make sure you have the balance of safety and well at public spaces but not creating a lot of light pollution and there's a lot of technical ways you can do that by shielding light by shining light only on buildings by focusing the building the light around entries and faces rather than kind of point it up into the sky and so we were able to draw on that great body of existing standards for this document the next one um is that's it that's over to Sarah yeah thanks thanks christin sorry i popped this little slide into your section i didn't tell you about it so i'll take this one um so christin's just um gone through the design standards that we developed with upp and there are a couple of other development standards that are included and added in your package and these are things that came up through um like other community comments but they weren't specifically design related they're also um a couple of things that we as staff and you know and city council and public noticed in doing our first sp35 development application review that we had a couple of these standards um that were sort of not quite as objective as we had hoped or expected so um the package before you today also does include proposals to add um burn safe building design um standards and requirements those are things that we worked with the local sierra club chapter and um a burn safe building design ornithologist to develop um we were also adding a um requirement of regarding archaeological reports so we already had a requirement that um or a standard that required the creation of a report and the submittal of that report and what was missing was a standard to require compliance with the recommendations of that report so we're adding that um we also based on um uh suggestion of one of our planning commissioners um took a look at the way that ad use interact with our inclusionary housing standards so our standards inclusionary housing those are units that are um expressly set aside for households that make below a certain income level and we had in the um in existing code there's a standard that allows ad use under certain circumstances to be used as the inclusionary units on um other types of developments and especially in subdivisions of new single family homes we're recommending that we remove that um ad use are not equivalent to other types of housing and they should not be um used as an inclusionary standard you know to meet that requirement for other types of housing it also just creates confusion because there are certain ways that um because ad use have typically been associated with single family homes um it makes them monitoring very hard when those are the inclusionary deed restricted units um so we are recommending that we delete that allowance and say that ad use cannot be used to meet the inclusionary standard of other types of housing we are also recommending that we add a standard for multifamily properties that add five or more ad use because that's now allowed under the state law projects can add or existing multifamily um development can add up to 25 of the total number of units in the building as ad use and so we're recommending that when there are five or more of those that they are then subject to our inclusionary standard and 20 percent of them have to be um deed restricted on multifamily property we're also adding um coming out of the objective standards some definitions to our code so we're adjusting the existing definition of usable open space to allow the um the area underneath the canopy of any tree to count twice towards that open space requirement and our hope is that that can add enough flexibility to a site plan so that more trees can be retained on site um we know that trees are super important for um climate reasons for shade reasons for human livability reasons and we want to find ways to encourage and support them staying on sites where they're already existing we're also adding a definition of or recommending that we add a definition of volumetric factory built housing this is a type of housing that can be built in factory in modules these factories are regulated by the state and inspections happen at the state by the state at the factory and then when those modules come to the site um the site work can go much more smoothly and quickly and the inspections on site are limited to how do the modules connect to each other and how do they connect to utilities and so it can just really streamline construction and cut down construction time and costs for developers okay so now i'm going to talk about um what changes we're recommending for our development review process so um as we incorporate objective development standards into our zoning code it makes sense to take a look at the way that we currently regulate development and make sure that everything lines up if we have all of these objective development standards and design standards for multifamily housing does it make sense to still require making 10 findings of a design permit it should be that you know if you've met all these objective standards ideally these findings would be automatic right so if we've written the standards correctly we're meeting all of those findings so a compliant project should already be meeting those standards um additionally I just want to reiterate something that Lee said at the beginning um most projects most of our significant development projects that are coming in right now are seeking to vary from our zoning code in some way that is already triggering a public hearing so they're looking for a density bonus I mean I think that's the big one we can provide incentives in terms of making a smoother permitting process and we are recommending that we do that to create some incentives for compliance with these standards that we've just written and the financial incentive of pursuing a density bonus is always going to be really attractive to developers and so um those projects are always going to be coming in and those will continue to um require public hearing so I want to be clear I saw in a couple of the um course pieces of correspondence we received from the public that they were concerned that there would be no public notification and they would lose this opportunity several folks cited the they were involved with the developer at 515 Soquel so I just want to be really clear to those folks that is the that communication that you're having with that developer right now and with the planning department is a result of our community outreach policy which is staying exactly the same as it is so notification community meetings um you know posting on the site when development proposals come in all of that is staying in place um what we're talking about doing is creating some changes to reflect the limitations that have you know come down to us through state law limitations for housing where we can't deny or condition a project to reduce the intensity we have to rely on objective standards we can't lose any of that development capacity so here here are two lists on the left you see what's currently required under our code community outreach and notice and meetings public hearings for commercial development density bonus applications land development permits variances coastal permits subdivisions buildings that are in proximity to slope residential development and commercial zones um there's a right of appeal with all of these applications and sequel review is required for all of these projects on the right you'll see what we're proposing which is that community outreach happens with notice and meetings exactly as it does now public hearings happen for commercial development density bonus projects land development permits variances coastal permit subdivisions proximity to slope exactly as it does now this one place where we're suggesting a change to recognize the objective standards is that um we now limit public hearings to only one alternative designs are proposed for residential development so we keep this right of appeal we keep our sequel review this is this is really crucial several people commented that we were moving to a ministerial review process i just want to underline this is not a ministerial review process ministerial permits are like building permits it's really it's literally just a technical checklist and no one can appeal an applicant can appeal a building permit but neighbors don't have a right to appeal that um what we're talking about is an administrative process and as we mentioned in his intro this is essentially the same as the existing administrative process that we have for for conforming development proposals in our multifamily zones that exist throughout the city that's a standard in a practice that has been in place since we adopted our current zoning code in 85 and perhaps predates that um so currently with those conforming proposals we still do make design permit findings and as i've mentioned a couple times that process just can't function the way that it was designed to and intended to when it was written but we there's still a right of appeal on those projects they're still subject to sequel so in our proposal we want to keep essentially extend this administrative review process and have it applied to fully conforming rental multifamily projects in all zones so we're creating mixed use zones it makes sense that mixed use development that is fully conforming to all the standards that we have in our code if we can make this finding that they are fully conforming that they should be able to get through this process without a public hearing the same way that residential development happens now on multifamily property without a public hearing unless there's an appeal and because of that community outreach policy people are going to get noticing they're going to drive by site and notice that it's been posted for development and they're going to have the the same ability that they have now to get on the email list to check our website to follow the project to meet with the developer and as we mentioned that's really the most productive way to affect a project and to change a development proposal public hearings where your time is limited to two minutes and you don't get to get into a back and forth with the actual project proponent it's just not as effective in terms of a tool to like really affect change and really participate and understand what's happening with a project so we want to make sure that we're maintaining all of that and so now I'm going to go into more detail on this I will try to move a little bit more quickly through this because this does get pretty technical so our proposed process for fully compliant proposals is that an administrative design permit would be required so it's administrative no public hearing still have the right of appeal still subject to CEQA for proposals that want to vary from some of these new design standards so there's design standards that are in 2412 185 um any of them as soon as you vary from one of those standards um a design permit with a public hearing would be required and um it would be heard either at the zoning administrator or at the planning commission level depending on how how many variations from those standards they were seeking and that would still retain the right of appeal and it would still be subject to CEQA sorry let me go back once um so the finding that the that the decision makers would be making at these public hearings would be essentially what Kristen identified so that we have that goal for each one of these standards so we would be looking to see does this alternative proposed still meet the goal of the standard that was from which they're seeking to vary so that's the text and those are the changes that you see into our design permit process it's to create this situation where fully conforming projects we make one finding that that they are fully conforming they meet every one of our zoning district standards they meet every one of our community design standards in chapter 2412 they meet all of our our objective design criteria all of our public work standards and there's no other trigger in there like a density bonus or a subdivision map if they're creating condominiums or new parcels that would trigger a public hearing and so I just want to mention on this last slide again of the 16 proposals that we've had since the beginning of 2020 that are significant large projects 13 of those proposals have been for a density bonus and all 16 of those proposals would have triggered a public hearing under this standard so 13 of them were seeking a density bonus one of them was seeking a planned development one of them was seeking to vary from our standards in some in some other way and then one of them was in proximity to a 50 percent or greater slope so in terms of taking away opportunities for public engagement this process really doesn't do that what we're doing is recognizing an existing process that we have for conforming development and extending it to places where we are seeking to create residential development and we want to make sure that all of those processes that are working so well around community outreach stay in place and that we create this right of appeal so that when when folks really feel strongly about something or feel that these objective standards aren't being met that they have recourse and a way to you know seek restitution on that so stretch break so now we're going to get into our new mixed use zones that we're proposing to create to implement the general plan and the ocean street area plan so our 2030 general plan has many policies and vision statement and goals and there are several that relate to this action that we're recommending that your council take tonight so optimum utilization of infill parcels so keeping a compact community with boundaries that are defined by the green belt in the Monterey Bay so we're not expanding we're not growing outward we're looking for a complementary balance of land uses and a land use pattern that promotes social diversity so this is again one of those foundational values that when we as planners come in and we're like we're looking for places to put multifamily housing this is part of that we we we need more places to accommodate people in our community who need multifamily housing choices and then also specifically in these locations where the general plan identifies parcels that should be designated for mixed use we're looking at land use patterns that facilitate alternative transportation and minimize transportation demand so we're transitioning to higher densities along the city's commercial corridors which are shown here on this map again this is the same map of our general plan these are the parcels that we're going to talk about now that are proposed for rezoning we are rezoning them to exactly what is called for in the general plan which to reiterate is already available to be developed under the state law so within these districts i also want to recognize that these represent sort of the commercial core of our city so these are places that hold our existing you know commercial uses that serve our neighborhoods and help us meet our daily needs for our households and both through employment and through services and entertainment options and restaurants and things like that so in these mixed use zones we are looking to require uses that are active um on the frontage so we are supporting mixed use in these locations but we are going to continue to allow or we're recommending that we continue to allow um development that's a hundred still 100 percent commercial because these do represent our commercial core and we don't want to see all of we don't want to see all of that go away we want to still maintain that option so all the commercial uses that are allowed in these zones are based on the existing uses that are allowed in the cc zone which is our you know most extensive commercial zone and most of the sites that are proposed for rezoning are currently zoned in the cc zone so we didn't want to be taking uses away from any existing property owners um the ocean street zones encourage more commercial and visitor serving uses so they're kind of skewed more towards commercial uses whereas the um the zones on mission street and on the east side are more skewed towards residential style mixed use and then the site standards that we're proposing are based on the adopted general plan and the ocean street area plan so the heights are determined based on a combination of the floor area ratio the far that's set in the general plan and then um the stories limit that's set in the ocean street area plan so there's six of these zones i'm going to go through this part pretty quickly so all on mission street these sites would be rezoned into a new zone district mixed use medium density mum it would have a maximum height of four stories and 45 feet for mixed use development and slightly less for commercial development on the east side these sites would be rezoned to mixed use high density muh located in clusters along a cluster here at brand support in water cluster here at water and morisey and along this part of soquel and then at the corner of brand support in soquel um so a maximum height here of five stories and 55 feet for mixed use development um on ocean street so ocean street because of the way that the general plan land use designations intersect with the height standards in the ocean street area plan there are actually four zone districts here um and some sites that we can't yes we had a request to slow down on the slides oh sure do i need to go back go back a couple and we we are receiving a presentation we will be able to have questions in public go ahead sarah um okay so again these are the sites that are along um along mission street you can see this is the um the site where the safeway is and and this intersection here adjacent to miramar um this is the corner of van nest this is bay street right here this is bay street elementary the site that's left out so that can kind of help you orient yourself here on this side so mixed use high density again here we're looking at um these blocks of soquel between morisey and brand supporty with some um areas that are excluded and then there's a note at the corner of water in brand supporty and at water and morisey this portion of water is not being rezoned this the interior portion between poplar and stanford this is the area that has that 2.75 floor area ratio and so we are recommending a maximum of five stories and 55 feet in height for these areas when it's a mixed use development um so on ocean streets there are four zones and um the first one mixed use ocean street medium density is shown here in this light orange color so it's here it's on this the back side of oh geez well this is really sensitive on the back side of um may here going up to hubbard and then um on this upper part up here and then there's a little cluster down here on barson at barson and ocean at the intersection and um this would be a height maximum of three stories and 40 feet for mixed use the ocean street area plan also includes minimum heights so um one story in 16 feet would be the minimum height on these mixed mixed use ocean street high density is shown in the darker orange color so that's at um broadway and ocean this big cluster here and then um up here further above ocean and water above the intersection um that's also proposed for this zone district so this would have a height maximum for mixed use of four stories and 50 feet and a minimum height of two stories and 24 feet so mixed use visitor high density shown in the light blue color so it's at ocean and water and at ocean and soquel and then there's also a piece here that's all the way over off of river side just adjacent to the river and so this again carries that highest floor area ratio of 2.75 and we're recommending here a height maximum for mixed use of four stories and 50 feet and a minimum of two stories and 24 feet and then our last one mixed use visitor serving additional height is this central portion this includes the county building site the hotel paradox and then the um this block between dakota and ocean so this also carries that 2.75 floor area ratio in the general plan and in the ocean street area plan it's identified for a height of six stories so we're recommending that for mixed use it'd be a maximum height of six stories and 70 feet and a minimum of three stories and 40 feet again these heights are based on the um what's been adopted in the ocean street area plan and so then this is a table um this is also provided in the agenda materials as a standalone pdf that just sort of summarizes everything so you can see it all together um I will just point out you'll notice that in um mu m and mu h the maximum height of commercial is less than the maximum height allowed for mixed use and on ocean street it's reversed and this again reflects our um the goals of the general plan for the ocean street corridor and of the ocean street area plan to encourage be focused more on creating commercial development and for these um mu m and mu h sites on mission and on the east side to be more focused on creating residential mixed use and really true mixed use in the traditional sense so um so that's why you'll see that sort of change in heights from um between the mixed use zones so um the rezone creating an amendment to the zoning map doing a rezoning requires a finding the planning commission did make this finding at their hearing and um had included it with their motion and their recommendation to your council um so they found that the public necessity general community welfare and good zoning practice would be served and furthered by the rezoning and that the proposed amendments is in conformance with the principles policies and land use designations set forth in the general plan the lcp in any area or specific plan um and that is true we are implementing exactly what is called for in our general plan and um to the extent possible in the ocean street area plan as well so there are some other amendments that we made to our existing zones because as we've talked about these objective design standards will apply to multifamily housing that's built anywhere in the city that's outside of downtown so downtown already has design standards in the downtown plan um so these new objective standards won't apply in that area but they will apply in all other areas of the city so there were some um sort of like tightening up and sort of adjustments we had to make to some of those existing zones to recognize that we're now using these objective design standards would be using them um and so uh in our residential zones our multifamily residential zones so that our rl zone and the m zone that we made a slight modification to the way that you calculate the side yard setbacks that allows for articulation at the top of the building and allows more floor area to be on the lower two stories in the residential high density zone rh zone we're deleting standards that conflict with any of our proposed standards um and the rh zone only applies to about three parcels in the city and um two of them are already fully developed so and one of them is in the downtown plan expansion area so those those standards really don't apply very far and then you'll also see in all the zone districts we um recently updated our wireless communication telecommunication facilities ordinance and so we had to sort of add wireless communication facilities as an allowed use in every zone district where it's allowed so you'll see that throughout the code amendments in our beach residential zones um the anywhere where the zone itself describes the purpose as providing housing or providing for residential development we made residential uses principally permitted rather than currently they require a use permit or and in some cases a special use permit depending on the size of the project so we're recommending that those all be principally permitted because essentially under the state law we're not permitted to deny them so what's the function of requiring a use permit um we're removing a distinction recommending that we remove a distinction based on project size but the other site standards and the densities are not changing commercial uses are not changing and we're just adding that wireless update in our commercial zones in certain commercial zones so this is the commercial thoroughfare the neighborhood commercial the commercial at the beach which includes the wharf and in our um professional administrative zone districts we're requiring active uses at the ground floor level and in each of these zone districts we're recommending that we create a category that identifies uses for active frontage so that's very clear what is appropriate to fill that requirement um we're making mixed use development principally permitted in those zones so you can do residential along with commercial development and then limiting the ability to to build standalone residential to just a few um sort of some of the existing conditions in which you can do standalone residential we're really making sure that that's tightened up and clear that there are very limited circumstances um the density for residential development in those in these zone districts is either based on the existing residential medium or residential low multifamily um which is staying the same as what it is currently and then we're adding that wireless update in those zones in our cc and rtc these are our main commercial zone district so the cc is a long mission along so cal along water along parts of ocean street um and rtc is the the beach frontage and the boardwalk um down in the beach area so active uses in these areas are encouraged we are not requiring active uses in these locations because currently the code allows sROs so single room occupancy units which is the densest type of housing the city allows can be built as standalone projects so in order to not reduce the capacity for housing we didn't feel like we could make a change there without making some other change to either increase the height and we didn't want to touch that so we're just going to continue to allow the current condition um and your council might recall that we just created flexible density units fduz and when we created those units we made the determination that in the rtc zone at the beach and downtown where those units are allowed we would require them to be part of a mixed use development so we do require a ground floor commercial use of some kind but in the community commercial that cc zone that stretches out far along our corridors um we are going to allow those to be standalone developments as well and we're just recommending we maintain that decision that we just made um a few months ago so um typical units are allowed either as mixed use oops jeez either as mixed use um or as standalone residential and when if you're doing standalone residential then we want to see some live work we created some standards that some of those units on the ground floor can be created as live work units and we're hoping that this can create some more opportunities for small businesses in santa cruse for people who are entrepreneurs or um you know people who see a couple clients a week or something to have a commercial space that's combined with their living space and um just create some opportunities for that kind of land use in santa cruse and again there's the wireless update okay so now we're going to get into the planning commission recommendation um on everything that i've talked about so far so the planning commission reviewed these at two separate here three separate hearings but you know we started off with two separate hearings to really dive deep on all of this content and in both cases they had sort of a yes and approach to them so they are recommending approval of the staff recommendation of the standards of the zone districts of the zonings of the process changes um christin mentioned um uh desire to prohibit vinyl windows on street facing building facades they also um direct or are suggesting that the um that your council require bus passes for projects of 50 or more units and then um they also are recommending that you increase the inclusionary standard for projects of 50 or more units to 25 percent um inclusionary and for 100 or more units to 35 percent inclusionary um and then with the in this part of the second hearing they also approved the staff recommendation about the mixed use zones and the process and then also added um uh the recommendation that your council increase the inclusionary requirements specifically this time for density bonus projects so um our staff response is we've incorporated this um change about vinyl windows um we actually took it a little bit further so prohibiting vinyl windows on building faces oriented towards streets for buildings that are up to three stories in height and then for um buildings that are over three stories in height um vinyl windows are not permitted on any building face so they would have to be some other type of material um in regards to bus passes and requiring them for every development over um 50 units we are recommending that your council um defer consideration of that till you are considering the climate action plan next month there is a lot of content in that climate action plan that gets into transportation demand management and um we think it's important to think about context and and make sure that bus passes are the right measure to really reduce transportation demand um because that could be kind of different based on where you are and what the bus routes are um relating to the inclusionary increases we understand that this is a really important issue affordability is something that everyone in our community cares about and um staff is concerned that we could increase this rate without studying it or testing what effect that might have on overall housing production um we are concerned that it could chill development of all housing and reduce the number of affordable units that are created and the number of market you rate units that are created um this could put us into a tricky situation with failing to meet our rena obligation and then that means we're going to have more super streamlined sp35 development applications come coming through and um we are thinking about making sure we can certify our housing element that we're currently beginning to to draft and we're going to be working on over the next sort of 18 months um inclusionary requirements are considered under housing element law as a potential governmental constraint and they need to be analyzed and we need to be able to show that our rate is not a governmental constraint on housing production we're not sure how we would do that without a study identifying that this rate could work without chilling production so um um failing to have a certified housing element could have big ramifications in terms of the grants the city can apply for for everything from road work to affordable housing so um staff is really recommending that your council be cautious before um taking any action that might put that in jeopardy okay with that i'm going to pass it off to nathan win from public works to talk about um public work standards for the public realm loading spaces underground utilities sidewalks things like that thank you sir uh good evening city council members of the public my name is nathan win i'm the assistant director of public works uh city engineer and tonight i'll be presenting uh items related to uh essentially the the public works in public realm um the standards that uh you have on our slide uh as as lee and sarah and team has mentioned that these proposed revisions to uh work together to create objective standards uh that comply with our general plan area plan and zoning codes uh one of the first things that we looked at was the loading uh off street loading uh facilities so we added additional use cases there we had warehouse and other similar items uh already existing on our code but we wanted to be more explicit with regards to residential and office and mix use development as uh as this project is