quel to be able to get into and out of our homes. Whenever there is traffic on Soquel, we can't leave our streets without the light and the alley. If PG&E is doing any kind of upgrade or road work or you have a water pipeline project or a Murray Street bridge being rebuilt, we can't leave our homes without the light and the alley. The public alley is, as a neighbor calls it, an important traffic corridor that mitigates some of the worst traffic in the neighborhood. Slide. So when it was presented to the Planning Commission, this is what we thought the project looked like, and we do acknowledge that the developer did listen to our concerns. Slide. And this is the proposed updated design, and it's not perfect, but it is better than the original, but we still believe that the public alley should not have to accommodate the exit or the entrance at all. We're also unclear exactly what, if this is the final version, what it's going to look like once it gets further down the road, which is very alarming to us. So let me walk you through this. Slide. Here is the alleyway. It's a one lane alley, but traffic holds in both directions. It's 15 feet wide currently, which is big enough for one fire truck, but not wide enough for two cars to pass each other. Here's how one neighbor describes the alley. I live at 178 Hagamon Avenue, and I ride my bike down the alleyway twice a day with my child on the bike. I have used the alley every day for 10 years. It's our neighborhood's outlet to get to ironic Gulch. Almost every time I ride, I see people riding their bike or walking their dog or pushing their kid in a stroller as many people use the alleyway. Slide. This one lane two-way traffic works because there are only 90 houses on our two streets. The development is 84 units, which is in effect doubling the amount of traffic on the alleyway. Slide. The development does not use Soquel for its entrance unlike the previous developments that were there. It throws all of 504 daily trips onto Hagamon and the alley. Slide. You've got people using the development going one way and people coming in the alleyway to get into the development coming the other way. So we're not entirely sure how they're not expected to bump into each other. Slide. Here's the updated version, but we still have questions. What if a car is coming in from forest? What about the cars that will be parked outside backing up into the alley to make a left turn? Slide. Keep our alley a public alleyway, not a private driveway. Slide. And then here's the intersection on Hagamon and Soquel. If we need to go towards Morrissey, we need to make a left at the light. Most times of the day, we cannot cross Soquel without the light at Hagamon allowing us to make a left turn. It's dangerous. So here we are, we have neighbors from forest in Hagamon needing to make a left. You have the Walgreens exit for people making a left back onto Soquel. Slide. You have this very wonky intersection at Shrevethin that is at an angle and difficult to see. Slide. You also have pedestrians crossing as one neighbor says I have had cars almost hit me many times. Slide. We also have the new townhome development coming in here at 162 Hagamon, which we know is separate, but it's going to add the cars. Slide. And you have this project with 504 daily trips. The light at Hagamon is long. There we go. The light at Hagamon is long. The cars, the previous slide please. The cars from this development will as one neighbor explains back up at the Hagamon light. It will likely back up the car traffic enough that it blocks the alleyway. Then what happens? The existing neighbors can't leave, the people who live in the development can't leave, and we are all in effect trapped. Slide. The developer has tried to create two lanes here, one at the left and the other going straight into the right. Unfortunately, the divide is only one car length. Can I keep going for a few minutes? Thank you. This brings us to our next ask. Slide. Make the lane divide longer so that the cars on Hagamon can actually go onto Soquel in one light cycle. Slide. We think this can be done. One suggestion is reducing the sidewalk on Hagamon from the proposed eight feet. We would rather some of that space go towards making sure we can get out of our street. Slide. This leads us to our final concern about the Hagamon corner specifically. Because of the misalignment at Trevathon to Hagamon, the corner is very sketchy for pedestrians. The angle's too sharp. Here's how a Hagamon neighbor described it. Because the crosswalk is so far to the right of the actual intersection on our side, drivers making right turns from Hagamon onto Soquel encounter a crosswalk where one is not normally expected. Just as pedestrians begin their very short time to cross. Slide. This project design will make the safety situation much worse by placing a four story building directly on the corner. So visibly, you won't be able to see when you're trying to turn where that car is. This is the developer's photo, but where that car is, you're trying to make a turn and you go right directly into that pedestrian walkway. We do appreciate that the developer is curving the corner of Hagamon and Soquel, but we need a larger curve and a larger setback here to help Trevathon and Hagamon visibly align. Slide. The boundary adjustments for this parcel are already being changed and a few more feet here would make such an important difference. Slide. We need a larger setback and alignment on this corner to protect pedestrians. Slide. I'm not a safety expert, but do you know who is? The professionals who do transportation studies. This development will have a huge impact on this designated critical intersection. This is our only opportunity to get it right. Please make this development safe for residents the old and the new. Thank you. Let me now recognize Xander Cameron to provide rebuttal. Good afternoon, sir. Mr. Arthur, good afternoon. I have not met you all, so nice to meet you all. But I'd like to thank you all for listening to us today and just want to let you all know that working with planning has been an actual joy as a developer. I've rarely ever said that in my life. So thank you guys very much. You guys have been responsive. I'm not gonna take a lot of your time. I just want to remind everyone of the number of things that we have done at the request of planning and the neighbors. We've pivoted within 48 hours to add more commercial. Did that not happily, but we did it. We've done, we've given up some of our land and eased that corner. I think that's a pretty big move for us. That's not something we typically like to do to give up our land that we purchased. I'd like to thank the neighbors for their ideas on widening the entrance into the building. That was their idea and that was a great one. So it's nice to get feedback like that that we can actually work with. So that was helpful. In terms of the bike lane proposal, and we've talked with SAF about that, that's something that we'd be willing to talk about in the future. But let me remind you that that is gonna be that one quick spot of road. The rest of the street has nothing to do with that. So they'll be safe in front of our building. So that's something we're willing to talk about. I'm not sure we can give up any more of our property for that, but whatever we can do to help make that safer. I also remind you that we are neighbors. We are going to be neighbors going forward. We will own this project. Those 84 tenants will be our tenants. And so their safety is of maximal importance to us. I do hear about traffic that it's frustrating and it's, I think it's frustrating for everybody when we're doing what we can to improve what we have to work with. An entrance off Soquel, I just don't think works. It makes it even more dangerous and you'd be cutting through your bike lane that you want. And then people turning lanes, it would be backing up in both directions without, it just, I like the idea to not load up Hageman, but we've found through working with planning everyone, it doesn't, it doesn't work. So again, I'd like to thank you all for your time and I'm going to move on. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor Keely and members of the city council. My name is Amra Morrison and I'm with the law firm of Wendell. I'm sorry, that was my, the former law firm. Fenimore Wendell and we represent 1800 Soquel in connection with this project's entitlements. And I apologize for the late letter that hopefully you all received this morning, but we did understand that their, the council was considering potentially the imposition of a new condition related to relocating access off of the alley onto Soquel. And so we wanted to just politely remind the council that there are, there are significant pieces of recent housing legislation that really do confine and constrict the council's ability to either condition or disprove the project. The project has been submitted under SB 330, which is the housing crisis act of 2019. And in connection with the project's application, preliminary application in September, that actually locked in or vested the rules and guidelines which were in effect at the time of the application submittal. So we understand from planning staff that there is a general plan mobility goal that discourages mid block access, such as one that is potentially being considered here on Soquel. I also wanted to point out that there is a recent density bonus law case called Bankers Hill versus city of San Diego, which essentially stands for the proposition that at least in connection with a density bonus project, councils or local agencies cannot step into the role as a project architect. The council and local agency is to evaluate the project as it's been proposed. And then I finally wanted to point out that the project has also been submitted, pursuant to the housing accountability act. And in order to deny or condition a project, a council has to make very specific findings related to a specific adverse impact. And that's got its own definition in the government code related to a public health or safety. And we think that the evidence is ample, as was presented to the Planning Commission that the current traffic does not pose a significant adverse impact to public health and safety. We certainly appreciate the appellant's concerns, but to now require that a traffic study be prepared, we think we assert is inconsistent with the Housing Accountability Act and also SB 330. So as Jim noted, we are certainly willing to work with planning staff relative to the bike lane. We've had very good discussions with staff and would anticipate that's gonna continue, assuming that the project is upheld and that the appeal is denied. So thank you and we're available to answer any questions that council might have. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is that the extent of the rebuttal? Thank you very much. This will be the opportunity for council members to ask their initial questions. Let me see if you will recognize the vice mayor. I wanna thank everybody that came out today and I wanna thank staff for meeting with us prior to this meeting to explain the nuances of the project and what's before us today. I did come up with three questions during the deliberations. And one of them is the idea of that one block bike lane. What are maybe Matt Starkey's or Nathan's thoughts on whether or not that would help with bicycle safety? Mr. Starkey, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Yeah, the bike lanes separated bike lane proposal is an interesting one. We are in the midst of undertaking our active transportation plan update city-wide. The volumes on SoCal are high as have been noted which would suggest that we do actually wanna have a separated bike lane on that corridor. I think that's a good suggestion and we've met with the development team to see if that's something we can fit into the existing distance between the building face and the bike lane line that's out there currently. I think it's something we can fit in a sort of interim condition if we move the sidewalk around a little bit and then we'll work through our active chance application plan to perhaps identify additional objective standards so that we can really carve out the space for that sort of treatment that we need corridor wide. So yes, it's a small segment of separated bike lane here but it is a step in the right direction. I think that leads me to my next question because I seem to remember in our objective design standards a certain standard sidewalk width. So if we were to reduce it here, how would that would be in ordinance with what we've already approved a few months back or how would that conflict with what we've already decided? We would have to accept us more narrow sidewalk on this frontage with the goal of just squeezing it in here when we have the opportunity but then when we do our objective standard update we'd wanna maintain that in large sidewalk plus add the extra width we need for the bike lane. So this section would be constrained but then in future proposals that come forward we would have asked for this additional width at the beginning. Okay, and then my final question is you know how Mission and Bay you can only cross like three sides of it? Has there been any thought about just removing that crosswalk altogether and making the one crosswalk on the other side just bigger and more visible? I think the idea here might actually be thinking about how we do this with our signal timing instead. One treatment we have is called a leading pedestrian interval and those give pedestrians a little bit of a head start in the intersection. So before the traffic light turns green to take a right turn we would have given the pedestrians a little bit of extra time to move out into the intersection and become more visible. I think the other note about there's a bus stop across the street. The need for pedestrian access here I think is really high so I wouldn't want to remove crosswalk necessarily and then just try to solve it with signal timing instead. Moving across to Dias here are the questions at this stage. Council Member Brunner. Just a quick question. Seeing the slide show that was presented by the appellant and the concerns of that whole intersection which some of it falls outside of this project but they're seeing an opportunity if work's going to be done and changes made at that intersection that it be done now. And so I'm just curious what city staff can say about the safety at that intersection the misaligned corners and what is in the works or in the plan to really address Soquel Avenue as a corridor and those safety concerns at that intersection for example, you know, other stop lights moving the crosswalk. Any of that outside of this project is anything? I think the improvements are really what have been talked about thus far with the realignment of the northbound approach to create better visibility across the street. The challenges with the alignment that are noted I think are actually more for the Walgreens side of the intersection just the way the angles come together where you'd need the spaces on the other side to allow that to line up a little bit better. I think this, what we've done on this side of the roadway is a good start but there is room for future improvement that's not in a project at the moment. For the question. Thank you. Council Member Watkins. I just have a follow up question if I may because I think if I'm also my line of questioning was similar to what council member Bruners was in terms of timing and sort of acknowledging that this is one project amongst a bigger stretch of need I guess transportation improvement need. So what's the timeline associated with some of those improvements or potential improvements outside of the scope of this project? And I don't want to deviate too far from what we're doing here tonight but I just want to put it in perspective like the Walgreens for example like some of the lights, et cetera. Yeah, that would have to be a project that's not identified currently. So there was not a plan to do those sort of improvements. The improvements we have before us are really just focused on the corner of the development wherever we align the curb line to make the visibility improved between the intersections there. But it's part of our general improvements for transportation, correct? Like we have strategies outlined as aspiration. Yeah, the aspiration is there. I think the addition of objective standards about separated bike lanes is a good step but there's not a specific project today, yes. But as other development happens on the quarter that's when we have opportunities. I wonder, I guess where I'm going with this is how to prioritize that given the traffic and knowing that there's only so much within this development and what's before us tonight but also thinking about it holistically in terms of our strategy with SoCal and what we're thinking about in general. And so how are we as a council able to weigh in on that in terms of timing and priority? I think our next sort of planning project that's coming forward is the Citywide Active Transportation Plan Update and the concerns we've heard about bicyclists and pedestrian safety on a quarter like SoCal would be a big focus there. And the timeline associated with that is? We're hopefully kicking it off in January. Okay, okay, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Council, excuse me, will you finish? Council Member Collentary Johnson is recognized. Council Member. Thank you. And I also want to thank those who came and the appellants for your presentation. Vice Mayor asked my question about the sidewalk and protected bike lanes but I wonder if staff could touch on the issue that was brought up by the appellants around the corner of Hageman and SoCal and the request for a wider, wider turnability and a larger setback. The staff speak to the challenges that, I mean, if that's feasible and if not, what are the challenges that would present? I think right now we're happy with the setback that's been established there, the curvature of the building, the setback of the curb line have all made visibility improved there. I don't think we need to ask for something additional at this time, we're happy with how that looks. And the concerns about the safety of the visibility? Yeah, the setback is what helps us achieve that the visibility. And then guys, I talked a little bit earlier, we have other treatments like thinking about how the signal timing works at that crosswalk in particular to help reduce some of those safety concerns. Thank you. Council Member? Good with that. Do you have further questions? Ms. Calentari-Johnson? No, that was it for now, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Butler, did you have further on this item? Thank you, Mayor Keely. Yes, I was just gonna provide a little bit more context to Council Member Calentari-Johnson's question about an additional setback. And I wanted to point out for the council the comments that the applicant's attorney, Amara, was making with respect to our ability to require those things that are not objective standards. You heard Matt Starkey, our transportation engineer, talk about the frontage and how in future projects, if we have objective standards, either in advance of the active transportation plan or through the active transportation plan, that would allow us to establish that greater dedication to be provided, but we have very limited ability to require that additional dedication, absent having those objective standards. So I wanted to point that out for the council. Thank you. Mr. Butler, don't go away. Let me ask the applicant a quick question. As I recall how you presented your asks, if you will, I think you said here's an ask and here's an ask and here's an ask. That's a summary in effect of this, is that right? They might be a little different. You know what, we worked on these separately. I mean, we had a lot of conversations together, but we each wrote our own, I wrote those objectives based on our conversations. The wording may not be identical to how Rina presented things, but they are a list of things that we feel would improve the situation. Does that help? Yeah, so essentially there's four things that we wanted. That's what you're asking. The protected bike lane, even if it's just on that corner there, we think it will really help the cars and pedestrians and cyclists. That's the four that are in there. Are there? Yes, and the alley, making sure that we have the alley protection, the corner alignments, and yeah, more understanding of that light and yes. So these four? Those four, yes. So you as the, jointly as the appellant. Yes. This is what you're asking for. Yes, thank you. Thank you, good. Okay, Mr. Butler, your turn in the barrel. All right, so let me see if I can work my way through this. If this application was here in 2017, let's go back in the way back machine. We're here with this exact same application. We're in 2017. My guess is, looking backwards, not only at this city, but other cities, the neighbors come in and say, here's a set of issues that we're concerned about. They're largely, if I get it correct, they're largely around traffic. It manifests itself in different ways. Here's something on Soquel, here's something in an alley, here's something on Hagam, and here's something someplace else, so it's really traffic. And if this was here, if we were here in 2017, look at the exact same project, I'm going to guess that what this city council or many other city councils in California at that time would have done is said, we need less units and more parking. That's what we're gonna do, because that's what the traffic is all about, is really how many units and how much parking and how do they get in and out and all that business? Am I okay so far? That would have been. That's correct, and that is also. The jurisdictions including this one did this in 2017. 2017 is when the laws really started to change. Now we're in 2023, and the state has passed 100 laws, and that's not a, that's an accurate statement, at least 100 laws in the last five years, which have their characterization knocked down barriers to development. Correct. And so today as we sit here and we want to deal with traffic, am I right in thinking, we don't have the option today legally to say, well, we're going to deal with this, is reduce the units and increase the parking. That's absolutely correct. We do not have that option. It is, everybody's absolutely clear that's not what we can do. So now we're going to try to do it some other way. And I want to have you step us through one through four here. Sure. And so let's take, and do you have the letter, sir? Do you have the letter? I don't have it, but I jotted down the community asks from the presentation, so I can go from that. I want to do it slightly differently because the community asks as they have indicated is just, okay, so I'm going to use your letter and assume that is what the appellants are asking for. Okay, I'm going to acknowledge you for 15 seconds. Come on. What is it you're trying to do here? 15 seconds. Yes. I want to submit, thank you, Mary Keely and the rest of the council members. I just want to remind the council that. Are you an appellant on this? Yes, I am also an appellant. Aimed appellant. I don't know if I'm added in. I just want to be sure of what we're doing here. Okay, go ahead, you got 15 seconds. But I live also on Hageman Avenue. I want to mention that there is also another project that is coming down the pike that you're probably familiar with on 162 Hageman Avenue, which is half a block away from this one. I could say you can do this later under public comment. Okay, well, I just did impact this because it's cumulative. I understand that, I understand that. All right, now back to you. Let's take item one, safe traffic flow. Items one through D. If the council chose to do all those things, could it do those things? You're talking A through D under number one? Number one, A through D. Dedicated turn lanes that are long enough to accommodate additional cars. You saw actually in that presentation that staff is recommending that the developer work with public works at the building permit and encroachment permit stage to evaluate the striping and provide for additional stacking. So the developer has agreed to that. Yes. B. Install green arrow left turn signal at Hageman. I'm assuming that's northbound left. And I believe that that is a planned as part of the, because there's a dedicated left and then there is a through and right for you planning on doing a left turn signal there. I recognize that. Hang on just a second. Mr. Butler, this way. What I'm trying to do is not understand whether the developer agrees to it. That's a separate question. I'm asking whether we have the legal authority on each of these items. So let's stay focused on that. One B, can we do that if we wanted to? Could we impose that as a condition? Over the objections of the developer. Over the objections of the developer. I do not believe we have an objective standard related to that. So no, we could not. One C. Coordinate cross traffic from Travis and to Hageman to avoid driver confusion, protected left turn and light timing. That is something that we can do internally. We can coordinate the light timing internally, but it's not something that the developer would do. Okay. With or without the objection, with or without the approval? One C. That was C. So one D. I'm sorry, excuse me, one D. Visible speed limit signs. Again, not something the developer needs to do. That's something our public works team can do. So one A through D. The only one we could, we could require. Let me help you out. Yeah. A, the developer has agreed to. Has agreed to. B, C and D are things that the city can do, but not require of the developer. Not require, but we could, we can do those things. They're not imposed on the developer. Those are things we could say we're doing. That's correct. We could do in effect on one A because the developer has said they agree with this. We can do everything one A through D. Correct. They can all be done. Let's go to number two. Legally they could be done, yes. Say it again. Legally they could be done. It's just who's responsible. Understood. City versus. Understood. Try to understand the legal situation we're in now versus five years ago. Completely understand. Okay. Two A. Provide a wider safer protected bike lane on Soquel heading east where the road jogs. You, yes, in that the developer indicated a willingness to not provide additional land, but to work with our public works department on where, on how wide that sidewalk is. So when the project comes through to the building permit stage that can be incorporated. Should it be the will of the council? Okay. I'm gonna ask the developers legal council to come forward for a moment or the developer either one whoever can speak authoritatively for the developer. Thank you. Good, good. Very good. Now both of you stay up here. You agree with that so far? Yes. Yeah, and I just checked with my client. You agree with that. They're amenable to that, yes. With two A as well? Yes. Okay, very good. Let's go to three. Mr. Butler, let's take those A through C. So three A is allowing 30-foot curb cut at the alley for wider two lane entry. We can require that on a legal perspective, on a policy perspective, a 20-foot drive line and a driveway there is gonna be safer in that the narrower aisle is gonna be navigated at a slower speed. That's a choice. Yes. That's a choice issue, but if we want it here. Yeah, the developer I know is gonna be willing to add to widen the driveway cut. They've put a wider driveway cut on their plans. Do you agree with that? Thank you. B. Protect public use of the alley. No, we do not have an objective standard. In fact, our general plan standard actually calls for minimizing driveways on SoCal. So general plan mobility development policy in 3.2.11 improve traffic flow and safety and reduce impacts on arterial streets by limiting driveways, mid-block access points and intersections, removing on-street parking, clustering facilities and so forth. Providing access from side streets and other similar measures. So not only do we have a policy that speaks against that, but also that would require changes to the plan that under various laws and case law that the applicant's attorney has cited, we would not be able to require a driveway access off of SoCal, for example. You agree with that? Let me ask a question, both of you. Some notion of prescriptive right or the ability to, once the public has been able to use something for years and years without obstruction or objection by the property owner, does the public then get some right to that? I have something in my memory that there's something in the law about this. There is such a thing as a prescriptive rights easement and the prescriptive rights easement is typically occurring over a private property, right? So someone cuts across a private property for years and it eventually becomes a public way and eventually through the courts it can be settled that there's a prescriptive rights access easement. This is different, this is a public right-of-way and so public access is allowed through the public right-of-way and we don't have an objective standard that says driveways should be on SoCal. In fact, it's the contrary, so unless the developer was willing to have a driveway access off of SoCal, both the general plan and case law would preclude us from requiring an access on SoCal. So make sure, I'm gonna ask. I would defer to your city attorney but prescriptive rights cannot be achieved against a public agency, so I completely agree with Lee. That's great. No, it's all around on that. So if we wanted to, quote, protect public use of the alley, do we have legal ability to do that or not do that? Public use of the alley, and limit public use of the alley? This says protect public use of the alley. So I'm gonna say the alleyway has public access and we can't say who has public access to the alley. Because who doesn't need protection insofar as it's a public, okay, fine. So in effect, that's not necessary it seems because there is no effort here to restrict public access across this alleyway. That's correct. I was going from the appellant's presentation where they were trying to basically not, I think their words were don't use the alley as a driveway, and so that's why I was saying, moving of the driveway to SoCal is not something that we can require. Thank you. 3C implements safety, mirrors, lights, sensors as recommended. Yes, that is something the applicants have also agreed to that in conversations. If they hadn't agreed to it, could we have required it? We don't have any objective standards related to that. And so that there could be a position where if a developer took a hard line, we might be in a challenging place. The developer has been very flexible and wanting to work with us on these types of issues. Agree, thank you very much. Let's go to item four, which, is this a one-page letter and only item four has A, that's it, is that right? Okay, I just want to make sure I didn't miss a second page. Thank you. Fixed the corner alignment, item A. So that is the move back and reduce the sidewalk width. That's something that I responded to with respect to Council Member Calentari-Johnson's question and no, we do not have the ability to do that. No objective standards. And we don't have the ability to do that, but if the developer was agreeable to that, then we could incorporate that because they agreed to it, but we couldn't oppose it over their objection. That's correct. And they have agreed to that portion, that small amount, but not to additional amounts. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate both of you. Thank you for helping us through that. This is the opportunity for the public to provide us with any comment for a period of time, up to three minutes each. So I'll start with the first person in line and let me ask Ms. Bush, do we have folks online? We do. So what we'll do is we'll start with you, sir, and then we'll toggle back and forth between folks in chambers and folks who are online. Good afternoon, sir. Afternoon. Thank you. I'm just gonna read this statement as prepared. I know a lot of things have been said already that cover it. Socal Avenue is severely impacted by traffic already. I live on Forest Avenue. I've been a bicycle commuter to downtown area for 20 years. Not only this project combined with the two-story townhomes proposed on Hagamon, but all the constellation of new and upcoming construction projects that you saw illustrated west of here sends more and more traffic through the Socal bottleneck at Trevatham. We're not the traffic experts, but they haven't been brought up in upfront. Where's the updated traffic study? Here's what's obvious to me. The Trevatham-Hagamon misalignment at that intersection is not being fully addressed. Only half measures. There's only time. This is, there is no other time to fix this. When traffic is not backed up at Socal, cars are clocked at near freeway speeds. Two types of bad, gridlock and speeding. Lose, lose. Extra wide sidewalks and more trees benefit no one. In practice, they invite the unhoused to camp out forcing pedestrians to walk into the bike lane to get around them. Instead, dedicated bike lanes with barriers and standard sidewalks would increase safety and narrow car lanes to slow down speeding cars. The alley behind the development is critical mixed use for the whole neighborhood. If the developer would go further to redesign both the building entrance and the exit, parallel to the alley, we're dispensing with this enter on Socal idea. Nobody wants that. It keeps coming up as a red herring over and over again. If they widen that apron to accommodate both entrance and exit without impacting the through flow of traffic in the alleyway, that would be a big improvement. And it seems within your power to do that. We saw a 20 foot wide apron, could be a 30 foot wide apron. But so they've only gone halfway. And it's good that they took the measure. They took one lane out of the conflict with the alleyway, but they could take both. And entrance and exit could be parallel to the alley without encroaching on it at all. Keep in mind, there's still those parking spaces. So the people or for the exterior parking, they're still using the alleyway. But for the tenants of the building, you've taken them out of the collide path. It's a very sensible addition. But to fix both the intersection misalignment and the alley, further easement and driveways on the parcel may need to be carved out of the building footprint. This might impact the precious retail space. Which do we need more? Retail space, tenant space, or traffic flow and safety for the impacted neighborhood? The entire neighborhood living in these horseshoe streets has only Soquel Avenue and this alley as our evacuation path in an emergency. Where is the evacuation plan after the double density of housing on this exact traffic pain point? The problems are obvious. The traffic studies to address the intersection misalignment and the evacuation plan are minimal due diligence. Where are they? Thank you, sir. We're going to take someone online, then we'll be with you in just a moment. Person online, good afternoon. Yes, good afternoon. This is Rotheson and Feld, calling in on behalf of Santa Cruz EMB in support of the project and respectfully requesting that the council deny the appeal this afternoon. I do appreciate that the community has really come together to advocate for improving bike pathways on Soquel. And I think many of us who care about this topic would appreciate the continued involvement of the community to help see that planning process and those improvements come to fruition over the next few years by attending transportation commission meetings and other community events that the planning department plans. I think this particular project and the discussion that we've heard this afternoon is sort of a good example of why it's generally a bad idea to do project by project planning and why we have general plans. And general plans are important and we've heard about concern about traffic flow and that we have a circulation element in our general plan that expresses policy goals that will hopefully help us improve the traffic in our community. But we can't require developers under the law in California to make changes to projects that they don't, where those standards aren't knowable ahead of time. And this project meets all of the standards that the city has imposed on it. It's compliant with our general plan and our zoning, including the density bonus units. And so we legally have a responsibility to approve this project, but it's also, it's a good project anyway. It provides 84 homes, including I believe 14 homes for families who are low or very low income. It's right on major bus lines. We generally agree in our community that these are the types of places that we want to be growing in. So if that's the case, we need to move forward and approve projects like these and save the concerns about traffic for long-term planning. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Candice Brown and I am a resident since 85. I was a renter and a homeowner of East Morrissey and I'm also on the Transportation Public Works Commission. And I am so nervous right now. And we have a situation where we know there's direct health and safety concerns and we see Hamburg as a city in the general plan with the dept of standards to address it. When the project was originally developed and approved in 2016, it was with 32 units and at that point they were asked to have an easement. So the developer here would have known about that if it's part of the disclosure when they purchased the property from the other developer, Peter Dores in San Francisco. And it was then increased from 32 units to 84 units. The developer gave notice to the community meaning that there would be at least three people or three people in each unit. And then so you multiply that by the number of people and obviously there's not enough parking spaces so they're invited then to use alternative transportation which is why we're really having this discussion. And we talk about transit-oriented development and yet we seem hampered to do anything to make it viable in our community. We talk about vision zero which was approved in 2019 and yet the staff here is saying we have the active transportation plan we're about to approve with no mention about the one thing that they can do which is to implement vision zero which is to address the speeds on the main transportation corridor. We know somebody that was killed there, the gentleman who was 11 children. I remember a time when somebody walked out got off the bus and got hit an older lady and she got killed. We know many people that had been bumped and hit helicoptered out from our community from my neighborhood which sadly they're not here today because we're in the middle of the day. So we have to have some way as a city to protect our community when it comes to health and safety. There's a lot of words being spoken today. I am not a lawyer. I am an individual and I'm an accountant formerly in high tech. So I'm not completely armed with all the tools right now to advise you but I can say that there are serious health and safety concerns at this intersection. I wanna mention in the 38 seconds that I have I live on Trevathen so I'm on the other side and as I mentioned I've been there a long time. If you make a left there cause people are cutting through from Morrissey to avoid Morrissey and Frederick which is a disaster and they cut through they're making left there on the right of the people trying to go straight and the people straight have the right away but they're to the left and so that's where all the collisions happen. Also because the crosswalk and I thought Renee had a great idea maybe you should just eliminate that crosswalk. You should not invite people to do something unsafe and that's exactly what you're doing. So I really think you need some kind of study. I don't know what you wanna call it and I also want to mention that there were conditions on the original plan that included the applicant will work with Public Works to develop and install pedestrian and bicycles have priority signage in the alley. The applicant will design and install up to two speed pillows in the alley south of the project that will address fire and bicycle access so the concern about fire that can be addressed with a proper speed bump and surface drainage they will work with the immediate neighborhood on need and location. And the public works will install in warning signs at the intersection of Soquel and Hageman. You might have to wrap it up now, thank you. So I'm just saying these conditions were in the original 2016 and they weren't even talked about and they weren't included in the conditions and these address some of the concerns and I was one of the people that paid for the appeal. You've gone way over so when I ask you when I give you extra time. Thank you very much. You see extra time don't abuse that, thank you. Next person.  Nice to see you all again. I am in fact the homeowner of the only home that has an easement as I approach my garage as this gentleman mentioned earlier today via this alley. That's how I access my garage. Then the house has been there since 1923 when it was separated from the Hageman family farm. That's the last time that title did transfer. So these systems, this has all been there for a really long time. All those incense cedars, those have all been there since the Hageman track since the Orana family owned the whole Finca, right? So now you're saying that's public property except we haven't had public works out there to fix it in about five years. The gentleman with the dreadlocks and I patched that hole a couple years ago. So you know and also I would point out that my side of that alley does not have a crack in its asphalt. It's the commercial that has this disastrous but then you had the illegal red tagged illegal garage with the illegal lift in there, right? And they tore all, they were putting illegal four by four lifts in there for a while until you red tagged them. But it's not like you guys are caring for this thing but now you're gonna give it away. I care for it. I bought it, I live there. I was born in the beach flats in 1969. You wanna talk local. So I don't see you doing your job. What I see is you given these people with this $300 an hour lawyer, scared, pet scared, you're gonna actually hold them to keeping our community livable. And guys, we forgot about forest. The taqueria, you cannot see Soquel from the taqueria guys.  And guess what? In the time that I've owned that house, I have seen four or five totaled out cars from people trying to get on to Soquel from forest which didn't even come up today which means you guys are not on your game. Thank you for your time. Person online, good afternoon. Person online, three, two, one. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Hi, my name is George Mead and I've lived on Hagamon Avenue since 1990. I just would like you to know that this development as designed is essentially putting a round peg in a square hole. The intersection of Trebethan and Soquel and Hagamon is both very wonky and unique and having all of the access to this development via an alley is unprecedented in my mind in the city of Santa Cruz. If anybody can give me an example of a multi-unit development access solely via an alley, please speak up because this is something that I am completely unfamiliar with. Having the alley widened behind the subject proposed building is a step in the right direction but as they say a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. So the section of the alley that goes from the corner southeast corner of the proposed development to forest is only 15 feet wide that can only accommodate one-way traffic. That is gonna create big problems when people are trying to enter or exit via forest and they encounter another vehicle. Traffic is gonna back up onto forest or in the alley. There's a history of accidents at this intersection already and I'll tell you that if you accept this proposal as planned, you're gonna have blood on your hands because there will be accidents, unfortunately. Something needs to be done to re-engineer the traffic access. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Gabriella Jones. I was born in the Santa Cruz Mountains and I've lived in the city of Santa Cruz since 1988 consistently the last 12 years as a renter at 225 Forest Avenue. So I am on Forest Avenue. I can speak to that particular issue of the danger of living on Forest Avenue and trying to access getting onto Soquel. I live just down from Soquel Avenue, the proposed development and the alley that connects Forest and Hageman. I've raised small children at Forest Avenue and now have teenagers at home, 18 and 13. We have two cars in our family and we have two members of our family that commute on bikes, a high schooler and a working adult. I support development, affordable housing and increased rentals in Santa Cruz. I'm a renter myself who would definitely benefit from affordable housing. I have secure housing at the moment. However, I feel strongly that there must be a commitment to sustainability, specifically making our streets and neighborhoods more bike and walking friendly as I transition more to walking and biking and my whole family does. We have an opportunity as a city to commit to these ideals. The alley that connects Forest and Hageman is a wonderful bike pedestrian and wheelchair friendly connector between the two streets. We have someone on Forest Avenue who's wheelchair bound and who does use that alley as a way to get across and over to Walgreens and into other places as well. It's also another way off of Forest in an emergency to get onto Soquel Avenue. I ask that you protect and keep the alleyway open as a safe route for all members of the community and we really do rely on it for all of these important reasons. Soquel Avenue, especially near our intersection, can be a very challenging street to navigate, especially where Forest meets Soquel. There is no regulated traffic street light allowing for a safe left turn. Onto Soquel off of Forest, cars often speed on Soquel at that intersection as Rena pointed out earlier and during commute hours it's a heavily congested and very slow route through Santa Cruz. It's an impossible left turn off of Forest during those times and it can be very dangerous. My teen driver was one of the drivers who made a calculated but unfortunately bad decision to make a left onto Soquel off of Forest and was almost killed by a speeding driver on Soquel Avenue. Our car was totaled. We counseled him on making good decisions as a driver but because that left turn is available to make and because of the angle of Soquel and the visibility issues and the fact that people speed, it's an incredibly dangerous intersection. Since that event, none of us have made that left turn onto Forest Avenue and we go all the way around through the neighborhood down the horseshoe of onto Hegemon to make that light at that corner. Unfortunately though, I'm sensitive to that we're increasing traffic on in that neighborhood part of the neighborhood as well. It looks like my time's up. I would just say one last thing that adding this large number of vehicles is going to make this whole, as you've seen, congested traffic area very difficult for all of us. Please consider the best outcomes for walkers, bikers and other people that need access. Thank you very much. We have anyone else online? We'll take that person then we'll see you. We'll see a person online. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, counsel. This is Ryan Mechel. I'm calling in support of this project and urge you to deny the appeal. I just want to comment on some of the transportation aspects of this. This project is going to be in a great position for residents to take buses, bike or walk to where they need to go. So Cal is envisioned as a protected and very important bike lane in the active transportation plan as Mr. Starkey mentioned earlier. And I think staff is going to do great work to address safety concerns on this corridor. I would urge you to leave staff in the greatest amount of room to plan that improvement and not confine it or constrain it to this single project. I don't think piecemeal planning out our bike lanes and safety improvements is the best way to make a corridor. And that's what Soquel Avenue is. It's a corridor that supports safe sustainable transportation. Additionally, Soquel Avenue is going to receive 15 minute headway service from Metro beginning in 2024 with the reimagined Metro process which will provide residents convenient and easy access between downtown Santa Cruz and the Capitola Mall. Additionally, there's a B cycle station within walking distance of this project. So residents have many different resources to get around town besides driving and I think they'll take advantage of them. Staff, both the county level with Metro and in the city have done a great job of encouraging active transportation and encouraging mass transit ridership and I think they'll continue to do so. So I urge you to keep these thoughts in mind while you deny this appeal and say yes to homes at this project. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Hello, Andrea who lives on Forest was here for a few hours and had to leave so she asked me to read her message. The first reason that this project should not be billed is its location, Water Street and Broadway funnel into Soquel and create a natural bottleneck. Adding a development of the size to this intersection will add to gridlock, pollution and dangerous conditions for bicyclists and pedestrians as trap drivers lose patience and engage in riskier driving behaviors and commute times and conditions that are going east will increase. I hope that any traffic studies are done during peak commute times. The second reason is that this is a market rate project that our city workers will not be able to afford. If we want to provide housing for our local workers, housing needs to be affordable. This project does nothing besides destroying a lovely neighborhood and creating huge profits for a few investors. Please imagine that you're voting for a project like this in your own neighborhood or allow the citizens of Santa Cruz to vote on this project. Either way this poorly conceived gridlock worsening project should not go forward. Thank you. Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? We'll take that person and we'll be right with you. Person online, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Councilor Bradley Snyder. Just want to mention that I feel that a lot of the comments about the increase in the traffic pressure and how it's already in such a state of like high intensity, high fast forward kind of motion. I feel like the council really should consider certain changes they make just like the Scotts Valley Metro or the building you're in, there's a plaque where it's engraved the names of the people who established it. These decisions are going to be a monument to you. They're gonna be, if there's like city planning where people feel menaced by traffic conditions. It's in history, they're gonna look back at who made the decision to make it that way. Now, I'm a person who's walked in Santa Cruz. I've lived on Darwin Street. I've worked at the Safeway at the corner of Morrissey in Soquel, I grew up in Soquel Village and would walk all the way to Santa Cruz on Soquel. I'm really familiar with that intersection. Here's a suggestion that I think you're gonna find highly lateral, but to me, the two circular intersections you installed near the beach, it seems like that could almost work at Morrissey and Soquel and Water. That whole intersection, if it were made to smoothly flow in a circle, maybe would slow people down a great improvement over in Capitola on Claire Street.  It's just psychology, but as far as, as far as tightening the screws with the way people drive and the way people are processed in the community, I've seen horrific head-on or total vehicles along there. I'm appalled by it and how increasingly likely it is to occur as you walk along in these areas. So I'm a person, I go to the East Bay, I panic attacks just trying to get from point A to B between Martinez and Concord, but I don't think Santa Cruz is gentrifying by keeping itself safe by designing things well. That's how I feel about the situation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon. My name is Quinton Rowland and I am a resident of Santa Cruz and I have family who live within a half mile of the project area. I'm in favor of a traffic safety study, regardless of whether it's required of, the development project or not. I think it's the right thing for the city to do. Sooner than later, why? Because we're inviting 200, roughly 200 new residents, maybe more, into this space that all these people have been describing for you. It's, we experience routine, meaning every hour, 45 to 60 mile per hour speeds, go out and measure them yourself. Now, I've done my homework and I've walked all sides of that intersection, so-called Hageman, Trevathon, in the dark and with sun in my eyes. I've observed the most common movements by all participants. I've stood in the bikeway while traffic roared by at 45, 55 miles per hour, only protected by a white stripe. I've observed texting drivers zooming through the intersection with sun in their eyes. I've witnessed numerous red light runners and many more drivers accelerating toward the intersection to beat the light, accelerating towards the intersection. High school kids cycling to school in substandard bikeway widths, partially obstructed by debris and pooling water and rising seams in the middle of the bikeway, seniors walking their dogs across a vast distance of uninterrupted asphalt, ultimately sprinting in fear to the curb. Bus riders hurrying across the street mid-block, hoping to catch a bus. Joggers listening to music while crossing against the light, thinking the cars are distant enough. Parents en route to Arana Gulch Park, nervously pushing baby strollers only inches from impatient bumpers. No crossing islands to provide physical protection, horizontal deflection and visual friction. This is the cornerstone, by the way, of a vision zero city is crossing islands. Crosswalks located too close to the intersection, creating complex conditions and blind spots for all participants. Primitive, unsafe, diagonal ADA ramps. Drivers weaving from lane to lane at lethal speeds do in part to chaotic speed differentials. Drivers waiting to turn at the traffic light despite no oncoming traffic, waiting for nothing. Drivers waiting much too long for a sufficiently large gap to enter the Soquel Avenue Stream because the speeds are too high, requiring much larger gaps in time for that maneuver. Delay stress, delay stress for all participants. Let's all problem solve together. Let's do a traffic safety together, study together. Let's get everyone who has skin in the game looking face to face, eye to eye, at the intersection. Let's all walk it together many times. Let's experience what all these people have experienced. Thank you. I'll wrap it up. Let's do it together as a team. And I know we'll end up with the best result possible. Thank you. Thank you for being here, sir. Ms. Bush, do we have anyone else online? Good afternoon. See, I told you you'd get to talk. Here you go. I wasn't worried about that. Thank you. First of all, I wanna thank you all for your patience. I know it's been a long day and you've heard a lot of different things. I do appreciate that it's hard to keep one's attention going for all this time. I wanna thank you all for that. I do want to, I don't know what the process is exactly to submit a letter, but I do wanna submit a letter. You can submit that to the clerk and that'll become part of our record. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll do my best to keep my comments very brief and try not to repeat all the things that have already been said. My two primary points are that I understand that the city council is limited in your abilities. I understand that. I understand that there are state laws that you are obviously supersede your abilities. And I also appreciate from what I've studied and understood from previous people that you have some discretion. A little bit of wiggle room here and there. So that is really what we're asking for is for you to do your very best to hear because obviously there's a tremendous amount of concern. The main point I want to bring up two main points. One is that, as I said earlier, there is another project at 162 Hageman Avenue which is being considered very close on the heels of this one and that involves seven town homes with attached ADUs. There are three bedroom two bath homes again with attached ADUs. So that poses an increased tremendous impact of a number of people. Again, we don't know exactly how many people are gonna end up living in those spaces but we all know from having lived in Santa Cruz for a long time what our current rental and rates are so we can easily predict lots of people will be living there as well. Again, increasing the traffic issue there on our intersection and on our street. So I really feel very strongly that these two projects need to be considered in tandem with each other. I realize that's not the responsibility of the developers but I think it is the responsibility of the city council because you're responsible for our whole city and the quality of our lives and our streets and our safety which keeps being brought up over and over again. I think it's, again, I've lived there for many years. I've raised two children. I bike all the time. Soquel despite what everybody else may have said about the safety of Soquel as a bike corridor, it is never a safe biking area. I'm always worried for my own safety and for my children's safety. It's as people have said, people drive very fast. There's nothing to block you. I appreciate that hopefully that's coming down the pike. I hope that that's the case that there's some kind of significant barrier put as has been put on Water Street which is at least a little bit of a help. You know, the little things that separate the bike lane from the road in a few spaces on Water Street. So I just really ask that you consider those two projects together and that's it. Thank you very much for your time. Well, thank you very much. Somebody called in, no doubt. Okay, we have one more person online. Good afternoon, person online. Hello there, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Wonderful. My name is Alex Noisy and I'm one of the neighbors who lives on Hagamon Avenue. I've lived here for eight years and I love my neighbors. I think we have a wonderful community here on Hagamon Avenue. And I'm glad that everyone is so involved in the processes that change and shape our neighborhood. I have read the appeal and its main points and I believe that the plan sufficiently addresses most of the primary concerns about the intersection misalignment, the turn lanes, the alley, the sidewalks, the ADA ramps and others. I know that early on there was some discussion and in fact today about moving the entrance to this project to SoCal directly but living in this neighborhood, I know as well as all my neighbors that the best and safest way to exit the neighborhood is by using the light at Hagamon. So I would caution against making a change like that. And in fact, it sounds like that's something that can't be made, so I think that's good. But in short, I believe that the plan as it is will be a boon to our neighborhood and I do not share the concerns that are laid out in the appeal as written. My primary reason for attending this hearing today is simply to underscore that our city is woefully in need of more housing. And I couldn't think of a better neighborhood to welcome new neighbors into. So hopefully we can all make this work out. Thank you so much for the work you do and for considering the community's varied points of view. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Francaise of on Hagamon and my main concern again is getting the transportation study move forward and to, and underlying that, improving the safety of SoCal for all the upcoming projects and just in general, even if there was zero projects, it's our main corridor. It should be our pride and joy. It's, the city should have a lot of focus on since it's such a main corridor and so many people use it. And many, there's been many fine suggestions and I agree with them, especially the pedestrian islands. Slowing down traffic enforcement on that area has been zero. I've lived there for 40 years. I've never seen a single officer enforcing any speed on that portion of SoCal. Also, as far as alignment on SoCal, the 2016 projects, which was approved for that corner by the Planning Commission, but did not move forward, the people who were developing it voluntarily seated much more than the present developers to the corner to align the area. This was not something they had to do. It was something they did voluntarily to make it safer for their occupants. Also, right now, I'm very concerned that the front of the building where the main lobby is is, where the main lobby is, there is no stopping of any vehicle in front there. There's this very narrow lane. Nobody ever stops there. So if somebody wanted to take a Uber, they could not stop there. They would have to go down to the alley or down SoCal or down for us and then walk around to the front door. So it puzzles me why the lobby would be there when there's no vehicle access to the front door. And the developers has put a loading zone in the back of the building in the alley, which is an improvement over having no loading zone. And they made a place where UPS can drop off in the garage, which wasn't there before, which I appreciate. The loading zone would not actually, from somebody with who has disabilities, they would have to walk again either through the garage or around the building up to the door to get to the elevators. So they haven't really studied the access as far as Americans with disability. And I'm kind of disappointed in that planning didn't pick up on some of these things. And so those are some of my concerns that haven't been voiced before. So thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Bush, anyone else online? Nobody with their hand raised. Nobody with their hand up. Anyone, last call? Very good. The appellant is your opportunity for a rebuttal. I'm taller than everybody else. Okay, I'll just start by thanking all of you for taking time to think about our intersection and take it really seriously. It affects all of us, it affects our city. I wanna thank the developers for all of the goodwill and the efforts to respond to our concerns. I really believe that you are in good faith and that we are gonna come to the best solutions possible. I wanna thank the city staff and public works for working actively to make this as positive as it can be. We are not against this project. We are very concerned about the impact. And I really wanna distinguish that. A lot of the people who said deny the appeal, well, the appeal is not to change the project, to stop the project. The appeal is to make sure that these traffic considerations are met. And so we really appreciate that it's already come pretty far. And I appreciate, Mayor Keely, your effort to look at our list and see which things can be done, which helped me understand which things are under the authority of the city versus which things are under the authority of the developer. And I understand that there's good collaboration and I have great faith that you will, in fact, do everything that you possibly can to address this corner. And that really is our goal for an outcome is that it's safe enough for all of us and for the future residents. Specifically, we really are counting on UCD council to help public works prioritize this intersection. Somebody mentioned that there's no projects yet on the docket for this corner. We'd like to see that happen. We'd like to see it get mobilized. We're particularly concerned about the left turn traffic lane off of, actually have a light that goes with that new lane. We really like the prioritized bike lane a lot, even if it's only in front of that development because of the jog in Soquel Avenue. So that the drivers know that the street is changing and the bike is prioritized on that corner. If it means a slightly narrower sidewalk, I'm really hopeful that that can be negotiated. We're really in favor of the 30 foot wide driveway cut out so that the driveway in and out of the garage is adjacent to the alley rather than taking up the alley. We think that that's a really good solution so that cars can pass going in and out of that garage without affecting the pedestrian and bike and wheelchair users, as well as other vehicles that also use that alley. And we think that that's doable. It doesn't ask them to change. It just means you guys accepting that that's a wider curb cut than usual. And we do acknowledge we'd lose some parking there. And of course, that's a challenge too, but we understand that that safety is more important in this instance. I think those are the main ones that I just feel like we've taken our time. We've done a lot of homework. We've come to you really in good faith to help us to make sure that this corner is safe. It's in your hands. We look forward to seeing how it all turns out and we thank all of you guys because we know that we'll be working with you living next to you and getting to know lots of hopefully cool new people on our block. So anyway, thank you. Thank you very much. Adder is back before the council. We glad to recognize a member for a motion. Sure. I'm happy to move the recommendation and I want to just make sure. So I'll move the recommendation as stated, but I want to make sure, because what I heard was that all of the things that we could ask the developer to do has been agreed upon. So is that written into the recommendation as presented in the staff report? Okay, I want to separate out you were almost there with motion. Now it's turned into a question. So why don't you ask your question then we'll get a motion. Okay, let's do that then. Yeah, I don't think the letter that we went through in detail is not in the motion. So I think that needs to be included as part of it. Okay. The details of it, yes. Okay, great. Make your motion. So I'll move the recommendation with the additions that were outlined in the questioning around what the developer was willing to accommodate within our legal realm to ask for. Would you like me to read those? Let me see if we can get this. Okay, so let me start with, I think we have to deal with the appeal. Is that correct, sir? I think we have to deal with the appeal. And then as part of dealing with the appeal, then we can take actions which would further detail our approval of this project. Is that correct? Correct. You could adopt a motion to deny the appeal with the additional of the additional conditions that were discussed and acknowledged by the applicant as being. Okay, so let's take this in pieces. Let's go ahead. Your motion is to deny the appeal. Correct. The rest of the motion is to reference the letter of November 28th, 2023, submitted by neighborhood recommendations for traffic safety improvements. Correct. And on those, if I understand. I can read. Where we're going. Please proceed. Thank you for the clarification. So on those include what is feasible for the developer and what I heard was agreeable is to provide dedicated turn lanes that are long enough at least two to three car links and reduce proposed sidewalk width on Hagman to accommodate those lanes. That was one A. Yes, okay. To provide a two A to provide a wider safer protected bike lane on Soquel Avenue in front of the development heading east where roads jog, reduce proposed sidewalk width on Soquel to accommodate the bike lane. And three A to allow a 30 foot curb cut at alley for wider two lane garage and I believe that's, oh and excuse me and three C to implement safety mirrors light sensors as recommended. No, am I, did I, I want to make sure I captured what I believe was heard. My honor, my honor, my honor. Hold on a second, come on. Okay, Mr. Butler assist with the motion here. Thank you. I've got Matt Starchy as well. So for the alley driveway curb cut, the letter here says allow the 30 foot. We would recommend 20 feet. We do believe that's a safer configuration to that if he agrees. The thinking beyond that is we want to make sure we keep speeds low on the alley, especially with the entryway into the driveway. What we're not going to do is a whole bunch of discussion about this. Get straight to the gentlelady's question. We'd recommend 20 feet for the driveway. What do you want to do on that? Not dirty. I'll accept your recommendation. Okay. Next item. Next issue. Next issue. Was that the only one? That was it. We just, I wanted to clarify that. The others were agreed upon in the island. I haven't heard anything else that's objectionable. I just wanted to. As we walked through. Okay, thank you. I would, I would just mention though that the 1A here, we included this sort of idea and the staff recommendation for a motion to have the appellant work with public works to develop the length there of the turn lane. I don't want to be limited to two to three cars if it needs to be longer, for example. Okay. We got to stay in motion world here right now. Ms. Bush is trying to get a complicated motion clearly stated. Ms. Bush, do you have a question? Do you need clarification right now? I just want to make sure 3A instead of 30 foot is 20 foot. Correct. What you're talking about? 20 foot for 3A. Thank you. And then 1A is as outlined in the recommendation based on the staff recommendation. And I don't know if you want to repeat how it's written. I don't have that in front of me. Ryan, do you have that in front of you? If you can just read it and then you can email it to Bonnie Bush. Can I just ask for one clarification? I interpreted the motion as to adopt the resolution with those additional conditions. That's correct. Ms. Bush, make sure you cut that. Very good. Is that the extent of your motion? Yes. I don't know if we want to read for clarification on 3A or 1A, excuse me. Searching for it. I have a presentation. But I understand it was the recommended motion to extend work with public work staff essentially to extend the length of that dedicated left turn lane. Correct. Just of it, yeah. So that's the motion. Everybody on board on that? Everybody clear? Clear rather? Ms. Bush, we good? So we're not putting 1A. I can send it to you. Slow down, slow down here. We're not putting 1A because it's included in the staff. Correct. Okay, so far so good. Is that the extent of your motion? We good? We're good. Is there a second? Motion? I will second it and I have further questions on that. And we'll be right back with you. Do you want to open on your motion? Yeah, no, I just really appreciate everybody coming forward. I think we, I also really appreciate the conversations that I believe ensued between the community and the developer. I think we all share commitment to safety, to traffic concerns. Anybody who lives in Santa Cruz knows Soquel is a really challenging street and that intersection is challenging. I live in the area. I understand your concerns. We have a lot of challenging intersections and streets and I know there's only so much within the realm of this proposal and this development that we can influence and also know it's part of this bigger picture around how are we improving our traffic safety and so I definitely want to make sure that the community knows that we heard that and that is a priority for me and it's a priority I know for our council and our staff and I appreciate some of the specifics that we could influence and the agreement that the developers and we're willing to make to make some of those accommodations take place and look forward to hopefully continuing the dialogue to make sure our community is as safe as possible and we're also allowing for more affordable housing. So that's it for me. Thank you. Ms. Brunner is recognized. Thank you. Wow, thank you for getting us to this point and I just had a question around the 20 foot, 30 foot and what that, what is typical and what difference would that make in the staff, the staffs from the staff's perspective? What data helps inform you to recommend 20 feet when 30 feet is being requested? Will it still impact the alley? As stated was one concern of having the driveway separate from the alley access. Yeah, thank you for the question. So with standard driveway approach for the city of Santa Cruz is between 16 feet and 30 feet and we typically will use a larger driveway approach when we're talking about higher volume development. So commercial development where we have a lot more vehicles coming in and out of that particular area. Right now, what was being proposed for this particular development was a 20 foot wide driveway approach which is very standard for this type of development, the size of the number of cars that we're expecting to come out and in and out of this area. And so that's why we continue to recommend a 20 foot wide driveway approach versus a 30 foot wide. Would it hurt to have 30 foot wide? What is that impact? The 30 foot wide driveway approach would end up impacting most likely the parking that's out there. There could be a bit of an access. I don't recall the exact plan mine as far as the approach into the development. Widening it most likely would just again, mainly impact I think with parking at this point. I'll add that the part of the concern here as we heard about is the speeds on the alleyway and we want to make sure. Excuse me, excuse me. If you want to be recognized, right? This is not some free for all, you're recognized. Thank you. We're trying to acknowledge that concern by making sure we keep a really tight driveway entrance and that's how we know people will cautiously enter and exit the alleyway which is a big concern for the neighborhood. Yes, it could be wider but our recommendation is to keep it as narrow and as tight as possible so we keep speeds down and we help everyone navigate the area safely. So I have a follow-up question and in terms of, I think 3C was implemented into the motion. Did you, three, oh excuse me, yes. So that relates to safety mirrors, lights, sensors as recommended determined whatever the best option would be in this case. What is our ability to ask the applicant or has the applicant agreed for anything that would help reduce speed at the parking, in and out entrance, a speed bump, a stop sign, mirrors to help with greater visibility? Yeah, we recommended that at the entryway from the alleyway into the parking entrance of the development that we had something like you mentioned. We do this at our garages, we put a speed bump as you enter the garage to kind of stop you before you get in and out. Stop sign is also a good tool there and then the mirrors could help improve the visibility for people exiting the development. Is that already incorporated into the recommendation or does that need to be spelled out? Can that be spelled out? Yes, that could be spelled out. Because I think I remember it was mentioned, it's not in our objective standards. Yeah, that'd be a good one to detail. So I'd like to ask the maker of the motion if that can be incorporated into the motion. I'm comfortable with that. To ensure those types of. For Miss Bush's purposes, let's make sure we know exactly what we're talking about. What is your motion, your request for an amendment to the motion? That there are devices that help reduce speed at the alleyway, driveway, entrance, exit, whatever that looks like in this case, such as a speed. Okay, so that the applicant shall include devices that reduce speed and conflict at the parking garage entrance, such as a speed bump, a stop sign, mirrors, anything that will help with that egress and provide greater visibility and safety. We can do that. We can work with the applicant on that. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Further? Griebel? Griebel's second.  Griebel? Agreeble. Okay, further on this? Ms. Brunner, further? I just have a couple of comments. Well, we're on a motion. So we're, let me see if there are other amendments or substitutes. Anyone, Ms. Brown is recognized. Thank you. I'm not going to try to make an amendment because, but I do wanna ask a question. I wanna revisit if I could for a moment this 30 versus 20 foot driveway. And there's a difference of opinion here and I don't have the expertise to, you know, weigh the different, you know, the variables. But I'm hearing from people who live in this neighborhood who make use of this space on a regular basis that they believe that would be safer. And so I'm inclined to wanna, you know, prioritize that view, you know, the manual that gives the guidelines is one thing. But there are as particularity of place. And so I want, I'm trying to understand this and it feels like that's a really important thing for the neighbors.  Why couldn't we do that? Sure. I think when these, I think we'll kind of think back to the arrow diagram that was presented earlier. Space is one part of the conflict issue, but time is also the other part. And that has to do with the number of vehicles that are entering and exiting a site. And so at this site, we know it generates less than 50 cars per hour. And so that really low volume of vehicles, you don't need as much space because you're much less likely to have conflicts between vehicles showing up at the same time. So that combined with the volume that it's hard to have low speed, is why I'd recommend a really minimal driveway apron. If we wanted to go 24 feet, that would be fine too, but I don't think it really needs to be negotiated. If I could follow up, because we talked about this, and it made sense when we were discussing it, and I've been out there now, and I'm hearing from neighbors, so I just really want to make sure that we address that and have the information. Yes, cars, right? And we don't know that it's gonna be 50 trips, that is a projection based on models. So we don't know that, we think that, and I'm willing to go along with the projections, but there are also, I mean, there are tons of people who use that alleyway on bicycles and on foot. And so I think that that does make a difference. And so again, I'm trying, I can't see people being able to move in that space without additional width if there are cars coming in and out and the increased traffic of moving, not all times of day, every day, but certainly there will be, I think safety issues there. And so having that space means people can get out of the way if a car's pulling in or pulling out. I'm not sure 10 feet is gonna increase the speed so much it makes it dangerous as the, how people move in that space in reality. So again. Let me try to get this into it. Do we have the discretion if we wanted to to make it 24 feet or 30 feet if we chose to do it? Yes. That's all I'm really interested here. Whether you agree with it or disagree with it is not my interest. Do you wanna add, do you wanna add that or not? I would ask the maker of the motion to move to 30 feet. Okay. Is there any objection? If we can do it, we can do it. If we can't, we can't. I'm wondering if we want to think about the 24 feet just to be kind of able to split it in the middle. Make a decision. What do you want? I'm gonna go with the 24 just because I don't wanna ignore the expert opinions or my what type of potential. That's the request. Is that agreeable to the maker of the motion? Yes or no? It's a simple question. Yeah, I'm hearing that this is a perceived safety and I think. I'll accept that as a yes. You've accepted that amendment 24 feet. Am I right? I'm just wondering why 24? If we can just clarify where that number came from. So 20 comes from two 10 foot lanes, which is a very minimal lane with 12 foot. It's kind of like a maximum lane you would use for two lanes of traffic. So 24, 30 is much too big. Yeah. Thank you. So 24. Yes. 24, everybody's good at 24. Sold at 24. All right. Let's see if there are other motions to amend or substitute motions. Ms. Calantari-Johnson, thank you for your forbearance. Thank you. I have two friendly amendments that I will just read from what I've written and then see if the maker of the motion and the seconder would accept that. One is to direct city manager, director of public works to return to city council in 2024 with an updated objective standards for separated bike lanes along Soquel from at least Morrissey to Capitola Road so that additional land dedication can be required of future projects when needed to achieve the desired long-term bike lane space and alignment. And I sent this to Bonnie Bush, so she has it. Thank you. The second. Is that your first offer? That's my first friendly amendment. Okay. Let me see if Ms. Bush, you do have that. All right. And maker of the motion, agreeable to you. Oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me. I'm fine with that unless there's any objection. Okay. Ms. Calentari-Johnson, second item. Great. The second is to direct the city manager, director of public works to further explore the proposed traffic safety recommendations, which are items one B through D in the neighbor's recommendation that was passed out as part of the active transportation update. Sorry, could you repeat that? I couldn't catch it all. And let me also ask Ms. Bush, do you have that? Good. Just a moment here. Would you like me to read it or? I think we're good, Ms. Calentari-Johnson. Ms. Bush is simply getting it ready for us to review. Ms. Calentari-Johnson, now that's up on the screen. Let me see if this is what you want it to be. This is. And when the time is appropriate, I can speak to it. Okay. Let me see if that friendly amendment is agreeable to the maker of the motion. It is to the second of the motion. I have a question. Is this separate from the appeal? And to me, it seems like that was part of the next step. Yeah. Mr. Butler? Yeah. That's a great question, Council Member Burner. I would recommend that that be separate direction and not included as conditions of approval because that's direction to the city. And so I think as long as you're clear about that, then if that satisfies the clerk, we'll keep it out of the conditions. This, these two items would not be conditions of approval. They would be separate direction that's recorded in the minutes. Agreeable, understood, and agreed. I can just follow up on that briefly. Say it again. So the motion would be to adopt the resolution as amended and give this direction to the staff. Thank you. Thank you for. Slow down here, Ms. Bush. I'm gonna make sure you're okay. We're good, all right. For the further amendments, for the debate or discussion, clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsom? Aye. Brown? No. Watkins? Aye. Brinner? Aye. Callentary Johnson? Aye. Vice Mayor Golder? Aye. Mayor Cooley? Aye. Motion passes and is ordered. Thank you all for your forbearance. Thank you for being here and providing your input. Council Members, we were, let's see, going to be finished with that item at 3.20. We did, we finished it at 3.20 a.m. What we're going to do is we're gonna take a break until, let's take a break until 10 after five. We'll come back in about 17 minutes or so and we will continue. Standing recess. Thank you. Thank you. 10 after. We're good. Good evening, the Santa Cruz City Council following a brief late afternoon, early evening recess. Resumes its work on our regular agenda. We are on item number 22. This is a 10 year citywide long range financial plan and good evening. And thank you for your forbearance. We're taking a little more time than we usually do on items today, but that's what happens at the end of the calendar year. Lots of stuff gets compressed into one meeting. Ms. Cabell, thank you for your very good work and your staff's good work. And we recognize you for a presentation. Thank you. So yes, Elizabeth Cabell, I'm the Finance Director and we are constantly in finance and probably throughout the city, you know, in a state of financial forecasting and planning. So about a year ago, we enlisted the help of Baker Tilly to help us create a citywide long range financial plan. And tonight, we're here to present sort of the results of that. We have had lots of travel issues. We were going to have representatives from Baker Tilly here in person. Lots of issues in the Northwest. And so just landed in his, at the airport. I think he's at the hotel now, but we had a backup who had his power go out and is now stationed in a library and ready to go. So everything has been working, but so in a way it's kind of good we had this delay. So now everybody is ready to go. But I do want to introduce Bob Leland. He's going to be doing the presentation today. And Steve Toller from Baker Tilly is also online and will be available to answer questions and assist with the presentation as well. And then I also have staff from finance here. So as we go through it, if there are any questions, please let us know. Thank you. Miss Cabell, who will we hear from first? Bob Leland from Baker Tilly. Mr. Leland, good evening. Thank you for being with us. Good evening and thank you for having me here. So let me get right into the presentation because I know you are short on time. Okay, you have the full version before you that you've had a chance to look through. So given the time constraints, I'll be giving you a highly abridged version of that, about 12 slides. The bottom line here is that the city has a structural deficit of about $10.5 million. Baseline forecast assumes that homelessness response spending remains at about $8 million with the general fund replacing lost state and federal funding starting in fiscal 25. So without corrective action, as you can see, in fiscal 25, you are below the city's reserve goal of two months of operating expense of 16.7%. And we'll continue to drop and it would, without corrective action, be negative by fiscal 27. So we will come back to this issue of the 10 and a half million. But I want first to just highlight some of the key assumptions because with any forecast, it's all about the assumptions. You get different assumptions, you'll have a different forecast. We think that these assumptions are realistic and particularly on the revenue side, we have recessions built in every seven years, not because we have a crystal ball, but because we wanna test the sensitivity of city finances, kind of give it a stress test. And so we're assuming a moderate recession in fiscal 25 and then every seven years thereafter. Some of the other key elements of revenue are property tax estimates and they are based on the various components under Prop 13 of a 2% growth for parcels that don't change ownership. About 4% of the parcels we think will change ownership. They'll go up about 40%. And then we have 80 new units per year and $25 million of new non-residential growth each year. And just for comparison, the 80 units compares to 76, which has been the average since 2008. Sales tax growth based on your consultants projections is about 2.9%. The TOT estimates do include the two prospective new hotels, La Bahia in fiscal 25 and the Cruz Hotel in fiscal 28, both of which are expected to generate about $1.4 million in TOT. So that $10.5 million shortfall is even with the two new hotels. The goal is to try to meet the reserve goal of 16.7%. Over on the expenditure side, we're assuming existing service and staffing levels. There are unfunded capital needs and there are new initiatives such as climate action that are not included. There is a placeholder assumption of 2.5% for cost of living adjustments. That obviously is subject to meet and confer, but with everything else in the forecast being inflated, we have to build in some assumption of inflation for labor as well. The 2.5% was selected because it's the 30 year historical average for the Bay Area CPI up until 2022. Plus it includes merit increases and savings from employee turnover. There is an annual contribution of $5 million. That is not enough to meet all of the identified capital needs, but we have that built in. There is the general fund backfill of $5.5 million due to the lost ARPA and CA-14 homeless response funding. And if you see that $5 million and the $5.5 million add them together, that's your $10.5 million that you're short. Then we also assume continued support by the general fund of the Economic Development Trust, the Technology Fund, Children's Fund, and WORF Fund. Now given this shortfall, we took a hard look at a range of budget strategies that could be employed to close the gap. And there are basically four categories. As you see down below, there are three sets of strategies that would maintain current service levels, and that would be what you would go to first, expenditure controls and cost shifts, service delivery alternatives that save money, and finally revenue enhancements. As a last resort, you would have service level reductions. Now of the categories that we identified, whoops, we have about three times the amount that you need, the 10 and a half million is needed to balance the budget. We have 32.6 million of alternatives, and you can see the number of strategies and the dollar amount in the table. Limited number of expenditure controls and service delivery changes, quite a few revenue enhancements, and then there are 14 other primarily expenditure related strategies that total $2 million. So we actually have about 34.6 million to address a gap of 10.5. Now of these categories, I've got the three listed here that do not involve service level reductions. The listing is color coded with black being those items that would save one and a half million dollars or more or generate that much more in revenue. Green are the moderate category of a million to a million and a half, and the reddish color is low, about 500,000 to a million. So again, you see that the amounts and about three and a half million options for expenditure controls such as streamlining operations, investing in a CIP manager to try to get capital projects done quicker and save money, more cost recovery, implementing technology. Service delivery changes involve some that are complicated such as exploring a regional shared service model for FHIR and EMS, sharing homeless response with a county which would require a fair amount of negotiation, diversifying the investment portfolio or reallocating to put more investment earnings into the general fund and reassessing some maintenance functions that would save collectively four million dollars. And then we have a whole list of revenue enhancements starting with increasing the sales tax. Other options include creating a parcel tax under community facilities district, Melrose, increasing parks and recreation cost recovery to 50% across the board, modernizing business license tax methodology. The city has a low level of business license tax revenue for an economy or size. And then various other changes that could affect admissions tax, utility tax, TOT, and then various other small revenue enhancements. So there's $25 million in that category. So let's get back to solving the fiscal gap. Let's say we come up with 10 and a half million in budget strategies. If they got implemented in fiscal 25, this is what it would look like. 10 and a half million is what is required for the city to not fall below its reserve goal in any one year. So you see in fiscal 27, we just hit it. And then in future years, the balance actually grows to beyond the reserve level, but it would take 10 and a half million in order to hit the reserve level in every year. Now, if we were to rely exclusively on the half cent sales tax measure, that would not be enough to close the gap in every year. And given the timing involved, you can see that balance would continue to decline, hit a low point in 27, begin to recover, pretty much hit the reserve level in 31 and 32. And then with the following recession that would be expected seven years after fiscal 25, we would start seeing a decline in revenue again. So that would raise seven and a half million dollars in fiscal 25 and just over eight million in fiscal 26. And so you see that there's no excess fiscal capacity generated, so this does not allow you to address any of those underfunded or unfunded capital investments or other spending initiatives. So in putting together budget strategy scenarios, we took a look at four basic categories on a spectrum of heavier revenues versus heavier expenditure reductions. The first category on the left here is strong revenue enhancements. The next would be a blended approach, mostly revenue, but some expense. The next approach would be blended with being more expenditure-leaning, so it would be mostly expenditure reductions with some revenues. And then finally on the far right, a strong expenditure reduction package. From this, we put together three sample scenarios and we looked at a lot more than three. There are hundreds that you could put together with the elements that we developed, but we picked three to be representative. The first being a revenue-centric approach and that includes the local sales tax, first and foremost. Second, there would be some increased general fund fees and charges for full cost recovery. We would have higher cost recovery and park and rec fees and we would have some reallocation of investment income. The second scenario is a balanced approach. It does still include the sales tax. It does include the fire-shared services model and it includes a range of operating efficiencies and reductions through attrition. The third approach is an expenditure-centric model. It excludes the sales tax, either because it's not put on the ballot or put on a defeated. You would have to fill that difference at roughly $8.3 million of revenue that you would be otherwise expecting to get from the sales tax with a range of general fund fees and charges, the park and rec cost recovery, more investment income allocated to the general fund, resume audits for business license tax, TOT, grant management, full cost recovery, the fire-shared services model, technology improvements, efficiencies and attrition cuts, and finally $2 million in reduction from the existing $5 million that's assumed to go to CIP each year or the homeless investment. So these three approaches. And what I'm gonna show you now is what that looks like for each of the scenarios. So here, you see we've got the items listed with the amount that they raise. And the important thing to note here is that scenario one is sufficient to give you another $5 million a year that could be devoted to capital investment or other initiatives, such as the climate initiative. You see on the chart in the upper right that you were actually above the reserve goal in each year. And in the outer years, you begin to exceed that and then it drops off somewhat as you get toward the mid 2030s. So this is an option that both balances the budget and gives you more fiscal capacity, $5 million a year. The second approach, the balanced approach does have the sales tax and you see the amounts for the other elements of that. This provides an additional $2 million in fiscal capacity, not as much as the other, which was $5 million. This is two. And you'll notice from the chart in the upper right-hand corner that the balance declines and there are three years in which it is under the reserve goal and that's highlighted here in the circle. And then it continues to increase. So again, this assumes the sales tax does have some additional fiscal capacity, but not as much as the first combination. Now we have the third scenario, no sales tax, a whole raft of other selections. As opposed to having additional fiscal capacity, in this case, you're actually still $2 million short even after implementing these other items above. So the highlighted item in pink here says there are still $2 million that have to come out of capital projects or the homelessness response or some other operating costs. This approach also leaves you short for three years, does produce some excess in the above the reserve in the outer years, but in order to get to this point, you've had to do a range of perhaps unpopular reductions and also a cutback in capital and homelessness. Now we have three other options that we've listed here that are perhaps also applicable to a strategy to provide increased fiscal capacity for capital investments such as, rather than doing a pay-as-you-go approach, having the capacity to pay for more upfront. One is the parcel tax for the community facilities district that we mentioned before, that does require a two-thirds voter majority, however, because this is not new development, it would be applied across the entire city. Another might be a specific tax, such as the admissions tax. You get a million four for that by going up to 8%. If it's a general tax, it would be a majority vote. If you earmarked it too specifically, then it would be a special tax, two-thirds vote. And then finally, there's debt financing through jail bonds, which you would have voter approval on a two-thirds basis to impose a new property tax. So that takes us through this very quickly and you have had a chance to look at the whole presentation. You may well have questions. At this point, I will turn it back over to Steph and I am happy to respond to any questions that you might have. Thank you, sir. Ms. Cabell, thank you. Let me see if there are questions from council members. Yes, the vice mayor is recognized. I guess I just was looking for clarity. We're not being asked to make a decision on one of those three things. We're just presented with, okay. We're just giving you an update, right? So no actions required, we're just, okay. You know. The budget and revenue subcommittees look at this work and I want to thank you and excuse me, I want to thank you and Baker Tilley for the fine work that you've put into this. This was an iterative effort over time. I think what you've done that's quite good is get us into a world where these are realistic options. Some of them are not attractive options but they're realistic options for us. And I think as we move ourselves into considering our 24-25 fiscal year budget, certainly this will be revisited. We will visit it quicker than that in one of the elements because we're going to take an action here, I suspect, in a few minutes which will put the sales tax measure on the ballot for March, which would check a big box if we were to place it there and it was to be passed. That then remixes, it seems to me, the blue and the green and whatever, because now we have, assuming a passage, we would have a real situation and we can then track it from there. I think this is very, very useful information. I also want to thank you for what isn't in there. There were some items early on that I think were not, I appreciated because you're trying to catch everything and put it in there that we don't have the council considering some things so that we're simply not going to do. And I think that's an important thing when you're presenting to the council as well. So thank you very much and thank the consultant so much for the fine work. Questions, comments? Ms. Brown. Just really quickly, I want to thank you and I don't have questions. I did get the benefit of reviewing this and getting to talk about it earlier and I think it really builds on previous work that's been done around our long term financial planning. And I did want to ask though, because people were asking me as the vice mayor asked, there's no action to be taken and there's very little information in the agenda packet. So I'm wondering, I don't recall if we talked about those slides being made available on our website perhaps, somewhere that people could actually see that without having to come back to the video would be great. And I think too, it's important to, we can't obviously implement everything at once. So I think putting things out there and then we have the revenue ad hoc committee to kind of like, okay, now we're focused on this particular piece and moving forward. So, but yes, we will put the slides out on the website. Very good. Thank you, Ms. Cabell. If I understand it, we need to take no action on this. It was essentially an informational item and a report. Thank you so much. Thank you, Baker Tilly for your fine work. We are now on item three. This is a resolution requesting placement. Mayor, sorry, just to confirm, we do not have anybody online for public comment. Thank you for your help on that. I appreciate it. It's kidding, somebody just raised their hand. They did just? Someone just raised their hand. On this item. On online. On the item 22. Am I right? And his hand just went back down, so I think we're good. All right, thank you. We're on item 23, a resolution requesting placement of a sales and use tax on the March ballot. There is a staff report and I'm going to ask if Ms. Schmidt, as she's approaching, let me just tell what we're going to do. We're going to take an hour of your time and not use it. We're going to take this down to about five or 10 minutes. So the council subcommittee, we all had a role. We're all, we're going to make big presentations here, but we think given the lateness of the hour and so on, we're going to get right to the meat of this. Ms. Schmidt, thank you for your fine work on this. Why don't you make a couple of opening comments on this? Thank you, Mayor. The council budget and revenue ad hoc committee has been working over the last few months and focusing on some of the feedback from Baker Tilly. One of the key things that you've seen given our financial situation is revenue is very much needed for us to be able to continue to deliver our high quality central services to our community through our amazing employees. So given that one of the biggest ticket revenue items in play was a half cent sales tax. So the budget and revenue ad hoc committee had discussions. They directed staff to do a community based poll about a potential measure. The poll results came back positively and so the budget and revenue ad hoc committee is now requesting the larger council to consider the motions in front of you to move forward with placing a sales tax measure for a half cent for the city of Santa Cruz on the March 2024 ballot. Is that summary enough? Thank you. No, it's quite good. Thank you. Let me ask you subcommittee members who would like to make some comments on this. Mr. Newsom, would you care to make any comments on this item? Thank you, Markely. Just quickly we saw our fiscal situations looks at the moment and this is a measure that we wanted to put on the agenda and have the council consider and put on the ballot. And I wanna thank the staff for all the work on this and thank my fellow committee members as well on their work on this. Ms. Brown. I would also like to thank the committee, the staff that have been involved in this and assistant city manager, Laura Schmidt for creating a beautiful slide deck that we are not gonna look at tonight. But it is a really great overview and hits the key points. And I just wanna highlight, I'm hoping we can make this one available as well for folks, the context slide. I think when you look at it, it will really help sum up why we're doing what we're doing and recommending this now. Let me ask if other council members like to make comments on this item. Ms. Brunner is recognized. I just wanted to comment as a former budget and a committee member. I understand the work and the assessment of any revenue that is required of us as being fiscally responsible for so many parts of the city. So thank you for the work that has been done to get to this point. And thank you to staff for presenting all the information. That's very kind of you. Thank you further. If I was to, which I will point to one page in the agenda packet, I would, although there isn't any such thing as page 23.3, I would point to it nonetheless because it has the one item on here that I think is so vastly important to us. And that is we've achieved a 29% reduction year over year in homelessness in the city of Santa Cruz. And that's a result of fine work by our city and the county working in partnership together. That has to be maintained. And in order to keep moving on what is one of the highest two priorities in the city of Santa Cruz, as I am able to discern it with regard to our electorate, this is one of those. And the ability to retain those gains and make more is literally in jeopardy. And this sales tax measure is a huge and obvious way to fill that hole going forward. So thank you. Thank you for this document. Matters back before the council, the vice-mayors recognized. I'm happy to move the item. If that's- I have to do real quick public comment on this. Oh, I just want to make one comment about that as well. I wasn't going to say anything, but I have to say I was taking those during the last item and I think it relates to this in that if I saw that $2 million cost that might be associated with our city's response efforts, I just want to remind everyone, I know we are well aware, but one encampment cleanup could cost upwards of a half a million dollars. And the proactive approach that we've been taking thus far, I think we are seeing significant increases and maybe people wanting to open businesses and then thus tax revenue and other things. So I think that balanced approach and really addressing it before it becomes a problem and spending that initial money upfront. Well, it seems like a lot. I'm glad that the polling and the community also agreed with that. That's phenomenal to hear. Thank you, Madam Vice Mayor. Ms. Bush, should we have anyone online who wishes to comment on this? Let's take the person online first and then we'll see if anybody else is with us. Person online, good evening. Hello, this is Garrett. Since measure F failed last time, you tried to raise sales taxes to the highest in the nation, only just about a year ago, you all should have got it that the people had spoken and don't want higher taxes and you should cut the fat and curb spending among other things to achieve a balanced budget. I guess not. For a long time now, the city government has approved big spending, growing the government, with ever more spending, regardless of population size, the economy, rising income, or what the people have been willing to pay for. We've seen these charts for a while and you've done nothing. As far as the expensive, well-surveyed ballot language of how to con people to vote for the highest taxes in the nation, another wasted expense like measure F, it says money is to be spent to protect and maintain essential services, including keeping pollution out of the rivers, bringing streams, preparing for wildfires, maintaining repairing streets, potholes improving, maintaining up good parks, beaches, and public safety.  Other cities can balance budgets. You admit previously in this agenda, the city is, well, in this one too, losing 10 million a year and this produces eight, so no improvements, extra improvements can actually be expected. You promise nothing, you have learned nothing, you haven't shown you can be trusted with budget monies, just more spend first, hoped to tax later, irresponsibility. As far as wildfires, you might be interested to know 2023 at the lowest national forest fire burn rate in decades, stuff those wildfires into your climate change alarmist trash bin. The only other state of use seems to be a slush fund to deal with homelessness, but you don't say how much goes for this or that or many uses. You just hope all these catchy phrases find the voters fancy. I disagree, homeless people are an essential city expense or responsibility. And I don't think that the point in time count this year and the wettest year ever might be accurate and your reduction of homelessness might be fiction. This is a shotgun-faced money grab.  Nevermind, this is a regressive tax that falls on the forest. Nevermind, we have little to show in California for all these high taxes. Nevermind, our population has not actually grown in three years, despite your false claim we are rapidly growing. And anyway, if more people come, it means they pay more taxes too. The city cost per capital is currently very, very high. Just a suggestion, get rid of all the DEI personnel, the DEI training, the climate change staff, insist any grants, 100% pay for staff, ditch the living wage and contractor requirements, those overly generous extra staff holidays and these expensive surveys because none of any of that is anything we can afford. If nothing else, at least learn from the lesson of where all our financial problems originate which are the expanding debt payments and inflation caused by the ever expanding federal government and the immoral and corrupt debt overspending, not that taxes are too low, thanks. Thank you, sir. Does anyone who is with us this evening wish to make comment on this item? Seeing and hearing none, the Ms. Bush, no one else online, correct? Matters back before the council. I'd be glad to recognize a member for a motion. Mr. Newsom. I'll make the motion to accept the recommendation. Adoption of the staff recommendation which has three parts, accepting the report, adopting a resolution requesting that the measure be placed on the ballot and third to support the measure for purpose of authorizing arguments and provide direction regarding authors, et cetera. And that is the staff recommendation. That is the motion. There is a second. Second. Second by Ms. Brown. Under discussion, questions or comments? Under discussion, debate or discussion? Seeing and hearing none, the clerk will call the roll. May I just confirm, sorry. When it says provide direction regarding authors, do we have that direction? Do we need it? Ms. Schmidt. No, we do not need it. We can just, the council directs that we go about doing that. It's traditionally what we've done. Friday morning meetings, we can have that conversation. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. Clerk will call the roll. The member is Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Martin. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Eulentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. Mayor Keely. Aye. Motion passes and sorted. Ms. Schmidt, thank you. We gave you very short shrift on this. Thank you. And your work was very, very good work. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. Certainly. Item 24, San Lorenzo River levy letter of map revision application submittal update. Those are all English words. I'm not sure what they mean when they're strung together. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor, council members, Nathan Wynn, director of Public Works. I'll try to keep my presentation brief today. It is really just an update on the process of where we're at with the FEMA accreditation for the San Lorenzo River levy. Bonnie, do you have the slide deck? Is there a slide deck that I sent you? No. Oh, did you want to write it? Yeah. Are you sure you want to do that? Are you sure you want to do that? It's only a few slides today. Are you sure you want to do this? You want to show us a slight presentation? Oh, yes. Yes, please. We want to be able to show you a few updates. I'll try to keep it brief like I was mentioning. Thank you, sir. All right, perfect. So again, a given update on the FEMA accreditation process and where we're at on the San Lorenzo River. And this is really about a letter of map revision that goes to FEMA. And we'll get to that in just one second here. So next slide. We wanted to provide some kind of historical background in regards to the levy that was constructed in the 1950s. And most recently, it was deemed complete as of 2019. That's when the Army Corps basically handed over maintenance responsibilities over to the city. And that's when we started embarking upon the work of getting a certifying engineer, MBK, to assist us with the FEMA accreditation process. And that's where you see that third bullet point there with the 20 to 23. And I'll go in a little bit more detail in that in a second. Now, some of the work that we've already completed here is, as you guys well know, some of the vegetation management work as well as road and control work. And so we're happy to see that that portion of the FEMA accreditation process is complete. Next slide. So really the effort comes down to, and we've already kind of went over that first bullet point right there, is complying with our operations and maintenance manual. Now hiring MBK, they did the hydraulic modeling work, did some survey work as well as determine our flood hazard zoning, which is really the critical piece to a lot of this work. So we'll go to the next slide. We're halfway through. Yeah, so really a lot of this work comes down to, over the years that we've been working with our consulting engineer, is developing this letter of map revision. So it's called LOMAR. You can see that image to the right is essentially what the certification does is it eliminates over 1,400 parcels within this floodplain area for being considered a part of the flood zone. So we go from an A99 designation, which is somewhat of an ambiguous unknown flood zone, to now an AE designation, where we actually have several locations where we establish a base flood elevation, and those are marked in the light blue of this map. Those parcels that are within this floodplain zone will be getting a letter notifying them of this revision. But first we're submitting this to FEMA as a part of their recommendation to go with FEMA, which we'll go to the next slide. This is the process essentially that we're at right now, where we're submitting this letter of map revision to FEMA. They have an estimated time of about six months to review and respond to that letter. Once we get their approval, there'll be an appeal process, and that is when we'll be issuing out letters to the impacted neighbors once they've actually concurred with the submittal letter that we've provided. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Let me see if there are questions. Was this letter mean? The letter to the residents who are in this area, what's that letter gonna say to them? That's essentially gonna let them know that several of the, there'll be two different letters most likely. Well, someone will know that they're actually out of the, moving from an A99 zone to an AE zone designation, and then some of those, again, 1,400 parcels will actually be removed out of that, out of the FEMA insurance zone. What does that mean to the folks who received that letter? What are we trying to tell them when we send them that letter? Yeah, we're letting them know that we've established a base flood elevation based on the work that we've done on the levee, and that they will no longer be required to have insurance in some of those parcels. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For the questions or comments, vice-mayors. My one question, because I know there's a lot of people watching this that are interested from Santa Cruz High. We think this will be good for the locker room at the pool. This is gonna get very positive for them. Absolutely, we were hoping to hear. Thank you. Yay, the kids can have a locker room. No action to be taken. That's up. Very good. Thank you. For the questions or comments, this is an item essentially for our information. Thank you for being kind enough to shorten it without us missing the point. Very well done. Thank you, sir. We are on item number 25 in ordinance requiring delivery companies to provide a service enabling customers to tip delivery drivers. Matters been before us on previous occasions. Let me see if we have no presentation on this. Is that correct? We actually have an hour long, but no, I'm just kidding. Your votes are now three, two, one. I'm teasing. I just had a few comments from all the tours. Please, please. I'm just kidding around. Yeah, no, thank you. Yeah, I just, I will introduce the item and say thank you to... Well, I'm very sorry. Let me correct that. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I'm trying to move too fast after our break. Let me return to item number 24 and make sure that I do give opportunity. Please come forward. And I apologize to you for skipping over that important part of my trip. You know, that's okay. Thank you, sir. Going 22 hours without eating was a mistake. I needed some time to eat. So yeah, this item, it actually looks great on paper. You know what? What possibly unforeseen could be happening with our weather systems around the world that are all part of natural cycles. Well, just leave it at that. This looks great on paper. Thank you. And Ms. Wood, do we have anyone online on this on item 24? I guess we do not. Well, thank you, Ms. Bush, and thank you, Ms. Wood. We are on item 25. Mr. City Attorney, do we need to do anything on 24? Have I cured that problem on public participation? I don't see a member of the public remotely with their hand raised. Okay, what I mean is, since I took it out of order, do we need to go back to that item? Did Mr. Whitman get a chance to make his comments? I'm sorry, I'm not clear on my point. Let me try it again. Just give me a second here. It was a receive information item. We took no action. Thank you, we're good. We're on item 25, delivery service, tipping ordinance. Council Member Watkins has brought this for our consideration. Sure, so I wanna thank our city attorney's office, my colleagues, Council Member Brunner and Calentari Johnson who, if are interested, can also make a few remarks. I'll keep my remarks short. I think there's no question that delivery drivers have taken on a more important role post pandemic in terms of the culture of having items delivered to our doorsteps and the convenience that that provides the consumer. But it also is a hard job for a lot of people who are commuting often from out of our county to provide that service to us. We're also seeing an influx in opportunities to tip people. And there was one occasion in a storm where I think I ordered something very small, like not necessary. And at like eight o'clock at night, it's delivered to my door. And at which point, if I had the option to tip, I surely would have given the circumstances and the storm in which this person delivered the small item that I didn't need really essentially. So all that to say is that this is just an option. This is to pursue an option. It's a new ordinance. And I appreciate folks who've contributed to helping our understanding of what it could look like and what some of the pitfalls could be. With anything that's new, there comes uncertainty. But nonetheless, I feel very good about moving forward and trying something new. And hopefully we can see success and some money in the pockets of those who are providing this essential service to us. And I'll ask my colleagues, Council Member Brunner or Calentari Johnson, if they have any additional remarks. Council Member Brunner, comments? Thank you. Yes. And I just wanted to add in addition to that, that we really want to emphasize this would simply create an option to tip. It's not requiring that there be a tip and the technology already exists. And so having this be something that could really help with a lot of the economic situations that do exist with this industry, then we're happy to support and in this way. So I'd like to hand it off to Council Member Calentari Johnson. Ms. Calentari Johnson. Thank you so much. Yeah, the only thing I will add is that this really upholds our community value of equity. That's really at the core of the intent of this proposal that's before us today. And that we have met with members of the industry and they had some really great points and comments that we've, since we've had time, this was on our agenda. If you remember a couple months ago, we've integrated those and updated what we're proposing in the ordinance. So I think with that, I will pass it to our city attorney. Mr. Condati. Thank you, Mayor and members of the city council. Just add a couple of comments because we did receive considerable feedback from the industry and some very constructive feedback, including a list of legal considerations that were pointed out by Pete Montgomery and Mike Yadon who are in the audience tonight. I'm expecting we'll be wanting to address the city council. I would just say in response to some of the legal considerations that were raised, this ordinance is not intended to affect the employment relationship between delivery companies and their drivers. And it's not intended to regulate delivery companies, except in so far as it will require an unobtrusive, technical implementation of a measure that enables customers to interact directly with their drivers to provide tips. And the companies are given a great deal of flexibility as to how to do that. The ordinance states that they can be, that the option must be accessible to the customer by one of several mechanisms that may include but are not limited to during the checkout or order placement process through a hyperlink or an email notification notifying the customer of the delivery status on printed material affixed to the delivery box on an order delivery tracking package page that a customer can have access to on a generally available website that customers are directed to which tip can be given for specific delivery by providing a tracking number. Those are options, they're not the universe of mechanisms that the delivery companies can use. We did incorporate a number of amendments into the ordinance that were the result of some constructive feedback that we have. And I would also say in response to some of that feedback, we understand that there are some technical issues that may need to be ironed out prior to implementation of this ordinance. We also understand that we will be engaging in a dialogue with the industry in the six month grace period that we've built into the ordinance to make sure that we cover all the bases and do all the necessary research and potentially bring back amendments or changes to the ordinance in response to that additional work that we know given that this is really a unique creature, the only ordinance of its kind in the United States that we are aware of. We expect there to be additional dialogue and additional work to be done. With that, I will be happy to respond to any council member questions or comments. Questions, comments of city attorney, the vice mayor is recognized. I just have a comment and I appreciate the spirit of the intent behind the work that my colleagues have done and because of the Brown Act, I don't have another opportunity to say this out loud. So I'm just gonna say thank you for your work and I appreciate the intent. I'm not gonna support the item. I do anticipate legal costs associated with us and when we're talking about saving money by not doing this, we can save money. The other thing that is influencing my decision is we cannot tip our USPS postal carriers. There's plenty of people we can't tip. I said last time that I think it's on the industry that groups need to organize and get fair wages to their employees and that's kind of out of the control how I see my role as a city council member here. The other reason is when you're shopping on Amazon or something that you're not shopping locally, it's not contributing to our local businesses and it's creating traffic and waste through emissions and just the packaging that it comes in. And so to me, I think that by not supporting it, I'm also supporting some of our core values and so I just wanted to throw that out there because I do try to work with you guys but I cannot support this. Ms. Brown. Thank you. So I wanna, I'm feeling conflicted here on this one because I do wanna associate myself with the comments that our vice mayor made. There are all kinds of challenges with this and in terms of equity, it is very limited and I do believe that workers all should be paid a living wage and that those companies should be ensuring that workers earn enough money to pay their bills. And so I feel you and at the same time, I think I also, given the constraints and that we don't have the ability to change those bigger systemic problems in our society with wage inequality and poverty wages, I do wanna support an opportunity, any opportunity for people to put money in low wage workers' pockets that they wouldn't otherwise have. And so I'm feeling like I'm gonna support it but I do feel conflicted because I think this is just, is a small and potentially challenging piece of this puzzle. The vice mayor is right. One more sentence, you can always give a cash tip. Okay, let me see if there are further questions or comments, let me go out to the public. Mr. Montgomery, good evening. As you're approaching, I wanna thank you for all the good work you did with then Senator McPherson when he and I were serving in the legislature. You did a great job on his behalf. Well, thank you very much. I know it's been a long day. It's been very informative for me, even just sitting here all day. Just so happens that my wife or two brothers and my father-in-law own the piece of property next to the Soquel Avenue Development. So that was a good discussion to see through. And my father and my wife and her brothers own a bunch of property on River Street. So I'll be texting him telling me he's about to get a property tax refund. So all in all, this has been really helpful. Sorry. See you in two weeks. I have a presentation, Fred. Do you want me to put that there? Sorry, good evening. Mr. Mayor and council members, as the mayor said, my name's Pete Montgomery, I'm Santa Cruz native. Been working with FedEx on engagement with the city. I do appreciate, I think we met with almost everybody or at least had communications with just about everybody on this. Really good, lots of time spent with the city attorney. But we're here today to ask you to not move this forward. I think as was mentioned, this would be the first of its kind in the US. And no matter how well-intentioned this measure might be, it's really difficult to implement on a very localized basis for a global carrier like FedEx, for example. Now, the ordinance exempts our two main competitors, which is UPS and the US Postal Service. So really, it's probably why you only see FedEx here. Delivery of residential packages by global and interstate carriers. It's a very complicated and complex process. The ordinance summary makes a lot of comparisons to like internet service companies, like an Uber Eats or a DoorDash or whoever. But in those circumstances, you as a consumer ha