All right, what was I gonna say? What am I doing? Wasting time. Welcome back to this channel, everybody. For those of you who are new around here, my name is Michael, aka Dr. Chlini, and today we're going to get straight into it because you probably clicked on this video because of the title, and we're going to be talking about my favorite apps for pre-medical students. So, let's get into it. Let me find my thing here. All right, so let's go ahead and start off with my first favorite app for pre-med students, which is Evernote. Evernote has been coined the best note-taking app. In fact, I actually remember using it way back when I used to be in med school, and I think it started around the time I started my first year of med school, which was in 2011. I used to be obsessed with this app because, for one, I just got an iPad, which was the very first generation iPad at the time, and you could actually sync your notes from your iPad to your laptop, which, I mean, in 2011, this was like mind-blowing technology here. Crazy. But nowadays, this is just like expected, but you all will never have to experience this kind of stuff again, but for me, this was like groundbreaking stuff. So I used to use this for that reason. It was awesome. I used to be able to take notes on my iPad in lecture and transfer them directly to my laptop. It was phenomenal. And I know it's only gotten better since then, obviously. I mean, it's been 10 years now, so the app has developed, and it's so much better than it used to be. One of my favorite things about Evernote is it gives you the ability to kind of search through all your notes. You can type in keywords. You can search dates or whatnot where you had your lectures, and it's just a way to keep everything organized. You can also actually scan your handwritten notes into the app. So again, you have them in kind of one central location. And I used to love this when I used to travel pre-pandemic, especially in med school. I used to put everything into like my handwritten notes. I would scan them into my iPad, and I would just bring my iPad on the plane, and I would just travel with that instead of like 15 textbooks, my whole notebook, and all that kind of stuff. So I know I said this already, but I'll mention it again. You can track due dates, type notes, or scan your handwriting, and keep these with related handouts, web pages, and whiteboard pictures all in one place. And the best part about it is it is free of charge, but you can obviously upgrade for the more premium options or the business options as well. Next up, I wanna talk about my personal favorite app, which is created by my good friends over at MotivateMD, who happen to be sponsoring today's video. If you've been a long time subscriber to my channel, you know I have worked with MotivateMD on multiple different occasions. The reason I worked with them so often is that, one, they're the nicest people in the entire world, and two, they know exactly what they're doing in respect to the pre-medical space. They have helped countless number of pre-med students prepare and get into medical school. If you're new to MotivateMD, they are a company well-known for their high-value medical school application services and everything from essay reviews to interview prep. But on today's video, since we're talking about apps, we'll talk about the aptly named pre-med app offered by MotivateMD. There are a whole bunch of features of this app, which I love, so let's go ahead and dive right in. For starters, you can set and crush individual goals from GPA to shadowing, to volunteering, extracurricular activities, et cetera. It's essentially a place where you can keep track of all your shadowing, volunteering, research, and other extracurricular activities with their intuitive tracking software. Do you wanna instantly communicate with doctors and medical students across the country who know what it takes to get into medical school? Well, you can do that with their MyMintor program. You have the opportunity to match with one of the mentors on their team, whether it be a medical student or a doctor. You can set your goals for the day, find motivation, and even learn something from the MCAT question of the day. The app is entirely designed to allow you to focus. Inspired by the study techniques of medical students, this scientifically proven productivity tool will keep you fresh and focused so you can study longer and more efficiently. With this app, you can also find the latest info on each MD and DO school in the US. Also, I wanna reiterate that MotivateMD's team is highly composed of medical students. In fact, they have 60 plus medical schools represented on their team. Because of this, you may have the opportunity to reach out to medical students who go to the school that you wanna go to. Just click on a button in the app and you'll see an option to message a medical student at that school. It's that ease and it's available on mobile and web apps as well. You can access the app by downloading it to your phone or tablet or you can just go to the website and browse that way. Also, there is a free subscription option that contains everything I just talked about. Also, MotivateMD is in constant communication with their web developers and they are making constant improvements in enhancements to the app. In other words, this app is forever evolving just like the people using it. Please be sure to check out the link in my description and check out MotivateMD pre-med app. All right, so next up on the list is an app called Headspace. Headspace has one primary mission and that is to improve health and happiness throughout the world, which is a pretty good mission in my opinion. Headspace offers exercises to add extra mindfulness to your day and hundreds of meditations on everything from stress to sleep. And the other reason I love this app is because it is free as well, which I think you can actually upgrade to other things as well if you want, but more importantly, it's free. Now let's get to my next favorite app, which is an app called Forest. This is such a simple and unique app that makes you so productive. If you find yourself checking your phone constantly, scrolling through TikTok or Instagram, you may need something like this app to kind of take your mind off of that. So basically, you download the app, which I have on iOS, and you set a certain amount of time you want to be productive for. So say you wanted to do a 30 minute block of studying. You set the timer for 30 minutes and you press go. When you press go, the app plants a seed. And as the time progresses, the tree or plant grows. However, if you leave the app for any reason or check your messages, you'll get an immediate notification saying that your plant or tree is dying if you don't return back to the screen. I wish I had this app when I was studying and well, I'm going to use this app when I study for future board examinations, but this is such an easy and simple way to keep you productive. It kind of just trains your mind to do things, let the tree grow because you want to have a nice tree at the end of your study session. The whole point of the app is to use it multiple times so you have a complete forest of trees that you can kind of plan and plan your little park. It's just kind of like a fun way to want to study. It may work for you. I love the idea. It's such a simple concept and I think you should all try it out. And finally, the last app we're going to talk about today is for all my caffeine and coffee shop lovers. This app is called Caffitivity. Is it Caffitivity? Caffitivity? Oh, Caffitivity. Sorry. I thought it was Caffitivity. It's Caffitivity. This app is called Caffitivity. Or as they say in New York, Caffitivity as Andromeda would say. Now if you're like me, I used to love studying in the library, but there were plenty of times where I just would go to a coffee shop and sit there for like eight hours straight and study. I did this for a couple of different reasons. The most important reason is because you have an endless supply of caffeine and coffee. But I also did it because sometimes you just wanted to get out of that room in the library and experience life outside of that small cubicle or whatnot. Coffee shops provide that certain amount of background ambient noise that keeps you awake so you don't fall asleep while studying. But it also doesn't distract you because it's so random and ambient. So what this app does is essentially provide you with that ambient coffee background noise from anywhere. So rather than having to go to a coffee shop, you can actually just have that ambient noise in the background to help you study or do whatever you want to do and be more productive. So the good thing about Caffitivity is you can have that background ambient noise from a coffee shop anywhere you want. It just goes through your headphones by going to their website and listening to whatever background ambient coffee shop noise you wanna listen to. I think they also have an app where you can upgrade a little bit to get more ambient noises at different places but the coffee shop one is actually exceptional and sounds just like a coffee shop. So if you're one of those people who loves studying in a coffee shop and loves that ambient noise, this might be a good option for you. The only downside is that you don't get the coffee with this app. You just get the benefits of being in a coffee shop. All right, so that concludes this video. Hope you all enjoyed some of these apps and I hope you all used them. If you have an app that you think others would benefit from and you want to share it with everybody else on this channel, leave it in the comments below. If it's a solid app, I'll pin the comment. Otherwise, if you have any other questions, leave a comment below as well. Follow me on TikTok and Instagram. I always post over there. It's like what I do in between YouTube. So follow me over there and thanks again for motivating MD for sponsoring this video. Make sure you check the link in my description to check out the pre-med app. Otherwise, I'll see you all on the next video. See ya.


ople every wednesday and saturday with a much better facility than this in the kind of space that this could be made into a park right next to pacific avenue okay i was in davis a few months ago it's vibrant dynamic in its downtown uh economy as well as the farmer's market i was in slo last weekend they charged me a lot for parking but i didn't notice that there weren't people there rather i noticed that it was incredible the number of people the number of businesses the amount of construction that was going on it puts frankly it puts santa crews to shame santa crews needs to wake up and you're not doing it if you're being railroaded into a stupid idea okay so please think about it get smart about city planning i urge you to do it thank you thank you sir next speaker my name is mary jennings long-term santa crews resident a concern that i haven't heard a peep about is earthquake nature certainly can send earthquakes that are beyond what human engineering can protect against in armenia uh some decades ago there was a famous earthquake where the floors of the schools fell and you ended up with towns with no children because of the cement floor construction now cars can't be supported without heavy floors to put people under cars is something that needs to be explained in california thank you ma'am next speaker good evening my name is justin comings and i just wanted to address you all real quick on the with the issue of the building of the parking garage and library and i just wanted to express my disconcern and um opposition towards that idea um one of the big reasons is because santa crews has been pushing for reduction in people driving and i want to commend the city on some of the efforts that it's made around more bike use and especially the new jump bike program i find myself biking more with those because i actually um feel less safe riding my own bike because of bike theft i've had two bikes stolen since i've lived here both were expensive bikes since what discourages me but now with the new bike program i want a bike more and i think that we shouldn't we should consider we should continue to encourage people to not drive so instead of putting a parking garage on top of a library which if we're thinking about how different neighborhoods have their own libraries then the majority of the people who are going to be coming downtown or using a library are likely going to live within the downtown area so we should be encouraging them to do more like walk and bike skate to get to the library to utilize those resources and so that is one one of the um the issues that i wanted to address the other was with the transportation demand management proposal um many people who work downtown um are not of the highest income earners in santa crews and as we all know with the um increase in the housing demand and the reduction of affordable housing that's here many of those people are going to be um more and more displaced and with that it's going to increase the number of people who have to commute and therefore by increasing this amount of um the ten dollar per year or per month increase per year of parking that's going to put a really big strain on a lot of the low income workers um that uh are going to have to commute over um and not only is it going to have an impact on them and their ability to commute um but it's going to have an ability on there it's going to have a decrease on their uh survival hood which we already seen a lot of low income communities so um i just there's a lot of major concerns i have regarding both of these proposals and i just hope you all take those into consideration thank you sir next speaker please my name is Cynthia burger i'm with the santa cruise tenants association and uh my concerns um are related to as far as the uh park the parking and uh well i'll say the library next but for the parking yeah um as justin was saying i recently spoke with my when i go to my doctor i have to pay parking because it's at planned parenthood and um and sometimes i kind of um forgot to bring some money and i was asking the workers there and the workers in santa cruise county including the city make 60 less money than the than the workers in santa claire county and that includes the people working at uh planned parenthood and so they're not getting these raises you're going to be raising their parking my was this on uh they're going to be raising you're going to be raising their parking and um they're having to pay extreme housing prices and can't even live in the city so i think that you need to um look to possibly the business owners that are paying um lower than they ought to be um that that'll be a concern for for parking for people who work here of course we need more buses maybe the money that goes into the parking garage part of that library could actually just be used to um boost have more routes for the bus the metro and um you know as far as the library i think it's great that you know i grew up here brought my son up here we use the library a lot i love the library but um now let's be realistic santa cruise has 60 percent less children under the age of five than the city of watsonville santa cruise has 60 percent less children teenagers than the city of watsonville this is american community survey um so it's great to plan to put a lot of money into your library for kids but let's be realistic um who which kids are you planning on having here are you going to planning to have like a lot of kids move in soon um are they going to be rich next speaker please hi my name is kersha durum i'm a fifth generation northern californian and i'm also um an activist environmental activist an advocate for active transportation so new construction does not support our climate car storage towers will not support our environment protect the soul of our city community plaza protect this land from the greed of humans and the you are soil who's gonna stand up and save our downtown skyline who's gonna say that we've had enough cars who's gonna say that we gotta protect our pop-up parks this all starts with you and fossil fuel let's draw an assure a life for all our sons and our daughters who's gonna stand up and save the heart of our town who's gonna say that we've cut enough trees down who's gonna stop inducing traffic and more driving who's gonna stand up and save our public community plaza we are the people 25 feet above the rising sea level thank you next speaker please hi i'm satio ryan and i'm representing the raging grannies and we love the library at its current location and we want it renovated right where it's sitting and we have a song to sing and we hope anyone that would like to join in will it's to the tune of god bless america what's nice about that is they stayed within the time limits and both got two songs so i love this town next speaker please yes that is of course guys in the gender-neutral sense um anyway i'm brett garrett and i want to question a working assumption with all this i think there's an assumption that we can't have a parking deficit and i want to emphasize that's an assumption san francisco new york they have a parking deficit and they have excellent transit and the parking deficit isn't a big problem so what if we say what if we change what's mandatory what if we say transit is the mandatory thing and then if we have enough money left over then we'll think about whether we have enough parking i mean to me the important thing is that people can get around i mean the library is important too but i'm mostly focused on the garage issue and the important thing is that people have transportation people can get around i personally advocate a personal rapid transit system but you know more frequent metro would be fabulous ecopass would be fabulous um there's some quotes from metro board members who are also supervisors bruce mcpherson said the ecopass is a win-win situation and a great example of a cooperative effort to solve a transportation issue in this county john leopold said the ecopass could serve as a model um i agree with these statements um i just i i think a parking garage is inconsistent with our goals for transportation to management uh demand management seriously look at the positive side of a parking deficit deficiency it's an incredible it's incredibly effective tdm to not have enough parking people will find another way to get around um building a garage is the opposite of tdm i i think we got our priorities wrong if we're building a parking garage instead of transit and also instead of more affordable housing we need more affordable housing we could put affordable housing in that same place for the same money and coupled with transit people wouldn't need cars thank you thank you next speaker please hi my name is kandace elliot and i'm the human resources manager for the glass jar restaurant group here in santa cruz um and we were actually just in sacramento this morning we received we were honored to receive the small business um award for district 17 um and it was it's actually really amazing to have been in sacramento this morning and then to be here right now talking about this issue which is so important to our community and i live outside of town in a more rural uh area because it's more affordable to live there and one of my housemates is cathleen astin and she actually works at the downtown branch of the public library and she created this awesome program recently where you can rent telescopes um i don't know if any of you have done that yet but you should it's it's pretty awesome we had one at our house and looked at the moon and and so i'm very much in support of a new library and parking in downtown both for my staff and for me and all of these other people who work and in the downtown area so thank you for listening to all of us tonight thank you and congratulations also thank you next speaker please makes me so nervous um i'm not as brave as those women who's saying um my name's kender baker and i am also with the glass jar um group we own the penny ice creamery um assembly restaurant and the picnic basket um and i want a downtown that is a vibrant cultural center that blends commercial retail with robust residential components a 21st 21st century community center driven spaces where our residents and visitors can enjoy experience and learn about the diverse interests and passions of the current santa cruz people and those that have come before us i am inspired by what having a 21st century library will mean for our downtown and our community at large i want to be a part of a city that prioritizes having a library of this caliber our children teens um all economic groups people starting small businesses college students avid readers insatiable knowledge seekers and all those unexpected users who will have their minds blown um when presented with the modern library that's being presented or that's being proposed we deserve to have access to an exceptional resource center such as this um people have mentioned earlier that we are a community in a world that is changing the way we gather the way we communicate the way we acquire information and the way we learn and grow and a modern library like this here in downtown will be a dynamic and rich cultural center that will be integral to the meeting to meeting these changes and helping grow the future of santa cruz i want to be a part of city a city that thinks strategically about how we can preserve and grow our downtown because being a city with a robust and unique downtown is one of the parts of being in santa cruz or one of the parts of santa cruz that makes us great there's not many cities with downtowns anymore and this is important i also want to be a part of a city that thinks responsibly about issues related to environment and the impact that our decisions have on our environment i think that what's being proposed here actually benefits all of these things and i think it is responsible and i think that the city has done a lot of work in creating strategic plans towards this i think we can meet many of these things by combining these these projects thank you so much next speaker please my name is robert kibrik i've been a resident of santa cruz for 46 years i'd like to second the comments of ricklick log genotti and others uh questioning some of the assumptions that went into the parking demand models both our transportation systems our demographics and our climate are rapidly changing in ways that are interrelated expanded transit ride sharing bike sharing electric scooters skateboards autonomous vehicles and a strong demographic shift where a lot of millennials are choosing a car free existence all of these will impact demand models and all of them have the potential to greatly reduce both parking demand and co2 emissions if the city is really serious about meeting the goals of its climate action plan then it must encourage such transportation alternatives rather than continued use of private automobiles the proposed parking garage does just the opposite there's a 20th century solution that fails to address our 21st century realities i urge the council to promote transportation alternatives now and avoid investing in a parking garage that will likely be obsolete long before it is paid off we've heard about boulder but one need no look one need not look any farther than ucsc for an example of a successful bus pass program for decades ucsc has made metro bus passes available to any staff member at minimal cost currently to cost about one less than one fifth of the cost of a monthly permit providing bus passes to staff cost the campus much less than financing building maintaining and policing the additional parking structures that would otherwise be needed program is a win for workers the campus the community and the environment i speak from personal experience having used such bus passes to commute to ucsc on metro buses for over 36 years not because i had to but because i chose to over those 36 years i saved tens of thousands of dollars doing so and workers downtown should be given the chance to experience that kind of benefit i urge the council to implement the eco pass program now what are you waiting for thank you sir next speaker please good evening council members michael st with campaign for sustainable transportation uh while rick gets couple slides up thank you rick um one thing i just a comment there was no mention from staff as well as council member questions about greenhouse gas emissions or vehicle miles traveled increase with this garage parking lot going up so i thought that was rather out of place but i want to do mention another tdm program uh stanford did an amazing thing back in the early 2000s they avoided over 100 million in new parking construction and how did they do this that was transportation demand management uh the main thing offered on that was the eco pass it's been changed its name a few times but presently it covers vta buses vta light rail dumbarton express highway 17 express monterey san jose express and cal train i also support the bus passes free here for our employees in santa cruz i have a personal note here my wife elizabeth has used this pass as an employee of stanford uh this last year and it has saved us over a thousand dollars in gas money uh not including maintenance and wear and tear on the car or wear and tear on my wife um she has also saved us over 5000 pounds of co2 not released annually based on a car that gets 40 miles per gallon most cars do not get that much other transportation demand programs are offered at stanford and that's significantly reduced the single occupancy car usage let's take a look at a couple slides and these are from uh 2002 to 2012 uh focusing primarily on the blue line on top uh which is based on employees they've dropped drive alone 72 percent back in 2002 uh all the way down to 46 percent drive alone rates in 2012 that's quite a drop and if we were to do that here on a similar program we'd easily reach our 35 drive alone goal thank you thank you sir next speaker please my name is susan cavalieri um i have petitions that were signed by people so over 600 can you speak into the mic please and you can hand that over over 600 people have requested um free bus passes and over 1500 people have requested um robust uh commuter incentives first before building a garage the other thing i just would like to say is that there are remote parking places cruise uh 511 has a map of parking rides these parking rides are places where people can park to get a car pool together or they can get on a metro bus the other um two of them uh resurrection church and the paul sweet road parking rides are on the so cal transportation quarter it is free to park in these lots and the bus is much less expensive than driving and parking um pasatiempo is a lot further north um by a small uh distance and that's um serviced by the 35 bus if people were to park at holy cross church or the boardwalk jump bikes could be put there people could ride from the from the parking lot to town and then back up and without too much trouble um bikes might also be um appropriate at the quaker meeting house parking ride because according to google maps this location is 12 minute is a 12 minute bike ride um as more people car pool bike walk and use the bus to get to work congestion on the roads decreases and the need for a 37 million dollar parking garage is uh non-existence thank you thank you next speaker please my name is dancy giro i represent the genealogical society of sanikers county and i'm on the board i'm an office manager and we have just um uh put together a resolution that i believe was emailed to to many of you and uh approving of the dlac's recommendation for option b and it states whereas in its final report the dlac committee members agreed that option b gives the downtown branch library the desired square footage balanced with a fiscally responsible price and whereas the mixed use building has the potential to be a beautiful and vibrant asset to the community allowing for new programs and spaces that could increase library usage across all age groups and demographics and whereas option b does not require branch closure or interruption of services during construction and whereas option b will ensure that the collection of the genealogical society of sanikers county which we call gss cc will be co-located with a california on a collection in the new library and therefore the gss cc supports option b and therefore the gss cc members will continue to volunteer as staffers for the gss cc collection at the new library and just to tell you about the demographics in my group we represent people from watsonville to boulder creek thank you next speaker please hi my name is deborah ostberg and my background is i'm a retired museum curator with the national park service and an archivist with the national archives this is my hometown i'm glad to be back here and i do support the brand new construction of a library i have a lot of experience in what is the state of the art collections storage and research facilities and i'm telling you if you rehabbed and retrofitted a 50 year old building you'd have nothing but a nightmare you need the best h-fax systems and as the daughter of a santa cruz city firefighter you need the best in fire protection you get that with the new building you can also add design elements to provide greater safety and security for folks i am very much in favor of the new library i'm also a member of the genealogical society and in addition to the genealogical collection which in itself is is irreplaceable by the way at the national archives the one question we'd always get we would roll our eyes at is always and everything online it's not and there will be not with any collection there are very special items in that collection not just for genealogy for for local history we have an excellent cadre of local historians here from around the country everywhere else i've been i've never seen a bigger and more successful group of local historians not just doing work on the local santa cruz area but touching on subjects that cover the state and the nation it is extremely important that that collection remain as part of the main branch of the downtown library i fully support that and another thing when you're talking about art incorporating to the library another thing i'd like to see is not just the history in the one room but incorporated throughout a new design on the walls on the floor all throughout the library so you see it as a part of it our history always there and at a time like we have now in our society i think our history knowing it understanding it respecting it is more important than ever in the history of our country thank you thank you ma'am what was your name yeah what was your name debora osterberg thank you miss osterberg thank you thank you okay next speaker please my name is mary odigard and i'm here to let you know that i think we the citizens of this community have two very good public commons the library and the farmers market great places the farmers market with those mature magnolia trees should stay right where it is i've heard farmers talk about like the idea of moving it to front street like the it would be such a crazy situation as far as having driving in right now they can drive in park their trucks unload sell their produce it's a great common space for all of us it's like our town plaza that we don't have it is our town plaza so let's keep it there the library it's a great place it's beautiful it's right across the street from here maybe we could turn the entrance so it faces city hall and maybe there could be festivals where the streets closed off and it's more like a plaza and it could be renovated and remodeled and brought up to date like so many of us want so that's what i have to say thank you thank you mary next speaker please hi elise casby again uh the first thing i want to say is i helped establish the green belt in boulder almost 40 years ago i played a small but significant role i've been in this a long time and my public's my comments tonight are more for the public dear public please do not go away after tonight we are witnessing a very small and elite's power block trying to gentrify santa Cruz they want to keep their cars they want to keep their gas guzzling cars and they want to keep a lot of people out that's one of the reasons they want a parking structure on top of a new library we've seen so much corruption here i really wish the public could have been here last week to see the obfuscation that really i'm sorry i just have to really tell the truth the deceit the bureaucrat ease there is no affordable housing with any really clear path that's the truth you can look up the documents yourself and now we're hearing tonight thank you gene brocco bank and michael for speaking about who this came from this is a mandate from the public director and the library director and then they assembled their supports and there was a bait and switch with measure s how much corruption are we going to put up within santa Cruz santa Cruz has a small elite group in the economics department in the planning department in the majority on city council and they are working to shove their plans down our throats they always have they do not care about our opinions they do not listen to us this is all one big promotional thing to make it look like they did a public comment which gene brocco bank thankfully thank you gene again there was only one public outreach meeting this is really a snow job and i'm tired of the corruption i'm tired and i'm so happy so many intelligent thoughtful well rehearsed thank you dana thank you so much for your presentation and rick too let's get all these people out and a whole new bunch in this november thank you alice next speaker please uh rickardo contras managed downtown business and uh live in the city limits uh thank you for jump bike i used it i think six times last week nice i walked to work quite a bit um that being said i would like to see you know mixed use library um and increased parking for us downtown the businesses do need it um we are losing parking places we have to replace those we have to forward thinking on that uh have two small daughters who would love to see a state of the art um downtown library that they would go to their avid readers love books and i think uh i could i would support this thank you ricka next speaker please hi good evening daniel spells i'm a family historian and a retired high school teacher i uh i commend the dlac for its uh its vision and recommendation around a new library count me as a supporter of of a new library um as uh and and as a teacher in the in the south county at pahero valley high school i loved going to the watsonville public library and meeting with students after school helping them with their research and uh writing in the watsonville public library which um has not received any mention tonight for the fabulous beautiful magnificent library there that embodies many of the features or even all of the features that the that the committee is uh putting in its recommendation as uh as dlac chair uh gomez mentioned the dlac was given four options to consider two options that were not included in those four were one a new library in a civic center plaza a standalone library in a civic center plaza um that also could uh embrace multiple uses and a second option of a uh of a multi-use of a library in a multi-use structure independent of a parking garage multi-use means residents offices and retail spaces in addition to the library it doesn't necessarily incorporate a garage the gaping hole in services in santa cruz is bus transit the library nobody has as studied the benefit potential on the library of an enhanced and much improved bus transit system so please embrace bus transit for the library um in the cedar lincoln cathart space thank you thank you sir next speaker please hi council members my name is barbara river woman my throat is really dry and it's very late and i'm 80 so thank you all for your tenacity um i think the the aha moment for me tonight when was when i heard chris crone council member crone ask rena um like how much did you actually know that you were going to be involved or how much did you know about the parking garage and it felt to me like a moment of sort of deer in the headlights like well that isn't what we were really thinking of we're the dreamer of big dreams it was exciting to watch all of the photos of the libraries all over the country and think of these as sort of dream places but i felt like all the wonderful work that delac has done was done without understanding or really being ready to make this kind of Faustian bargain with anti-environmental forces um and i feel sorry about that i feel like we all want a beautiful library i love libraries it's my church i wanted to be a church too and look like a church and not be in a garage to me the iconography or the symbolism of putting a library which is the heart of our democracy under a garage which is a symbol of our culture our culture which is contributing to greenhouse gas emissions which is contributing to the end of our life on this planet is just too much of a juxtaposition an ironic juxtaposition so please plus measure s was not about creating teen centers i love teen centers but i don't think libraries are about creating teen centers if it's a social space we should do it and i don't think teens are going to come downtown i think teens are going to they need to have study spaces in their schools and in the branch libraries i think this is misconceived and i hope there's a really robust discussion hate toward us thank you very much okay thank you next speaker please mayor and council my name is james meccas i'm here because i've got siblings still trying to run businesses on pacific avenue and parking is an issue uh before i do that though there's been so many library issues i've got to say that for people that can't picture a library combined with parking go give a look at like the san jane main library award-winning architecture when it was built or the far more recent watsonville library both tightly integrated with parking structures they work very well but we desperately need more parking downtown and many business owners and their customers agree our pacific garden mall was a model for the exceptionally vibrant santana row but they added large multi-story parking it contributes one percent of its amazing revenue gross revenue to san jane's general fund revenue parking remains a basic requirement if cities want both community friendly core and business revenues for programs because retail rarely succeeds when relying only on nearby customers plan development below cathcart will add hundreds of residents cars and only a small portion of that parking is required on site even if many ride bikes they will likely leave their cars park downtown while they ride those bikes just like they do today the shortage of parking below cathcart was considered acute when my father was on our off-street parking commission 50 years ago still is little has changed my brother owns a business in the 900 block of pacific he buys permits for employees to park in any of 10 spaces three blocks away they often arrive to find those spaces are taken by all-day local residents and have to feed the meters all day there simply isn't enough parking today the owner of sunshops and surf flight life downtown 1300 block pacific told me just yesterday that lack of parking is an ongoing complaint and deterrent to customers we provide to provide parking for new housing and to generate retail tax revenue we need more parking thank you thank you sir former mayor don lane you're up next thank you council um i don't think i'll surprise you by saying i'm here tonight as an advocate for housing i know there are a lot of other issues on the table tonight and housing is a relatively modest part of your considerations but i hope it will not be forgotten because it is the most pressing issue in the city of santa cruz today the proposed library garage building if constructed will have a positive impact on our opportunity to create needed affordable housing downtown it means we can build more units of housing on other sites because those sites will not need to build separate parking it means parking can be more efficiently used because at times it can double as both customer and resident parking it means inefficient flat lots can become sites for housing so how do you navigate this political and parking policy minefield here's one quick suggestion adopt a formal policy stating that if the new library parking structure moves ahead the council is committed to reducing parking in other locations downtown when that parking is no longer justified and commit to converting those lots to developments then include affordable housing i know that's somewhat simplistic but i only get two minutes but i think it addresses the desire of transportation and climate change advocates to devote less space to cars and parking the desire of advocates for smart land use to eliminate inefficient flat lots it it satisfies advocates for a great new library and they get one and at the same time it meets the housing advocates desire to have new tools to meet our parking needs best wishes for success in your decision thank you next speaker good evening council monoconic i sit on the downtown commission so i got to hear about these issues this morning and i've been worrying about them all day so i think so much of what we're hearing from the public is the issue of you know we this is the location okay the location of this garage you're talking about putting it in the heart of downtown and we can't cut down our heritage magnolia trees to do that i don't disagree with the science we do need more parking i mean that's as don lane said that will support more housing construction and more dense usage of our area of our urban core but we just can't put it in the heart we have to consider other locations we have to consider the county building they actually are running out of parking at the county building and need the county workers need more parking and so this could actually be beneficial to work with them on that why don't we consider eminent domain on the river street location you know right on highway one and highway nine i mean we want to be closer to the arteries with the parking to get cars off the road so that then people can come in and enjoy our very unique downtown and it's going to be unique if we maintain the permaculture there if we maintain the magnolia trees we can consider a different kind you know it's not that parking is completely inconsistent with that location we know we want on-site parking at that lot so let's look at the union square model in san francisco right maybe you can fit one floor parking right but it needs to be a civic center first and a parking center second and that is the design constraint that we're hearing from the community today i think that building a new parking structure is not inconsistent with transportation demand management but you've got to put it at a place where buses can then get in and out easily and support those kinds of uses so move to study new locations so we have all those options on the table and move to study some different design elements so that we can see what this will look like thank you thank you manor um before we go to the next speaker is there any other member of the public that has not spoken that wishes to speak we've got looks like four people that are up there now any other members of the public want to speak okay so they got one seated just joe you'll be the last speaker if there's no one else okay please go ahead hi everybody thank you for listening i'm emily corn i have a four-year-old we go to the farmers market every week we get all of our local food there i also love the library i would love a new library an updated library particularly with the sciences collections um but please don't put it on the site of the farmers market please uncouple the projects thank you thank you next speaker please judi grunstra from the beginning relocating our library to the bottom of a garage was a poorly conceived idea i've been a librarian for over 40 years many librarians i've spoken with think this is a bad idea though they may be hesitant to speak out for their own reasons also don't be misled into believing the entire membership of the friends of the library supports this proposed project many oppose it while other cities have engaged their residents early in the design process the library committee bypassed that critical step they didn't ask about you know how people felt about moving the library in their survey maybe they did not want to know and they did spend quite a bit of their limited time hearing about the city's parking needs time that could have been spent digging deeper into the cost estimates that the architects had given them um we recently uh renovated our laudan nelson center uh which is an old building the thanks to measure a our schools are being renovated and those are old buildings we can't just say oh this is a 50 year old building it's it's beyond repair um and please don't regard opposition to the proposed project as resistance to any and all change in our city this resistance is specific to the proposed removal of the library as an integral part of our civic center it's not just the library is not just another retail or commercial space that you're going to stick in the bottom of a garage let's respect our history as we build the future renovate and revitalize the library where a library has stood for 115 years it doesn't seem like good planning to couple our library for the 21st century with backward thinking housing for cars thank you thank you I'm Patrick Dexter I'm the treasurer at Calvary Episcopal Church the Little Red Church downtown and we are in negotiation to lease our property that is the parking lot for housing and I want to apologize to the antique market because the free parking on sunday will disappear and as a personal note I lived 34 years in Arlington Virginia I saw the building of the shirlington library that has both a theater the signature theater and also parking garage in it and I certainly talked with the librarians and I don't think they were worried about being in a garage so I'm very much support the downtown plan B thank you thank you next speaker please my name is Steve Blair I'm a member of the downtown library advisory committee and as a member of the community I want to urge city council don't bury a library mixed-use proposal the delac process was about library services understanding what library services we have now and what library services we should provide for the future and the most efficient way to achieve those services with the limited amount of funds and measure s provides remodeling the existing building I came into the process with an open mind I was leaning towards remodeling the existing building I'm sure everybody came in leaning towards one thing or another with the information that I had at the time that's what made sense but as I gained more information I realized that we would spend such a sizable amount of measure s funds mitigating not resolving or remediating but mitigating the infrastructure problems in the existing building we would be spending more for remediating infrastructure and less on services I hear the discussion tonight and it feels like it's about everything but the library and the library services this is what we were this is what we were trying to achieve the best services for the for the best small city in california thank you thank you thank you for your service um before executive director of the downtown association chipp speaks um is there any other member of the public um that would like to speak after joe jordan any other member of the public okay joe you'll be the last speaker uh you're up chipp thank you for that introduction mr mayor good evening how's your night going okay I am chipp I'm the executive of the downtown association I represent a number of businesses here all of them in the downtown or try our best to um our board met on this issue last week um you know that we got all of the pieces including the finances um and really I'm here to say we're we're looking forward to a more robust conversation uh to work with our membership and and get more information both to and from our members I know that all the pieces are together in terms of the financing that staffs put together the proposals and all that obviously you've heard from a number of businesses tonight parking is a very important issue well managed well placed well uh uh priced parking is very important to the success of downtown so that's something we're all very concerned about so we're looking forward to having more conversation so we can come forward with a recommendation from our board that reflects our membership so thank you so much for your time thank you okay um joe last speaker of the evening yeah good evening and thanks for all you do and thanks to all these fine people out here and all the people who went home for democracy in action you know uh given what's happening at the federal level I have to say I am just absolutely starved for democracy I sat here for three hours this morning through the downtown commission and I've been here for in and out for three hours I I need more more of this I'm sorry I'm the last speaker but anyway can you pause up for a second we'll be here next Tuesday for I know okay so so I am a fierce friend of the library and um I I just say we we should decouple those issues if at all humanly possible and I think there are better more innovative creative ways to do that they're separate problems that should be solved separately and uh on the parking garage thing um you know there are game changers on the horizon this side of the horizon I mean you know the jump bikes thing is just getting going we most a lot of people don't even know that exists yet that's really great you know I haven't heard although I've been in and out I had to go down the street to a party for a while but I don't know if anybody mentioned you know self-driving cars I'm not a big fan of all that but uh there's a study out there by respectable people that says that if you uh you know that that will uh eliminate like 80 some odd percent of demand for parking in x number of years I mean I don't know whether to believe that study we should get some more studies but we need to you know think outside the box and a whole lot of the people this morning at the downtown commission said yeah let's think outside the box and then they voted for the same old same old dinosaur age so-called solution to things so anyway I don't see the rush I know there's a some money dangling before you that you feel pressured to use and I guess that's what it is but let's take it easy and get her done right okay thank you so much thank you okay that concludes the public comment portion of the meeting and now it's our time to bring it back to the council for further discussion I just want to say I want to thank each and every one of you for not only being here tonight for the full three hours and 20 minutes that we've gone forward up to this point but also for the really respectful kind of dialogue in terms of everybody's hearing each other out in terms of both sides and I feel these are the types of meetings that are most successful when there is that discussion and we also can take it back to internalize it in terms of how we move forward with some of our future actions I do want to comment and say I heard two comments that that um from the public that that really kind of interested me about the dynamics of these discussions one was you know about the decline of youth in the city or the fact that hey teenagers or our young people wouldn't go downtown and use the library and as a parent I'll tell you one thing my kids use the library our family use the library and I think I want to see more types of investments to make sure that we are seeing more kids in our downtown and more kids in our city and so when we when we think about like what type of investments we make we oftentimes aren't put at put this out front and center where we can talk about the fact that you know these are choices we make and sometimes over generations we have not really kind of invested in the types of resources or infrastructure for our children here and when you look at our schools that have been built many of them were built by a prior generation 50 years ago our libraries of that same time and so when I hear these types of discussions when we look about how we invest in our future it makes me really feel that we're at a point where we do need to kind of backtrack and start to look at how we are going to reinvest in our future and look at the types of infrastructure for our town and for the children that are going to live here that are going to raise their families of their own and when I think of and when I think of when I think also when I also think about what we're doing we do need to maintain what we already have and I personally feel like we're not doing enough to kind of maintain our downtown in ways we're investing in it the way it should be I love our downtown I'm there about every day I work down there I see Elise downtown just about every every day and I feel like it's something where we sometimes aren't acknowledging the need to really continue to invest at a greater level on what we have and so when I think about some of the parking rates that we have there I think that we do need to start looking at how we kind of balance out what we're doing and how we can maybe increase our efforts to make sure that we're creating a more welcoming place a more safe place and so as we hear this dialogue I do feel there's lots of components that we can continue to work on but I just wanted to point that out as something that you know I took away as a really kind of important aspect also I appreciated former Mayor Don Lane's comments about looking at our policy changes we heard this last time in regards to comments that Mr. Longinati made about you know decoupling our parking with or unbundling our parking with you know our existing facilities that is a current policy and we I think by looking at our pricing and costs we can get to that point where we can achieve those policy goals that we've set out so I do feel that there's lots of kind of discussion points we can have right now in terms of how we can move this forward and we have in front of us something that there has already been action on back in December and I know that one of the big pieces that is still remaining from that former action was to develop an engagement and work plan that we go in to see what is that strategy and how we are able to move forward to make these types of investments in our future so I look forward to having the discussion with the council about how we can kind of kind of continue to move forward council members yeah I have a few questions thank you mayor um just one a clear couple things up would the antique fair be displaced and did we not reach out to them during this whole process um no they would not be displaced they're they're on the uh existing lot that's across from the farmers market where they currently are I'm not sure what lot number that is lot eight so they would remain where they are um we did in our initial meetings with the Santa Cruz farmers market we actually did have Bonnie from the antiques fair at at those initial meetings but um and through those discussions um she expressed us how much she wanted to stay at her existing site which wasn't the site that we were looking to develop so um we you know we did meet with her then but we um when she expressed that she didn't want to move we we didn't push her on that issue thank you um the whole global warming climate change issue that's been brought up because I don't I haven't feel like it's been addressed very much um in our the staff report um has I know the plan went to the downtown commission why wouldn't you send this to the climate action planning committee so the why would you consult with them with the sustainability team the climate action planning committee climate action planning committee do we have a task force climate action task force so I know that we have a handful of climate groups that are subcommittees of implementation of the climate action plan Claire I'll turn it over to the manager he knows about the the group I think you're referring to Tiffany wise west she and I'm on the community action and and but their their scope is to focus on the climate action plan and its goals and and the the specific uh right right exactly uh and so they they don't generally uh review uh you know projects or anything like that as far as their scope as well just for the record that's a big mistake that the climate action plan committee should be reviewing every public works project that goes through persistent question that we I think we need to address and um and maybe somebody can do that why was the parking garage it wasn't part of measure s how do we get beyond that as a city that you know how do we tell people well how do we answer that question that the parking garage was never part of measure s we've shared the language of measure s with many entities and bodies it's a public document um the the measure does not specify it says where the money will be spent but it doesn't specify how other than for library purposes and also just this is before Susan was here the the library system went through a facilities master planning process where they identify the various needs for every single branch and looked at a variety of different alternatives for the downtown branch they looked at a variety of them including the mixed use project at a time they were looking at the metro site as a possibility so when they looked at the various needs the the need that they identified as as the best alternative was was to build a new library whether in a mixed use project or standalone so that was something that was considered as part of the facilities master planning process that the library system and the library board took on when it came to the ballot measure as has been noted it was recognized that uh there wasn't enough uh support in the community to pass a measure that would fully fund uh what the ideal uh circumstances were for every single one of those entities in addition since that time the cost of construction has gone up considerably so even some of it for example capital just uh got their their bids and so there they came in over over and they'll have they're gonna have to make some adjustments we've incorporated those increases into the into the estimates that you have here um so there's always been a recognition that there'd have to be a way to sort of figure out to uh be able to meet the the gap in in financing as well uh jimber how would you respond to the question is building a parking garage the opposite of tdm trans uh demand transportation demand management i think as you saw the modeling results tonight uh we need both measures to maintain a vibrant downtown um the structure does not um it it backfills three hundred and seventy spaces adds a couple hundred new um so we'll be we'll need both to look at the kind of growth we need downtown thank you um a colleague of mine uh adam illard ball sent a letter to the uh the council i hope the council members um saw it um he had several questions that he put forward and i i agree with them but the question number three was what is the marginal cost of net new parking space under the new parking supply scenario and how does this marginal cost compared to the proposed one the proposed rates and two the cost of accommodating a trip by tdm in other words is it cheaper to pay people not to drive than to build new parking from the text 35 million dollar cost for 231 parking spaces but you but um mr burge said the implication is that each new space then costs 152 thousand dollars or seven hundred and thirty dollars per month amortized over 30 years at four percent interest excluding maintenance and operation costs however staff would have access to more precise estimates seven hundred thirty dollars a month would buy a lot of trip reduction how might we respond to mr adam illard ball who is the transportation expert uh in environmental studies uh up on campus well i would suggest if you were going to build this parking structure outside of the district it would never be able to support itself but similar to the way if you booked a flight on an airline say southwest and you got to fly in a brand new airplane you would not pay a different cost than if you fly in one of their older airplanes so because the district has been proactive and planned over the years we have 3000 public parking spaces that we spread the cost over to support the cost of the new structure but why not then use just the money to pay people not to not to drive rather than you know they would be cheaper that would be a policy decision the other question he asks what is the rationale for subsidizing monthly parkers versus shoppers and visitors a monthly rate of 75 equates to 50 cents per hour 20 days per month eight hours a day compared to hourly rates of about 125 has staff considered whether shifting to daily rates with no monthly subsidy would encourage downtown employees to walk walk bike carpool or ride the bus on occasional basis what's your professional decision on shifting from daily rate from monthly rates to daily rates so one of the things we looked at we did model the effective daily cost of the proposed increases in monthly parking permits based on a 20 day average work week per month at the top rate at 75 dollars per month this works out to three dollars and 75 cents per day for drivers one of the things that we have been discussing is the ability to provide a monthly punch card a value added card that would have a potentially a decrease in the overall parking costs there potentially a 10 percent decrease or something like that so that if we could encourage people to take alternative modes on most days but accommodate them on you know the one day they need to drive where they're heading home late and the bus is no longer running or they need to arrive early to work for before the bus is running and before their carpool buddy is going it does allow for a break in that daily parking cost that's not an element that's built in here to the the long-term model there but is within the the range probably of acceptable values that we're looking at modeling on daily rates of parking and monthly parking thank you we talked about parking deficiency fees is my last question okay um could you explain what parking deficiency fees are and what the origin of them are because I don't think that's that's quite clear and how much do we actually collect in parking deficiency fees and who do we collect it from so it's money paid by businesses to the district for not supplying parking in other words the district supplies the parking businesses don't supply the parking they pay a deficiency fee based on the type of business they are and the size they are sometimes on rare occasions how many employees they have um but mostly that it's a square footage number again outside the parking district you businesses provide their own parking inside the district at a reduced rate you can either provide your own so not all businesses pay these only businesses that do not provide enough parking the disc the idea then that was set up in the fifties and the fees were first charged in the sixties the idea was to use those funds to bond for and build parking supply projects so that would then serve those same businesses that help and we collect about eight hundred and ninety thousand dollars a year in deficiency fees so is it theoretical or is it real that then businesses have paid they they they're paying for projects the city's already done that's why they're paying for deficiency fees that because we've built parking for their customers is that is that the idea or am I get it wrong the fees go into the district budget which covers all the on m for everything we do downtown on m stands for operations and maintenance of all of the different functions we do in the parking district as well as debt service on the last garage that's the soquel front garage we're still paying we will be until 2027 it's about 450 thousand dollars a year and the restroom maintenance the sidewalks scrubbing the you know attending all the structures maintaining all the structures the cash control issues so it's not just putting the fees on to the people who park their car then there's all these other fees involved as well the business portion is basically a subsidy it has helped keep parking prices low for a lot of years and so we're giving up the city's giving up a 800 6 890 thousand dollars is this money we're kind of leaving on the table i mean can we get anything from the businesses as we decrease the deficiency fee that that you're recommending or that you recommended to the uh the downtown commission honey i'm gonna add one thing in there before you jump in so the same rate more or less that we're decreasing the deficiency fee over time that recommended 20 per cent per year is mostly in line with then that increase in the monthly permit fees that we're seeing an increase in user fees so incrementally raising fees on users while we're incrementally decreasing fees on businesses this allows for us to meet the the best practice in looking at parking management to fully shift the cost of parking to the users and consumers of that parking so that's where that 20 reduction comes from and how it relates to the user fees bonnie can touch on the business actually before you do that i just want to ask the question a different way so if you were to reduce the parking deficiency fee and just make it fully charged to the district was there any interest in looking at that what you like what would it be if you if you did not have the businesses carry the cost but it was just part of the cost of the operations of the district if we didn't raise the fees is that what you're saying no no what if you there's a deficiency fee right to the businesses that are charged annually what if that cost was part of the rate structure that you're proposing was there any interest in setting that up that's essentially what it is where you eliminate the whole deficiency fee structure proposed but it's gonna phase out though i understood that there'll still be a remaining cost at the end of that five year no it phase out completely in five years oh god so 20 40 60 80 and then gone and i would just add to that for the downtown businesses is they currently assess themselves and the property owners as well about half a million a year between the downtown association for that business improvement district and then through the downtown management corporation which is a property based improvement district so there is a number of assessments that are in place that the businesses do play pay and and that's part of the feedback we've had over the last 15 20 years is how many assessments there are downtown particularly by the businesses and the weight that they feel from that with the assessments from the city of one other follow-up then i'm just on chris's comments just in terms of understanding like i mentioned earlier like my interest in seeing how we can invest more in some of our maintenance in our downtown and keep it you know clean and and you know have better oversight of like the the lots as well as our sidewalks and other spaces has there been a an assessment to look at well what would it take to to bring up the level from the current baseline and what that might cost we have not um you'd have to we'd have to define exactly yeah the scope of what you're talking about are we talking about every street in the district or just part of the street anyway there's a lot of definition yeah that would need to go into that study okay so no that has not been done okay i just last one was 300 tdm 300,000 i was confused because i didn't see that as a line item in our budget or anything like that so that that's when you said oh we've been doing that for years and this is what it was so that cleared that up but how did we arrive at 300,000 now like is that a placeholder why it could be three million i mean why why not it is a bit of a placeholder we think we can we think we can meet all of the tdm needs we think we can meet the people who are interested in taking transit who are interested in bike share subsidies we think we can meet that all with 300,000 it may be 350 we might find that as we develop this program with the downtown commission we need a little bit more um and i think that's fully within within the range of possibilities but we'd be expecting to get that out of the monthly fees for the garage that fee is fully generated by user fees thanks thank you council member chase i don't know that you got a chance to answer the question claire about the ego pass um could you talk to us about that a little bit yeah so the um our staff received a staff level recommendation from the team at metro we've been working with them for the last couple months trying to come up with uh parameters for a downtown eco pass we have around 4,000 employees in the downtown and we wanted to look at what it would take to cover them all with a monthly transit pass uh the proposal that metro gave to us is for 311,000 dollars for a one-year pilot program this represents a 90 discount rate in order to cover all employees downtown with a transit pass um it's a really interesting offer and it's based off of good and sound logic one of the things that it doesn't do is provide any level of service over what we have now so it's um paying in to cover all employees at 311,000 dollars with no additional service any additional service hours over what we have now either to start service earlier for our cafe workers who start making coffee really early or uh the people who work in bars and restaurants that work late um that's not included anything that would increase the level of frequency so that maybe instead of your bus coming once an hour it would come once every half hour that's not included either that would be billed at an additional 140 dollars per hour uh so we took this offer on the staff level and we examined our both downtown employee commute survey our current mode split and what we thought were some reasonably foreseeable mode split goals so in looking to double our downtown mode split of transit we modeled what that would cost if we were to just buy transit passes and in doubling our downtown employee mode split it would be more affordable for us to just buy transit passes at the existing 20 percent discount rate for all employees that wanted one um in looking at these various alternatives and modeling um how aggressive we could get in being aspirational and getting more people to switch to transit and really encouraging that what we kept coming back to is the uh desired approach to meet people where they are better needs meets the needs of our downtown employees uh when we did our downtown employee commute survey we asked people how likely would you be to try one of these different modes transit came in six of nine choices things that came in um higher were bicycling a short work week teleworking carpooling and walking um so other modes that we could look to encourage um that we could spend additional dollars on so of our overall TDM program we do anticipate spending a significant chunk of that budget on purchasing transit passes either for free or for a subsidy for employees who want them and for employees who transit works for them and that's a mode they want to try but we thought that um of the funding we had it would be better spent if we could spread it across biking carpooling um emergency ride home transit and other modes as well thank you for that and I have a follow-up question to that and I can't remember the statistic but I'm sure you will um I know that I fit into this category and that is I live downtown both of my primary jobs are downtown it actually doesn't make any sense for me to get on a bus because it would take me longer to do that than it would take me to walk or ride and I know there's statistics on this so I'm sure yeah we have some great stats so we have this I keep referring to our downtown employee commute survey it's it's a great survey that we went out and did and we we surveyed a sample that included both office workers and service workers and we looked at um workers as a whole and then service workers as a subset of that so one of the things we know is that um 44 percent of our service workers already don't drive so it's one of the groups we've caught but in terms of how close people are to work I know I have it in front of me right now and I'm looking for it um the heavy majority of our here we go mileage that's what I'm going for of all of our downtown employees 44 percent live within three miles this is a group that it's going to be faster cheaper and easier to walk or bike um potentially carpool but really walking and biking is the easiest alternative and zero to three miles if you go out to six miles that adds an additional 17 percent at that six mile range transit does become a competitive alternative also but really looking for the lowest hanging fruit and matching people that live close with telling us that they want to try walking biking and carpooling is the most logical scenario in order to encourage mode shift right now thank you thank you very much for those statistics about the bus passes because that's something I was really interested in and looking into but you know someone who grew up in Santa Cruz and had jobs downtown where I didn't get off till midnight I mean the bus was just not a possibility for me um even though I was just going to the west side um and so I understand the issues of you know paying this amount of money and not getting increased service um and really outside of UC Santa Cruz and maybe a couple other bus routes unfortunately our metro system has not had an easy go of it lately we have a hard time getting home right now oh yeah absolutely absolutely so um just some of the things that um I wanted to just really complement the downtown library advisory committee I just I'm still in awe of these citizen committees who are willing to get together and spend so much time really studying this issue and I just can't thank you enough and just the depth um and the breadth of knowledge of your backgrounds are amazing I was reading your biographies and just blew me away at um you know how savvy all of you are and um that's why you know when I look at what you're proposing I don't doubt that you weren't careful in really examining everything um and that you know there's you know some sort of conspiracy to um just subvert the public and that's not true I know some people alluded to that and I just I don't think you all even knew each other before you got together and did this so I'm I'm just thank you so much I you don't know how much you know how grateful I am for it and the community should be really grateful too that we have people with your expertise to be able to do this type of work so um and I mean I think it's been really clearly explained that we're going to be losing parking we're going to have surface slots go away and hopefully be used in a better way in in regards to land use and that the 240 additional spots will hopefully put us in a position to get some affordable housing downtown and you know I know in the ideal world we're trying to get more people out of their cars but if those 240 additional spots leads us to having folks who may be check into our you know check us into our medical appointment or teacher kids or patroller streets as entry-level police officers if it gets more of them to be able to live in the downtown area and not have to commute from the hinterlands to be able to work in Santa Cruz um you know I'm I'm willing to support that uh I think it's important to have those opportunities for people who want to live and work locally and while I know we're not going to be able to have every person who um works at maybe a service job or an entry-level job be able to live here I'd like to at least attempt to mitigate it and if you want to talk about lessening car trips that's probably one of the best things that we can do is to have places for people to live downtown so um I understand why the additional 240 spots have to exist that was one of the first things that jumped out at me was well why can't we just replace what we're going to lose in the surface lots why do we need to add you know when I hear the explanation as to why um it really makes sense to me and then just my own experience of you know the bus wasn't realistic for me when I was a worker downtown so um I think coupled with all those things it makes a lot of sense and another thing to consider is you know the parking isn't just being used by locals we have tourists that come to Santa Cruz as well and the park once model is really great if we can get them to just park downtown which a lot more figuring out that it's a lot cheaper to park downtown than it is across the street from the boardwalk they park downtown they discover we have an amazing downtown that they can have a unique experience both here and at the boardwalk and then there's that wonderful beach trolley that you can take from downtown um to to the beach and I have to tell you once my family discovered that you know from there from out of town they they want they want to take the trolley they think it's fun especially the the 11 year old so he was very enthusiastic about it so um the only thing that I think um you know I'd be more interested in is is the possibility of adding housing have no idea if that's um you know something that's even feasible but I know that we're looking at other lots to do affordable housing and so um I feel good that maybe this you know we're utilizing this um project as well as we can but if there's any possibility to look into that I would really appreciate it especially if they can be affordable units no we'd like to do that to make it a truly mixed use building you want to look at housing office and okay great so I feel confident in supporting option b I think it has been researched really well we've had a great citizens committee do this for us um and I I believe that you know the metro passes I think we should do both make them available people who want them and also do the parking I think we need both we need multiple ways for people to utilize our downtown so um I'm going to feel comfortable with voting for for the option b recommendation I just have a few thank you I just have a few comments and I have a couple things that you can report back because I know we're not necessarily taking exact action tonight um I'll try to keep my comments limited I just want to thank the community for coming out and speaking on behalf of whatever your position is it's really important for us to hear from the community on these these complex issues and there's pluses and minuses to all of our policy options including not doing anything and I really believe that I also feel that part of our job is to have um sort of this foresight into the future and to do our best to plan for the future that's that's what I see my role as in terms of a policy maker how are we designing policy with the long-term vision in mind um and from somebody who has um a lot of vision I enjoy that actually um I also just want to echo the comments that were made by the mayor in terms of the demographics and the shift we're seeing in our community coming off of the housing blueprint subcommittee um we have work to do and being a mother of two young daughters and having an opportunity to go to the library to experience a presentation by the librarian and all that it can offer to our community of all ages for so many different needs is critical for me to offer that perspective and to share that perspective so I want to thank you for your comments in terms of building what we want to see in terms of having more youth in our community I also want to um look or maybe hear back at a future time I don't know if you necessarily need to to um to respond tonight um at first I'll actually I'll first say that I really like the perspective of meeting people where they are that's essentially equity and I think that's a beautiful thing I also um I think we spoke during your presentation um when you met with me individually in regards to um potentially like a sliding scale for folks that might not be able to afford a pass if they need a pass um on many days I'm here and there from school to pick up to daycare to multiple places um and sometimes even if driving is your only option it could be a way to meet people where they are and I know that was brought up also um and then in terms of the uh recommendations for this evening do you mind putting that back up on the um screen for us in terms of best next steps and I just I guess before we we move forward um I'm curious to just maybe know a little bit more about what and you don't I mean it doesn't have to be into full detail but what you have in mind for your outreach I know that the downtown association mentioned that they're excited to hear about more outreach and an opportunity for conversation I too feel that sounds great in terms of education educating the community but also hearing from them as well um and then also just sort of the the timeline knowing that uh you know the month of July and August is kind of quick and people are gone and I don't know in terms of what your thoughts are around the timeline as well we've had a we had a number of individual and small group meetings but we'd like to actually have some noticed public meetings as well as um working with the downtown association and really have as many outreach meetings as we can and that's because a key piece that we hadn't had up until recently was the actual rate strategy so that's the missing component that uh there hasn't been a lot of opportunity to sort of discuss it and so that's the key piece of it okay I mean I think at this point I know unless there's any other I just I guess just as additional actions something we heard tonight was the um in terms of the policy unbundling the parking reducing the parking requirements for new housing when you look at if we are kind of committed to looking at you know creating density downtown and providing more housing looking at how this type of infrastructure can help us support the creation of new housing opportunities downtown I think that was a policy kind of suggestion um also we heard at the last meeting um from rick as far as unbundling and how the cost now a parking because it is lower than the cost that private developments have to pay there's a there's a mismatch where as we start to increase there should be some sort of timelines where we see that those policies better reflect what the the cost is of the parking um I'd also like to see as I mentioned a couple of times I want to see like a actual cost of what it what it would look like um if we were to increase investment in our maintenance downtown what is the uh you know what does that look like in terms of the cost to the structure um what will we get from that and what are our expectations because I don't know if there's a clear understanding of what our baseline is right now in terms of what we should be getting um in the downtown and maintenance and I think it's important to to know that what we're getting for the current budgeted amounts and then what it's going to take to maybe exceed what we are um you know what we're what we're looking for what the downtown business owners might want to see us be doing more of to make sure that it's a more welcoming place and and and it's a well maintained place um the other I I just wanted to commend also Debra Osterberg I was really resonating with me I was on you know I served on on the old library board and one of the the the really kind of exciting things is to go and look at their collection they have an amazing collection of historical artifacts of our city's history and I think that for me not only the genealogical kind of um um displays that might come from that organization but the library collection itself is really something that should be better better displayed and part of any new facility so I'd like to see make sure that as we think about the design I mentioned the public art and exterior but Debra you know reminded me of the the importance also of the historical aspects interior and also how we kind of make that an environment that really does reflect the type of downtown space we want for our community so those are some additional actions I think should be incorporated into not only your outreach plan but as we get the design um suggestions come back I'd like to see those kind of reflected in whatever work takes place from here I I think you have what you need or if I could just ask a clarifying question on your downtown maintenance so we have the ability for downtown maintenance of looking at a number of models like a lmd a lighting landscape maintenance district or putting something in place like that but I just wanted to clarify your question when you um because it sounded like you were making a connection between the parking and the parking fees for overall downtown maintenance and not just for parking related maintenance and so I just wanted to clarify to make sure we were understanding yeah sure well I mean in terms of the the parking costs that we heard today and I've heard this in the past that there is budgeted amounts that take that are allocated and expended for maintenance downtown understanding what we're getting for that current fee that we have for our downtown parking district if it's just the garages or does it include like any sort of street maintenance or painting knowing what we get and also if we have kind of like what we did in terms of looking at the um water uh what conservation there was a conservation fee that like one that we we imposed to look at that perhaps there's a way to look at the cost that we might have whether it be in parking or some other measure to go above and beyond what we're already doing because I feel in my opinion we need to do more so just to clarify with respect to the um parking fund and what it pays for in terms of maintenance downtown it's the restrooms that are in the parking structures and the the scrubbing program and but we'll bring all that back or the yeah the sidewalks on pacific avenue and then but we can bring it all together because then we have the parking fund I'm sorry the refuse fund pays for the the garbage collection as well as the um the hope services clean up and then in the park's budget they pay for all the landscaping but we can bring all that to you so it's to that point it's not just the parking fund this is a multiple fund uh item yeah I guess my my point was I mean I imagine it's also the maintenance of the garages right how they're how they're cleaned and maintained as well not just the scrubbing that's included in the parking yes so I guess I would want to know if um one what we're getting from that now and if you know what types of incremental increases would help to maybe provide some more ongoing maintenance and then have that you know become a discussion point with the downtown association to see well what do we want to see in terms of the level of maintenance downtown this is what we have and you know perhaps going further we can get a little bit more and these are what the options are so I think at the beginning of the presentation Bonnie you mentioned um incorporating the recommendations from the housing blueprint so okay great so many of those things were mentioned tonight many of those things are you know related to parking um as well as the housing comments I loved all the support for affordable housing that we heard tonight uh one of the best ways to do that is to not have parking required in those projects and to have it adjacent that gets us more units and more deeply affordable units so I'm a huge fan of that I think it's I appreciate um the mayor including this suggestion made by former mayor don lane I think that that is really important as well I would like to see us um really you know continue to aggressively pursue our TDM options I don't think that they're mutually exclusive with our parking um plan that you've brought forward tonight and I would be I would like us to pursue what council member crown suggested which is looking more aggressively at the rate structure in terms of the fees I think we need to study that because I'm concerned about the impact for lower income folks particularly those who work downtown um who rely on being able to get downtown and work downtown and raising that could be really problematic for them but I think we should ask the question and we should really talk about that and see kind of where is that sweet spot that could work um and I think I'll stop there and thank you so much for your presentation and thank you all so much for your presentation and all of your work council member crown just to follow up on council member chase I was going to ask could we look into a tiered rate structure for um you know low income people who do have to work downtown and come great distances and can't take a bus you know for uh because the bus doesn't run where they where they drive from is that possibly like a tiered rate structure does that sound like something that was possible if you run across that in other cities yeah I expect that the downtown commission will want to take up that very issue I've heard it expressed from some of the commissioners with the idea in mind that we we we are trying to have less employees parking our garages and more visitors um but some balance yes absolutely um Bonnie what was the affordable housing that you're that you're going to take up that you heard from David well there's a there's a couple of things we had some parking in and in the affordable housing there are two things and one thing that we haven't actually mentioned tonight and that's the city support supported pacific station project and so one of the um sort of policy decisions that will come before you in the months ahead will be a decision on whether or not to include parking in that project there's the opportunity that came out of or actually not opportunity one of the recommendations that came out of the housing blueprint subcommittee which is um there's a variety of them for downtown but one of them is specifically to reduce the overall parking requirements for affordable housing projects so that will reduce the amount of parking required for those projects but another recommendation is actually to allow for the parking to be created in an offsite location so that will allow us to for pacific station for example within the current height to actually build more affordable units within that footprint so that's something that we're really excited about but we have to actually bring the project to you for you to make that policy decision so incorporating some of those specific downtown parking recommendations as it relates to affordable housing within this recommendation when we come back so putting the affordable housing aside do you think that not building the parking garage is going to put in jeopardy the planned sort of growth of 500 to 600 units downtown like is that a no go if you don't have this parking garage uh Owen Lawler was here this this morning at the downtown commission uh speaking about you know in support of the parking garage so it kind of like put up a little bell for me saying oh well maybe his development would be in jeopardy if we don't do a downtown this this garage yeah i i don't know if i would put it in a no go no go situation i i think it's it's looking at trying to maximize the amount where we're looking at particularly affordable housing in the downtown on those parcels that we have control over so we only have so many city-owned surface lots and and parcels in the downtown so we're looking at each of those and part of that has been council direction to analyze what's the highest and best use for those which which are suitable for housing which doesn't make sense where we might want to develop some of the surface lot so that's part of the process and so to the extent that we can consolidate what we have and all those surface lots into one consolidated site that creates more opportunities for us to develop affordable housing would there be consensus up here that if we gave staff direction to look at that two years rather than five years to get the the monthly parking rates for the garages up to seventy five dollars in two years rather than five years i think you know having that as part of it to look at it to bring it back it went to the downtown to see what the numbers look like i mean i i don't have a problem with that and um i wanted to just respond to um councilmember neroy and i don't i don't think folks out here tonight were saying there's any kind of conspiracy i think they're about about the choices and stuff well i i feel folks were saying that there wasn't enough choices that there was four that people were locked into and i think um one of the speakers dan spell said it well you know that there was two other choices that he brought out and there's perhaps more choices as well and there was maybe a constrained uh nature of the the process and that's that's what i feel like folks were saying that i that i heard tonight anyway so let me just say that um there was i'm going to one comment that i i made a note of it was after one of the downtown association or downtown commission members um manu mentioned was the idea that the county needed a new parking garage and lot there and i know we're looking at you know how the transit center is located and i know that's something where i've seen in other areas you've seen a combined transit center with project um with parking garage and that might be something that the county might be interested in doing if there was something and and i thought that was something i just wanted to to to bring up i would have to say though i'm very thankful for all of you that came here tonight that stuck it out with us for four plus hours and i want to thank again the downtown library advisory committee library staff and all the staff um that not only did the presentations this evening but answered our questions this is not the the last time certainly all the comments and additional actions are going to be reviewed and we'll come back um in august but i just want to thank everybody for the patience and all the time spent this evening and if there's no other further comments um we'll adjourn the meeting is adjourned