ission sea level rise guidance documents they actually recommend looking at say for example geologic um disclosure um for say a coastal property um so those will be things that we will be considering um during that process and i know i think it was 2007 the first adaptation plan was done was that right 2011 our first lhmp was in 2007 okay and how is that kind of um i guess coordinated with our our general plan i mean do we have has it been integrated so these this kind of updates now or something that we have integrated into our our general plan that's the second piece of sb 379 is that the planning department will be adopting the lhmp into the safety element of the general plan and that's how it becomes part of the general plan so they will be doing that over the next i think year or two okay i appreciate it all right we have a motion on the floor by vice mayor walk-in second by council member brown um all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed that motion passes unanimously with council member chase absence thank you so much thank you the next item on our agenda is item number 17 this is the charter amendment committee appointments and i believe if there's no one um coming up from city manager's office and what we're going to do is just treat this like we've done with other advisory bodies however this is um these are six appointments and so one consideration is to um you know first of all take uh take um the uh nominations that come forward and um maybe we we take the first pass with three because it's you know six appointments we vote um and then we we see where things fall um so that we can go for a second round so that we're at least um taking those if that you follow we're going to everybody will go through make nominations we'll uh we'll make the first round of appointments and then we'll come back a second time afterwards if we need to follow up if there's uh any additional uh votes for those that did not reach a threshold vote on the first path one thought also and i it's um something um that we've i've seen in the past is the idea of um um alternates having those voted on at this time is that something that um where we could identify perhaps two alternates um that that might be um assigned in the event that there isn't someone there and then we have it done so i just want to put that out there as well it's more brown just a logistical question would we make that decision after after the six or point yeah okay all right let's begin so i'm gonna start because i know that we are focusing on you last time councilmember brown so i thought every time we'll start on we'll start on the right side with councilmember crown so you can make um let's let's do up to up to three uh nominations at this time okay i i would uh um nominate patrice boil denise holbert and noah thorn the ucsc student okay hold on a second okay it's patrice boil denise holbert and the other one was noah thorn yes okay councilmember matthews um in addition i would like to nominate dave shuman and case of kumar third first one dave shuman case of well i'll just say this to me is a weird way to do it there are plenty of other people i'd like but i don't want to over nominate so got it understand so there's two okay um councilmember brown i feel the same way councilmember matthews here um um i will in addition include um jamie garfield and sylvia carris shulna royan so i would like um shuman if it's already been said yeah oh i'm sorry i'm just for my own denominator yeah um sabios okay that's it um she said uh sabias any others you we said you mentioned dave shuman but yeah uh did you want me to say three if you want so uh shuman sabios kumar so in addition to those that have already been said i would just add timory gordon can't we just put them all on the floor and vote this do that too i was yeah this isn't working i don't think i don't know i think it'll work um i i think i was just we're looking for trying to treat it as we worried our our advisory appointments um so i'd like to put on uh christina horn additionally but now we've got everybody but except for two well we're gonna see where the where the four votes are we can do multiple passes that's okay just to clarify one more so now we're just going to vote for three and then those who don't make the first list then we can renom we can nominate again that's correct and how many do they have to get to be elected four four votes we vote for our top three four or more four or more okay so if you want to read off the can we um do you want to just vote for three or i mean i we could vote for more than three how would you like to approach that based on we personally i'd rather vote for my six okay let everyone vote for their six okay and then be able to change your vote okay people feel i mean you're the boss yeah i think that i was trying to do to expedite i'm actually if did you are you are all of your nominations up yep okay um see all of all of them i'm i'm comfortable with all if everybody would like to vote for all of their six if your nominations are are there you can do so there's only three right now who haven't been nominated okay so if anyone wants boss word brooks or geo i would i would do geo okay did you put three on the floor already i did yeah okay that's fun okay okay okay so you can use all six votes if you like on this to can you read off though it's those the only ones that have not been nominated are steve bossworth and bill brooks did you want to call the names of those for each one's for for vote go by individual and yeah by in by individual right yeah um so voting for patrice boil all those voting for patrice boil i i'm soviet karas um gust sabayos um jamie garfield go geo marie gordon denise holbert uh christina horn how many well i'm just trying to one two three i know i i i gotta see i'm gonna wait and because i have so three that what i have two um kisha kumar david shuman and noa thorn so it looks like you have five and the sixth person is tied we have a tie you it looks like patrice boil and christina horn read off those that um are have been the appointed ones um gust sabayos timory gordon denise holbert kisha kumar and david shuman so now we could do a vote for patrice boil and christina horn is that how you want to do that one sure why don't we just say boil when we raise our hand yep so patrice boil um and christina horn so it's patrice boil and i mentioned if you um to do two alternates i would i would select christina horn as an alternate the idea of alternates is was not part of this proposal and i personally don't support that um i think we need to this is going to be really intensive and i think we need to have people who are there and committed and if they're not there too bad but i think it's going to take a great continuity of effort so my own preference would be just to stay with the the group that we have and let it go at the other you know we don't have alternates to any of our commissions we didn't have we anyway i would just prefer to keep it clean that's from ryan did we have alternates to the water wassak or isary committee visor committee we did i think we did for the public safety committee maybe if some of the folks who've been identified to serve are unable to or kind of we can let the other folks know because at that time at that time or something like that this was really really challenging there was incredible people that i know i you couldn't really go wrong with a lot of these folks so what is the at this point is that the council field they do not want to identify alternates at this time my feeling is oh sorry i'd be fine either way i don't know that it matters if we do it now or should somebody not be able to serve just have a question just occur to me that might make sense if the council is going to consider appointing an alternate to also give some direction as to the circumstances under which the alternate would actually serve is it for a one-missed meeting or is it in the event that one of the appointees decides not to participate yeah that's yeah that's good that's good feedback so under the circumstances i don't know if you need a motion or a sense of the group i'd prefer that we just just leave the nominations as they are for now i don't think there needs to be a motion but i but i think i think having some guidelines um in regards to the appointments i was thinking consistent with what we have for advisory bodies when someone misses a certain number of meetings then then they uh they're no longer considered a member i'm not sure if we have a specific guideline but there are provisions in the government code that that discuss when an office is presumed to be vacant they're pretty forgiving you have to miss meetings for i think three months in a row or something like that so okay also to answer your question about the wassak they did that did not have alternatives okay thank you okay well at this point then we can hold off on that so if you could can you name those people that um reach the threshold votes for the appointment yes um patrice boil gus sabios timory gordon denise holbert keshav kumar and david shuman thank you so um in terms of action um is there a motion to appoint those six members at this time based on the vote move to approve i'll second that so um this is a motion to approve patrice boil gus sabios timory gordon denise holbert keshav kumar and david shuman to the charter amendment committee um all those in favor please say aye those opposed that motion passes unanimously with um council member chase absent thank you okay next we'll move on to the meeting calendar um i don't know if anyone has any comments um regards to the calendar not some member crone i do um since i cannot really talk about it um let me see where there it is um i wanted to uh make a motion to place the resolution of the city of santa cruz in support of educating tenants on their rights to post political signs under california civil code section 1940.4 on the next uh council agenda any discussion okay that motion pass uh fails for lack of a second um any other discussion regarding the um calendar okay seeing none we um at this time are recessing to closed session at 5 30 p.m council members will recess from closed session return to the days to hear from the public for oral communications following oral communications council members will return to the closed session when we will finish that item i'd also like to announce that the 7 p.m session overflow will be available in the tony hill room at this point we're adjourning to the closed session 5 30 p.m for oral communication yes sir oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda are there any members of the public that wish to speak to us in regards to oral communications okay everybody seated too yes okay um if so please line up to my left to your right and you'll have two minutes to speak sir please step up your you can begin ruse thomas from do4 neighbors i'm here to provide a brief update uh what's happening with our petition this is the hard copy in case just keep going you can hand it after it was presented two weeks ago i want to say thank you for helping inspire some discussion and the news is um we had a four-party meeting yesterday it was a very good discussion among the neighbors starbucks blaze pizza and some city folks and it was very interesting to hear everybody's um take on what's going on and um there is a sense that starbucks and blaze pizza want to find a collective solution so positive news there officer sergeant uh i don't know how to see your last name everlith was there anyways um a couple items to note that i think you're going to be getting a form a more another update as things really solidified but right now we're in a state of talking about no idling signs on do4 street and starbucks has talked about um adding some be courteous to your neighbors placards in their business which was a really i thought a really good suggestion talk of establishing a designated loading zone is one of the key things that i think has come out of this because no no no there was no designated space for starbucks and blaze pizza deliveries to take place prior um delivery times will be a key um notion that also has to be resolved because of noise and vibrations case in point the reason this was raised to a level of a petition was um happened just last friday after two days of being woken up at midnight um the noise and vibrations i called the police to report a disturbance of the piece i opened my front door so they could hear it it was so loud the police dispatcher could not hear me so just these are real problems and i really appreciate the help that's been provided because we've got some meetings and discussions going that seem to be help um working towards the solution thank you very much thank you thank you for the feedback i appreciate you coming back the assistance um city manager i think has been tasked with reporting back to you with the results from the planning department martin who who's been assigned you know the woman said it's in the plan department tina no is this no tina yeah i think it was tina's hold sold tina shoal shoal yeah okay tina shoal okay great thank you next speaker please hi i'm satio ryan um i want to thank you for the action you took this afternoon um i want to say more about 5g in general and my opinion is that should not be happening at all not just delayed i've been i've been talking with the planning department quite a lot and i've learned that the 5g cell towers will need to be installed every 500 feet or 40 per square mile which um and i'm assuming that that's per carrier so the actual number could be double or triple that amount i've seen the ads for the the 5g internet of things about self-driving cars and smart appliances and i'm don't know if people know this but this frequency has only been used so far by the military for um as a weapon for crowd control purposes it's never been used in public spaces before and it's never been tested before so my question comes is like who who is looking out for our safety i hear that we want to look out for our safety but the standards for safety set by the FCC are based on 20 year old testing and recent scientific studies have have shown serious harm at levels thousands of times lower than that to humans animals plants so it's something worth looking into and also um the 1996 telecommunications act which i'm sure you're all aware of but i wasn't exempts health and environmental concerns from any of these tower installations and and how is that fair to us i don't understand so it seems to me that the FCC and the telecom industry are not concerned with our health and safety so we need to be and there's no lack of wireless coverage in this town and i don't think we need self-driving cars and smart appliances so what are we trading for that you know wire thank you thank you thank you next speaker please hi i'm gail necunum and i want to thank you for voting not to streamline 5g um i live across uh within a thousand feet of a new cell tower um i don't live in capitola but that's where the tower is and since then i've been having trouble sleeping like one morning i was up till four in the morning just wired you get wired and you get tired and there's no way out of this i mean i live there unless i want to move to the you know the wood somewhere i guess so what i'm thinking of is ways to protect myself and i did find this material it's called skiff segmented compartmented secure compartmented information facility it is what the government uses to keep its data facilities from being hacked and it blocks 10g and you can use it in the walls and the way they're going you're probably going to have to use three or four layers of this because fifth generation has a wide range of frequencies as you know and it is used for crowd control dispersion it makes your skin feel like it's burning um so i'm not going to argue with the military i'm not going to wait for people to um stop this because the telecom industry is probably going to get its way unless we're like some other cities that are suing the fcc for trying to push this kind of law so thank you thank you next speaker please um keith mckenry with food not bombs and um you we uh rented uh laden elson so that we could raise money for uh um Santa Cruz disaster preparedness plan and we've already gotten like water filtration we're seeking a space for another uh container we've uh are collecting a lot more food and and uh we're prepared for the life of the earthquake or something like that that we could respond and help the community as we did in past earthquakes and other disasters and so um we rented this space i've rented laden elson a number of times and then uh um about 4 30 the day of our event i received a phone call from uh sherry to come down and show that we are residents in the community and so i um uh brought them my driver's license which has my mail my mailbox uh at the downtown post office it's because i don't have any other personal information about being here other than my mailbox and i brought down our flyer to show that we actually cook we actually cook at india jose and we um rent his space every week for years and we share at the downtown post office but we were told by staff that we were not residents and we'd have to pay an additional fee and so um that we think is unreasonable and now the city has uh uh additional hundred dollars of ours which they're not willing to return and so what's most important is that there are many people that actually live here who don't have physical addresses like food not bombs other than you know we rent every saturday and sunday from 12 30 to 3 30 and those people should be allowed to be considered residents if they are in fact residents as we are and that you should uh um not give like a roughly 30 minutes notice that you need to prove that you're a resident so i would like the uh hundred dollars return to food not bombs as soon as humanly possible thank you next speaker please hello i'm natelix.canady at gmail.com 3469888 uh i was just speaking earlier about how we've got the technology to translate voice into text live and i've got my tablet right here doing it right now so what i think we really need to do with these meetings is we need to make them more friendly to those that are hard of hearing and deaf and those who are blind and hard of sight and the as far as all this goes we need for uh we need to have radio broadcasts of these meetings people can listen to into it on their car tune into it at home um where you don't need video uh at the same time for people that are uh deaf or hard of hearing we can have uh live subtitles saying every word that showing every word that they say up on the screen and not only that but the people who are not native english speakers many spanish speakers around here we can do live translations into any into just about any other language spanish french german you name it and so while we could have a live feed of the of what somebody's saying at the bottom of the screen on on tv at home and or up here and also have up on the top uh or one one on the top one on the bottom uh have a translation into spanish so every word that i'd be saying would pop up as a spanish word on the bottom of the screen and uh last note here i've already said my email uh you guys should know it by now so i want to talk to any council member who's willing to take the time so please get back to me with an email of what you have on your schedule thank you before you speak are there any other members of the public that would like to speak during oral communications if you'd please line up to my left any other members of the public that wish to speak at this time okay ma'am you'll be our last speaker so please go ahead sir thank you for hearing me my name is vince faunce of santa cruise i'm speaking on behalf of the residents of viaduct court where a small hilltop community near the santa cruise wharf in the last three weeks there have been three fires along the hillside and the path below our homes all of them have been extinguished by the fire department fortunately the first two didn't cause any damage but the most recent one this last sunday did cause a house fire it was witnessed by council woman narayan if i'm saying her name right thank you very much uh the path in the hillside i'm talking about is about a thousand foot stretch between depot park and the santa cruise wharf along those thousand feet it touches a children's playground a bmx bike park the neary lagoon wildlife refuge an official monarch butterfly habitat the roaring camp train track a thousand-year-old trussell and the monterey bay sanctuary exploration center i'd like to address three issues that have come up since these fires have begun when responding to our 911 calls each time the emergency responders had trouble identifying finding and accessing this area we had hoped to see an increase in security or police presence but we haven't and we feel that it'll be wise to clear drive rush and fall in the wood in the area which we have done personally but as i mentioned there is a monarch reserve habitat that we don't want to go into so we the residents of e dot court hope that the city council can see the vulnerable nature of this important area consider the following measures for the depot park path assure local emergency responders have knowledge of its path and access points increased security on patrol and clear brush and deadwood thank you very much thank you if you could leave your um a mailing address or email address so write it on one of the sheets um we'll make sure that you get some follow-up also from staff actually have maps here if anyone is unfamiliar and i'll add my email thank you um okay ma'am you're our last speaker you step up hello my name is tammy donnelly i'm here because i'm extremely concerned about the 5g i think that if we could see all these invisible waves once the cell phone towers came in the wi-fi the smart meters nobody would dare to approve this because we're already so saturated there's so many health problems there's i'm actually became electrically sensitive once they started installing the cell phone towers at cabrillo i live very close to there and i help a lot of people and i've invested a lot of money and time into testing things products and devices in the home and wearable to help protect people but this 5g is so intense i don't think there's anything out there to protect us that you know animals i mean the whole i know they're trying to fast forward this through the whole country and if you guys i don't know if you guys have listened to tom wheeler who's in charge of the fcc who's supposed to protect us i mean he's made it super clear that it's so important for these companies to make their billions of dollars and he even says if anybody tells you this 5g you know that they question you run as fast as you can the other way don't listen to him because he goes as quote is it's damn important for these companies to get their billions of dollars and that's what it is it's follow the money it's all about the money and so they obviously are not here to protect our health so as as the city and the county we have to do it individually and a lot of them are not enough but it's starting because people know the dangers of this it's not like just going from 4g to 5g it could be hundreds and hundreds of times more powerful and recently somebody i know that went to the rise and cell phone told them that if you that know none of the phones are going to work on 4g you're going to be forced if you have a cell phone to use 5g and that you're going to have to upgrade your phones and have no service so it's very serious thank you thank you all right that concludes the oral communication we um mayor can we just get back uh information about what the residency requirement is for loud and nelson um yes i was going to do that if you want to talk about it right now i mean we can ask for direction to find out what the residency requirement is let me ask um and i'll just maybe ask you are you a resident of the city of santa cruz yes i am you are and and what is that the address if you want to write it down and we can just check to make sure here okay okay so okay so thank you we'll look into that and we'll get back with you okay thank you sir we'll get back with you okay let me just say that um that concludes oral communication we're going to return back at 7 p.m. for an evening session um but we'll have um uh a um we'll have to clear the room now until we begin our 7 p.m. session so thank you for being here it's driver's licenses there oh we'll let him we'll look at it i mean okay no no she she'll is asking a question okay okay good evening welcome to our now 705 session of the october 9 2018 meeting of the city council i'd now like to ask the clerk to please call the roll thank you mayor council member it's crone here Matthews here chases absent brown is currently absent noroyan is currently absent vice mayor Watkins here and mayor trousers here before we begin um we did have some extra space set up um in another room but we're right now looking at our sole item on this evening's agenda um this item is to review the fiscal and administrative analysis of the Santa Cruz rent control and tenant protection act we'll have a presentation from our planning department and the consultant that developed the report we'll again begin with the presentation then we'll follow with staff or questions from the council then we'll take public comment and return to the council for deliberation and action there were two people who requested additional comment time after the presentation in advance of the meeting that was Cynthia Berger from the Santa Cruz tenants association are you here miss Berger okay thanks and also Josie Buchanan from Santa Cruz together are you here thanks okay i'd like to now turn it over to um planning director lee butler thank you mayor and council members good evening on june 26th of this year after receiving verification from the county clerk that the Santa Cruz rent control and tenant protection act petition had the minimum number of signatures required to place that item on the november ballot the council voted to do just that place the item on the november ballot and so on november 6th the voters will be uh deciding on measure m and if approved measure m would mandate the creation of a rent board that is elected and put in place various rent control and just cause eviction criteria at that same june 26th meeting the council directed staff to hire a consultant to evaluate the fiscal and administrative effects of the act as they would apply to the city the council did not request a market-based analysis only fiscal and administrative analyses staff prepared a request for proposals and sent it out to interested parties including the two main groups representing the proponents and opponents of the measure we had a number of responses that were received all from very highly qualified firms and we selected the law firm of colantuno high smith and wotley to prepare the independent analysis the report that they prepared was included in your packet and with that i'd like to introduce michael colantuno to present the findings of the report good evening as as expected i'm michael colantuno i'm a local government attorney i have practiced in california for about 30 years and have represented a broad range of local governments my particular expertise is in the revenue side of local government finance but i also have a broad grounding in all of the things that cities do and what i have done is what you have asked me to do which was to study the measure and gather data about the experiences of other rent control cities to help you to appreciate the impacts of this measure on your government it's not uh i did not attempt to evaluate the impacts of this measure on your marketplace your economy your tenants your landlords so with that explanation let's dive into the slides which summarize my report and allow me to expand upon it for you the rent board and the city council will be two legislative bodies in one agency that creates opportunities for conflict because your powers will overlap to some extent and it also creates opportunities for cooperation the rent board will control rents evictions and relocation assistance the city council will continue to control land use building codes and code enforcement and has some authority to supplement the policies of the rent board the city attorney's role is affected by the measure two the rent board will appoint its own council the city attorney is required to defend the initiative but should he be unable or unwilling to do so the measure allows private parties to do so at public expense the rent board board can pursue civil remedies against landlords to enforce its rent control and just eviction policies but it can't pursue criminal remedies only the city attorney has that authority in conjunction with the district attorney the reason your charter and most charters provide that there's one city attorney who advises all city officials is to prevent legal fights within the organization if you all got one lawyer he or she has to sort of figure it out and can resolve legal disputes in that way if you've got two lawyers you will regularly have two opinions sometimes three and that produces the opportunity for conflict in berkeley there has been some litigation between the city council and the rent board although it's not entirely clear the law would allow that so having two lawyers means the possibility of differing legal opinions the likelihood of it on at least some points particularly given that the city attorney's role will be to maximize the authority of the institution of the city as a whole and the rent boards council's role but to maximize the authority of the rent board starting up the rent board the obligate the the act obligates the city to do it your council will appoint the initial seven member board the city is required to quote advance all necessary funds to ensure the effective implementation of the act both necessary and effective have some room for discretion within them there's room for judgment there this is effectively a loan that's what the word advance means and the loan is to be repaid from future housing feeds if they're established if they survive the um legal challenge and they are collected i think all of those things are likely to be true eventually we just can't tell how quickly how long the loan would be outstanding uh city management staff would staff the board until it hires an executive director the rent board is to be treated like your other departments are in terms of receiving support from the city clerk finance hr it and other administrative departments it's subject to cost sharing as other departments are what that means if it's your current practice not to charge your departments for certain things like space in city hall you won't be able to charge the rent board for those things until you change your cost allocation practice for everybody so as long as they're treated like everyone else you can make them pay their full uh share of the cost of running their programs they can request certain services from the city attorney the building official and code enforcement staff but those requests don't have to be honored and if they're honored they don't have to be honored for free so what will this cost the short and honest answer is i don't know because no one can know because we can't predict with certainty the choices that an elected rent board will make what we can do is make some educated guesses based on the experience of other cities establish a range of magnitude and give you a sense of where these numbers lie so these numbers look a little bit precise you're going to see 218 dollars and rounded to two digits they're not precise at all we don't have the ability to see the future that clearly this is just intended as a ballpark so these estimates are based on data collected from principally Berkeley and Santa Monica because they're the only cities have that have elected rent boards and i think the fact of an elected rent board is a meaningful difference a board that you report you appoint and that reports to you and serves at your pleasure is likely to have a perspective that balances the other objectives of the city a rent board that's elected to be only a rent board and is responsible only to the voters is likely to have a perspective much more narrowly focused on rent board issues so i think those two kinds of institutions are likely to behave differently presumably that's why the framers of the measure provided for an elected rent board they thought it made a difference and that difference is likely to have fiscal implications i have also looked at data from Richmond because it's the latest startup city mountain view is a startup city but we couldn't get their data quickly enough to put it in your report and we have a data point from west hollywood the relevance of which to you is debatable which is that west hollywood is the one city that we identified that subvenes supports their rent board budget with general city revenues one could argue we haven't had chance to talk to them about it that was intended to make for a more ambitious program one could argue that was intended to keep rent fees down housing fees down could do one or the other i don't have any way to read the roar shock plot on that and i'm sure it's arguable okay so that's those are our data sources let's see um what will actually happen will turn on such things as the choices the rent board makes whether prop 10 passes in a member it's behind at the moment but there's a month to go and a lot of money to be spent so who knows where that's going um whether litigation delays implementation of the measure etc so who are we looking at in terms of our comparators and what are some of the relevant data about them berkeley's rent board has a budget of 5.17 million dollars it has 22 full-time equivalent staff it has twice a santa cruz's population it has 20 thousand units under regulation and its housing fee is 250 a year per unit santa monica's budget is 5.7 million dollars it has 25 full-time equivalent employees it has one and a half times your population it has 26 360 units regulated and its fee is 198 dollars a year per unit you could say there's some economies of scale there you could say that santa monica's less ambitious than berkeley there's lots of ways to interpret these numbers and as i noted west hollywood perhaps uniquely we haven't surveyed all of the rent control cities out there but that's the only city we know about that provides a general fund subsidy and of course a general fund subsidy is not required that would be a decision for your council and every future council so assuming a range of 5100 of 5800 units subject to both rent control and just cause eviction i'm focusing on rent control and not just cause eviction because most rent boards do not provide very substantial services on the just cause eviction side then i'll send a lawyer into every courtroom for every tenant most of their energy goes into rent control not just cause eviction so we think rent control is the right uh data point to use in estimating and again these are just estimates of costs 216 dollars and 258 dollars are adjustments of the numbers i gave you on the last slide for berkeley and santa monica's fees adjusted to the number of units of housing that you have to regulate so we took their fee their budget divided it by their number of units to get at a price per unit and applied that to your estimated number of units and that's where the 216 and 258 come from again they end in in two digits but they're just rough orders of magnitude that budget 5100 low estimated units times the low fee gets you a minimum budget of a million one a year if you apply the 5800 number to the largest budget gets you a million five so it's a million one to a million five is a rough order of magnitude for a rent control program in the city if you were to grant a 30 percent a subsidy that would go to 1.4 to 1.9 there's a pretty wide range there from 1 1 to 1 9 that's almost doubling but still you know the order of magnitude it's not 20 million it's not 20 000 it's a million or two so what about startup costs this is to be quite honest a wild ass guess this is just my sense of what a minimal startup team would likely look like an executive director two analysts and administrative assistant just to get started post your agendas conduct your meetings write your staff reports help you develop policies etc berkeley's got 22 santa monica's got 25 you're probably looking at a lot more than four eventually and you and it will take more than four people to consume a budget of two million bucks but just getting started i think you're probably looking at four people i assumed 150 000 fully loaded per position because that's about what you spend in your community development department obviously 150 averaging an executive director and a secretary an average describes neither of them but it's just again a rule of thumb so i'm looking about 600 000 in just personnel for that startup phase there are obviously other costs too which we really haven't tried to model now we looked at richman's startup costs because they're that's the best um nearby city that did something similar recently their measure was approved in november of 16 they have 950 uh 9558 units subject to rent control and just cause eviction they have 10 460 units subject to just cause eviction only those are units built after 95 that are protected from rent control by the hawkins uh cost of hawkins which we'll talk about in a minute that's about 20 000 units in total their budget for the remainder of the fiscal year in which the measure was passed it was 1.15 million dollars their budget for the first full fiscal year is 2.8 million dollars because richman has almost twice the number of regulated units at santa cruz take that 1.1 number and double it to 2.3 year it shows that 1.1 to 1.9 wide range like gave you seems to be on the money it's this is a way to sort of validate these estimates but again these are all just estimates who pays for this these are the funding sources available to your housing board under this measure if it passes first is a housing fee on landlords which this measure says cannot be passed through to tenants but which constitutional law is going to be required to be recovered from rents because it's going to be a lawful cost of the business and the constitution requires the business to be allowed to recover its lawful costs and a fair rate of return on their investment so tenants are going to pay that fee one way or the other whether it shows up on a rental statement or in a separate bill from the land order not they're going to pay it one way or the other service fees on tenants the rent board may charge tenants for services so for example if they're providing information or assistance in the just cause eviction setting they might choose to means test their services and provide subsidized services to the poor and charge a fee to the folks who could afford a lawyer if they wanted one most rent boards have at least some fees coming in even if they're only public records copying costs and then there's the possibility of a general fund subvention as i said i only know that west hollywood does it doesn't have to happen it's up to your future elected leaders as to whether it does as i mentioned landlords are constitutionally entitled to a fair return on investment exactly what that is is a complicated topic the measure has a formula in it but that formula is just a recitation of the legal standard and the legal standard is factually dependent which is a nice lorally way of saying you get litigation because there aren't clear answers there's stuff to argue about and when there's stuff to argue about in money at stake people argue fees may not exceed the cost of regulation under prop 13 prop 26 your fees have to cover the cost of your regulatory program the trend of the prop 26 case law which has been coming out of late is fairly flexible and generous to um rate makers your city made the very first published case under prop 26 with the late mr griffith which upheld a a a fee that was calculated in a fairly simple way it was a spreadsheet i believe from your planning department saying this is how many permits we expect to issue this is the full-time cost the grossed up cost of the staff we're going to do it permits divided by dollars equals a permit fee that fairly simple fee making was upheld in griffith versus city of santa cruz so as long as they have a basis to demonstrate they're not just you know running the police department on the rent fee they'll be fine in in covering their costs so i don't think we need to have an elaborate conversation about that all fees will affect rents but rents are essential to fund the rent fees are a fund essential to fund the rent board so there's this tension between you want a high fee to have an ample program to accomplish the social good in the world you're trying to accomplish but the higher the fee the more impact there is on tenants so that balance between how much can we afford is going to be the rent boards challenge state law the ellis act entitles landlords to get out of the rental housing business they can move in and make it an owner occupied property they can sell it for owner occupied use they can convert an apartment building into condos they can convert a residential structure to non-residential use if your zoning allows it so there are ways to get out of the regulated marketplace and recapture that that real estate value the costa hawkins act mandates vacancy decontrol under costa hawkins rent control prevents the landlord from raising the rent during a tenancy when the space goes vacant the landlord has freedom to set whatever rent the market will will bear and then the new tenant is protected again so rent control protects incumbent tenants without respect to their income vacancy control protects units without respect to who lives in them so they can see decontrol which requires you to protect only incumbent tenants while they're incumbent makes for a more modest rent control program and rent since Santa Monica rose very rapidly after costa hawkins became the law incumbent tenants were protected but affordable housing was not so the rent control versus vacancy decontrol is a crucial distinction costa hawkins imposes vacancy decontrol statewide if it's repealed in november three restrictions on rent control will go away one is the mandated vacancy decontrol two is the exemption for single family properties and three is the exemption for properties constructed after 1995 and in your case that's significant because it would greatly increase the number of units subject to your rent boards authority and that affects of course the scope of work and the budget so let's see here's a controversial statement the number of regulated units can be expected to decline under rent control as landlords exercise their LSX rights and as fewer rental units are developed there is authority for that proposition there's some studies of the number of units in berkeley and Santa Monica there is the legislative analysis of prop 10 and there's a somewhat disputed report from an economist named rosen at berkeley there are counter arguments i did not mean to wade into these arguments about market effects because you didn't ask me to and because it is debatable so why is it in my report when you're doing fiscal modeling it is important to be conservative in your projections because if you staff up and then can't fund those people and lay people off bad things happen to those people and to your credibility as an employer and your ability to deliver services to the people that you serve so in the fiscal context i think it makes sense to accept this premise even if you don't accept it in the marketplace analysis setting so we should be prepared for the possibility that these numbers will overstate your financial wherewithal and overstate how much you can fund of a program but i really didn't mean to wade into the debate about effects on the housing marketplace because you specifically asked me not to prop 10 if prop 10 passes in november it repeals costa hawkins and this measure specifically terminates event vacancy decontrol it requires vacancy control in your city and it requires your rent board to enforce vacancy control and the option to get out of vacancy control for some are all parts of your housing market would require another initiative another ballot measure so there's a particular choice in this measure and it's it's a policy choice that's an appropriate one for your community to make but it but it is there and it should be understood if prop 10 passes the number of regulated units will increase the workload of the board will increase berkeley berkeley's executive director predicts his staff will double if prop 10 passes they've had rent control for a much longer time so the number of units that would come back into their marketplace is large it's behind in the published polls but well-funded campaigns are under way for and against and nobody can perceive the future because if we could we'd all be betting on the stock market so if prop 10 passes here's the impact we see on your budgets we think the number of units goes to 12404 that's taken right out of the census number of units in your community that's why there's only one number in both lines again that 216 into 58 fee which we talked about previously takes your budget up to 2.7 to 3.2 rather than 1.1 to 1.4 and if you gross it up by 30 just because one city did you're in the 3.54 to 4.2 range only two recommendations one is if it passes we recommend that the city council negotiate a memorandum of understanding with the rent board to clarify roles and responsibilities to provide for that startup loan and the terms under which it will be repaid berkeley has effectively an understanding that was worked out casually and painfully over years of cohabitation and conflict i think doing it thoughtfully in writing at the beginning of the relationship can probably save you a lot of um storm and drung over the years the only second recommendation is your staffs and that is take public comment and receive and file this report no action on this report is recommended to you i'm happy to take questions now i'm also happy to get out of the way and let you talk to your constituents and take questions later great thank you so much for that report um i'll ask are there any council member questions at this time council member crone yeah hi thanks for the uh the presentation um one of the big questions was 30 why why did you include that that at all because i mean there's 15 cities that have been controlling in the city california and is that the only one that does this that takes money out of the um general fund budget it's the only one that i know of and as i've told you there's two ways to interpret it either the city council's trying to protect the tenants from a large housing fee or the city council's trying for a more ambitious housing program and i can't tell you which that is i put it in to give you a sense of the range of possibilities for your community but that's a choice that you have to make as well as the rent board and you have to make it every year did you mean protect like landlords from paying the fee or why why tenants from charging what is what fee do they pay when the landlord pays the housing fee they're constitutionally entitled to recover it from rents so if you're trying to keep rents low you need to keep housing fees low and using general fund money to operate the rent control board so that housing fees don't have to has that effect because rent not all tenants are low income this protects every tenant not low income tenants what some communities do is they let you pass through some of it or they let you pass through all of it and then rebate it to those who prove to the city that they're low income so they pass it through to everyone and then you can come to city hall and get it if you're low yeah i like that uh as part of it um this one prohibits an overt pass through but it can't prohibit the implicit pass through because the constitution requires it and um you're saying that on page um three it says we conclude a successful challenge to elected renfors unlikely and then you footnoted at the bottom it's uh 2007 that was that recently home Berkeley got sued when they passed theirs and one Santa Monica got sued when they passed theirs and one i don't think there's any serious question that rent control conceptually is constitutional i don't think there's a serious question that this measure is constitutional that doesn't mean you may not end up in court about it right and um uh it's it's a charter amendment in both those cities uh that's correct and on page uh berkeley's is an ordinance i think it was an ordinance followed by a charter amendment to create the rent board rent control was an ordinance in berkeley Santa Monica is a charter amendment for both on page four the um it says that we conclude that the rent board must fund prosecution uh prosecutions what is what do you mean by that means they don't get the city attorney services for free they want them they have to pay for them um on page five you said that um led to conflicting legal opinions do you have any examples of that um about the city attorney represents all city officers but that fact will likely lead to conflicting legal opinions i'm defending the city of riverside at the moment from a lawsuit filed by the mayor alleging that his um veto power extends to the city manager's contract um that's an example of when there's more than one lawyer advising city officials you get conflict the fact that the city council of berkeley once thought the rent board was too generous to landlords and sued them over their general rate to increase shows you that two lawyers means different opinions as for what it's worth the rent board won um i thought that was a really interesting case too uh on page um six you're said we concluded the city is not obliged to grant such requests that is the request the city to conduct uh well when if the rent board wants sort of money or a supplement to its budget it's not shallow but it's a request right and the city council can turn it down the only thing you're obliged to do in terms of money is loan the startup costs according to the um the way the ordinance is written that's right or the charter amendment um i would say a question for the city manager what do you remember when we started like the recycling programs and the yard waste programs there wasn't immediate income coming in from people paying bills we had to put up a upfront um startup costs you know i wasn't here when when that was started up so i i can't recollect i think although it isn't necessarily completely uncommon for there to be startup costs to provided for various you know uh city um public purposes thanks on uh on page seven you talk about code enforcement do you know of any any rent board that has that power that to have the higher code enforcers would that be one of the analysts could that be one of their job descriptions to be also be a code enforcer or is that getting to the territory of the planning department i don't think anybody does it i don't think there's a legal reason you couldn't do it i also think it's a really bad idea the reason i think it's a bad idea is that code enforcement involves a whole lot of codes that expect a whole lot of things out of property owners and if you've got one set of code enforcement staff that's just looking at tenancy habitability issues and another code enforcement staff that's looking at zoning compliance landage compliance noise other stuff you're going to have to coordinate the efforts of those two and you're going to create inefficiency and duplication of effort and cost so i don't know anybody who does it doesn't make sense to me to do it that way having said all of that this is pure policy and if you had reasons to want to do it that way you could and on page eight about the fees and stuff i assume that the 258 dollars per unit came from the number of units divided by 5.17 million yes but then what was the 216 and the 198 216 for Santa Monica i guess and 198 for Berkeley the those are their actual adopted fees on their tables at the moment that's they charge landlords for each unit per year 250 and 198 and we adjusted them to 216 and the other number to your situation for your your caseload we basically adjusted them for the number of units that you have the only thing i really have a hard time with in this report is putting the 30 percent subsidy since it's not a regular thing were you asked to do that or just did it because you thought that was i thought it helped frame your thinking i didn't intend to push you towards it or push you against it but it's it's there's only 15 cities out there so all of them there's some extent part of your peer group and did you say that in the report that the west hollywood at the time had a very pro tenant uh council is that is that how that came about there as you know there aren't very many non-democrats in west hollywood but there are flavors of democrats in west hollywood an experience with which i think you have experience and one of the flavors of democrats in west hollywood is their tenants rights party that's not the name of it but it's the tenants rights organization committee that had a lot to do with the incorporation of that city had a lot to do with who got on the first council in the city of richmond on page uh 12 did they pay back their startup cost of 1.1 million i don't know the answer to that but i would be surprised because it's so fresh but you don't know the status like they're making their payments and they have a payment schedule worked out i didn't ask that question did they do an mo you do you know i don't know the answer to that um and and you don't know about mountain view in richmond mountain view was um non communicative they're probably busy setting it up and not busy talking about it yeah um and the last thing i'll say is on bottom of page 14 it says even berkeley's rent board staff council are members of the city's civil service they report and i just think that's probably they have good labor practices in um berkeley they their executive vector was quite frank with us that they don't want to mess with the city unions they don't want to have a beef with the unions about taking work away from the the union's bargaining unit i think that's partly about how their board members get elected and it's partly about the philosophy of their board members but they respect the union rights of the city's bargaining agents thanks maybe i'll just ask a follow-up on that question because you said it was an ordinance originally in berkeley was and so how does that conflu- here we have a an independent charter amendment that would set up an independent board that you could you have something where you these would be city employees here this measure requires all rent board employees to be treated as all other city employees are with the exception of the manager the lawyer and the hearing officers in the hearing officer capacity what that means is that your regular civil service system with the city manager serving as the appointing official for everybody is going to apply to the rent board staff so there's a condominium here where they work for the executive director perhaps but they're hired and fired by the city manager another topic that i think could be productively included in your mo you and probably requires meet and consult with your bargaining units following up on david's question did they pass the ordinance by a vote of the people and then these were both initiatives the council went back out to the people and asked about a charter amendment for the rent board the voters initiated rent control and when some folks in the community thought the council was insufficiently passionate about the subject they then amended it by charter amendment at a subsequent election to establish an elected rent board yeah thanks councilman ryan so the the figure that interests me is the $600,000 startup fee and that doesn't count a lot of other expenses that you mentioned in here what is your experience looking at other places where these have been where you know the fees the city needs to provide the funding for the startup how long does it take for a rent board to become self-sufficient where the city isn't providing funds for its operation if the rent at the housing fee is collected on the property tax roll which may be the most efficient way to do it you're going to create this in november of 18 you're going to get the data to the assessor in august of 19 and you're going to start seeing income in december of 19 so you'll see a half a year's worth of the initial housing fee in december of 19 if there's nothing there's no slips between now and august you should be able to accomplish that unless there's a lawsuit and even if there's a lawsuit a courts should be unwilling to prevent you from collecting the money in the interim so i think a rational a reasonable expectation is that you'll have money coming in the door from the primary money source in december of 19 you'll start incurring costs in november of 18 and so you've got a little more than a year where you've got money out the door and no money in okay so that's a that's a year where the city is providing support for this operation and then at that point do you know you know is there an interim time between when the city you know is no longer providing the money to when it's fully self-sufficient i think that you're asking the rent board to take a year's worth of income each year to cover their activities in that year and pay back the debt the more quickly you require them to pay back the debt the less services they can provide so there's a judgment call to be made for this council on that board about how much you can afford to invest in this social socially benefit and beneficent effort um and how ambitious you want them to be how quickly and striking that balance is what negotiations are for and so i assume that these other cities that we're talking about um have budgets similar to santa cruz they're tight their shoe string you know we're we're trying to pay for services pay for salaries um you know and we're looking at even making cuts because of the the cal purse there are the pension liability so have what have you seen these other cities cut in terms of services to backfill this operation for a year like is there a typical way that cities are going about cutting other other services to backfill this i don't know the answer to that question and i would expect each city you know there's that ancient there's that line from anna carenna every happy family is the same and every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way i think all 15 budgets are unhappy in their own way okay okay so that you haven't seen a typical like we cut parks we cut okay all right thank you i have a i have a couple questions did i quote the wrong Russian novel no no that's the first time i think anna carenna has been referenced to the council um i wanted to ask two questions i didn't i don't recall reading in the report but for Santa Monica west hollywood uh berkeley richman those are all elected rent boards there's only two elected rent boards okay that's why i spend so much time talking about berkeley and Santa Monica okay so for the elected rent boards the costs of elections they're folded into the fees that are charged they should be yes and what are the costs if you know for elections there um your clerk or your city manager is going to have a more useful answer to that question than i am because it's it's very someplace to place i'm i'm sure it's non-trivial okay the other the other question i had just in relation to that when there's over time as you look to see maybe the cost structure of the operation changes how does that work in terms of then levy new fees on the landlords is that something that's required to vote like when we think of we want to raise a tax or a fee on the public is that something that would have to go for a vote of the people so is there any legal issue there i know the rent you said there's no constitutional issue regarding the issue of um you know forming a rent board but what about the actual fees that are levied for the services that are being provided by the rent board because these are regulatory fees assuming they're limited to the cost of regulation which is the reasonable cost of implementing this charter amendment they can be imposed without a hearing without an election without notice they just have to be cost justified and then is the the rent board would be the body that would oversee oversee the justification for the fee that's what's cost okay that's right and where there are challenge to the fee they would be the ones to defend it when they have money to defend it with which will be a couple of years out and for those rent boards that you looked at for the two elected rent boards did they also you said they you used a factor of their salary what was what was the the salaries for the rent board you had the administrative staff estimates but i didn't see you put in a estimate for the cost of the the rent boards there i didn't gather that data but i would be surprised if it is meaningful in budget terms you know on a budget of a million one to two million even if they gave them salary and benefits totaling ten thousand dollars a year apiece that's fifty or seventy thousand dollars i don't know what they're they're spending and it's going to be politically relevant but in terms of the kind of budget numbers we're talking about it's likely to be i don't want to say decimal dust but maybe a rounding error okay any other questions council member brown i think vice mayor walkins just out of follow-up question there so i i just want to be thank you first of all for the study i i really appreciated it and i want to particularly thank you for this being underwhelming as i um had suspected it would be um but uh so you know we've been hearing from and i get the mail in my mailbox at home uh suggestion that rent board members could be paying themselves uh seven figure salaries um i suppose in theory that's true but i just want to clarify that based upon your read you think that that's unlikely um rent board members subject to recall and this is not a town um quiet about the exercise of its political rights so that was uh one question and then we'll all leave it there for now because i may have other questions based upon the comments or questions that come from the audience thank you mayor it looks like transparent california has it up on their website for rent board members and looks like just what we get as council members 30 000 around and 30 000 benefits health care and stuff 60 000 per person looks like it okay all right yeah vice mayor walkins thank you thank you for the report i know it was a quick um kind of timeline i apologize if i missed it but one of the things i heard was the six thousand six hundred thousand for staffing but that the city would subsidize office space is that correct obviously people need computers and internet service and offices and all that stuff and i haven't attempted to budget that except by showing you what richmond is spending which is roughly twice that in richmond that was a charter amendment or is it ordinance there if you recall richmond is a general law city okay so that would be an initiative ordinance okay if there's no other questions i'm gonna open it up for the public any other questions at this time i'm gonna i'm gonna ask for public comment and then there might be some follow-up questions after that thank you excellent presentation and report are there any members of the public that wish to speak to this item that are present today we're going to start first of all with two organizations that requested additional time sythia berger of the santa cruz tenants association she requested four minutes and then joseb you can and if santa cruz together then if any other members of the public wish to speak after they're concluded with our presentation if you please line up to my left you're right um well you'll have two minutes each to speak so miss berger you have four minutes you have four minutes um you have four minutes hi um i recently spoke to nicholas trailer who is executive director of the richmond rent board they do not receive any pay i recently spoke to lenny seagull who is the mayor of mountain view they do not receive any pay these are the most recent ones none of their board members receive any pay that is their um these are cities where you know commissioners don't generally receive pay both of those cities they are appointed though so those are that's a little different um but just so you know that um as far as uh just about evictions i um most most of evictions are dealt with in court so just cause eviction is a law regulation that has to be followed but the people who enforce that are more likely to be the court than the rent board um there may be some appeal to the rent board but evictions are dealt with in court so um that was just um a question i had when the gentleman was speaking um the payback from the payments are on schedule in mountain view according to mayor lenny seagull whatever deal they made to pay them back they're on schedule i believe in richmond they've already paid back their original loan that that's what i was told by nickles trailer um i'm going to just read a little bit here first um the report emphasizes again and again um financial uh under almost every point that any financial or administrative support that the city were to extend to the rent board would be at the city's discretion and is not required the separation of budgets is built into the language of measure m itself furthermore a city staff has suggested if there's any ambiguity or lack of clarity a memorandum of understanding what the rent board can be written before any funds are advanced for the transition stage in order to clarify this matter for voters uh we suggest that city council ask the city attorney during your discussion today if there's any language in measure m that would require a city funding of the rent board i think that was answered fairly well including staffing office space information technology and general purchases um it is the intention of measure m that the rent board be entirely self-funding it's this party pause please is this party your four minutes yeah okay are you're going to oh okay i'm sorry um and that's all pretty much that i have to say um i just did want to say that richmond yes being a poor city but and with a six point over six percent vacancy rate they're still able to charge and get over two hundred dollars a unit from their landlords and they decided that that was a reasonable thing to ask and um the city is um a strange combination of both um a richer and probably poorer than richmond and so i think that um that amount uh is not a extra high amount over two hundred dollars per unit thank you thank you next speaker please um josey bucannon from santa cruise together we have four minutes okay good evening mayor and council members my name is josey bucannon and i'm here today representing santa cruise together the 100 locally funded and managed campaign against measure m i'm here tonight not in our normal capacity to tell you and the public at home why we oppose measure m at this point i feel confident that you all know how we feel and why so we at santa cruise together do not wish to spend any more of your time telling you about this measure instead i'm here today to say thank you for all you do for our community as elected representatives some of you who are running for reelection currently we applaud the effort you have undertaken to provide a greater degree of transparency and voter information through this study that has been provided to you today the issue of housing in santa cruise is extraordinarily complex and highly contested everyone agrees that housing is a problem and that people all across the board are facing this crisis but there seems to be almost no semblance of an agreement on a solution more information can only be helpful in the public decision making process especially when that information is not subject to an outcome thank you again for the service you do for our community and for commissioning this study thanks thank you right now at this point we're going to transition to any other members of the public that would like to speak to this item are there anyone here who wants to speak to this item seated nobody so just those standing there's three people okay three people you'll have two minutes hi always nice to be back my name is bar for childs um i sent you a long and sort of detailed technical response to the report and because it's so complicated i was planning to read it um but since so many of the issues have been dealt with so well um it had to do particularly with the 30 percent i thought that was an unnecessary red flag making it seem as if rent boards might actually and i just hope the press or other opposition groups don't pick that up as if somehow um Santa Cruz will might have to spend 30 um subsidy for the rent board i think that was a red flag and even though i understand the intention of mr. Juan colantuano i love the name um i think it could be very confusing i also would like to reiterate what Cynthia requested of the city council which is that in your further discussion and deliberations you ask our city attorney to say very clearly what whether there is any language in measure m that would absolutely require payment to the rent board in other words i all of the literature that's going out horrible literature shocking literature seems to me it should be illegal to send this sort of thing out this help wanted city of Santa Cruz seeks help running new city department um create your own salary benefits and tension benefits and pension could be included that's shocking um so i just would really appreciate one of you asking our city attorney whether anything in measure m specifically requires um the city of Santa Cruz to pay the rent board i think it would be good to have a really clear statement from our attorney um it's complex and we got the complexity from the consultant um so actually i really i just want to say right now okay please no you can finish this finish that was more than a sentence it was a story and i'm okay well if you can send it to us we'll read it all right thanks next speaker please hi my name is Stanley socalo something that the attorney just uh mentioned confuses me a little bit i wanted clarification from it maybe you do too um regarding if somebody challenges the validity of the charter amendment and the city attorney chooses not to defend it then a private party can defend it at city expense does that mean win or lose the city has to pay a private attorney who chooses to defend the charter and at what rate is it and is normal rate or the city's rate or what thank you thank you next speaker please hello carol plohemus how are you thank you for all your hard work in this arena thank you for that report i thought it was really great to be able to read a report like that as a layperson and grasp it so i appreciate the simplicity and clarity so i have one question that's been bothering me for the last couple of weeks that has not been addressed either in measure m or in anything else i've heard at the city council meetings and this is something that came up around the short term rental vacation rental issue also we don't know how many rentals are in the city we know the people who come forward and do the rental inspection and fill out the farms and pay the transient occupancy tax and all the people that do that but there is undeniably a large group of people who don't so i want to know if you thought about what will the provisions be for figuring out who has rentals and what department's going to manage that and is i don't think the city has the bandwidth to do that so where does that factor in that's just a question thank you thank you next speaker please good evening just a point of detail from one of the previous comments i'm reading from the mountain view voice regarding a meeting that they held regarding the budget for the rent the rent control program just an excerpt regardless of who fits the bill the budget for the new rent control program received a lukewarm response from pretty much everyone tenant and landlord advocates both said the city officials should have tried harder to limit its costs among its significant expenses the program budget will create four new city positions which cost an average of about 170 thousand dollars in annual compensation in addition to the new staffers the budget calls for spending about seven hundred and seventy five thousand dollars on a variety of consultants lawyers and hearing officers to help administer the program city staff reminded the committee that they had a considerable four hundred and thirty thousand dollar debt to pay back to the city of mountain view for the program's costs incurred so far just a point of detail okay thanks and that was from the mountain view voice and i i just send the link if you have a chance so okay is there any other member of the public that wishes to speak to this item seeing none i'm going to bring it back to the council first of all there were three questions that came up during during the uh during the discussion the first was um asked originally um by um the organizational speaker and then came up again is are there any costs required from the city to fund the rent control program and that's that was the one that i i think started that off please go ahead the startup loan only startup loan only this do you have another relative to that as i understood it um the city would be required to support the rent board with basic operating costs to the extent that it did that for other departments that's right you have to treat it like other departments and if other departments get things for without charge the rent board would too my sense is that if you're doing that you will stop portion two departments you're going to do a cost recovery program okay the second one was in regards to liability um of the city to defend the charter um for legal fees in the event or the charter um a charter litigation in the event that the city declined to to um to litigate yeah if the measure is challenged and the city attorney were to decline to defend and the proponents or another private party defended it and they were a prevailing party um basically if they won they would be entitled to seek attorney's fees under what's called the private attorney general statute and that statute um pays you quite a bit more than a regular paying client would um there's usually a multiplier applied in order to reward people for success because we know when they're not going to get paid for failure and you're trying to make sure there's a living there so i would imagine that that's going to be a substantial six figure sum and if the litigation were protracted and went to the appellate courts it could be you know a half a million bucks okay thank you and the third question was um what types of provisions maybe in other communities they've done this but that have taken place to analyze the housing supply to have a clear understanding of what are the number of units that could potentially have an assessment for the fees or that fall under different categories of applicable law yeah there were i heard two aspects to that question one is how do we count just so we know what we're planning for and the answer is we make the best estimates we can using available data sources and the best data source at the moment is the us census let's hope it stays that way but we'll see what the federal government does this time um so we're using census data and making reason judgments from that census data the second aspect of the question was how do you enforce this against underground rentals you're you're living in a unit you move to europe rent it and don't reveal to the government that is now a rental it may be very very difficult for us to track that that is something that the rent board will grapple with and it will be i think quite a bit like enforcing your business license ordinance if somebody opens a business in town and doesn't tell you how do you know about it you may notice them you may go looking for them you may get complaints will enforcement be perfect of course not there's another question i heard that you may not have that i think is worth commenting on and that is what's the role of the rent board with respect to just cause eviction enforcement it is not meaningless but it is not nearly as demanding as rent control there are two aspects to it one is that every eviction notice has to be filed with the rent board so there's a data keeping data collecting and perhaps data analyzing role that will have some cost and some social benefit the second is that the berkeley rent board executive director said see when you evict a tenant in a rent controlled jurisdiction you have to prove to the court that you're in compliance with the rent control ordinance in order to evict so therefore the local uh superior court housing department such as it is whatever department takes these cases is going to become intimately familiar with your rent boards requirements and will in berkeley sometimes hauls them into court as effectively an amicus to say i'm getting these two competing arguments about what your regulations are and mean could you come tell me so they experience some costs for lawyers to go assist the court in the just cause eviction context but they were up front with us they said we spend more lawyers time on public records requests than we do on just cause eviction city manager martin brunel i just wanted to clarify a little bit more on the fiscal impact it's in the fiscal impact section of the agenda report but the other piece that's unclear is the leasing of uh spaces and the costs because we don't uh we're required as was noted that we treat the the rent board as the same way as we treat other general fund operations where where we don't charge rent uh however so we wouldn't be able to do that however we could change that practice and in charge departments but currently that is not our practice to charge a general fund departments for leasing spaces so that's in the fiscal report but just want to clarify that just as a follow-up don't we the city uh doesn't the city charge um through enterprise funds the charge enterprise funds uh but not the general fund departments so wouldn't this be equivalent to an enterprise fund it says all city departments so i think that may mean the most favorite city department okay doesn't mean they get the kind of public funding the police department does because the police department can't be fee funded but it means that the police department's not charged rent this agency probably can't be charged either okay all right thank you council member brown so i um actually did i i do have a question that i thought might be worth asking right now since you're here uh so we're being asked tonight to accept this report um which i'm prepared to move uh when the time comes but i also wanted to be you have another uh recommendation in the report and you mentioned it here tonight about the city council's consideration of a memorandum of understanding with uh the rent board should measure and pass and so i was hoping you could just talk a little bit more about the kinds of things that might be included in the in a such a mo you um i'm fully supportive of doing that one if and when the time comes hopefully for me um but i um you know just want to kind of understand what you consider to be some of the parameters for such an mo you i think the report touches on most of them but the broadly described is the startup loan and its repayment it is um other services made available to the rent board on what terms what do they get for free what do they pay for how do they pay for it and delineating the authority of rent board the board itself and its staff and the authority of other city actors so it may be useful to give some thought to who's going to do code enforcement who's going to do civil prosecution who's going to do criminal prosecution can they request the city attorney's services does he have the right to say no what happens when he says no those sorts of things might be helpfully thought through in the advance of any particular instance so you can have sort of decent rules of the road before you're in the heat of a political moment yeah i and thank you i saw the the overall parameters i guess i'm thinking more about things like how much the should given that we're required to um fund startup costs how you have an estimate here based upon i mean that's an educated guess as you suggest but if we were to be asked for significantly more for startup costs by the initially appointed rent board is there a way for us to i mean do we have any leeway there i think so i think what's likely to happen is that the rent board will hire an executive director and he or she will sketch out an initial strategy and a budget and come to you and say here's what i'd like can you swing this and there's going to be a negotiation that's my expectation and if you are lucky your rent board will choose somebody who can collaborate well with your city manager and if you're unlucky the city attorney will be on his toes early i've got a question just on kind of related to what um customer brown mentioned when you talked with some of the other jurisdictions that have this rent control board how much time did staff spend working with these newly formed organizations in terms of it may not be captured in the actual rent board organization but how much additional time external to the the work of the rent board was city staff doing to help support it that may not be necessarily captured as a cost after the startup phase i think it's reasonable to project that the rent board will need as much staff support as the city council does so as much staff as you put into doing agendas and answering your questions and providing your agenda packs and and and helping you correspond with your constituents in all the means that you do that same level of what i call secretariat support they're going to need and one political dynamic i see particularly in the two cities that have elected rent boards is that the easiest way to prevent political conflict between elected officials who don't answer to anybody except every two or four years is to treat the two boards alike so there's an awful lot of well if you're getting a pension at this level i'm getting a pension at this level if you get to use a room that looks like that i get to use a room that looks like there's an awful lot of conscious parity to avoid the alternative and was that just if i could follow up was that cost i know you contemplated it but was that cost captured in your analysis i've got a budget for somewhere and we're working with their all-in budget council council member crone it does not clear to me if they have a budget they're going to have analysts you know that they're the kind of thing that we get from the city manager's office is an analyst person um and then a city clerk but you're saying that that's not going to be paid for by the rent board itself they're not going to have their own analyst doing that work i i did not i said the first thing i did not say the second thing they're going to need that support and i assume they're going to pay for it yeah okay yeah they'll need more lawyers than you do the city of west hollywood has a contract city attorney who is in fact one of my mentors they have staff counsel for their rent board you said something interesting too that berkeley went to the voters they passed around control and then the people said well the city council really is not paying attention enough and i mean that's the reason i think that we have this initiative because the city council actually can't pay attention enough to the rents and housing i mean it is a huge issue that occupies a big part of our job up here but not you know i just think that it needs a lot more attention and i think that's why this is all come about that may be and you know and i don't know this is well outside what you asked me to think about but i'll observe that when the city council in berkeley sued the rent board in berkeley it was because the city council thought the rent board wasn't doing enough to protect tenants so it sort of depends on who gets elected when and which way the political winds are bowing and personalities and leadership and accidents and all that stuff i have a question um i just on that what's our budget uh for the city council do you just for the annualized budget i just don't have that on the tip of my tongue i'll look at it real quick yeah it's it's in the half a million range let me just get it real quick any other questions council member matthews oh i just thank you for the report it seemed very straightforward as someone from the public mentioned it uh i think it laid out on the one hand this on the other hand that these are your choices um and it was comprehensible to a lay person so thank you okay you want a motion to accept yeah i'll second i'll second that motion to accept the report and i'll also echo that the comments i feel like a lot of times we don't get a lot of at least review and i even think of some some of the discussion that took place regarding the housing i'd like to see more data as far as the number of units especially as we looked at seeing the results from measure u in the last um election you know some of our housing supply issues that we have that kind of play into these costs that we're talking about in terms of mitigating the cost of rent and i think that will go a long way to help us understand kind of these decisions that was moved forward to address our housing uh supply had a question for the city attorney that about um one somebody asked about requiring payment to the rent board from the city council can you say that you know without a doubt the city council can reject um any requests for money after the startup costs i can't say that without a doubt but you've received mr colin two knows opinion that the um as you know the measure states that the rent board has the authority to request and receive funding from any source including from the city um and we have discussed whether or not the the right to request and receive means that the rent board is entitled to receive what it requests and frankly we've had um internal debate about that but i think michael's analysis is sound and he's concluded in his opinion that um that it can request but it's the city council's determination as to how much it can receive right okay i just wanted to make that clear thank you well the the answer to your question about the council budget it's about four hundred thousand four hundred that's okay thanks and that's factored into the full amount with the salaries that were there for the okay thank you okay so we have a motion on the floor in a second i want to say one of the things i want to point out the conclusion here uh ensure that the act will establish a rent control just cause eviction and rental housing regulation comparable comparable to those in 15 other california cities which regulate apartment rents the city's general fund will be obligated to advance staff and funding to establish the rent board and it's programmed to be repaid from rental housing fees on landlords when those funds are available the rent board will be an independent policymaker with budget authority to the extent of its own resources its own resources and will have power to appoint some of its own staff i just want to make that clear that that's what we're what's going on here i did they feel like a tempest in a teapot that um this was all pretty clear to begin with for spending eighteen thousand five hundred dollars probably very well spent but very good report all right thank you all right we have a motion on the floor and a second any further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye impose any opposed none none this is accepting the report that's accepting the report that motion passes unanimously with council member chase absent and i think at this point that concludes all of the business for today the meeting is now adjourned