there's a large pot of money coming money has come and gone many times over where there's a welcome at where's the welcome at that encouraged participation we do all the work for none of the money thank you thank you Brent our next group approved is Serge Cagno with stepping up santa cruz hi can you hear me welcome thank you good evening mayor council my name is Serge Cagno stepping up santa cruz I'm a consultant for homeless services of the county's mental health advisory board because of council member golders questions I'll throw out an invitation to council chief escalante and the public the mental health advisory board creating a collaborative work group with all of the jurisdictions and the community to review our behavioral health crisis system find and fill the gaps in our system possibly using the road map the ideal crisis we had 78 participants at our initial meeting thank you goes to council member Calentari Johnson for attending as 988 implementation for the new suicide prevention behavioral health help line nears we'll be focusing on that subject with our partners I'd like to take a moment for Sylvia Paris the foreground of Mr. Huffaker's building capacity partnership slide our community lost Sylvia recently to suicide who was a beautiful soul always found knitting in community I'd like to mention my great appreciation for Matt for Larry and for all of their staff to work on this very well thought out action plan been reactive and opposed as opposed to proactive long I was a member of the catch and it was this council which chose not to take action the recommendations of the catch for outreach first design as well as creating an city action plan our name was overall homeless techniques action plan created a much as your acronym work that out it was oh snap I'd like to point out that there was a lost opportunity in this action plan to not include the community and those experiencing homelessness and staff meetings creating this plan it is a continuing lost opportunity not leveraging the knowledge of our community and those experiencing homelessness anywhere within the action plan to review and make improvements throughout the next three years I would like to point out a few places where the data messaging is not in line with the action plan which includes all perspectives of our community to move forward as a city I think that it this is a moment we can work together work collaborative to manage the tragedy of those on those struggling in the struggles of our city to do that we need to admit where our services are working whether or not honesty and transparency allows for collaboration I appreciate that. Currently considering the Bench Lens is part of the new safe sleeping places required to enforce the C.S.S.O is not providing the required safe places it's not in line with health in all policies require people to move to the Bench Lens when the city is not willing to guarantee their safety it should not be considered a successful out of 1220 to refer someone to another city. It's not effective to or consistent in values to support low barrier services but not trauma informed care. Our shelters are always full by those wanting help saying it's necessary to make an ordinance threatening with citations to get engagement is not true and will not make the safe sleep sites more safe with those not wanting to be there. The other point of the homeless shelter with only being part time will not allow them to attend collaborative homeless case management outreach meetings provide case management or provide housing navigation which is necessary for the housing bowser. I would like to ask all of these services will still be offered to the Postal Commission or a lawsuit to the C.S.S.O again please consider adding an advisory committee which includes members of our community, members of our community, non-profit businesses and other interested groups to support this action plan with ongoing review suggestions for the success of this plan in our city. Thank you very much and take safe. Thank you sir. Our next group is the C.S.S.O and it looks like number ending in 1705. Hi. I am not representing together. I do want to comment publicly but I am not the representative. I will go ahead and then I will come back to finding. I want to thank staff and council for all their hard work and I recognize that this is a very, very difficult issue with multiple causes and no solutions and so I do appreciate that hard work. I do see a really glaring issue with this plan aside from the funding issues in the subsequent years beyond year 1. I think the biggest problem is that by the city's own commission has one of the highest per capita rates in the whole country. One of the reasons is that we have site services and have a bunch of tolerance and we need to do our part but this plan is even more shelters within the city. What we really need to do is we need to get some of these shelters in other jurisdictions in the county because it is just a vicious cycle but more services have more homeless and shelter folks will come and then we need site more services within the city and the other jurisdictions say well all the shelters in the city of Santa Cruz that's for the services to be so I really think that with all good intentions and I think that should be the number one focus is standing up these services in other jurisdictions not to say we shouldn't do anything we already are doing a lot and we need other jurisdictions on their fair share so thank you very much for hearing my comments once again I do not represent Santa Cruz together Thank you so much for your public comment I will try again for Santa Cruz together if you can press star 9 raise your hand and then you can press stars to unmute yourself or press the unmute control on your webinar for the I wonder they can't unmute themselves until I give them permission to but I can't I don't know who it is in order to grant permission I'm looking at the phone number I think it's 6959 I think that's what I have here on the list there we go I just I don't know if she's okay though Hi there, is this Santa Cruz together if you can unmute yourself let's see press star 6 you're on your phone or device I can come back as well there should be an unmute feature on the webinar on the computer or star 6 unmute yourself okay I will come back and move to the next hand in line Jane Mio go ahead and unmute yourself thanks everybody for the effort and the work that was monumental has been ongoing one of the things the boots on the ground in the Benchland because I am the lead for the best I'll focus on certain camps I just want to go back to Donna's remark the women also the men who have children where they're at and if you set up a camp there needs to be a place where these people can bring their kids and know what I mean I really urge that amount so the more housing the better DST is having technical difficulties so we will back the group that was approved for action time as that is through in the meantime I will continue with the hands raised and it looks like our ending in 0249 I would love to hear your public comment good evening mayor council and city staff this is Carol Paul Hamas I have a few very short comments first we would like to express our gratitude and support for the tremendous amount of work the city staff has put into this plan with all of its moving parts we especially support the city's efforts to span actual shelter and safe spaces we support the original oversized vehicle ordinance and the city council and the county as a partner as a means to increase safe spaces parking with services our questions are all physical the proposal discusses hiring 10 staff and we are concerned about the unfunded liability for these positions going forward thanks to councilmember mayor they don't have to ask the next two questions because she asked them and they were answered by the city the county should be providing and we encourage working closely with the county to make sure that the county provides services that are funded to provide by the state thank you so much for all your hard work on this pressing issue have a good night thank you for your comment and our next for reggie meister welcome hi can you hear me yes thank you what's being done here I like I like the line items about permanent supportive housing I was a little confused because some council members were talking about not wanting people to stay here not wanting them to be permanently here but I mean if we're aware of housing matters their primary goal expanding permanent supportive housing so emperary shelter bed, shelter space, or something like that. So I was a little confused by the comments made by council members, Colin Tari Johnson, and I forget, maybe it was Golder. I guess the main issue I have with this is what Santa Cruz cares brought up in particular that Santa Cruz Police Department is their own city department with their own staffing funding. And they have a lot of the general fund as is. So I'm wondering why we're paying for things like community service officers and vehicle abatement officer with one time infrastructure funding, which will then have to just like ping pong to be paid for with the general fund and funding the following year anyway. So, and I also find it kind of just inappropriate conceptually that these positions are sort of intended to criminalize the unhoused, that we would spend infrastructure money to fund those positions. So I think I'll leave it at that. I'd like a motion to sort of change this up a little bit, reallocate funds away from the police staffing costs and at least put that towards permanent affordable housing, permanent supportive housing. Thank you for your public comment. Next I'm showing, I am watching you. Hey, did you read or note the 105 letters that were sent in questioning the blowing of the whole 14 million in the first year of a three year plan and a desire that the plan should spread it out over those three years instead. Otherwise, this is the government obligating a future more and more obligation when blowing one time money to start up a program and then ask the taxpayers for substantial amounts later and forever, perhaps that starts later this meeting. I count maybe 10 additional staff requested over time and it is little mentioned these positions like one for a lot longer than three years. Why some emphasis in placing these expenses in contact with some other item focusing on explaining a balance on figuring out how to avoid terminal city bankruptcy is a mystery to me. I would love to hear what happens when all these resources are fully expended and the homeless wanna come in. It's a question either no one has asked or for sure no one answered. Are you promising the illegal begging on the standard of buyers are gonna be gone forever if this has to wherever camping? When is the timeline for clearing the bench plan? Are you gonna measure the homeless population every year including all who are on full support?  As I've said many times before why is locating these shelter units just outside the city not a priority option that would reduce the extraordinary density of homelessness in the city relative to any geographic state city boundary in the state. If you build it they will go. It seems success providing unfunded long-term shelter for those who are in sub-shelter so police can hassle or us to leave. It would seem this has an unknown outcome as shelter fills up. Surely some priority effort right homelessness around the county equalize the negative effect and there are negative effects on everyone is missed. Thank you for your comment. Our next caller, I think this might be Santa Cruz together is ending in six nine five nine. Go ahead. Hi, this is Lynn Renshawks together.com. Sorry for the second number at work. I wanna thank Senator Laird for 14 million state funding. Please send most of these funds on permanent physical infrastructure spread the spending over the three years of the plan with the primary objective of replacing all on sanctioned camps with fully managed camps. In 2018, the homeless action part received 10 million. What is there so for that? The grand jury report shows 46 full exited to house and 145 exited to a safe exit like a ticket home. What is the exit goal for this 14 million? Create a dash update at quarterly showing results. Cracks exiting to housing, turning to family, entering addiction and mental health treatment and more. The three year action plan is a plan or plan. The agenda report here is to contain the concrete details, the actual plan. Reducing fire risk could be a clear objective in 2021. The county published a report by a wildfire threat city of Canada. It mapped 142 fires in 2020 with many in the Pogo Nip, Harvey West, housing matters. The report notes, quote, there were 19 fewer fire incidents in Pogo Nip in 2020 than in 2019 due to the clearing of encampments, unquote. We cannot afford to lose additional houses to wildfire. Are the relevant mass metrics or dash? Further, is there a goal to clean up the city and reduce trash, needle, equipment, towns, trash here, other potential metrics? As was noted about cemetery camps and the 99 tons of trash biohouses. I wanna thank everyone's hard work implementing the CSSO and OVO. The city's Bergman survey that came out recently found 73% of residents are concerned about homeless tax on local businesses and neighborhoods. The majority of residents are with you with implementing these two ordinance. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your public comment. If there's other attendees who'd like to comment on agenda item number 17, homelessness response quarterly update, response action plan, homelessness staff and homelessness response funding sources, and press star nine, raise your hand. And I see Jacqueline Patel. Yeah, this is my first time asking a question. I'm not sure it's the right place. Is this public comment just on this particular item? Correct. We will have in about one minute, coral communications. Then I put my hand down and you can call me afterwards. Thank you. Thank you. This is Don Lane. I wanna thank the mayor and council members for this opportunity. As you know, I've been working on this issue for a very long time. It's been a long and frustrating process to create and affect this. And I appreciate that you are each scrutinizing the details of the current plan and set of proposals for major system improvements before you today. Community members definitely need to understand this agenda item. However, I do hope that on your scrutiny, you will recognize what a sea change this represents in the city's response to homelessness. It's comprehensive, appropriately ambitious. There are amazing new components of money and human resources. There's a much improved strategy. The partnership with the county is unprecedented. The plan reflects urgency. We have not yet not seen before in the city's response. And it represents a lot of learning from our past mistakes. And I say how are because I have been a participant in some of those. So I want to thank everyone who has put this very good package together and urged the council to move this forward implementation as quickly as possible. This has taken long enough. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it's damn good. I also want to add a word of caution. The homelessness response system be excellent in every way and will still fail if there is not sufficient housing so that each person, whether it's a school child or a person with a long-term drug addiction can end their homelessness by moving into an actual home of some kind. Homelessness won't go away without adequate affordable rental housing or community. Thanks very much. Thank you for your public comment. At this time, I will have to pause this item if that's possible. We have a time certain oral communications for 6.30 p.m. on our agenda. And as we just saw, there is a member of the public here for that. So at this time, I will go to oral communications for members of the public who are streaming this meeting and you want to comment during oral communications. Now is the time to call in and raise your hand for oral communications. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on agenda. Press star nine on your phone or select raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer. And I will move out to oral communications the first person is Jacqueline Tuttle.  Thank you for your time. My name is Jacqueline Tuttle. I'm a member of COPA, Temple Beth El and Apocos. And we in COPA have recently met with city manager and I wanted to thank you as city for working with the county and developing this long term plan that you talked about. We see that as something very positive. I do have two concerns. One is that there are many, many people who have applied for rental relief through the state. And the state, not sure why, is has not come through with all the funding that people have been waiting for. And therefore, when the moratorium expires, March 31st, I have some great concerns about people who will be eviction proceedings will be starting while they're waiting. And so we have a question is, is there a way that the city and work with the county or by yourself, standing or local, making this eviction moratorium extend for the people that have applied for this funding and are waiting for the money? I just have this vision of people being evicted when the money is on its way from the state. The second suggestion maybe, if that's not possible, I hope it is, but if it's not possible, is there a way that mediation between these people who are waiting for their money and landlords might be recommended so that they'll be away from the communicate with the club? Just so many people, the vision of that is very troubling. I thank you for your time and hope that we welcome further or continued conversation with you all on the city council on these issues. Thank you very much. Thank you. I will now move to the next member of the public for oral communications that is items not on our agenda today.  There you go. Is that unmuted now? Yes. All right. Thank you very much. Being an ex-city councilman in another community, I know what you're going through, but nothing quite as difficult as what you're going through. But it is relative what I've called about. My name is Gregory Cole. I'm an architect here in Santa Cruz, perhaps used to drive around my office on the corner on the way to the Crosnes there at the bridge. But all that aside, I am a law breaker. I have broken the law.  I only bring this to your attention because I know I'm one of 650 other ones here in Santa Cruz city limits who may be going through or may end up going through the same thing. And the city of Santa Cruz is losing two bedrooms for the next 20 years. I'm 75. My goal was to be here for another 20 years. So that's 24,000 nights of lost sleep. Those three people who were renting from me upstairs. I bring this to your attention because these are incredible. This is an incredibly beautiful little unit. I brag a little bit about it. I'm looking at the sunset now over the main beach, the lighthouse, the wharf is out there. And I'm on the Santa Rosa River cliff overlooking the boardwalk as well. It's all just a beautiful location for a fantastic honeymoon cottage. It turns out that the people who have created this loss of a unit here in Santa Cruz were on a honeymoon and they'd been there for seven years until I had to give them 60 days notice. I'm sorry to say, as you know, that's something I can do no reason and I have a good reason. But that aside, I think my goal is to alert you to the fact that it is not the fact that this is a dangerous unit. It's the fact that the regulations are tougher than they were when these things were built and maybe tougher than they need to be. Being an architect and you and I have probably slept on those lofts with our grandparents or whatever. I have, as you know, when you're in your bedroom, that's about 95% of the time you're in your bed, your bedroom, you're horizontal. And in my six foot three high bedrooms at the top of some steep stairs, it's perfectly comfortable for that 95% of my night. I'm bringing this to your attention because I think it's a very, very important possibility that there are a lot of units out here we can preserve if we alter the regulations. And we don't make sure everything is built according to what the current code is, but rather modified codes, which allow me to walk up. I'm six feet tall. I walk into my six foot three bedroom upstairs and I wake up with the seals barking upstairs, but now I can't rent that out. And unfortunately, like I say, that's losing 23,000 nights of sleep for those three people that used to be there while I'm here in Santa Cruz for the next 20 years. It should be legal.  My number, very easy to remember, I want you to walk through this unit with me. My number is four two. The rest is nines. I want to show you my unit so that you can maybe think about what I'm thinking about, which is I was never ashamed of this gorgeous unit and the people loved it so much they never wanted to leave, but I had to make it an ending. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks for calling your public comment for oral conditions. Our next caller says I am watching you. Yeah, hi. Hey, maybe you missed it, but the federal government declared the COVID emergency over. It seems they have a new emergency to replace it, but they said, well, let's be out to do a most a disingenuous 60 minute spot to wrap things up. I see no reason to delay it as over any longer.  I hope not because the government response Susan got declaration was and is a dreadful deceit and caused a lot of unnecessary damage. As the last meeting sick district and elected mayor election item, you sure didn't answer any of the questions I posed and have really lacked a detailed transparency as to exactly how November's election is going to go down. That mayoral central piece did reveal an answer to the question that there will be alternating free district elections every two years that was missing in the ordinance itself, but questions still remain as to how you will fairly choose which districts will vote first while the rest rolls their thumbs and I suppose the council members with two years remaining if they don't abandon ship to go to the county will pretend to represent those districts they might not even live in. The question is why not put a choice of the mayor's permanent balance for the people to decide which you could still do even today has not been answered. One wonders just how rigged this November's election will possibly become. For that matter, some of the same questions remain unclear as the alternative of the seven district if the six district condition fails or we have a seven district. I missed giving my objections to the renters prior resolution so I can't go into it much here, but that is pure welfare that belongs in the welfare system and renters instead deserve a piece of the property tax deduction instead, regardless of income, since ultimately they are paying most of those and receive most of the benefits from them. The renters credit is more of the state throwing in the towel and individual rights because of inflation like their rent control acts and I don't see a resolution from you condemning the real cause of inflation to prolific a moral exponential balloon debt spending of the federal government combined with a print money happy fellow reserve banking cartel. Government spending money that they don't have before asked for more and more is going around and we don't have to look any further than the next item 20 defined. As to throwing the talent on individual rights as in rent control, I wonder if it has dawned on you that when Cynthia Matthews pulled that purely average three and a half percent large rail increase figure out of her rear, let's say pocket, I wonder if anyone considered now or then the consequences of seven percent inflation in 2021 for so far seven and a half percent in climbing inflation now. Eventually we will have lost over our mobility and loss of housing when investors decide that there being squeezed too much, they fell out. Thank you for your oral communications. Next, I have caller ending in 1-705 for opportunities to items not on the agenda today for oral communication. Hi, thanks for taking my call. I also have a comment on districts, the six districts map. I hope we can get another map for the district options because all three of the maps have just one crazy district that runs from Mission Street on the west side. Two of them go all the way to the limits of the city by the harbor and one goes almost that far. And I don't think that anyone who lives in Santa Cruz that are what your political leanings are would believe that the natural district in any sense. So yeah, I'm wondering, I know there's an option for citizens draw their own map, but it seems like especially in the press time frame that's a little bit impractical or maybe the council could provide direction or provide direction to demographer to draw up another alternative for the, because I just think that it's just, it's just not a natural district at all. And so yeah, if you could give some direction on that to the community and or the demographer, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other callers for oral communications? Items not on today's agenda. Okay, so that concludes oral communications. I will now bring it back to item number 17, Homeless Response Quarterly Update. And let's make sure there were everybody public comment had a chance to weigh in with their comment. I will say in addition to the callers tonight, did receive 124 emails to the city council email regarding this item with various broad and general, I mean broad and comment on this item. So input has been very helpful. If that is it for public comment, I will bring it back to council members for deliberation and action. And this is, there's two recommendations on 17.1 to receive updates regarding council directed homelessness response programs, services included in the certain camping services and standards ordinance and the oversight vehicle ordinance to adopt homelessness response action plan by motion acknowledging associated funding requirements and courses, including use of the 14 million from the state for homelessness response. 17.2 is a resolution amending the classification and compensation plans by administratively implementing, staffing to support the city's new homelessness response action. So now I will bring it to council members. I see council member Cummings and then council member Mayer. And thank you, mayor and thank you members of the public. My colleagues on the council staff for the wonderful discussion that we've been able to have this evening. There's been a lot come out throughout this discussion and rightfully so, since it's the first time this has come to us and the first time the community has had a chance to look at this. So I just really wanna again, express my appreciation of the city manager and staff for pulling this together and bringing this to our attention. I did have a few comments that I'm gonna ask questions earlier but I felt like I had in the essence of time I'll just make a few comments. Throughout the conversation what I've heard from the community, few things that came up that were concerns were a need for clear goals and outcomes. And so for example, I know we heard that Larry mentioned housing vouchers as a success. And I think one thing that would be helpful is if we're clarifying what are good outcomes because while somebody getting a housing voucher uses a success, I think it all would be that making sure that person actually gets into the house probably an even better success. So I think one thing, something that would help would be for us to kind of clearly define what the goals are for programs, especially since we're putting so many resources towards them. There's also been expressed around the need for clarity around some of the positions. In particular, there's a number of positions, for example, like the planning requests for proposal specialists, the legislation advocacy, the advocate that wasn't included. And given that those are some very highly paid positions that are taking a lot of these resources people have expressed wanting to know more about why we're, what the role of those are gonna be. We're gonna be funding them so heavily. The need for clarity around how we're gonna target different populations. And I think to council member Meyer's point and some of the points we heard in public comment, really understanding what are we gonna do about families, women experiencing homelessness, veterans, people who just kind of lost their homes but are working, so really trying to figure out how we're gonna target various populations. One thing that came up as well, I don't think addressed is that I had a conversation actually with one of the mental health liaisons and although they're using their vehicles and that was largely COVID, I actually think that what I heard from them is that that's actually not a good thing because if they encounter someone who has experienced a mental health episode and they can actually take them somewhere to get them help, if these people have kind of, they've defecated on themselves wearing soil clothing, they have to put them in their personal vehicle and that shouldn't be the case. So, I think that there needs to be a deeper look at whether or not we can provide, the city can provide vehicles for our mental health liaisons since they're providing this needed service and they shouldn't be putting not only mileage on their cars but potentially bringing people in, they don't necessarily know and city vehicles might be more appropriate for that. As I really do agree with the point brought up Matt and Wanderer just be emphasized that as we're doing this outreach, really highlighting what has happened in our community, 1220 River Street, what we've had in the past work very well along with some of the other shelter we've stood up at whether it's 1220 River Street or the Santa Salvation Army shelter that we had set up on Laurel. These are all really good models of things that have worked. So as we're moving forward, we're really being able to put those models at the forefront when we're engaging with communities. I think it's probably gonna be to our benefit because we do have models that work. We really need to understand what those models are. One of the community members brought the 988 kind of call service that's moving forward around and told behavioral health and suicide and that's something that we really need to kind of think about in terms of as we're developing programs, what programs might fit within those models that could benefit from that service. And I really do wanna also express that the city should exercise caution when skating with the pendulum is a city sanctioned encampment. I know that we are sending individuals there, but there has been a lot. Just how that camp has been managed, the negative environmental impacts that's had. And the fact that, you know, although the city is allowing people to camp there currently, that is not ideal model for what we wanna have and what the city can provide as far as services are concerned. So really agreeing with what was mentioned earlier by one of the callers that this is, what's at the Benchlands is kind of a legacy of the fact that when the county moved their services up to the armory, there wasn't enough capacity to move everyone from that area up there. And after the court order was lifted, really haven't done anything to move those cents. So as we stand up, these various forms of shelter, any of which will have case management, I think we'll be able to show that we are moving towards models that provide health, safety, security for people who are experiencing. I'll leave my comments there. I think the last thing I would just say is that it would be great to get some clarity around case management, what that is and what it looks like moving forward. And with that, I've prepared a motion that I've sent to Bonnie. Doesn't include everything that was brought up including the comments that we heard, but hope is that there'll be an opportunity for us to address some of those concerns as well. So Bonnie. I don't remember. I wanna know what you sent me a blank. Oh, okay. Well, I will send that and we'll read it. I can get it. I just sent it. There's no subject line in it. And I'm prepared to read that motion once you're able to put it on the screen. A lot of it is, I'll just say right now, a lot of it is in line with staff's recommendation with a couple of adjustments and really wanting to see how we can work towards consensus. Cause I think this is something that we all are supportive of. So the motion is to, and this is in line with the staff's recommendation, see updates regarding Council Direct with Homelessness Response Programs, services including the camping services and standards ordinance, the oversized vehicle ordinance to support the direct of the Homelessness Response Action Plan, acknowledging associated funding requirements and sources including the use of $14 million from the state's Homelessness Response. Number three, include under community safety bullet point six in the action plan, work with the county to prioritize and develop 24 seven non law enforcement alternative emergency crisis response program and explore federal and state funding opportunities. Four, turn to the council for final adoption, five or before the second meeting in April with information on goals and outcomes for programs, services to determine effectiveness, strategies for targeting and supporting the different homeless populations and justification for new roles, costs for including but not limited to community relation specialists, legislation advocacy and planning requests for proposal special. Second that. And I'll hand up there a second, but no worries before. Sorry, I'm so sorry. You can go ahead and do that. I think that wasn't going to happen. No worries. I was busy reading the screen, I apologize. I can't all of it. Made a sure it looks like one is the same. Council member Cummings and two is the same, just worded differently. No, the two is support. The staff also says to adopt and I changed the support to press the we're supporting direction. The reason why I didn't want to move with the top is we adopt the plan. That means we're also adopting the budget and heard the one six, if we could express our support, then when to have it come back with them further around some of these other line items that we can adopt it. That's why number four has returned to council for final adoption. Okay. So I will, yes, go to council member Meyers and then let's see, I see manager Matt Huffer with. I just had a couple of comments too, if I could hear just some initial thoughts. I think everything that's being proposed by council for Cummings is reasonable. I would request for a bit more time on item number four to give us the first meeting that day to bring that work forward and that actually aligns with the next quarterly update that we would be bringing back to the council. Some of that work's already underway but the additional time would be helpful. Then for clarification on point two, council's not adopting a final budget plan, budget will come through as part of the budget process itself. So that helps with some of the current additional details that council's wanting to see. We can certainly commit to bringing that work forward but it may not need to weigh in on whether or not you're supporting or adopting it. That is one of the main factors as well but of course we would defer to the will of it. Thank you for those points. Okay. There is that correction first meeting in May. Are you fine with that update there? And the seconder, okay. So council member Meyers and then council member Kelly Johnson. With the county, I'm just going to find what you mean by the price, not just wondering if it's for price or not clear what emerges. Yes, that's for mental health crisis response but what some folks in the community have been pressing is that there's also calls for like wellness check whether it's behavioral mental health, substance abuse, homelessness, that those are calls that don't necessarily require law enforcement. I think part of the example to what council member Boulder brought up earlier was we don't currently have 24 seven mental health liaisons going out and there's also been indication that there's funding that's available for pilot programs to do this kind of non-law enforcement emergency response. And so the wording around how to frame it I think has gone back and forth a lot in the community and as some people say, well, it shouldn't be just mental health, other things such as wellness checks as I mentioned before and also homelessness. So this is the best way I could frame it. It is intense that the county would actually operate is different than I guess program that they recently started. I'm curious about kind of how it is to share with. Are you referring to healing the street or the mental health liaison program or both? I'm about whether or not this is additive million that was by the county. And for example, I mentioned program called going to be initiative and I believe that would be enough. I'm just trying to understand whether the work with the county, something whether or not there's additional additive that is not visioned with some of this already trying to get us. Yeah, I think the purpose of this is so that it's in alignment and supporting what the county is doing and also creating a role here in the city too because if this is a three year homelessness plan really kind of explicitly pointing out that we also want to have this 24 seven emergency crisis response or mental crisis response because what we currently have is something that's not 24 seven. And so I would actually like to see the staff come back to proposals on how we can better define this working with the community and work with the county that we're not duplicating efforts but we're trying to stand something that that really addresses the concerns of the community and also is working in collaboration. A friendly amendment, perhaps that might help with items. Work with the county prioritizing support, 24 seven non law enforcement alternative emergency crisis response program rather than develop. I think there are several programs. I think it's a build upon effort that we need to prioritize. So instead of support and develop support and yeah, the support and build upon existing. Is that where you're going to? Okay, your animal to that. And I guess the clarification is, I would hope that this has a kernels of a program off. Because most employees would not have information.  Also for clarification with the change that council member Myers has asked for that have an effect on moving from support to approval of the action plan tonight. You tell the patient plan came at that date, Jordan and me was to get just a question. Are we talking about the same things? Or one, might that move the needle on an actual adoption of action? Or was that for me, Matt or for the makers? I guess it's a combination of both just a question. Yes, my question is, I feel like supporting the plan. It sounds like there's still some concerns with, for example, the finances and what these metrics are. So I'm just curious how you envision the difference between supporting and adopting. What would that really mean? We're gonna move forward with that. Because I think the big concern is that by adopting it, we're also like as I mentioned, we're also adopting the budget. And I know some of that will happen back, but it does sound like some concern around right of the different positions. And I think that if we adopt the plan and we adopt those roles and positions, I mean, forward with the new classification and other things. And I think there's some desire to have more discussion around that and also have some more clarity on what the outcomes are. So I just wanna make sure that as we're spending a very large amount of cash dollars that we're not only providing the opportunity for the community to weigh in, but also bearing that we're getting concerns that before we're making approving, what will be a very expensive move forward. I appreciate that council member coming. A significant investment that is included in the plan contemplated. The only positions that are specifically being approved tonight are the ones that Lisa Murphy had outlined earlier. It was like hours ago, I think it was hours ago presentation. And then outside of that, there will be a couple of room for the council to give additional direction on final budget through that process over the next months. That helps try to resolve some of the questions about just around the other positions that are not included in the council's formal approval tonight. But I hear the concerns you've raised and some of the input we've, I appreciate your point. I guess I would just, I would lean from the top tonight, reflecting on some of the, for Mayor John Lane's comments, I'll complete the change and actually had this kind of programmatic, but it may have very, very different impacts. Like in the ground, we adopt this act as for those, those actual implementation, but what if like in the council, there is room for the council to find the staff, but I do feel like it is important. Pression state, Senator Laird and members of the council, was no other state of California that homeless, and this effort already garnered funding in the, I'm going to campaign, almost campment grant come in. And I think that's my sort of the driver behind all of this is be seen as a city that's doing that ready. That's both as well as programming, software programming that has metric and ability to express any rightfully in the commenters asking, but I would make her the motion that all of these things out of process and take adoption. I had a motion that would have had and make decisions, got to get it done. No. Mayor, I guess before, I mean, I guess I'll, I know that there are other council members who want to comment, so maybe they'll pick their comments and then I have some, but do you want to hear from other council members? Okay, thank you council member Cummings and council member Myers. I will move on to council member Calentari Johnson and then council member Brown. Thank you mayor and thank you to member Cummings and Mayor for massaging this motion. And I just want to comment and note how far we've come in the last year to crafting this together. So I really appreciate that. I'm supporting the direction that this is going. I'd be that I think that we do need to put a stake in the ground and that we do commit and adopt this plan knowing that some of the friendly amendments I was going to make were made knowing that there is some specificity that's needed in particular around metrics that are around the budget narrative and that's in here. So we know that that's coming and we know that we can continue to work on that. And I know council member Meyer already quoted Don Lane, but it is a sea change, unprecedented partnership that we're showing and we got a forge ahead. So I would support that friendly, I don't know if someone may I think the reminder is made the friendly amendment if that to adopt rather support. I wanted to just make some comments around either a health topic that's come up over the course of the discussion. I have been meeting with community members including new members who are on the mental health advisory board and colleagues at the county who work at behavioral health director of behavioral health and there's a lot that's happening right now at the county that's in the works and it's in the process. Haven't seen implementation yet. That's why we haven't seen outcomes and results but there's a lot that's currently happening and there's a lot that are way. I think that for us as a city to be that entry point makes sense and then for us to really integrate with work with the county so that they as experts are providing the services is very, very important. In the last year, we've applied to a number of grants. We, county as a community, we've been successful in 100% grants that we applied for and it's about $15 million over the last year and a half that you're specifically around mental health, behavior health and some of it overlapping with homelessness. So that's encampment, outreach, suicide prevention, step down services including babies, children's crisis stabilization and residential programs and crisis response. So what I recently learned is that we submitted a $3 million grant date and we were actually awarded $0.9 million because they thought we were innovative and they thought we were doing a lot of work and we were ready to receive the resources and be in action and that $3.9 million is going to do exactly what we are talking about tonight, exactly what some of the callers called about increasing mental health liaisons, having co-responder model with emergency services, having a peer crisis support team, having a mobile emergency with news. So it's happening and it's really exciting. So I think we're in a really good place. There's also stuff happening at the state level. There's AB 118 which is community response initiative, strength and emergency. That's being established. There's a stakeholder group right now that's at, how do we have alternative salon for us? How do we get crisis response really fully robust crisis response integrated into communities? CalAIM, how we think about funding behavioral health is coming down the pikes. Round three of top 47 funds with the state neighborhoods and schools act and then Newsom's air court. So I'm just listing all this because I think we're in a good position. So let's not waver here. We've started on this journey a long time ago and seven of us, community who's been engaged in staff a year ago, let's commit to this because there's a lot of opportunities. There's a lot of doors that'll open if we are primed and ready and I think we are. So that's it. Those are my comments. Thank you so much for comment. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Well, I'll start out by saying that I have a strong preference for support at this time. I think that there are, I'm just not willing to adopt a plan that says we're gonna spend $216,000 here on legislative advocate without any other. I, for example, there are other areas. I guess I'm gonna ask this as a question. I think it's a rhetorical question, but I'd like here because I'm hearing this insistence that we have to adopt it, let's move. And so I guess I'm wondering what would prevent our staff, council members, people who are involved bring this forward from continuing to move forward at the same pace, all of the same activities if we support this plan versus adopt it tonight. So I'd like to hear from those of you are suggesting that we must adopt it now in order to get things done. How supporting this and asking for more information before an official adoption would prevent that or undermine that? Would a, would Matt Puffaker, city manager, like to speak to the work of adopting the support but city staff would continue or not be able to continue that different? A few thoughts and thoughts to that council member Brown and I appreciate the question. I think it does a couple of things. One, it sends a clear message to the community and the organization that we have a firm plan in place. The beauty is eager to move forward with this work in earnest. It also gives Larry our homelessness response team the ability to take the direction tonight and come back with that detailed plan that the council is asking for. There are additional details we need to bring back to council and I appreciate the questions about the conditions, just the conditions we need. And I also just want to make sure that this is going to be an ongoing conversation with council with lots of questions for the course of this work. And I also admit it's a big, complex, multi-layered plan that we're asking the council support on tonight. I don't envy even in your role and having to make it, I'm just out of time but it would be helpful in our work to move these various actions. Again, if I could just, I still don't understand what they're not gonna be able to do if we say that we're supporting this now as opposed to adoption. And perhaps this is just me, I would really like to support that. I would like to speak a unanimous vote but I cannot in good conscience vote adopt a plan that includes, again, $116,000 for a legislative advocate. Hiring community service officers, for example, as part of this budget without knowing what that procedure will be for hiring, will they specifically be dedicated to homelessness response or addressing public space where their issue is related to our unhoused. And I don't need all of my questions answered but I think those are pretty fundamental questions. And so I don't, they're nitpicking kind of questions. They're pretty big questions about a pretty significant amount of money. So I guess I'm just again trying to understand what can't be supporting this as opposed to adopting it. Which I believe, yes, it sends a clear message but it sends a clear message that you're committed to spending money on that I'm not ready to, I mean, we're not adopting a budget, of course, but we're saying this is a plan and that's part of the plan adopted this. If we wanna adopt something, then I'll start picking it apart and talk about the things that I think make sense to adopt right now because a lot of work has gone into this but there's kind of bells and whistles and some fraction there that is not in here. So I guess I just, no, I guess I just don't feel, I mean, we're being told that adopting is important as a way to send a message to get moving and I guess I'm not entirely to that message. If it, well, some of this stuff is gonna, I can't really tell you about this. You know, and I'm sorry, it's difficult about this. It's a really big deal as everybody's saying and I just don't see, like, saying we're gonna support this right now, we could do an official adoption. Got some of that in the back. It just doesn't seem like, I mean, it's either it's a big deal and it's not a big deal is what I'm hearing. And so I'm still just, what will we not be able to do? Yeah, so I appreciate the directness of your question. Customer Brandon, right, this is an important decision and I think most specifically and most importantly, it would delay our hiring of the positions we're asking for tonight, which will to a certain respect hinder some of our work as a team start getting fully resourced up. It would delay some of that work until we bring back that decision of the council. So that's a specific example of what would be delayed by not having a final adoption tonight. If there are specific questions related to the CSO, you know, as an example, we will do our best to answer those tonight. Council feels comfortable with the positions that we are requesting, but your question, it would delay moving forward with the organizational structure that we're proposing, which I think will, by extension, have some facts on which we can do the work that we're proposing. All right, then I guess I have some questions. Sorry to say. Okay, so one, can we get some additional information about the plan for the two community service officer positions? Will they be using this team? The job description, will they be hired in CSO pool and just in other two additional officers, or will they be specifically dedicated particular tasks related to homelessness response? Alongside that, I guess I wonder, where are we at having all of our CSO positions filled? I know the police has had challenges with retention, and so I don't recall what they've, I know we've had updates, but I don't know where it's at right now, so I'd like that. And I also would, yeah, so I guess those are some, I'll just start there. So I can get additional information. Yeah, thanks for the questions, Council Member Brown, I'll pull Barry probably to go on to it back into the conversation. It can help speak to some of the intent around those additional CSO positions. I'll kick it off and then turn it over to others. I think part of that is providing assistance to address the instances when people do need to move in the location where they are. I think the approach, starting with outreach and or the land and resource conservation staff and having those individuals recommend these people move and there's a place for them in the shelter facilities and that timelines for that, if those individuals aren't complying with that, then the CSOs vary a little bit more weight. I see it as a sort of a progressive approach and I welcome Bernie's, sorry, Interim Chief Escalante's comments on how he foresees those resources or Larry's thoughts as well, but that's how I envision that sort of a progressive approach happening. And so that would be dedicated CSOs who are specific to this staff or just whoever gets called. So we're basically just adding, I mean, are we adding to the pool for CSO officers or doing the same work as every other CSO officer and it just happens that they'll receive a call just like any other CSOs? Again, I'm really trying to understand this because if it's coming out of $14 million grant for homelessness response that was tended for infrastructure and I recognize there are significant needs around services, but we're gonna pay for it and then we're committed to it and the city will continue to pay for it out of the general, I just would like to know, are we just essentially hiring more CSOs and they'll get intention is that they'll get more calls in general because this. The expectation comes from a Brown is that we would be adding two full-time equivalents so it's adding to the pool, but having a total of one of two dedicated commissions to assist with that response work that Lee was describing. So they often working in them right now with some of our public works and parks and parking, but the vision going forward is to have these commissions to be able to support in a more dedicated way that assistance work coming alongside the resource and land management team, that's vision. In addition to that, it would also allow for any presence downtown CSOs that have been doing some of that work recently in our effort to try to assist with some of the behavior challenges that have been occurring in the downtown area and using them as a bridge to connect individuals that come across with services. So that would be the vision for that role against the end of the CSO team, but the expectation would be that there'd be more dedicated service by what we were describing. Okay, thank you. I would just add that I would expect that as these individuals are regularly addressing these homelessness-related needs, they are going to gain a stronger familiarity with the county services, for example, and they'll be able to make some of those referrals and provide some of those connections similar to what we would expect as a regular basis from the outreach folks. But I think that just by virtue of that regular exposure, they will be able to also provide additional connections to services for us. Yeah, I think that's, I'll leave it there. All right, are we at full staffing now on CSOs? So we, or is that, maybe, Gascolante? Yeah, I can answer that question. We are currently budgeted for 13 community service officers and we have nine and we are actively actually recruiting for additional CSOs, but the CSOs, they do a variety of tasks throughout the community. So what we've found is that when we can dedicate a couple of community service officers to this assignment, working alongside other city staff or Chris and Jeremy, and they're out there providing service, providing direction to other alternative, we're not, we don't have to pull them away from that particular assignment, we commit them, they know what they're doing. We'll be looking for those skillsets that will provide them a higher level of success of working with other groups like Encompass. They work with them now downtown, but oftentimes we have to pull our CSOs away from that or whether it's traffic control and a traffic collision or other duties in this particular case, they could be solely dedicated to this particular task. And so I, yeah. That's really helpful. Again, really trying to understand this. Okay. So another question I have is, this, you know, we're kind of saying, well, everybody agrees to have some outcomes and metrics for determining success. But when can we expect have some of that firmly established provided? Council member Cummings brought up a point related to this and I'm just in the interest of transparency, accountability and understanding if what we're doing is working and fiscal responsibility of taxpayers. When are we gonna, when will we see about expert of full, you know, how is the section eight vouchers actually getting used? You know, there's, I mean, I can think of all kinds of things I've played already. So I won't go on about that, but overall, it would be great to have a sense of like, when can we expect the, or of that, that be in May as well or at the next quarterly meeting? Quarterly report. I appreciate that question Council member Brown. We had some conversation with the team and up to tonight with some of the feedback that we were receiving around wanting to see meaningful metrics that you like, the report on regularly. Yeah. There's two things I would say to that. One is we're feeding up into larger regional housing homelessness strategic plan that we've partnered on with the county. There are very strong metrics put into that plan. I think we can forward and apply it fashion plan that we were discussing. And then I also think, and as we've been talking about all afternoon, our own local experience, there are some other metrics from the work we're doing, vision we have, moving forward to add to that. And I would suspect we would have that to Larry on the spot of what's a reasonable timeframe, but either in May or as part of the quarterly report. Also, Matt, Larry? Yeah. Yeah, I'd agree. I certainly, we can have a framework that has some metrics and outcomes benchmarks for the next quarterly update this in May. That's definitely doable. Okay. And so I'm jumping around a little bit here, but I just try to get things that are really, I have concerns about in killer address, vehicle abatement officer, where would that be housed? And what, I mean, it sounds like it may be an expender. It may not, and I just like to understand that more. I mean, I don't really support it in general, but I just want to know what we're planning on for here. Yeah, Larry, I want to jump in, but I think the intent there is to have a vendor on contract and provide for some of the necessary work included in the OVO ordinance. I think you're pointing out some of the grounds to last report on a mechanism we want to have to utilize, but it is a necessary component to implementing the OVO, having that resource available would not be in-house position on contract. And so that's not something that we currently have in place. My understanding is we have a vendor and then the vendor, we didn't have a place, to send the RVs to oversized vehicles. And so, we've been sort of in a little bit of limbo. Do we have a vendor? This in addition, the expectation is more towing happening. I want to speak to that. I think Bernie, Chief Escalante has info on the vendor they have towing, which is a little bit different than, a broader role enforcement, I think Matt, are you articulated in terms of what we're looking for as it's passed around the OVO, but I can't speak specifically to the vendor we have towing. Yeah, we do have a temp employee. They are technically a community service officer as the vehicle abate. They are a temp employee. We do have a vendor that we operate with, but our current vehicle abatement officer, primarily focused on 72-hour abatement issues around the entire city. So the anticipation here is the potential increase workload around the enforcement of the OVO if it gets to that. So that's what we currently have now and what they focus on.  I wanna go back to another, see if I can get some resolution question about calling Anne Lorenzo, the Bench lands sanctioned encampment and counting it towards the number of thoughts that we, trying to think of the worst spot.  I can't say beds. So like if we're, but that's gonna close so why is that in there as an encampment to count towards a number that the council has set as a minimum when it's not really a place to stick around and I think it's very clear that that's it's not an appropriate location for long encampment. So I'm not objection to that, but I'm just wondering, I mean, that's in the land, that's in the plan here, right? That's in the language of staff report. And I don't want to, I don't want to adopt a plan that says that's part of our plan. I appreciate that. I appreciate that point, Councilor Brown and as we talked about this afternoon, we are moving away from Bench lands serving as suitable shelter space. So the target that we're aiming for that talks specifically about 150 beds around a minute course or beds on a regional level. The goal is by the summer, the Bench lands would be demobilized. Those beds would not be obviously counted as part of that work for standing up the other shelters that we have very, I've described today. 1220 River, the housing matters in terms of the farmery as examples. Those are the beds that we're counting for. And we're permanent target, right? Thank you. I don't mean to be difficult here. I just really, we're gonna insist on adopting, I'd like.  Thank you. That concludes your questions, Council Member Brown. For the sake of us all being able to sleep for four hours tonight, yeah. I have plenty more, but. Thank you. Okay, I will move on to Vice Mayor Walker. Thank you, Mayor.  And I really just want to say how much I respect the work. And I haven't always agreed with John Lane and I think he knows that, but I've always respected him and I've always known no matter what is committed to supporting our most vulnerable population. And I think it's really telling when he calls in to say, gosh, you know, I haven't necessarily been as effective, not for a lack of will or trying for ultimate dedication he really had, as long as I've known him and has known his positions in public office. But at the end of the day, it's about shifting from reaction proactive, right? And it's go time. And it's about trying to get things moving. And I think that's really telling to what this proposal says in terms of embracing how we want to balance it to our most vulnerable population in a meaningful way, as well as responsive to the media at large and how to balance that. I think it's hard to say yes. It is really hard to say yes. These are really challenging, you know, proposals before us. These are difficult financial decisions to make. And I think the lack of ability to say yes to hard things has been a state of inertia. And I think we need to go and we need to move forward with an adoption. So I'm supportive of moving forward with incorporating that word. I think that also, if we think about fiscal responsibility, we also have to think about shifting our mindset from a reactive fiscal response to, you know, the tons of leftover trash that we're having to pick up for our criminal justice system that is now embracing having to be the first to respond to an unmanaged situation. So if we're thinking about how we're gonna be more prudent, but also really investing in upstream and intentional, proactive policy programming and partnership, I think that's what's different here before us. So I know it's not easy. I don't think anybody really wants to be in a position, but I, you know, if in a perfect world, we had everybody doing well and thriving and health and supportive, I think that's where we want to be, but moving forward in a way that is pragmatic and is responsive and is thinking about the unique subpopulations and all of the different components that when you have funding that you need to have in place in order to adhere to getting them on, right? Like you can have the best programming, you have the best of funding, but it's give nobody to do the work, then what? And I want to thank former Mayor Myers for her legislative advocacy, because what that led to 14 million and in response and in collaboration with our state legislators, right? So if you have good legislative advocates that small drop in the bucket during what you could potentially get in return, same as to the concept with a grant writer, right? Like you put money into supporting grant writing, then you hopefully get the return. So I know the questions that feel really hard and frankly, some of them might not work out, but nonetheless, it's really shifting our mindset from saying we want to be in a feeling not fully prepared to a state of not being able to paralysis by indecision or enough to say, gosh, we have a pretty, you know, we have, we have our lane here. We're going to try to do our best to stay in the lane. You might fall out, that's where the data component comes in. 100% of that for capability. But at the end of the day, we're going to figure out what doesn't work. At the end of the day, we're also going to figure out what does work. And ultimately, what that leads to is for a healthier community. And so I guess my comments are, you know, more at large, but I guess I think it's really important that we think because it's important that we keep moving. And I think that working in this phase is also a priority. The last thing I think I will say, and I think that's what my hand went up originally for, was really the notice and, you know, identification of really prioritizing subpopulations. That was outlined right away. And I just want to make sure that that something that was kind of in the, that I feel really strongly about that also written into both the ordinances. So just making sure that that's also reflective in our, you know, our adoption of this plan is thinking about how are we supporting our most, how are we not targeting or further harming people like women who are struggling or transitional age families or single parents or those funds that are really, really needing our ultimate investment and wanting to support them. And that was something that was pointed out early on in this guess. You know, I know in the interest of time, just because I also have the standard agenda, you know, I'm comfortable with making a substitute motion and transferring really, I think it's just really one word, right, from support to adopt. And moving this forward, knowing that we're going to have updates, we're going to have refinement, we're going to have a budget adoption event. We're going to have further information to move from as well as accountability metrics to learn from. So with that, I'm going to make a substitute motion really essentially keeping the same language that was presented in the prior motion, but shifting from supporting to the top. That's my... Is, okay, instead of an amendment doing a substitute motion. I mean, I think if the amendment was welcome from the motion maker and the seconder, then that's, I'm fine with doing that. But if not, then I think I've got a substitute motion. So we'll go ahead and I'll go ahead and withdraw my substitute motion in hopes that an amendment would work for it to now reflect that we would be adopting instead of supporting in the interest of trying to resource really a lot of these priorities that we've had out to accomplish in a meaningful way as opposed to sort of spending the time like. If that's accepted by the maker of the motion, yes or no, that's fine. If not, then I'll go ahead and make maker of the motion accept this amendment. I know that the council member Myers had brought this up to one thing that I had expressed was just wanting to hear from council members. And I think we're almost there. So that's the only reason why I didn't... Hold on. And I think the city clerk misunderstood or maybe I misunderstood that your word of support and adopt not related to item three, but two. No, I'm just copying it. I was just copying and pasting it to adopt the action plan, right? Yes. Yeah, I'm just copying and pasting so I have some support with. That's it. I'm gonna stop hearing my... I think I might need to... I think that I've been really mimicking. Yeah, we'll get. And I just had, I had some questions. I'm not, I mean, as I think we're all trying to work towards consensus here. And I think we're pretty close, you know, because this is, if we get behind the fence, think wanna feel good with, especially because next item we're gonna be discussing is moving forward with the revenue measure. And if we're not on, you know, if we're not able to reach consensus on how we're gonna spend $14 million towards homelessness, what confidence can we give our community when we're saying, hey, you should be voting on increasing our tax. So that's, so I'm not, not that I'm opposed trying to see if we can get some questions to answer if we can get there so that we can also have support as we're moving. Thank you, Councilmember Cummings. So is it my understanding? Can we scroll so it's smaller so we can see all the entire motion? There we go. So number two is what my understanding is Council Vice Mayor Watkins for Friendly Amendment. I think Councilmember Meyers had made that, moving that forward, that suggested forward earlier. And one thing I asked Mayor was if we could hear from Council kind of just see where we're at. And I think we might be pretty close. So I had some questions. Who I raised my hand because I wanna be. I wanna respect the order at this point. I was just saying that's why my hand. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. Well, I guess I'm a little bit confused in that and what the request is. I think, you know, as at a certain point, but one, I think, you know, I adopt means that we give firmer direction to move forward and knowing that it's gonna come back for refinement. And that's sort of where I'm at. And I think from what I've heard from a couple of the other colleagues I'm happy to list the others for moving forward. That seems like that's where they are at as well. So I don't ask answered at this point or if there's sort of a conflation of this item with the next item because I feel like what I've witnessed over the past, you know, various iterations have been a lot of discussion and hope of trying to move forward. And then maybe one thing will not do that, right? And so I don't know if that's the interest or intention of you, Councilmember Cummings, what you're wanting have happened, right? In order to sort of feel the confidence that you need for the next item. But I'm sort of, I'm kind of a little bit confused about what, where we're at.  Maybe is that what it is? Or can we see the friendly amendment? I'm not seeing the whole, okay, great. Great. So your friendly amendment was changing item two from support staff. Yeah, given what we heard from our staff really as well as in trying to move moving and as really our ability to stay competitive and be able to kind of also be able to yield some of the things we want to see. I think adopted, I heard that too overwhelmingly is an important component. So I'd like to move forward with that tonight. And I'm happy to make either a substitute motion or if we want to postpone that, that's fine. But at some point, I think we're gonna have to make a decision. Okay, so there's a friendly amendment by Vice Mayor Watkins on item number two. And is the maker of the motion amenable to that? I'd just like to say that, again, Council Member Myers as the second of the motion had said she would want to move forward with the top. We asked, I said, maybe let's hear from the council members. I don't know where my hand is at this order. But I just had a few questions. And I think that if I can get some resolution on my questions, I'd be willing to entertain the second or the friendly amendment. I think so, Council Member Myers, Nat, and then Council Member Cummings and Council Member Brown. And has it, Council Member Myers had framed it more as a question, whereas Vice Mayor Watkins did a formal friendly amendment. That's why I'm asking again if you're amenable. We can continue with the discussion and hold it here. Before you, if you want to continue with the path we're on. Just to sort of frame it here. If the friendly amendment isn't accepted, then the motion could be framed as a motion to amend the main motion or a substitute. Well, it's neither accepted or denied at this point. You know what, here's what I'll do. I'll accept the friendly amendment purposes of continuing the conversation. And is the seconder okay with that? Great, thank you. Okay, Council Member Myers and then Council Member Cummings. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to maybe talk a little bit about my thoughts. I had a lot of questions about this. You know, this legislative, I think Council Member Watkins, excuse me, Vice Mayor Watkins really did out the effectiveness of active legislative. We have the effect of the legislators that we have at all levels statewide as well as national. That is, that's something that a lot of parties don't have. So I think I respect the managers. I also, you know, is the realization that the legislature has a close call. When I was Mayor, there was, I did have colleagues out, others fall close, much larger close population than even, you know, for a capita than a large city and obviously much less resource. I think there is a lot of interest in our city manager. Also, to be able to work in quarantine with the coastal cities by nature, whether it's weather, whether it's cities that end up trying to accommodate folks that are realizing that on a sustainable situation for small cities or whether it's environmental advocacy. I know there's a lot of people that are very about water act violations that are basically associated with, you know, not just homeless camps, you know, a long riverways and water corridors.  So I think this legislative is very strong at this point in time and it is well worth the best. And it can give it ends in terms of really understanding and getting assistance today. You've already seen the state for the kinds of things that we've talked about. In the last year, the news put money on the ground to help. I'll try to talk to you about a per course development to help participate in areas trying to keep the risk. Dedicated funding to this last one, starting to try to dig in. So the severity of mental and behavioral health issues, how do we make, how do we have when they're struggling? So the work done over the last year is signals all over Sacramento that we're on the right track. So, this is all investment as our city. It could be a lot less. I mean, with the right kind of approach, very much of cost share type of situation. Also cities in California raise so many factors for the state of California that you are a force and we need help. And that sustains our little budgets. So I just want to make a plug to that. And I just wanted to clarify. I think it's very, very, I'll stop there. Thank you. And I do accept the, yeah, sorry, the amendment. Sorry, I already did that. Nevermind, sorry, Mayor. Get tired. Thank you. Council Member Cummings, there's Council Member Brown and Council Member Golder after that. Thank you. So I'm just going to stay really focused on planned for us. And I know that what was in the agenda report isn't necessarily what is accomplishing this plan that I understand. Maybe I can get some a nod that's based on, okay. So what we're seeing in the report is kind of an update on what's been happening versus what's in the plan with the outlining kind of what is the pathway forward. And so the reason why I've put the stance on support versus stop is this is $14 million one time funding that we're receiving. And I just want to acknowledge that there was information in this proposal that was lacking when we have this budget chart with number of different line items. There was an explanation on to what the roles would be and why we're spending money on those roles. So that's the reason why I was moving forward for versus action plan. Now that being said, I guess my question around wanting to use support or with taking action on this plan first or how we're gonna vote on this item. I guess more for me or with this. I'd just like to know some clarity around when we adopt this plan. And I know I mentioned it before, but what exactly are we bidding to tonight in terms of what money we're gonna be spending, what we're gonna be spending money on because the two things what I see is that there's a total variety of action and action areas. In addition to that, we have the second item which has, it looks like a handful position, but not all the positions that have been laid out in the budget that was impacted. And so the concerns that have been raised is that, for example, legislative advocates $432,000 a year planning and request for proposal specials, $336,000. Community relations specialist $100,000. In that whole category of expanded capacity and partnerships, it's $968,000 to $175. And much of that not been explained in the report that we received, nor is it an action plan, nor is it explained the item that's with us. And with respect to prudency, transparency, we really need, if we're gonna be making decisions on how this money's going to be spent, my concern is, and this is why I'm saying this in relation to the revenue measure, the next item on our agenda is we need to make sure that, we need to make sure to understand that it's clear what we're spending their money on. And so we take action tonight. I just wanna know what exactly are we spending money on and what exactly are we committing to and do these positions which haven't been defined, but those included what we're gonna be moving forward with. Thank you, Council Member Cummings. It sounds like there's three positions you're specifically calling out as we've heard about in the information we've received. And for you to feel comfortable moving forward with an adoption of the plan, those positions need to be clarified. It doesn't even have to be those positions. I just need to know what are we approving in terms of what we're gonna be spending money on because at the same time, the positions that we've outlined resolution, there's only, you know, I think add one or seven positions, looks like that we're adding. So planning, community development, ad position, city manager's office, add three positions, add new classification and position for a homeless services coordinator, add two community service officer positions and then delete management analyst, lead assistant city manager. So that's clearly defined in that part, but it's not clearly defined what the roles of these other folks will be. Are we approving those positions tonight? And so I'm just trying to get some explanation around what exactly we're dedicating that we're gonna spend money on. Yeah, so Council Member Cummings, do you have that right with the list of positions that we had identified earlier? Those are typically the positions that we will be moving forward with tonight with the approval and adoption of the plan. Some of the other items we've talked about, like legislative advocacy, that'll be done contract that would come forward to the Council at a later date and for consideration at a later date. That's also true of the supplemental vehicle abatement, vendor work. Specifically tonight, crystal clear is the positions that we identified just listed off. The other items will come forward as the part of the word retail plan as well as the budget for final adoption. And I'd call on Leader Larry if there's anything to share that they'd like to share. But that's what to ask. Hopefully that has clarified your question, Council Member Cummings, there's specific city positions that would be approved to move forward night if we adopt the plan and be contracted out, identified as would come forward at a later date for our consideration. But they are here in the framework as identified as a very helpful component framework. Is that kind of? So I guess if I could finish. So moving forward tonight, we would be approving these positions and then I guess when would this be coming back? Because it sounds like there's a number of questions asked in terms of returning with information. And I would, and part of that is also asked the information and justification for the roles and costs which would come back at that meeting in May so that we would be able to determine whether we want to move in that direction or not. Right, so yes, Council Member Cummings. So we are committed tonight to bring those additional details to you no later than May. I will say it's not to say that there may not be any elements come forward sooner as we try to advance that work. So I want to make that clear as well. Ali and Larry, for instance, on some of the pre-development work related to the Coral Street master planning, there could be contracts that we expedite and bring forward to the Council consideration sooner. And I would expect that that would be, Council would be supportive of that. But yes, outside of that, the additional details we would have no later. Okay, so I just like to say that that is helpful for me. We want to move forward with supporting this because what it's saying is that we are not committing those positions. And tonight the only thing we're really committing to are the positions that are in 17.2. And until these other items forward to us around even the case of the Armory, sheltering, transitional camp, all that has over the $100,000 limit. That correct? That's correct. I would also add that the additional time will allow us extra scope being around alleged advocates in particular. Now that that's a special interest to the Council and some of the community feedback we've received. We can start conversations that we would, some of the legislative advocates in terms of that work can come back with a harder number. You have better sense of that as well. And then to your point, anything that's above administrative authority ask you a matter of process that will be, as I mentioned earlier, lots of opportunities around down the road that's the way in on it. Okay, yeah. And so I guess one more time for clarity for the community service officer. This is, these are dedicated positions that are going to be specifically working on homeless response in those roles. All right. Yeah, as long as that's clearly defined, I think that's, I'm supportive of moving that direction. I did have a question though within some of the spending. I know that in previous conversations that we've had along around homelessness, one of the things that had come up was dumping for RVs, creating a kind of dump site. And I don't see that in here. And I'm just wondering kind of where that that, like how that fits, because that is a critical piece of infrastructure that the community has expressed over and over that they have. So the people aren't dumping their black water or gray water in the streets. And so I'm just wondering where that fits. Yeah, there is a reference in there that you could have missed. I'll ask. Certainly, yes. It's in the plan, but it is included. It's wrapped up under the basic services and safe parking. So part of that includes installing an RV dump station, the infrastructure for that as well. It also includes a mobile pumping service to support safe parking. So that's all wrapped up in there. That is an element. And that number also goes back to the plan that was presented and approved by the Council on December 14th. So that's the same budget. Just extending the time as part of this plan. Okay. And then I guess the last piece is that I would just maybe make a recommendation when this comes back that there might be the consideration of vehicles for the mental health liaisons so that they're not using their own vehicles. That concludes my comments and yep. Thank you, Council Member Cummings. Just one point of clarification. My understanding is that the county mental health liaisons, county vehicles and in-compass outreach workers, I'm not sure if they use their own cars and our city staff with some positions, I'm not sure if they use city vehicles or their own cars, but definitely the county mental health liaisons and county vehicles. I'm gonna stick. I meant for the city's public service because Bernie Escalante mentioned earlier that they use their own cars and the ones that I've encountered it said they're using their own cars and it might be good. As I mentioned before, if our people who are engaging with people who have mental health crisis emergency issues want to take people to places where they can receive help and the people are in such conditions to where they're soiled clothing or what have you and that they can ruin the person's car. I mean, if we're gonna put those people in that position and ask them the same thing, then we should be providing them with vehicles that we can clean the city that are dedicated to those specific purposes. That's just my recommendation. Thank you for that recommendation. Clarify. I'm sorry, Mayor, can I add something? Yes, go ahead. Sorry. That's okay. I guess I wanted to get some clarification from Council Member Cummings. When you say their own vehicle, are you under the impression that the existing mental health liaison drives their personal vehicle? I met a person from Encompass who does one of the outreach workers and she had mentioned that he is currently using her personal vehicle and brought up these concerns because prior to COVID, the outreach workers with police officers, police vehicles, and because of COVID, they're using their personal vehicles and she had mentioned this scenario, which is why I'm bringing it up now and we see. Yeah, no, it's a valid point. Just for clarification, so the staff within Encompass and the county mental health liaisons that work alongside our officers are two totally different sets of both and the two county mental health liaisons that work with our office, they are driving county vehicles. I can't answer to Encompass because they don't necessarily work as directly with our department. So I can rest assured, you know, you can be certain that the county mental health liaisons drive county vehicles, not their own personal vehicle. But that's good. Council member Cummings, we're clicking to that with our original partners. I'm sure that the teams who are working with have the resources. Great, thank you so much. Okay, council member Golder, welcome. I had my hand up for a long time, only because council member Cummings asked where we were at. And just knowing that this is not, like I had said before the plan, it's been an overview with updates that we're expecting to see in the coming months. I'm very comfortable with the DOP at this point, having heard everything I've heard in the discussions. And that's all I have, thank you. Thank you. Any other hands? I guess I'll go ahead and say some comments as well. This has been a really good conversation. I had a feeling it would go longer than we allotted on our agenda for this but it's really important conversation to have. I really wanna thank all of the community members that emailed us as well as all the callers tonight. Your input is really important to hear and did help inform very specific point to really move this forward. That being said, this is quite the investment from our team, our city in a way that has not been invested in before and investing in care and shelter teams and land management and resource teams, partnerships with county and regional, really coming at it instead of just an enforcement way but really getting to a support model for folks that are unhoused in our community. And I really think we've made some great progress. I want to call out the raising standard of the shelter models that we have typically put up and really wanting to be better, models of shelter. And I know the word how it shelter was brought up. Very earlier or Lee had mentioned or some other types of shelters. I think it's important to stay open to different options of shelters. We've had some community members that have reached out about some engineered models created and want to help and contribute. And I really love seeing those types of our community want to help with this. So whatever the shelter model is not and Benchlands and really full connecting the resources they need for better well-being and for our environment of a healthier environment. So thank you so much for all of the work that has gone into this plan and these elements thus far. So I look forward to the next update. And so now at this time, we have a motion on the floor with three friendly amendments and they're really quick if I could. Laura kind of consolidated all the friendly amendments and everything to go into just ocean language to make it maybe a little more clear. So I'm gonna put up that. I'll let the give a minute to read it through. The amendment. Correct. So I put the county to prioritize support. Number three. I tried to develop that one. Yeah. The amendment. The support. There was a lot of use of the word support throughout the discussion. I wonder if we can also prioritize in there. I, yeah, as my friendly amendment, I thought it was in there. So yeah. Okay, we're gonna go back to that. It was good. It was just prioritize and support instead of prioritize fellow. Yeah, I think you're there by adding one word. If you wanna go back to that Bonnie, it was good. So work with the county to prioritize support instead of prioritize fellow. So delete develop. There we go. Thank you. Is the maker of the motion and the seconder of the motion? I think I'm in for return to the council on or before the first day because city manager did say that there is the opportunity for an aspect that was in the original. So the number of forces buyer before the first day. Yeah. A reads a little strange identification of relevant metrics tied to the county's homelessness strategic plan and additional ones measurement of outcomes for our. There it is. Yeah, it's in the language that was just put before. So there's a bunch of information about the county and I don't think that was the case. Would you like me to spot that progress? No progress. That would help. All consistent. Yeah. So A with a pace. Right. But that whole section regarding timeline goals. It's sure we have to make sure we have the original. There we go. Are you saying to delete that? Yeah, that to delete it and swap it with the first part of that progress. Or could these are maybe just the whole section? Hard to figure out where to. Why don't you just do the whole section Bonnie? Or it looks like maybe you could end after. Oh, sorry. Before it got to the positions. I think the intent of this was to make it easier for everybody to read, to get rid of all the friendly amendment addition. If everything you guys see here is accurate. It, this is what I would. I think Laura just did this to make it a little more like make it clear. Yeah. I think we stuck with the met the actions we took. I think it also helped the flow of seeing where amendments were made that way. We don't leave anything out. Because otherwise we're just going to be going through and cutting and pasting or viewing for another. Appreciate the intent though. That's why Bonnie is the city clerk. Thank you, Laura. We have a motion with refriendly amendment. And there's no additional comment. So I will ask the clerk for a roll call vote. You may. I'm sorry. Mayor, the resolution for the human resources items is missing. So that needs to be added. Unless. Oh, is that going in this motion? It should all unless you guys going to do another motion I'll be there because we need the human resources personnel component be approved. Thank you, council member Myers. So we'll continue. So is that a separate motion then? Yes, that's okay. Break it up for council member Cummings. We just added to this because I thought that when we started item, we were going to hear both items at the same time, public comment all at the same time and make a motion because otherwise. The only problem with that is that particular recommendation fell under 17.2. 17.1. There are two separate items in our agenda management system. So it just seems to me that are unless. We'll proceed with this item, 17.1. The motion, there's a motion by council member Cummings and a second by council member Myers. Re-friendly amendment. And so we'll do a roll call vote and then move on item number 17. Council member Cummings Johnson. Vice Mayor Watkins. Aye. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you. And now we will go to item 17.2. This is the resolution amending the classification and complication plans by administratively implementing staffing to support the city's almost every council member of Myers. I want to make a motion to talk to the council. We have a first by council member Myers and council member Callentary Johnson. Do you have a second? Yes, I'll second that. Any discussion on this item? Okay. If we can move to a roll call vote. Council member Callentary Johnson. Vice Mayor Watkins. Mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. Deep breath. Thank you everyone for entering through that work. Good job everybody. That brings us to, we had two items that we continued and not discussed. So we've gone through already oral communication, earlier at 630. We are now at item number 20. Resolutions requesting the placement of the skills and use tax ballot measure on the June, 2020 California statewide primary election. And before we begin, I'd like to call a 10 minute break. And then we will come back at 840. I'll give everybody a minute to get back to their cameras. Hopefully get a little stretch in. Back to you. Is clerk, buddy. Okay. So we will resume our meeting. We are at the final item on base agenda. Agenda item number 20. Resolutions requesting the placement of the sales and use tax ballot measure on the June, 2022 California statewide primary election. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item you want to comment on, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation followed by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and return to the council for deliberation and action. Okay. So, we will now begin the presentation. And I will be seeing us off for presentation. Okay. We, I'm speaking on half of our ad hoc budget and revenue can be myself, Vice Mayor Watkins and council member Brown. And really some brief background. We are recommending this item. We started, next slide please. We started with a review of some background and exploration of different types of revenue for the city to explore and really looking at a way to keep our city of Santa Cruz the essential services intact and continuing despite the loss of revenue during COVID, during PZU wildfire impact and other challenges. And did someone say anything? And so some of the background for the revenue items that we did look at were property taxes and sales and use taxes, service charges and assessment fees. We looked at revenues from other government agencies, rent of public property and development impact fees kind of went through a whole spreadsheet of options and associated descriptions, potential annual yield and administrative overhead. You know, looking at other fees as well and other jurisdictions. And so really the goal is to be able to maintain and expand our whole city services. And we decided to do a poll. So next slide please. We started after the November full financial status update. Transitioned our council members in February were the most revenue results and projections as well as budget. And we really put a lot of evaluation into the possible revenue source for the highest impact. So the poll that was conducted was in January for a potential sales and use measure. And that poll is done by an outside consultant. And it's done with a randomized selection of voters in the city. And those analyzed poll results came back with other risk factors as well. There were questions and communications with businesses including downtown businesses, hotel years, community-based organizations and conversations with a couple of people in bargaining. So what the poll results found were that 61% of the randomized voters selected felt positive for a successful passage in support of sales and use measure and really wanted to see support in areas of housing. And I think our resolution did a great job in summarizing what we found in the poll results. Really, that the residents wanted investment in housing, especially for low and middle-income residents. Problems around addressing those unhoused and mitigating the number of wildfires and water supplies, public facilities, and recreational areas. Those were the top focus from the poll results. Next slide. Next slide. So this is, again, we were shown this slide previously, the mid-year financial outlook improvement with structural deficits remaining. So really looking at what our path is without any additional revenue sources. And at the bottom there, you'll see the assumptions at the bottom. So this came to us at our previous meeting. Next slide. And already with the reductions, there have been expenditure reductions and hiring freezes, early retirement furloughs, reductions in services, and so on. And so really, we're at a point where we need to not only replenish our reserves, but be able to fund our essential services in capital and continue to build back up. So that's next slide, why we looked at some of the risk factors from the polling and knowing that we have some ongoing uncertainties ahead. And next slide. I'm going to hand it over to Vice Mayor Watkins to talk about the possible use. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank our staff and my colleagues for Brown and Mayor Bruner for really diving into this. So yes, we looked at some of the possible uses and really thinking about how we're going to move forward with alignment with our previous plans and ultimately just values and hoping to move forward with some of these investments and really looking at the guiding principles of sustainability for our community and community and equity and well-being and essential service delivery. Okay, next slide. Looking at some of the kind of pending projects we also have, we have 50 units of all portable supportive housing coming online at 314. Jesse Street, speaking to our, really our value and commitment to equity. Same with our Coral Street, very exciting with a number of 120 units of permanent supportive housing and there. And gosh, that really, so exciting about what is possible for our community north and I know a lot of have been afforded and are moving forward to make this come to fruition. And as the slide really indicates we have 94 units, 92 of which are affordable 25 supportive really just transforming our downtown and providing really much needed housing for our community. And our transitional shelter really thinking and gosh, we just kind of had a in-depth conversation about this, right? So really think about how we can make this come to fruition and how we can make this come to fruition. And so, I think it's a great opportunity for our community and our community to be able to make this come to fruition. And I think it's a great opportunity for our community to be able to make this come to fruition. So really think about health, prioritizing health, prioritizing these services that we just in-depth which I know all of us are committed to being moved forward and some of which include our hygiene and moving forward with our transitional shelter. And then our community meetings really thinking about how we're engaging with our community and how we're engaging with individuals who are experiencing homelessness and a loss of housing and thinking about how we're supporting them and their individual needs and pathways to find, you know, really independent and hopefully healthy well-being for their future. Next. And our homeless responses to management as well as how, you know, we are in certain barriers. I really hope we're thinking about investing in supporting these individuals and our and our connection and integration into this network of care and there I think I'm trying to I can't quite make out on the picture but I believe it's Jeremy who has told to our community and to our response and a really great demonstration and illustration of the work. And Matt, I see that you came on I'm trying to see I'm not sure exactly I don't have my other I didn't get it I don't have my others who were wanting to jump right in. Okay. Okay. You're doing great. I just wanted to confirm that was Jeremy. That was Jeremy. Okay. I could tell but it was kind of blurred. So, thank you. Yeah. So I can continue here and then I'll pull in Sandy after this there you know, it was almost fitting that downtown streets team have their presentation earlier at the start. We started off our meeting with a presentation from downtown which they had booked already or made a request for a presentation or a council and it just aligned coincidentally the same date with this item our previous item and here but in you know having investment not only in some of those services but also in the the partnership like community services that are that exists. So downtown Literary Batement Crew services has various teams that hopefully will be able to expand on because they definitely are part of the services that our residents are asked for. So next slide and that's just another photo for them. There's been part of the the health and well-being. It's a win-win situation next slide. And then wildfires safety was a huge was one of the top items of concern where our residents hold and really wanted to be continued investment and services around wildfire next slide and vegetation management of course. There's a big business and recovery component to this and a desire from a lot of local businesses from the west side to midtown to downtown that really are still being several challenges and really not just within their business but around their business and really need support with various aspects of their business depending on the type of and so there were several meetings with various types and stakeholders and next slide. Safety and maintenance was a very critical part of having not this is a wonderful picture but I think what also fell under category were roads and sidewalks just residents feeling that those basic services to be able to still fund and address those needs of safety and maintenance in our city throughout our city in various places. Next slide and there's roads and sidewalks. Next slide and so Sandy I will hand it to you what our summary recommendation Council Member Brown. Thank you Mayor Bruner so and I also want to my colleagues on the budget and revenue staff work with us plan together and I'll save my other comments for a little bit later but we did agree that this was a solid recommendation for Council tonight the recommendation is a general sales tax increase which would add $5 purchase groceries encryption medicine diapers and feminine hygiene products for them talked about that visitors also pay the tax and a significant portion of our sales tax actually comes from tourists from tourism dollars so visitors pay the tax and so half actually a little more than half of sales tax paid by visitors so that's the recommendation and do we have another slide yes but thank you so here is the ballot language that generated for your consideration and so we did here but I'll I'll just point out that for me this really is about protecting quality of life through programs and really through supporting our cities I just want to say I think their city's workforce is they provide services whether it's picking streets maintaining our parking recreation facilities wildfire risk reduction and obviously all the work with our climate action manager and working to fight climate change and then just the overall about service reductions so the question then is shall the city of Santa Cruz authorize to augment general fund by levying half of one plus tax raising about $6 so here's that council act recommendation which we also have in your wonderful thank you so much at this time I will bring it to any questions from council members council member coming thank you I'm wondering if you could put the slide back up not the last like the last resolution so it might have been the ballot language there's a draft ballot language so we had a question maybe this is city manager city staff I guess a couple questions one in particular what terms of the fighting fighting climate change I'm just curious what types of strategies what will we be funding when it comes to like our ability to fight climate change because I know that having been on the council seen a number of our different climate action plans west cliff management plan there's a variety of things whether that's kind of reinforcing some of our cliffs versus the need to start investing in if we have to have managed the need of some of our areas especially like beach flats and our low income communities that's something that we should probably be investing in now and so I'm just curious in terms of how we're going to be approaching fighting climate change as an example of this what this funding would go to support potentially thanks for the question councilmember Cummings we've got some other folks on the call that may want to chime in well I think you're right I think a large piece of it is around resiliency and adaptation projects planning for the inevitable impacts of climate change thoroughly being as susceptible as we are on the coast those are not significant projects as we all know some of the areas along along west cliff are good examples of that so and you know we're broadly speaking we have about $300 million non-profit capital special projects that are part of what you're describing outside of that the investment programmatic area that Tiffany brought forward of the National Plan as a whole she is a one-stop shop on our sustainability climate planning front and rich very thin so additional resources would allow us to advance the network and support the strategic way she's working with the region to move this effort forward I don't know if that answers your question we could probably call on Mark Fiddle and others that could speak to more specific projects if it's helpful I'm happy to also just share when we we're talking about the interim recovery plan really screening that in our intentions to build it around health, resilience, sustainability and I think in all things that we do really it applies and how Tiffany's position is funded and I'll let Matt refine my response or correct me if I'm wrong is that it really is part of our general general fund budget so having her and having that as a priority for investment is something that we can build into our strategies moving forward with this revenue stream and then also I did want to just also add and I didn't bring it up earlier is that you know having been on the council now many years been through a number around and I know we're facing a lot of really tough decisions in terms of finding so what this is also going to do is allow us to move forward with a number of our priorities and to continue to provide a lot of the services our community is really wanting to provide. I think I would also add a lot of services that already for you know when we got into the services that already exist that we don't want you know go down that path so it's not even about adding additional necessarily but main services that make a big difference in ours Mayor Burner it's that more we I know this is well known to the council we've gone through multiple rounds of productions now into our services we're at the point now we're faced with really hard decisions as to what services need to sustain many of our departments are stretched very thin we're asking a lot of our employees which is simply not sustainable to continue in our current mode and what that means is without additional resources we're talking renewed erosion of the quality of services range of services we're able to offer and I think our community has come to expect from the work that we do and so the low-hanging has all been needed to project a structural deficit and we need to look at renewable revenue sources to get us on can I ask a follow-up question? Yes go ahead council member one I was going to see maybe Matt and having some other folks kind of comment on that I'm a change piece I'm wondering if anyone who can follow-up on the first question I had and then I'll have a follow-up question Sure Mark Director of Public Works would happy to comment on that I know a lack of communication of the fleet is something that's very of interest of the council and although our refugee service is a rate-based service that would be up to be worked into the rates but this is a general fund tax our general fund vehicles are then three vehicles and those kind of things that your general fund this would supplement some of that one of the things with a general fund tax is you don't have a lot of specific then you have flexibility in it so it's not a specific tax that's and allows it to pass a percent plus one so I think it's it really does allow us to retain the services as Matt said we are looking at significant cuts and this would allow us to retain and continue to provide the services to the community Thank you Mark Yeah and I okay so follow-up question or another question that I have and this is somewhat related conversation that we've talked about around homelessness so you know prior to some of the policies last member of the situation for our finance that if we weren't to do anything and receive ARPA funds we were going very far into black in terms of revenue generation over time and however we have moved down this path of providing services in our community which we need to all that being said I'm just kind of wondering if this is going to bring in $6 million annually how much of that is going to go toward homelessness versus and supporting those kinds of programs versus all the other services that our city has been putting or on the verge of putting trying to think about this context of you know getting support this and then also knowing that we have broad range capital improvement and the maintenance of other services some of which have been cut and need to come back some of which can't really risk yeah so I appreciate that question come from our communes especially on the heels of our discussions around homelessness first and foremost I think it's going to be really important best these dollars in ways that are what the community is telling us is most important to them and we continue to hear it loud and clear over again that in capacity have more effective approaches for homelessness response along with affordable housing top of the list so having said that looking at the proposal for the homeless response action plan you also see that in the outlier have some of the programmatic investments funded so the intent would be for a portion of this revenue to sustain some of those additional services we're standing at as well as reserve for operation as a whole the last thing I'll mention and I don't think this is great almost all the other jurisdictions in our county are likely to this is well and clearly in our county our county partners around homelessness response we have a shared commitment of leveraging those funds in a way to support our collective efforts to sustain this new approach discussing that for now so I see there be an opportunity there as well that we can bring those efforts better in a way that allows to say that all has to be $3 that's another element to this and that's been part of our ongoing discussions and I appreciate those comments because I think one thing that we want to make sure it's clear is that the approach that we're taking on providing these services towards homelessness and the funding that's going to go into that is not just going to come from the city that we're going to be looking and exploring ways to maintain those services and I think as part of that as we're standing up services I think that we need to have clear expectations on what we can provide what we can and really be mindful of how money is going to be spent so that we're not you know so that we're able to keep all the other services provide well supported as we move forward those are all my questions and comments for the moment and so thank you thank you council member Cummings council member Meyers and then council member Calentari Johnson it's also important to invest cover and read things also acknowledge that I hide everything all the way down hide everything and I'm encouraged again by the lives of all the clear community member ballot decision strategy thank you council member Meyers council member Calentari Johnson and then council member Cummings thank you yeah I'd also like to thank all of you who worked on this and forward this recommendation and just to comment on what Matt Huffaker just said that it's hopeful to hear that the other districts including the 20 are looking for measures provide approach across the city and and these efforts you know what one city does and another city does but it'll all build on each other so I'm really glad to hear that and it's even more motivating for us to take this action tonight and really builds on what the last agenda item we were talking about as you said for us to really be able to accomplish some of these robust goals that we have we need some additional funding and this will further time us and prepare us as there are other opportunities date and the federal government to jump in to address some of the I'm losing steam here so to to take take the opportunity and be prime and ready for when funds come our way we will show that we're ready as community I'm going to stop there because I'm talking in circles now I'm losing steam Thank you council member Callantari Johnson council member Cummings and then council member Brown Thank you and I'll also just thank the revenue committee for bringing this forward I'm sure that you all have a number of different options and weight them and the fact that we were able to get to something today just makes me hopeful about our ability as a governing body to work together to consensus the one question I do have that in order for this to be effective there's obviously going to meet me the substantial amount of outreach community I'm just wondering whether the subcommittee wants to comment on this or the manager but just wondering what the strategy is going to be and has there been a strategy that's been outlined so that we're really sending clear messages to the community because obviously there's opportunities for people to say that this is going to make it harder for people for low income families to buy groceries which it won't afford to buy medication which so I'm just wondering what the communication strategies try to get on board with this there definitely is a framework and I will pass it to city manager Matt Huffaker to talk about some of the framework that we discussed and the outreach needed to go forward thank you for bringing that point up yeah it's an important question I would make clear for starters so we as a government entity are prohibited advocacy so we have an outreach plan in place to help be understood what the ask is and why why it's hidden what our fiscal situation is and what the possible uses of and outside that I know that there are members reporting that work as well we and we've also been working on TVWB across the measures those who who's assisting with guiding them as well so short timeframe we're going to have to hit the ground running if there's work from the council tonight thank you does that conclude your questions council member coming I had one more but I forgot okay we can come back late council member brown thank you mayor I just wanted to ask it seems like we're comments portion council member coming asking questions but I do have some additional comments I'd like I thought go out public so okay I just wanted to make sure that there okay great but this time if you are interested if you are a member of the public and you are interested in commenting on resolutions requesting the placement of a sales and use tax ballot measure on the June 2020 California statewide primary election raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or select raise hand in the webinar polls on your computer when it is your time just you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted and the timer will be back in a minute I will go out to our T-list that's definitely shrunk if is there any member of the public that would like to this item raise your hand okay seeing none I will bring it back to our council for deliberation and action so council member Myers and then council member Cummings yeah thank you I do have a question if I copy ballot statement how that who does that but whether or not that needs to be signed tonight together that does that I see those on the ballot a ballot measure you that's something that you or is that something how do we help with that council can or the mayor direct an ad hoc committee draft the arguments in favor and can authorize that to refer to the mayor the mayor can designate that okay thank you can't hear me Bonnie I'll have to test my stuff anytime I'll yell okay did that answer your question yeah I'm just curious about that thank you I did want to there was an attendee whose hand went up right as I went out and they just took their hand down so I just want to make sure they do have the opportunity to speak and great their hands back up so I will give this color the opportunity to speak color ending in 554 and if you can unmute yourself by pressing star six or unmute on your webinar polls item number 20 resolution hi there good evening council mayor Brunner the issue tonight is not supporting important services programs the issue is how best to raise those revenues raising the sales tax by half a cent of the time for policy I find it harmful a significant portion of the community when students poor and working folks just trying to get their heads above financial waters add an additional financial burden top of the highest inflation in 40 years sales tax increase will compound this cycle sales tax called the regress tax as opposed to a progressive tax that puts the bulk of the financial responsibility on those most able to afford to pay I ask how much business will be lost increasing the sales tax done that study this sales tax increase plans under the guise will emerge an emergency is by the dictionary definition serious and unexpected and often dangerous situations requiring immediate access over nine months tax also had the opportunity to place other revenue raising measures before the voters such as a COT for a property transfer tax neither of these revenue supplements caused by financial harm marginalized struggling community members the city's fiscal ailments were known long ago long before COVID and the fire upper management administrators still make a scene salary pouring money down rat holes PR hacks and consults trying to damp through a boondog about turning the war into Disney Central West another wasteful project fiscal emergency is not an emergency rather one of the city's failure to act because it strongly encouraged council to place on the June ballot the long overdue two to three percent entry transient oxygen tax so it makes good sense to join the county to place both of the COT increase at the same time on the June ballot and if all else fails it's always November 2022 with a sales tax it's November 2021 thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration thank you for your public comment our next caller Barbara Meister go ahead thank you mayor I appreciate you reopening public comment because something was happening that I wasn't catching that so glad to be here I'm Barbara Meister I am a parish member at Holy Cross Catholic Church and also active in COPA with the pandemic our parish serving over 300 families a month struggling with lack of income to lots of jobs and we've also been working through COPA to help people stay housed through accessing the rental programs and as my colleague earlier during your public comment I had mentioned there are over 2,000 people who are still awaiting consent from the housing program specifically for the community I bring that up because I notice and I do not know what COPA's position will be on the proposed sales tax we'll vote affirmatively tonight but I bring this up because what I didn't see in the description of the ballot measure I saw mitigating the impacts of homeless and increasing affordable housing gap of opportunity there people homeless and COPA through the years and hundreds of people we've been talking to and assisting in workshops assisting in their applications we've learned a ton about the struggles of rent in this whole very high cost living area here we've got a number of ideas started with city manager recently we'd like to be in conversation with you here is a dearth of tenant education legal assistance that would help people just understand what a three-day quit notice can and they could be prevented from many are self-picking out of intimidation and fear and misunderstanding so just that that project in and of itself really beefing up those services for renters and could be a return on investment to preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place so we would like to be in conversation with you if you pass this tonight to think about how could some of that sales tax revenue in ways to really prevent but thank you for your service thank you so much I would like to bring it back to the council and I will council member Cummings and then council member Calintari John Mayor I had some additional question based on the comment we just heard and so first one and I had another question that came to me while we were having this discussion in terms of our ability to raise sales tax this well this half cent sales tax tap us at our ability to be able to raise sales tax moving forward that's correct I just wanted to make sure that's clear to the public that this is less something changes at state level or otherwise this is the last opportunity in the city the other question I had was whether or not there were any progressive tax considered by the subcommittee and if so because I know there's been a lot of discussion around TOT and other tax coming forward later and so I'm just wondering if folks can speak to what other opportunities might be moving forward that would allow for more progressive tax to be considered as well as the research actually pulled the community to play recent work for TOT and there was collective consensus and where things currently stand the fact that TOT increased wouldn't yield the same in total revenues compared to sales tax that if there were to be percent percent of TOT it would make sense to perhaps follow where the county is going but are most likely bringing in June and because that kind of sets the tone for the larger region allow us to see where that goes and if appropriate things are more in November but next year actually but for now the subcommittee and they may have their own thoughts on the matter but it was important to prioritize the sales tax better. Thank you. I just want to acknowledge that there's a lot of community kind of concerned around raising sales tax. Definitely people in our community who see that raising sales tax is a progressive tax that we should be exploring other options given that I was on this revenue committee previously and we had come forward with the revenue measured to increase the sales tax then there's been more engagement with to address other council member concerns on that and you know tonight we're here to consider this once again feel that that we really do need to be using the options available to us try to help us cities fiscal situation and try to do so in a way that we're not putting too much burden on low income middle class residents part of why I'm supportive of this and actually I think part of what I'll be including in my motion related item is that this will also we think about our workforce and the workers and this will also help support some of our lowest workers and I think that we've made commitments as a council to help support low income workers support our workers in terms of contracts over the time that I've been on council and moving forward you know wanna have programs that support low income people in our community in middle class folks wanna support affordable housing this is an option where we will be able to generate a large proportion of this revenue from the tourists it's a revenue stream that will be consistent and you know although I'm hesitant to move forward with this kind of given some of the decisions that have been made that have put us in this situation I do see that you know want us to be able to take advantage of this opportunity while the forest while we have the ability to use this as a way to generate revenue that will largely come from the mentioned before people who are visiting our community and also the fact that it won't be it won't go on groceries or medication some of the things that feminine hygiene products some of the things that really are important for low income so I'm happy to move the recommendation that's the forest that was brought by the subcommittee with one additional change to that which is to and I'd sent the one line item over to Bonnie but the one change that I would like to include that be gather input from council members and bring back a resolution of intent first meeting in April and I think we just heard folks who called in particular the folks from OPA who expressed you know ways in which we can use this revenue help support low income in our community I know that the last time this came before the council there was interest in providing a resolution of intent and what that does is it's not a commitment to how we're going to spend the money but it is expressing community that should about the past these are some of the areas that we would be interested in supporting and knowing that there's a diverse amount of interest in how we spend back dollars having this resolution of intent could help provide some clarity around what we're hearing about the money and did it pass so that's my motion thank you we