Ready? Now we are passing now. So good morning. Welcome to the 11am public portion of the closed session of the May 26 2020 meeting of the City Council. All council members are participating in this meeting remotely. I want to thank the public for staying home to view today's city council meeting. If you wish to comment on closed session items now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. Please note that there is a delay in streaming. So if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. In this part of the meeting, the council will receive public testimony there after the public line will be closed and inaccessible. Not on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak, you will hear an announcement. The time will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you have finished commenting. Thank you Mayor. Council member is buyers. Thank you. Council member buyers. Here. Matthews. Here. Brown. Here. Golder. Cool. Council member Golder. He was here. After all that. Council member Watkins was going to be late. Vice Mayor Meyers. Here. And Mayor Cummings. Here. Sometimes I'd like to see if there's any member of the public who'd like to speak on our closed session item. Please call in one of the numbers that are on your screen and please press star nine to raise your hand and you'll be acknowledged to speak. I guess we can close the meeting to other members of the public and start our closed session item. I also like to ask if there's any staff on the line who are not part of the closed session. Good afternoon and welcome to our 130 PM session of the May 26, 2020 meeting of the city council. I have a few announcements and then we will move on to our regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, cityofsantacruze.com. All council members are participating in this meeting remotely and I wanna thank the public for staying home to view today's city council meeting. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today, instructions are on your screen.  Please note that there's a delay in streaming that you need to do on your television or streaming device may miss your opportunity to speak. All in the beginning of the item you are wanting to comment on, when it is time for public comment, press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak during public comment, you will hear an announcement that you've been unmuted. The timer will be then set to two minutes and you may hang up once you comment on your item. You may also send an email to cityclarke at cityofsantacruze.com. Your comment will be shared with the council members as they are received. We'll be entered as a public record. And with that, I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, mayor. Council member is Byers. Here. Matthews. Council member Matthews. She's, I will confirm that she is here. Can you hear us, Cynthia?  And you've come back alive now. Council member... Council member Brown. No. Here. Boulder. Vice mayor Meyers. Here. And mayor Cummings. I'd like to acknowledge that the land upon which we gather is the unceded territory of the Oaxaca-speaking UP tribe. The Almondson tribal man comprised of the descendants of indigenous people, taking to Mission Sanikers and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the central coast is today working hard to restore traditional stewardship practices of these lands and heal from historic trauma. And to begin our meeting today, we have a presentation from Sharon Papo, executive director of the Diversity Center. Is Sharon. Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you all so much for inviting me to be here. I'm really honored to be here. Bonnie, can you keep my presentation? Yep, it's up. We have it up. Okay, can folks see it? Bonnie, council members can't see the presentation. So you might need to share a screen. Right, we're working on it. Cool. Okay, fantastic, great. Wonderful. First of all, I wanna distinct the Santa Cruz City Council for your longtime commitment to being great allies to the LGBTQ plus community. And as they're about to go into Pride Month, I really appreciate your time to give this presentation. All right, next slide, please. I wanted to talk about a few things today. One is how COVID-19 has been affecting the LGBTQ plus community. What the Diversity Center's response has been and then what is going on with Pride 2020. So I wanted to make sure that the city council knows that COVID-19 has had significant impacts on the LGBTQ plus community. And some of the reasons why that is is because there are higher rates of smoking and asthma in our community, which means that a respiratory illness will impact us significantly. We have higher rates of HIV, AIDS and cancer. So we have more folks who are immunocompromised. One in five LGBTQ people live in poverty. And we are overrepresented as essential workers who are clearly at risk of more exposure to COVID-19. As I'm sure you all know, COVID-19 is not impacting all communities equally, who we get it. And folks who are Latino, Latino and African-American are at greater risk for dying. And if you put in sexuality and gender as risk factors, then the risk is even higher. And so I'm looking to know who's really bearing the brunt of the death and the impact. 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ plus. This number comes from the Williams Institute of UCLA. Our local point-in-time homeless count survey said that 33% of local homeless identify as LGBTQ plus. So it's in this range of over-representation. And LGBTQ plus elders are less likely to reach out for help because of real or perceived discrimination from service providers. Next slide, please. We did our own community survey. It's still in process, but I wanted to share some of the early top issues that have come up. One is that 31% of respondents have lost income due to COVID-19 and 20% are not sure yet. So that's a lot of folks who are really having an economic impact. 20% of our survey respondents expect to learn less than $25,000 this year, which is in alignment with what I shared in the last slide, which is one in five folks in poverty. 25% of LGBTQ folks don't know how to access community resources like food housing and unemployment. Mental health remains a top need with 33% of folks expressing concerns about their mental health and 24% of those folks feel they don't have access to the mental health resources that they need. Next slide, please. Heltering in place has been a really important effort to reduce the spread of COVID, but it's also had impacts on people's health for LGBTQ plus youth. Some of them are home isolated with families that are not accepting of who they are. And that has had some really, a very hard impact on some young folks. I think about one of our young folks who used to come in all the time and being at home in a not accepting household started really talking a lot about self-harm and we started getting very worried. So we reached out, found them a free therapist. They could talk to twice a week in there, sleeping now and thankfully doing much better. We see that these impacts in the national suicide hotline calls which have doubled since we've gone into shelter in place. And many LGBTQ plus seniors were already suffering from loneliness and isolation. And of course, sheltering in place has only expedited that impact. I think about one elder in our community who I called to check in on and she said, I am so painfully alone. And this woman is cancer and lives by herself in our trailer. And so we connected to give her 30 books and a DVD player and 20 DVDs to help her just get through this time in addition to grocery delivery support and other support. Next slide, please. The Diversity Center has been a really big pivot from an in-person space of having folks walk in and ask for resources to having in-person events and gatherings. We have really said, okay, who do we need to be now? So the first thing we did was we called over 350 of our active LGBTQ plus elders to check in on them. We've done those calls three times and we found that some of them have had needs that they really need support around that we've met. One of our elders fell down and broke two bones and needed help with a ride back from the hospital and getting groceries and figuring out how to get in and out of their bed and other things that we have been essential support around. We partnered with the Volunteer Center to deliver groceries to folks houses, non-contact, of course. And one of our donors to support restaurants donated a bunch of meals that we now can support the restaurants and have been delivering meals to those who are more vulnerable to COVID. And we have multiple weekly online social activities for elders, discussion groups, theater groups, singing groups. We have sit and chat spaces where Jenny Panetta came two weeks ago. John Laird is coming next week. So we're having wonderful gatherings that are vibrant and good places for folks to connect and not get alone. Next slide, please. For our youth program, we know that the internet can be a very dangerous place. So we immediately created our own online platform 24-7, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for young people to connect with other young people locally. And at any given time, we may have 60 or more young people actively involved. So there's always a space for them to connect with each other. And we have daily activities from homework help, queer history classes, cooking classes, and our three regular support groups. We are still continuing virtually. We also started a new English Spanish by Vingol Young Adult Group during this time. Next slide, please. For our transgender program, we moved our 18 monthly transgender support groups online. All of our groups are available online through Zoom and through conference calls. And we provided additional transgender-specific programming. Next slide, please. At the Diversity Center, we like to say that every door is the right door. And if someone is gonna reach out for help, we're gonna do all we can to say yes. For example, last week, Dominican Hospital social worker called us and said, I have a patient here who needs some help and they're connected to the Diversity Center. Can you go get these things and bring them here from their house? And within an hour, a staff person was in their car going to get this person what they needed. We are making mental health connections. We are starting next week. We're starting a coronavirus stress group led by a therapist. So we have a free weekly mental health space for folks in addition to our many other support groups that are peer-led. And we are doing all we can to meet our goals to support our LGBTQ plus community to stay alive, strong, connected, and resilient through this pandemic and beyond. Next slide, please. As I know that you are all looking at your budgets and these are really intense times, we've experienced that too, that some of our funders have stopped their grant making entirely and others have cut our funding in half. So while we are doing more than ever to show up for our community, we are looking at unknown funding into the future. We were very fortunate to get PPP funding, the Payment Protection Program funding, which was part of the stimulus package that got us funding through early June. And I wanna give a big shout out to Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Community Credit Union, who is our bank who helped us through that process. And I know funded many local small organizations. Next slide, please. And we continue as the theme this year for Pride is nothing can stop our pride. And it's a virtual Pride 2020. And I hope that city council members and folks in the community will connect virtually because nothing can stop our pride. And so you can find all of these events on the Diversity Center Community Calendar. And some of the things going on, it's gonna be a whole weekend. Fab Friday is having a virtual party for men. The Dictransmarch is gonna be happening on Saturday on the Majesty Dance Party with Motion Pacific. The Diversity Center will be happening on Saturday. Pride celebration on Sunday with historical clips and interviews and entertainment. And we are encouraging folks to decorate their houses and apartments with pride flags and to be visible and prideful. And I also wanna give a big shout out to the MA and their Queer History Online exhibit that the Diversity Center partnered with them on is really exceptional. And I hope everyone will take time to visit it because it's a remarkable honoring of the incredible LGBTQ local history here in Santa Cruz County. Next slide, please. And that's it. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for your fiscal support of the Diversity Center. Thank you for your long time support of the Diversity Center and the LGBTQ community. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Sharon, thank you for that presentation. And for all the hard work you all are doing to ensure that people are connected and have support during COVID-19. I think that you were pointing out how this has been the sheltering place has impacted a lot of folks. It's great to know that the Diversity Center has resources to support members of our LGBTQ plus community. So thank you for all the work you all are doing. Thank you. Cynthia Matthews, any questions? No questions, but Sharon, thanks for everything that Diversity has done, will do does for all ages. You guys are great. And you know this, but I thought I just mentioned publicly, where is it? Here, you know about this. That's what PD did for Pride. Beautiful. Have you seen that? No, I hadn't seen that. That's amazing. These were issued to Santa Cruz PD to wear during the month of June. Oh, that's wonderful. Is that cool? Yeah. Yeah, hi, Sharon. I have not been able to catch up with you lately. So it's great to see you. It's been a crazy time. But thank you for the presentation. And especially for all the in-depth information you've been able to focus on, especially for our community. And to understand more about what people are faced with, it really kind of personalizes the need. And I, even though time, funding and things like that are, it's tough for everyone. I just, I really appreciate the statistics and the information that you shared today. It's given me a lot of information that is specific to our community. So I really appreciate that. And it's gonna be weird not to go to Pride on Sunday, but it's good to see that everything will be virtual. And I'll hang my flag on Saturday and off we go. So thanks for everything you're doing. And please stay in touch with us. If things come up for the community, please make sure to come and let the council know about any needs or situations that come up for us. Thanks again. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Myers for being out and proud means a lot to our community. Council member Golder. I wanted to thank you and everyone in your organization for all the hard work you do. And I appreciate the presentation because I didn't realize the parts of your work that involves reaching out to older adults. I am familiar with all of the youth outreach. And I even remember having the triangle speakers come speak to me as a child and it's just super powerful just to hear all of the work that you're doing for the LGBTQ community. And I'm just grateful to have you guys in town. And thank you. Thank you. And I want to make sure I give a big shout out to the Santa Cruz Pride Committee, which is a fiscally sponsored project of the diversity center. So they really function independently. And I just want to make sure that as we're talking about Pride, you know that there is a whole group of amazing volunteers who are doing a lot of big lifting in our community. And I want to make sure I give them a big shout out. I just want to thank you Sharon for your presentation. But also just for your work that you're able to do right now and this time and how you're able to pivot as an organization to really find ways to support individuals of all ages. But also sort of the online platforms and the opportunities for students or children who aren't feeling safe and having that community even if it's a virtual community is so powerful. So thank you for the presentation. I look forward to participating over the weekend virtually. And thank you for all the hard work you're doing as well as keeping track of the stats and the data so that we can also know how to best support the LGBTQ plus community. And just to add, I'm always amazed by how much work you all do and the enthusiasm that you bring to it even with limited resources. And I know that's true in all times. And so I do want to say that, I really want to be supportive in whatever way I can personally. So for people out there, if you're listening, obviously monetary contributions will be very important in this time. But also if there are ways that we can support you non-monetarily with our time and other opportunities, just please do stay in touch and let us know. And if you have anything now that you want to share, feel free. Otherwise, just stay in touch, please. Thank you. That's how your hand went back up. I've never met you Sharon. I'm Catherine Byers, but maybe I will soon. My question, I saw that one line, 40% people are on the poverty level. How about homeless? Are there any counts do you have on? I'm on the board of the housing matters. So I'm really involved in the homeless. So the local point-in-time homeless survey, believe it or not, that recent count, they found that 33% of respondents, responded they were LGBTQ. Oh, I didn't see that. However, the 40% number comes from the Williams Institute at a museum. So I think it's hard to get the exact number because we don't talk to everybody, but we know that we are far over-represented than the number of folks in the community. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. I know for the questions from council members, Sharon, I just want to thank you again for reaching out and for taking the time to give that presentation today. So we better understand the work that you all are doing. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it. This is to the next item on our agenda, which is mayoral real proclamation declaring June as LGBTQ month in the city of Santa Cruz and comes as following up on the amazing work that organizations like the Diversity Center does in Santa Cruz. I wanted to take an opportunity to acknowledge how much we are supporting members of our LGBTQ community. And so I thought I would read a few lines of the proclamation. So whereas on June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, a courageous group of citizens who resisted discriminatory harassment and mistreatment, setting in motion a chain of events that will become known as the Stonewall Uprising and the birth of the modern gay and lesbian civil rights movement.  And whereas the rainbow pride flag first used in 1978 and the transgender flag first used in 2000 symbolizes solidarity with the LGBTQ plus movements around the world were both flown for the first time outside of Santa Cruz City Hall in June of 2019. And whereas the city of Santa Cruz honors and celebrates all the hard work that the LGBTQ plus elders have done to create a community that embraces people who identify as LGBTQ students and their allies from the University of California, Santa Cruz have worked to support the efforts of the LGBTQ plus community of Santa Cruz for decades. And whereas the city of Santa Cruz continues to participate in and support events and organizations that support members of our community that identify as LGBTQ plus such as the Diversity Center and the Pride March whereas this year in honor of Pride Month Santa Cruz police officers have been authorized to wear rainbow patches to support the LGBTQ plus community members of their department and are raising funds to support local LGBTQ plus organizations and charities. And whereas this year marks the first annual graduation ceremony for LGBTQ plus high school, junior high and middle school students on June 3rd, 2020. Now, therefore, I just in time, mayor of the city of Santa Cruz to hear about proclaiming June 3rd, 2020 as LGBTQ plus high school, junior high and middle school graduation day and June 2020 as LGBTQ Pride Month in the city of Santa Cruz and encourage all of our residents to embrace, respect and support the rights and culture of all individuals who identify as LGBTQ. Congratulate the LGBTQ plus students who will be graduating this year on all their achievements and join members of the LGBTQ plus community in their fight for equal rights in our city, state, nation and beyond. If there's any council members who would also like to speak this item, provide folks with an opportunity. And so I'll start with council member Brown. I just wanted to say congratulations to the LGBTQ plus graduates and the class of 2020.  We see you and we applaud you on your day and I look forward to seeing you at your graduation on June 3rd. Council member Watkins. You just want to congratulate the LGBTQ plus community and the students and class of 2020. You know, now is the time where, you know you're having an opportunity to really understand yourself, to understand what it is that you want to do and you have already took that step. And so I just applaud you for your hard work and wish you the best of luck and also just encourage you to stay connected to those that see you and support you and want to see you thrive. So best of luck to the class of 2020 LGBTQ plus. All right, council member Matthews. And this is a graduation that will go down in the history books, but you should know at this time you are surrounded by community friends and family who wish only the best for your future. So congratulations. Yeah, my wife and I just want to wish the graduates all the best and especially right now let them know that, you know they need to be thinking about their future and certainly our community has a lot of work to do. It's unfortunate that we continue to have some of our rights and other things, the focus of rescinding things that are really important to everyone like marrying the person you love, keeping your children, having a safe place to live and being able to work at a job that you love. So I know that the future rests with all of you and we all progress by working together and fighting for the things that we believe in. So we're lucky to live in a place like Santa Cruz. I know you'll be extraordinary people moving into the world and just know that you have a community that supports you here and congratulations to the class of 2020. Congratulations on behalf of my fellow teachers that have watched you grow up and a number of years and you're graduating in the most non-traditional circumstance I could think of but I know moving forward you guys are gonna really change the world for a better place and I'm really proud of all of you and wish you all the best of luck. Thank you. A year ago I was invited to Gardner, Montana to give a high school commencement address. There were only 18 in the class. How delightful was that? But I just wanna mention that because my theme was fall forward, fall forward. Like Reggie Jackson struck out like 2,600 times but nobody remembers that. They only know how many homeruns he made and Thomas Edison failed in a thousand experiments but a thousand and one invited the light bulb. So of course the point is to all your students is there will be those little bumps in the road there will be those little failures but just tell them to fall forward, fall forward. Congratulations to them. Thank you all for those wonderful words and again to reiterate the class of 2020. Your work has just begun. Congratulations on all of your achievements. As we continue to move forward we're gonna need to work together to think about how we can innovate and learn from the impact that we've been facing with COVID-19 but we also need to figure out ways that we can continue to support each other and just know that there's a lot of people who have been fighting for a long time to pay us away for you to have your rights and for people to, for there to be acceptance within our community of people who identify as LGBTQ, people who maybe people of color and so just know that we're here to help you and as you now take on the torch of moving these rights forward. So thank you all for all of your hard work and achievements and we look forward to working with you all moving forward. With that I'd also like to end by congratulating all the nominees for the 23rd annual Queer Youth Leadership Awards and honor and celebrating queer youth and ally leaders and finally just to reiterate that as it was mentioned earlier, Santa Cruz Pride is still happening and will be in a virtual form and for more information you can visit the santacrusepride.org website to find out a list of when all the various events are gonna be occurring. Okay, so with that we will continue on to the next item on our agenda, which is move on. I actually have a few announcements to make and then move on to our regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television, channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, cityofsantacruse.com. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today instructions are provided on the screen. We will be providing these instructions throughout the meeting. Whenever we move on to an agenda item it will be opened up for public comment. Please note public comment is heard only on items on the council's agenda that we're taking action on and not on regular updates and reports. The items that will be open for public comment during today's meeting are numbers five through 26 with the exception of item 21 on our agenda. I'd like to ask the council members if there are any statements of disqualification today. Seeing none, I'd like to ask the clerk to announce any additions or resolutions. An opportunity for members of the public to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda and oral communications will occur all around six p.m. today. City attorney to provide a report on closed session. Members of the city council. The council met this morning in closed session at 11 a.m. by a Zoom conference to consider the following matters. Item A was liability claims. The claimant was CFAA insurance group. That item is also listed on your consent agenda this afternoon as item nine. Item B was a conference with labor negotiators in which the council received a report from its negotiators involving all bargaining groups as listed on your agenda. Item C was existing litigation in which the council received a report from and gave direction to its legal counsel in the matters of Jane Doe versus the city of Santa Cruz and Herman and Jenkins versus the city of Santa Cruz. And both of those matters are currently pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court. Item D was significant exposure to litigation which the council received a report from the city attorney's office in regard to the claim of Gabriella Joseph alleging that the city's system of at-large elections results in racially polarized voting, violation of the California Voting Rights Act. During the closed session, the city council approved entering into a settlement agreement with Ms. Joseph whereby the council agreed to consider adoption of a resolution of intention to begin the transition to district elections commencing with the regular election of 2022. That resolution of intention is also listed as item five on your consent calendar this afternoon. As part of the settlement, the council also agreed to pay the sum of $30,000 to plan a legal counsel to compensate for legal fees and costs. The settlement agreement is a matter of public record and once it has been executed and delivered to all parties will be available on request by members of the public. And there was no other reportable action in today's closed session. And that concludes my report. City manager to report and provide updates on city's business COVID-19 response and events. Thank you, mayor and council. I wanted to just provide a really brief update on the COVID-19 shelter in place order. I did email you a copy of the presentation. So if you want to reference that you can do that. And I'm going to share my screen here so I can make this work. Can you see that? I want to just start off by saying that the changes are occurring really quickly here from the time that I prepared the presentation. There've been a couple of changes from yesterday and even from this morning. So things really change very rapidly between what's happening at the state level and in the county level. So we had anticipated that the health officer was going to issue a new health order today which she did actually this morning and which is effective at 11.59 p.m. So essentially by tomorrow. And so the main change there is that that order brings the county more closely aligned with the state children place order which has been a little ahead on the reopening the government reopening plan than the counties. I should note though that the beach restrictions that we currently have will remain. So those are not changing. The state is in what they call the early stage two where curbside for retail is allowed curbside and delivery only related to logistics and manufacturing, office workplaces, limited personal services, outdoor museums, childcare and other essential services can open with modifications. That's where the overall state is. We have not been there but that is where we were moving. So to give you a bit of a sense of where that will be beginning tomorrow. So in the order will again align us with the state and allow with modifications, these modifications involve putting in place measures to prevent the spread of the disease like facial coverings and social distancing, cleaning the number of different criteria. And in all of this is available on the state and county websites. But the major changes are that curbside retail will be allowed, which was not previously manufacturing will be allowed, childcare for those outside the essential workforce thus far had been limited to essential workforce children. Now it'll be open to those other areas that have been opened. Office space businesses will also be open now, although teleworking still remains strongly encouraged. And then selected services like car washes, pet grooming and landscape bargaining will now be allowed. Also outdoor museums, including open gallery spaces and other public spaces and modifications will be allowed to open. An example locally is the mystery spot, for example. And then one of the most recent changes that just happened over the weekend involves political gatherings and churches based on the governor's recent changes. Be those were originally in a later part of stage two but now are or even later stages but now are in early stage two. And the state goes by their stage two, early stage two and expanded stage two, which I'll go over next and then a stage three happens later. And then four is when we're completely out. So the next stage is called expanded stage two. And a number of counties in the state of California are already there. And to get to stage two, you have to go through the state of California and you have to meet a certain criteria set forth by the state of the Department of Public Health and there's county guidance on that. And the county has to, essentially the county board of supervisors has to decide to pursue that and they have to notify the California Department of Public Health and then have to submit and get authorization and approval to be able to do that. And that is the process that our health department is going through now. And what they expect to do is call the expanded stage two attestation is that on June 2nd, which is the next subsequent county board supervisors meeting that on June 2nd, the health department it doesn't tend to take the attestation variance package to the board of supervisors for approval. And so once that is posted on the state's website so they get approval, they go through the state, the state approves that it's posted on the state's website, then the county will be permitted to evolve all the way to the end of stage two, which is the expanded stage two attestation. And so that is expected to begin June 2nd, although the implementation is probably will be some days after that, perhaps June 8th or 9th, something to that effect. And we'll know more about that once they go through the process, but the major milestone here is June 2 when it goes to the board supervisors. Here again, as I understand, the current beach restriction all sorts of meaning, even after this expanded states to attestation process. These, what does the expanded states to mean? So these counties will be able to open up some additional sectors with modifications. Generally they include destination retail, like retail stores, including shopping malls and slot needs, dining restaurants and other amenities like bars and gaming areas are not permitted on stage two, but dining restaurants with modifications and schools with modifications. And so that is where we will be in the coming weeks by way. And then we'll see where we then move on to stage three, which the other major change that the board supervisor will be making is that the health order now that the health officer has issued will just continue to follow the governors of the state shelter in place order. So it'll be consistent with that. So that they essentially mirror, essentially mirror except for specific areas that the health officer calls out. Like for example, the beaches is one example. And then finally, I just wanted to highlight some of the things that are not permitted just for reference and I can add to move some that were here over, but those include things like personal services such as hair, nail salons, tattoo parlors, gems and fitness studios, hospitality services such as bars, wineries, Kingston rooms and lounges, entertainment venues like movie theaters, gaming, gambling, arcade venues, pro sports indoor museums, gallery spaces and zoos, community centers, public pools, playgrounds and picnic areas, night clubs, concert venues, live audiences, festivals, theme parks, hotels and lodging for leisure and tourism, hotel lodging for leisure and tourism for non-essential travel as well. Oh, specifically for non-essential travel and then higher education. So these are areas that are not permitted just for reference. So that is, oh, and then finally, I wanted to just kind of give a brief overview of how the weekend went by the way of reference. So don't have a lot of data yet, but we did the check-in with the department head team this morning. And the overall sense was that the Memorial Day weekend didn't went well overall. We didn't have any major incidences and the beaches were not crowded, particularly when you consider what a comparable traditional beautiful Memorial Day weekend would be like. And so there was compliance for the most part, although nonetheless, there's still, we did see individual groups from out of the area. And also there could have been better compliance with facial covering and some of the beach restrictions, but by and large, it went fairly well. And then we'll just have to plan for coming holiday weekends when we might expect to have additional folks come to the area and also with the additional openings and what impact those might have on people coming to Santa Cruz and also with the improving weather. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have or for any departments that are available to answer questions with this talk to the Children's Place Order. Thank you, Martin, for that presentation. Minute council members who have questions at this moment in time. Yeah, thank you for the update. And just wondering a couple of things. One, where are we at on testing? I know there was an update in one of the county communications about increased testing in the county, but I don't know exactly where we're at now. So, and I haven't got the most recent thing. So if you could just share that, if you know. And then also with respect to opening the beaches, I totally understand where the public health officer is at on that. And I think it's great that we've been able to kind of maintain some safety in that area. But just moving into the summer, has there ever been any discussion about how that might work? I mean, we're gonna still probably be in a shelter in place situation for quite a while. And I'm just wondering if there's any consideration that maybe we open the beaches during those daytime hours for walking or non-hanging out kinds of situations. And maybe that's to be TPA, but I'm just wondering if that is in the conversation. Great, all right. I'll start with that first. Yes, with respect to the beaches, it is sort of to be determined and it's evaluated on a day by day, weekend by weekend basis. I think with the goal of trying to sort of meet the health needs or criteria. And thus far, it seems to be working fairly well, there are modifications, but I think again, as time passes, I think there'll be a desire and interest in re-looking at that. For now, it seems to be working well, which is why I think the health officers continuing those restrictions even with the expanded openings in the other phases or in phase two. But again, I think they'll be revisited over time. There's also a, the county health officer has put in place a committee that's working with businesses and reopening. And I imagine that many of the conversations around that will happen in that group. With respect to testing, testing is one of the criteria that has a certain amount of testing has to be met before we can go to the stage two expanded at the station. And so that has been something that they've been working on. Testing has opened and is now more readily available. There's a state-sponsored testing site in Watsonville, which is available to any person who wishes to get tested and they'll provide testing, whether you have insurance or not, so anyone who actually would like to get tested can go to Watsonville or even go to the website and find out and actually be tested. Additionally, the University of California, Santa Cruz has, are also providing testing. That is starting to open up and providing more testing. So the combination of the state open sites as well as the university's testing has provided sufficient testing to be able to, they believe to be, to move on to the expanded stage two. So I'll piggyback on that. But in our meeting with the county health officer, who's also mentioned that they are actually encouraging people who are not sick or asymptomatic to go get tested as well. It helps us better understand, you know, what, how many people in our community might potentially can have COVID-19 in their asymptomatic so get further recommendations on testing as well. By having more demand for testing, they will then also provide for the ability to open up a new testing site in North County too, so making more convenient for people as well. Thanks for the update, Martine. I just, just been looking at some of the press coming out today. When we complete the, is it a testament? Is that the term? When we complete that process, yeah, at a taste, whatever that is. There's been notes in recent press today that barbershops and other things are gonna be opening for counties that have achieved that. Will we be opening those up as well once we've gone through the process or is the county anticipating continuing to keep those activities not, not allowable for now? My understanding is that those are in stage, would be like in stage three and this would take us to stage two, expand it. Now, the thing that's, you know, really interesting about this is that the governor, sometimes these things can change and they can move from one stage to the other. The prime example that just happened yesterday or very recently was churches. They were, they weren't on the list of expanded stage two, now they are. So I had to like modify my presentation just a few minutes ago. So, you know, it's possible that things could change but as far as I understand, you know, places like hair cutting places and salons are not in stage two expanded. Okay. Yeah, I'm just seeing some press that comes out, just came out within the last couple hours. So maybe just having, I mean, we've been updating our website really well. So just for the public that's listening, just a note for folks to realize that these things can change hourly, basically. I guess just all comment on kind of the face mask rules and probably that is the comment I get the most questions about from the public. And I think especially with regards to the density when you're in our outdoor spaces and really it's places like West Coast Drive where, you know, you actually do have people coming within contact, you know, within fairly close contact, but it is outside. So I think there's a lot of a little bit of confusion about the risk associated with an outdoor space where you really can't, you can't keep far apart and maybe you aren't running, but you're walking but you are walking within close proximity to people. So it doesn't necessarily mean we need to go deep into this, but I think that's a piece of personal and community protection that people have a lot of opinions about. And I think that's one thing that might be helpful to get more clarification as we move forward on what is that risk level and how are we weighing that? Because that's something that's probably the number one question I get is why aren't people wearing face masks and et cetera. So it's just, that's probably gonna be something we just have to figure out how to communicate the best we can about, but that's just for a comment for you. Right, thank you. Well, that is actually one of the, probably one of the most items that we get questions about talking to Ralph about that and for communications to a person and because it is a bit confusing, but as I understand, the guidance is that really the idea is that if you're going to go anywhere where there's gonna be a crowd of individuals, whether it's inside or outside, the distinction isn't necessarily inside or outside.  So if you're going out on Westwood Drive and nobody's there except you and five other people on the whole street, you may not have to wear it, but if you're going down there on the day that it's very, very crowded, the recommendation is that you do wear it. And so the best thing to do is to always carry a mask with you and then use it when you come into contact with groups of individuals, whether you're inside or outside, it's in my understanding to see if that's... If we could potentially think of a creative and fun way to maybe convey that more broadly in the region, I think that would be helpful. I mean, I think especially after the weekend like this weekend, a lot of people coming into town, if there's a way that we could use our website or use some of these PSAs and other outreach we've been doing out to, you know, Sacramento and all the way out to the region, so I'd like to come to Santa Cruz. It might be just a helpful, fun thing to do is to remind people to bring those with them and have them on them at all times. I think that would be a good practice for us to promote as a community. Okay, thank you. Number Watkins. Thank you for the presentation, Markine. And I guess one of the things that I'm understanding about the church is too, is that they're only open at a certain capacity, which is I think 25%, which is I think an important element to highlight. And then in regards to the modified beach hours, the 11 to five, as we get long for days and folks can find time after 5 p.m., how is that going or how is that gonna be monitored? Just having witnessed a lot of all of them gatherings right at five on the beach business weekend. I know we kind of blocked off that one, that one sort of that portion of half the middle of the day, but I'm just curious what the thoughts are on that. That is what, there's two concerns around that. One is that there is the longer days and also with the nicer weather and summer coming in the July 4th, the holiday weekends as well. There's a concern around our capacity to be able to enforce that. That is one of the issues that I can go or police department departments have a concern around. And so we'll be strategizing with the health officer and all the other studies to look at that. As I noted earlier, we are having to evaluate the situation on a regular basis. And our health officers very open to receiving feedback and has been very responsive to that feedback and to making adjustments to address situations that have all been changed and to the general public actually. So I think as long as we're able to sort of make adjustments that are consistent with good health practices that there'll be an openness to to modify those. And we will have to look at those. Don't exactly what they would be at this point, there's some discussions that would have to occur, but I think all things are really on the table at this point. I guess just the only thing I would add maybe just some community awareness education about wanting to maintain social distance and still trying to adhere to the best public health practices as they do go after hours of speeches. Right, right. Yeah, and also look through everything you mentioned, churches. And so all of these openings that are happening, all of these have modifications, they all have physical distancing requirements, cleaning, they all come with these restrictions. It's not just open and you can just go back to what you were doing. None of them are really going back to the way it was at this point. Seeing no further questions. Thank you again, Martin, for the presentation. Thank you. There are no updates. So on to our next item, which is council memberships in city groups and outside agencies. This is the time for council members to report out on committee meetings that have occurred since our last council meeting, as well as any COVID-19 related community efforts from our partner agencies. Thank you. I was just looking, trying to pull up my notes here. So yeah, thank you for the opportunity. I have a couple of announcements from the meetings that I've been at recently. First, I think that most importantly, the community action board has now been has been granted as one of the grantees, one of, I think of 11 in California to manage the distribution of the one-time payments for undocumented immigrants. And they have had some challenges initially with the phone line. Just to give you an idea of the need, they received, when the phone number went live, they received 30,000 calls in the first hour. And this is not just for Santa Cruz County, but this is Santa Cruz Monterey and San Luis Obispo and San Benito counties. CAB is the administrator of the fund. And they have funding for a total of 3,400 payments total in those four counties, 30,000 phone calls. And by all accounts, some pretty desperate situations that people are describing. So I wanted to let people know that the new number is up. I can, I'll read it out, but you can go to community action board and it should be on the front of their page. And they're open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. The number is 1-877-282-7174. And if we, it might be, yeah. So that's the only number they have. And if you get a busy signal or no answer, just keep trying and let people know that that's available at least for the time being. I was also the area agency on aging board met and we discussed mostly what the state budget outlook is and a little bit though with the federal budget, but the state had been moving, the legislature and the governor had expressed support for moving ahead with some pretty significant expansions to some of the senior programs that provide services for seniors in California. And most of that has just kind of been put on hold. There has been, there have been a few recommendations to partially or fully cut, but there are significant challenges with those programs. But we are sort of in limbo here, hoping that because the expansion has been put on hold, that we won't be seeing a massive cut to those programs. And so that's kind of the, all is still up in the air, but things don't look horribly bad right at the moment for those programs. And I also will report on the Regional Transportation Commission. We're just continuing to move along with the alternative analysis. We're gonna be voting on preferred alternative options for the use of the real line at our June meeting. And I will report back then on what happens. And I think that's all, there may be more, but I think that's all for now. Sandy for that update. And I don't have any committees that I was able to meet with this time, but I was super excited to hear about what the work with the Community Action Board was doing. So that's fantastic. Thank you. But I do want to just extend warm wishes to the Muslims around the world as they celebrated the end of the polling months of Ramadan this weekend. And the breaking of the fasts has been really difficult without being able to gather as families. And it is a Memorial Day with yesterday. And I want to honor the fallen soldiers and older typically circumstances where people gather. And so just having the social distancing guidelines, I'm sure it was difficult for people celebrating both of those holidays this weekend. And I just hope that people took time to reflect and just spend time with the moment of gratitude and just quiet reflections since they couldn't gather in groups. That's all. I just wanted to provide quick updates on a couple of JPAs that I set on the Library Board and the 911 Center Board whose meetings have been really dominated by the same issues which is responding to the fiscal constraints and the situation as a result of the COVID pandemic. And so both the agencies are currently reviewing their proposed budgets to look at the impacts of the budget revenue declines. Both they, in particular, the library system relies on direct Countywide sales tax revenues and as well as property tax revenues from the cities. And the 911 Center is, they don't get a direct funding but they're impacted by the ability of their respective agencies to pay. But both agencies are looking at ways comparable to what all the other cities are doing which is to look at temporary measures to reduce costs in order to get through this difficult time. So I just want to let you know that both agencies are working on those issues that are totally consistent with what we're doing and what other jurisdictions are doing in the County. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I guess I would just, I don't have too much to report on. I was looking also over the different assignments. What is that cannabis subcommittee, as you know, on our agenda is going to be postponed and to our first meeting in June. I will say the farmer's market for those who are watching to continue to monitor what you can, when you can access the farmer's market, they have modified hours, but on their website they have information about the services that they're providing still. And then just in regards to education, I think there's still a lot up in the air in terms of how that's going to look in the school year in the fall as well as childcare needs. So the County Office of Education has a dedicated webpage to support those that are seeking more information about education and what is happening and changing really quickly. And then I guess I would just say that one sort of, I guess not a subcommittee kind of update, but just in general update, the health and all policies work has been highlighted on a webinar today, which was great. And it was showing how Santa Cruz is really ahead of the game thinking about how we're integrating the pillars of health and all policies in our efforts here now and potentially moving forward.  They're really working hard to increase folks who haven't yet completed the census. And there will be certain areas that they'll target certain populations to increase access and increase people responding to the census. And I do believe that there will be some chalk art like your talk or census is 2020 and I'll let you know and let the council know if and when that happens so that we can raise awareness about the importance of filling out our census here. No, I didn't have anything. Thanks. The Measure U implementation working group is in the process of adding a few students to its community advisory group. Although the look of that group is in a bit of a limbo now because of the progress on the LRDP and also un-clear how many students are gonna be on campus and reaching out to them with how that's gonna work. Metro, as I reported last time, dealing with deep, deep, deep service cuts in order to try and they do have reserves but they don't wanna eat them all up so they're trying to maintain basic services but some real changes and also protect drivers. They are continuing to move forward with global ticketing system that at some point in the future you'll hope to build system-wide and with these big improvements. The Downtown Management Corporation, we have the renewal of their assessment district on our agenda later today but I have been working with them also on the outreach for the E-Biz, the property-based improvement districts which has been in the process of combining DMC and DPA. Obviously the COVID, the emergence of COVID and all the uncertainties around our property owners and businesses has been a profound disruption in that process and so we'll see, we're still proceeding, we'll see how it plays out in the next couple of months. And finally, visit Santa Cruz, also the visitor industry local state national has been clobbered, we all know that and I've been very impressed how the local visit Santa Cruz has been coordinating with the news coming from the state trying to be both wanting to get back to business but completely wanting to be safe. And obviously there's been a good working relationship. Bonnie has been organizing outreach specifically to our local lodging properties. It's part of the effort that the Community Foundation put into gear with involving different economic sectors what do you need to adjust to the regulations to the safety orders, what are your concerns, how can we safely get back up? And so there is outreach going on and economic development is specifically reaching out to our local lodging places to engage them and find out how we can be of assistance to them keeping safety almost in mind but I think they've been good on the messages. Thank you very much Vice Mayor Myers. Apologies for disappearing there. My internet went out for a second there. I got dropped. Let's see. Yeah, I'll report on a number of items. Some have already been covered by Council Member Matthews. I guess just real quickly on the Metro. I think it's important to also state that the Metro has really taken it upon itself really early in the COVID-19 situation to adopt national safety standards with regards to sanitizing the buses every day. In some cases, multiple times a day. So that is a big focus of their work right now is to try to maintain the buses in the highest quality quality so that people feel safe while they're on the bus but also to provide safety to our drivers as well. So that is a big and they do have quite a number of videos, et cetera, on their website for people to understand how they're actually sanitizing the buses to keep them as clean as possible. So the other update is the Cowles Working Group is meeting actually this week. There is a big announcement that will be coming out. Several of you heard that through email so I don't want to really ruin the surprise but the work of the group has been successful and we are going to be looking at some outreach and press on the findings of the latest Heal the Bay report and that will be coming out towards the end I believe towards the end of June. So we have some good news to report to our community about that and the work there at Cowles Beach over the last several years with the Cowles Working Group partnership. The two by two committee which is the two by two homeless committee which the mayor and I sit on along with Supervisor Coonerty and Supervisor McPherson. We've actually been having weekly calls with the county and city staff involved with our homeless response system. We have been working primarily over the last two and a half months, three months now on really understanding the needs through the COVID-19 lens but last week we started to pivot away and also get back to the work that the county was conducting with focus strategies and with the hope that we can begin to talk about the longer term homeless response, homeless programming that we need to put in place for the county. So we've been sort of making that pivot now and just want to recognize the county's commitment to starting to transition into the broader consideration of where our homeless programs will be going in the next year and my other committees. Lastly, we did have a downtown library subcommittee meeting as well this month. We had good attendance at our discussion and presentation by group four which is the architecture and sub consulting groups that had prepared plans for the potential for mixed use alternative as well for the library. It was well attended and we've received a number of public comments about that. We're planning our work over the next period to bring something back to the council at some point. So I think I'll end it there. Thank you. Thank you for that. I think that most of the committees that I was on then mentioned already and I guess I'll just highlight with the library, one of the things that we're also working on right now is an evaluation form so that we have some pretty clear criteria for how our decisions are gonna be made on that item. In addition with the two by two, as Vice Mayor Meyers said, last week we were able to start having more conversations about long-term planning around homelessness. And one thing that we did receive as well was some information on how the previous $10 million has been spent and kind of where that's at. And we actually mentioned that it might be good to put something together that could go out to the public so the public can see how that funding is being spent. And so we're hoping that something will be available that we can share out that shows where the money from that $10 million that we initially, the county got for almost us where that's going. LACCO met and we approved a draft budget. And in addition to that, Roger Anderson and John Hunt were both reappointed by the LACCO Committee to continue serving on LACCO. And I think that's about all I've got with regards to the cannabis subcommittee that just also would like to mention that in addition to us meeting, we were also able to meet with some of the folks from the industry to hear their concerns and incorporate that into our decision-making process. So I just thought that we would share that as well. And that is all I have at this time. And so Council Member Matthews, see you have your hand raised. A question on the homeless two-by-two, I see Ron Prince is shown as the staff. Is he still doing that or is that book now taking that role? Yeah, yeah. We'll have to change that. We'll conclude our Council Member updates. Next item on our agenda is the consent agenda. These are items five and 20 on our agenda today. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, now is the time to call in if you want to comment on items five and 20. Instructions are on your screen. Please remember to mute your streaming device. Press star nine to raise your hand and listen for the cue saying that you've been unmuted. All items will be acted upon in one motion, unless an item is pulled by Council Member for further discussion. Are there any Council Members that would like to pull an item from consent? Raise your hand. Council Member Matthews. No, sorry, that was what we had. I just have a question on item number 16 and a question on item 15, but I don't need to pull it. Thank you. You repeat those, sorry. Item number 15, Highway 1 and 9, just a question though and item number 16, Watersheet Bike Lane, just a question as well. No, not currently. One and 15. Numbers one and 15, perfect. Five and 15. Five and 15 as well, but I do have a question on 12. Hearing none, are there any members of the public who would like to speak on items on our consent agenda with the exception of items numbers 15? And actually before I open this up to the public, maybe if we could have the questions on item number, being by Vice Mayor Myers, followed by questions on items numbers 12 by Council Member Brown. And I'm not sure who had questions on item number eight, but we can also add that item as well. I just wanted to thank Public Works for the work on the Watersheet Bike Lane enhancements. I have talked to a number of residents up that way who are excited about the changes. There was one question, somebody, I can't remember if I received an email or exactly how the question came in, but just with regards to sort of the street cleaning machines, are they able to navigate into that new set of bollards and other sort of, you know, the separation? Are there any issues with that? That was the question that came to me. I was just curious if you could comment on that. Mayor, Council Member's Chris Schneider, Assistant Director of Public Works. So we work closely with Refuse Street Suite being Metro, et cetera, on the design of the project. We heard there might be one area that's a little tougher than was anticipated. So we'll be working with street sweeping again to see what the issue might be. Right, thank you. And yeah, again, just the, it's really nice to see us, you know, investing in really that, that really higher level of safety for bicyclists, especially on that busy road. So thanks for, thanks for the department's work. Appreciate it. Welcome. Council Member Matthews. Since it was full for comment, I can't resist saying that's a spectacular improvement. And it was really wonderful to see that you were able to go even farther than anticipated because of cost efficiency. That was a bonus to that. Brownie, you have a question, item number 12. Yeah, thank you. I, so we, I did get some information that answered most of my questions on this one. And I do understand that there is some flexibility in terms of, you know, how this is the early, early retirement incentive program for people who are listening or watching. So I think most of my questions were answered, but I am wondering because the timeline, it's a very tight turnaround. And that's a big decision that people are making about whether if they weren't anticipating retiring right at this moment. And so I'm just wondering what if that, if there's flexibility in that timeline, I know that we need to get those decisions made as quickly as possible, but so, you know, what's your thinking on that piece of it? This is Lisa Murphy, Human Resources Director of City of Sanctuary. I think that we could be more flexible on the timeline, but because we are trying to get these, the savings into this current budget, that is why we're trying to make this process move as quickly as possible. I certainly could if it was a council's desire to extend it maybe another week, but any longer than that, then we start to eat into any potential savings for our budget. I add also that it does also provide some flexibility there that I could, the City Manager could provide exemptions if needed, I think it's included in there as well. And then also this is just when they need to let us know, they don't have to complete the retirement process by that timeframe, it's just for them to apply. I thought I put my hand up. Oh, some people, yeah, go ahead, Kevin. Oh, thank you. Lisa, you, there was a question earlier today, you mentioned you might have some data available that what happened was it 2009 or 10 or the last time we did this? Yeah, I did, Council Member Fierce, in 2009 there were three people who took advantage of the program. And then later in 2011, under different circumstances with the library, there were 12 folks that did it in lieu of a layoff. So it wasn't a large number because again, if you remember, there must be an associated savings by freezing the position or a like position for at least one year in order to achieve the savings. So I anticipate it'd be a somewhat limited number of individuals that will be able to take advantage of this program. Thank you. Mayor Cummings, was item eight pulled or were you going to make a comment on it? I'm going to hold on to item number eight to answer the public on the other items. Okay. Mayor, for the item number eight, were you, did you have questions or did you just want to, I was going to make sure that it was highlighted no matter what, is that your intention? Yeah, yeah, that was the intention. Okay, no problem. I'll go ahead and let you do that then, thank you. If you get the public to weigh in on the items that have not been pulled, and then before we make the vote, I'll just make comment on item number eight. So if there are members of the public who would like to speak to any of the items on consent with the exception of items numbers five and 15, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and you will have up to two minutes. And again, these are items on our consent agenda with the exception of items number five and 15. By most excellent letter, you would know then it is not appropriate to display the rainbow or trans flags in the council chambers. It would be promoting the full agenda of a tiny special interest group above all others. While you say it acknowledges their contributions, neither flag represents the totality of union that the American people have in the national U.S. state or city flags. Flags represent ideas and beliefs and we do not pledge allegiance to these proposed flags. Perpetuating this unique special honor yet bestowed on no other flag beyond your terms year after year is inappropriate hubris. Opinion changes, leaders change and future leaders should be deciding the manners of recognition after perhaps you are no longer there. The meaning of those flags is not as clear as you say. There are numerous beliefs of these communities which have not gained the full acceptance of the court of public opinion and indeed not unanimous acceptance even in those communities themselves which have no official spokespersons although many pretend they do and speak loudly. I would cite beliefs like continuous encouragement of children with gender dysphoria to promote, maintain and encourage such feelings or even adults injecting such children with puberty blocking drugs up to and beyond the age of puberty where most would normally revert to identify with their biological gender. These are vehemently up-questioned by many as agents of child abuse. Other beliefs such as gender being a choice or that there exist many dozens of multiple genders of choice or that children as young as eight years old should be taught in school that questioning their gender is appropriate also have many strong opponents of those beliefs. These flags are also representative of those disputed beliefs. None of those beliefs have been validated as approved or acceptable in the big court of public opinion. And so then what we are supposed to be honoring with such flags lacks sufficient clarity and full acceptance. This is more of a leftist social justice warrior agenda that actually installing a symbol deserving of such truity, honoring for instance of, well, we should be honoring for instance national sacrifice or beliefs so that the American state or even national NIA flags possess. Time is up, bye. All right, next speaker. Hello, this is Dana Bagshaw. I wanted to speak on item number 15. So I'm not sure how to. Okay, we'll switch back in the queue then and we'll have you lower your hand for now and when that item comes up on the agenda we'll have you raise your hand again. I'm just calling in from the phone. I don't know how to lower and raise my hand. I just got a star nine.  All right, thank you. Thank you. Next member of the public, you're on the line. It ends in four, six, seven, eight. You are now on the line and you have two minutes. On number eight, I hear other people coming in. If you're watching this on your TV, there's a bit of a delay. So now's your opportunity to speak. Oh, okay. Yeah, this is Brett Garrett and I just want to thank you very much for displaying the rainbow flag. As a gay person myself, it is very meaningful to me and I think of when I was younger and just how important it is for people to, for members of the LGBT community to see support from City Hall. So thank you very much. All right, thank you. The public would like to speak to us on our consent agenda items with the exception of items number five and 15. Now is the time before we go back into, before we take our vote. So please call in if you're watching and press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. Yes, hello, City Council. I just got onto this meeting. I'm glad to be here. I didn't think I was going to have anything to say on this subject, but I'm going to say it anyway. So, you know, it seems like what's going down the pike is that human beings are going to be altered. We're, the children are being taught all kinds of things in school, but this RNA force vaccine that will be a force vaccine is going to change the human being into a humanoid. So, I'll be speaking of that later, but I just appreciate finally being able to listen to you guys. Thank you very much. That's it. Thank you, Council. And I just wanted to make a comment on item number eight, which was displaying the LGBTQ pride flag and transgender pride flag at City Hall. Last year, Vice Mayor Myers at the time, Mayor Watkins and myself brought this item forward and we brought it back on our agenda because we just realized that rather than having to vote on this every year, we thought that it would be, you know, good if we could just ensure that we are honoring and respecting the members of the LGBTQ community who are living in our city and all the people who are helping them fight for their rights that we would have on our agenda that we would fly these flags every year outside of City Hall to honor those members of our community and all the struggles that they've faced over generations. In addition to that, we are also interested in whether during the time of the month, during the month of June, moving forward, we can have those flags flown inside chambers as well. And so that's the item that's before us today. And as we, and we've had a number of items today, has been honoring our LGBTQ community and just want to find ways that we can continue to support those members of our community. So really happy to see this on our Consent agenda. I want to thank Health Member Watkins and Vice Mayor Myers for joining me at putting this on our agenda and I look forward to moving this forward and supporting our community during Pride Month. As I see your hands raised, you're muted. Going on to number, start the agenda number five, but you may want to pass the Consent agenda first. Yeah, I have to move the cursor. I will go ahead and move the Consent agenda with the exception of items five and 15. Okay, we have a motion by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member Watkins. And I'll turn it over to Claire to call the roll vote. Mayor, Council Member Byers. Aye. Matthews. Vice Mayor Myers. We'll move on to the items that have been pulled from our agenda starting with item number five and Council Member Byers. I know you had a question on that. Well, I get my question. I know some of you Council Members have dealt with this over the last many months. And this was kind of the first time. And so I'm glad it's on the public agenda and I pulled it off the agenda so in case people want to speak to it. And given that, there are a couple of questions I had. I don't, yeah, Tony's there. The demographer, are we just accepting the demographer of the Santa Barbara law firm or tell us who the demographer is? The demographer is a firm that has worked successfully with communities all over California, well over a hundred. And this is someone who was identified through our research and through the League of California City's City Attorneys Group that we communicate with on a regular basis. And the company is an outfit called National Demographics Corporation. And they presented a city with a proposal on April 22nd of 2020 to provide the demographic services related to really the whole step by step process from the adoption of the resolution to doing the demographic analysis to the public outreach and ultimately considering adopting district boundaries and an ordinance to implement that. So no, this has not, this came from our own research. Thank you, I did not know that. In terms of all the public hearings that you've been saying the staff report is going to be considerable amount of staff time and public hearing time, have you designed a timeline and what I could look at in terms of is this a year we're talking about over a year or anyway? I guess I was looking for some kind of a something in writing showing the timeline, nothing. Yes, and we have done that essentially. I mean, I could just verbally go over it right now because we've communicated to the council through privileged communications. But what we envision is that in late 2020 and through mid-2021, we would create an outreach plan with the assistance of city staff and the expert demographer. Sometime in mid-2021, we expect the 2020 census data to be released. And then once that is released, we can analyze that with our expert devices and craft, districting options for the city. And then in early 2022, we would have probably more multiple public hearings and outreach, including website, announcements, press releases, public meetings, publication of draft district maps for members of the public to view and consider and provide input on and ultimately adoption of an ordinance transitioning to district elections. Sometime around early to mid 2022, excuse me. 22, correct. Does these consultants, do they design the district lines or have we thought about a, you know, Citizens Committee? What they do is they analyze the demographic data and then they make recommendations to the city as to options that you would have to adopt, you know, population balance and otherwise adopt the various district boundaries. And then ultimately, the manner in which the districts are selected, the council has some discretion in that regard, but ultimately it would be a city council. Okay. Good. Those are my questions. I will make the motion if the mayor is ready. Maybe. We'll, I'll let everybody go through questions and open up for public comment and then a little break back. Motion. Council member Brown. Thank you. Thank you for the clarification that council member Byers asked the questions I was interested in. And I thank you for the clarification on the demographer because I, in looking at it, it just looked like there was a high level of correlation between the communities that have received these letters of intent to sue and the demographer kind of coming behind those on the heels of those to get that business. So I just wanted to say thanks for clarifying that this was a independent recommendation idea based upon kind of more extensive conversations. And I think, you know, just while I have the floor, I'll just say really quickly, you know, we're just in a place where we are kind of being forced to move in this direction. And I think there's a lot of interest in the community in participating in this conversation. And so I'm glad we're finally putting this on our open meeting agenda. And I look forward to seeing a robust community engagement plan moving forward. Thank you. I do want to mention, Captain, in case you haven't seen it, but we did get a pretty detailed proposal. It was part of a closed session packet from the demographer. And so Tony can provide that to you. What a process might look like with huge amount of outreach and variety built into it. And of course going to support the motion, but I think it could be helpful to the general public. And I asked Tony about this, if that in an appropriate form could be made available to the public, because it's not secret information. I think the useful to advance the discussion. Thank you. And send me a copy, Tony. Yes, thank you. I'm happy to circulate that to the council. And it's also, it was sent to the council under the cover of an attorney plan privilege communication. But the document itself, I do not consider to be privileged. I just, just to make sure that my point is clear, I'd like to clarify my statement is that, ultimately it would be the city council that will decide the manner in which the district boundaries are chosen, which is not the same thing as selecting the district boundaries. If you saw in your correspondence, there were a number of comments from members of the public who suggested forming a citizens committee to ultimately select the boundaries. And that's an option that the council could consider, whether or not that's a good idea is something that the council will be able to, to hear from the public on and discuss as the process looks forward. Okay, thank you. Council member Watkins. Thank you. And I appreciate the questions to get more clarity. Tony, did you, I know that there's been work done with Santa Cruz City Schools process and the alignment, is there, can you speak to that in terms of what we received as the council in regards to this potential resource to help us move forward in a, in a neutral way? Could you clarify that? I'm not quite, I'm not quite following that question. Well, I guess I have the, since Santa Cruz City Schools just recently went to district elections, it seems to me, if, if, if you can share how that could align with how this demographer can help us navigate this forward as well. I believe it was the same consulting firm that assisted the school district with its demographic analysis. Of course, as you know, the boundaries of the school district are not determinist with those of the city. So the district thing would not, I expect look the same, although there may be similarities. And I have not carefully followed the process that the school district underwent in order to choose its district boundaries. I was involved, as you know, in the charter amendment that was approved at the March primary election that removed provisions from the city charter that specified at-large elections for the Santa Cruz City School District. Oddly in my opinion, but that is no longer a part of the charter. Maybe just one sort of suggestion or thought is as we move forward, we can speak to them to understand what their experience had been and learn from them as we move forward as well. Certainly could do that, yeah. I have a couple of questions, Tony. The, some of the communications we've gotten also speak to potentially having an elected mayor of some, some form. And so during this public process, I assume that along with the district elections, we could take up those kinds of ideas as well for discussion in our public meetings, as well as be able to debate that with the community. I think that's also something of interest, but I'm not sure that the community understands that the district elections is sort of a separate item from the elected, you know, looking at the possibility of an elected mayor. Is that correct? Yes. Run the process at the same time. I think one of the issues that has already come up in communications from members of the public and will be part of the discussion is whether or not in transitioning to district elections, the council should also as part of that process have an at-large elected mayor with probably an even number of districts in conjunction with that to maintain the odd number on the council. So that's something that can be part of the discussion. Yes. Okay. And I just, just for community, you know, disclosure or whatever we want, however I want to frame it, but I did attend a number of the district presentations and public meetings and they were, I would say fairly well attended for the school district, district team process. I thought that the presentations were really well done. It was a pretty solid process for the events that I went to. So it's good to see that at least one of those have gone through the community. Obviously the vote went very well, but those were good meetings. I thought they were very well informed and worthwhile of attending. Thank you. Council Member Golder. What Donna said, because I went to some of the school board meetings and saw how it was presented. And it was like the demographers presented different, you know, ideas. And then there was a community input and it was a great process. So I think it's talking to them about how they structured it might be a good idea. Council members will turn it over to members of the public who would like to speak to us on this item. If you'd like to comment on this item, now's the time to call in, if you haven't called in already. This is item number five on our agenda, resolution declaring City of Santa Cruz's intention to transition from an at-large city election process to a district-based election process. If you'd like to comment on this item, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And when I allow you to speak, you will be given two minutes. So if anybody would like to speak to item number five on our agenda, please press star nine. Please call one of the numbers on your screen and press star nine to raise your hand. City council in public. My understanding is in 2018, the population of Santa Cruz was 64,725, and 64,725 persons. So I hope this isn't gonna be enacted upon, my understanding is until 2022. So I'm hoping the public has another chance to comment on this because it seems like it's creating more bureaucracy. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. This is your last chance to comment on item number five, a resolution declaring City of Santa Cruz's intention to transition from an at-large city council election process to a district-based election process. Please dial the number on your screen and press star nine on your phone once you've entered the room. If you'd like to comment on this item for the members of the public who wants to comment on this item, I just say that it's unfortunate that we're in this position because I think that for many residents of the city, there's not so much of a preference to move towards district-based elections. However, I hope that as we transition this process, that the community weighs in heavily on how we should do this. And as we move into district-based elections, we understand how the impact of this is having on our community as well in terms of who's able to be represented on council. I have one more question for Tony and then I will make a motion. Now with our charter, where normally this would be a vote of the people, where are we on solving that dilemma? Do we have to put it to the vote of the people? We don't. And what courts have held in dealing with other charter cities is that the provisions of the state law and particularly that the California Voting Rights Act essentially take precedence over conflicting language in a city charter. If you'll recall what we did with the school district they had already adopted by district elections. And I think they used them in the 2018 election process, but we hadn't repealed the provisions of the charter that specified that large elections until March of this year. So I would envision something along the same lines. If the council does ultimately adopt an ordinance implementing district elections then a proposed charter amendment would come along as a cleanup item after that. Okay, thank you. And they are ready for motion if you are okay. I'll move the resolution declaring the city of Santa Cruz intention to transition from an at large city council election process to a district based election process. You're muted, Justin. Justin, you're muted. I'm challenging the participants list, but I just see a hand up in the attendees section. So I'm not sure if there's somebody still trying to speak or if that's just from the past. I just wanna make sure everybody gets to public comment if they're interested. Why don't we turn it over to this member of the public. Thanks for pointing that out to comment on this before we take it to the vote. Can you hear me now? On this item. I'm sorry about that. I did try to call on the phone. My name is Candice Brown from East Morrissey and I just wanted to say that if you wanted participation, broader participation from the community in our community government, then especially for the X community, then it would be desirable to have materials in Spanish and also have transfers easily available and make it more accessible to that demographic. That would be a genuine step and it's not necessarily about district elections. Also district elections can be a variety of things in Santa Barbara. They have four districts. They have three at large from which one is selected as mayor. And so there are many different variations on this theme and I just wanted to mention that as a possibility also. Thank you for that. All right, thank you very much. Also for a vote on this item. We're taking a vote. Council member is Byers. Aye. Matthews. Aye. Brown. Aye. Boulder. Watkins. He didn't recognize him. Aye. What can I say on this? Vice Mayor Meyers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. Aye. Let me have it unanimously. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next item that was pulled from our consensus agenda is item number 15, the subject of which is the high one and nine intersection improvements. And so there are a couple of council members who had a question. I'll start with council members Meyers. I don't have one now. I'm okay. Council member is here. I'll start with council members Meyers. I know there were other council members. That's a lot of feedback. Yeah, Mayor, somebody's listening to the meeting and there's a delay. So that's going to cause an issue. Somebody's listening to the meeting and there's a delay. So that's going to cause an issue. All right, thank you. Yeah, I do have some questions on this item. I know that we're pretty far down the road with the intersection changes. And so I, but things are, given the changed landscape at the moment, I just feel like there's some questions that I want to make sure we get clear before moving forward. The first is last year when this came before the council on another action, we directed that this intersection improvement plan go to the Transportation and Public Works Commission for review. And in particular, I was interested in looking at bike safety and potential recommendations to make that a safer intersection for bicyclists and pedestrians. And so I'm just wondering what happened with that. I didn't see that it occurred. So that's my first question. And then I have, most of my other questions are related to the funding because we are in a pretty changed environment here. So I'm wondering kind of how much has been spent so far. I see kind of adding up from the resolution and the series of actions that have been taken since 2004. It looks like for the consultant here, about a million dollars a little bit under prior to this action today. And, but I know we've incurred other costs. And so if you just have a ballpark how much we've spent to make this move forward. And then the CTC, the agenda report suggests that the CTC will fund this project. And construction is somewhere in the $5 million range. So I'm wondering, is that money already like allocated and it's sitting somewhere and just getting approval is what we need to actually receive the funds to make this happen? I just, it's like kind of continuing to go down this road without knowing if we can actually get it done in the near future or kind of move along the timeline that we had kind of anticipated. I'm just wondering about those kinds of changes or potential changes.  And I know that we do have funding through our traffic impact fee fund for this project. But I'm wondering is, are we looking at encumbering that money from the future traffic impact fees for this project? What does that mean for the potential to get other projects funded through that fund? And finally, sorry, it's a long list and I just kind of put them together. So I'm sorry, I didn't get these two sooner. The last one is, is there any potential that the city could request measured D highway project funding to perhaps offset some of that cost that the city will incur that's not coming from other sources? And that's it. Thanks. Mayor, council members, Chris Schneider, assistant director of public works. So the five questions, council member Brown that I heard was the public works transportation public works commission. So the project was presented at an open workshop on public works projects and programs. And so it was presented to the public relating to some of the design of the project and the bike lanes that were included with the project as well as pedestrian improvements. And as part of that process over the last year or two now, green lanes have been added and there's a bike lane southbound on highway nine and there's a shoulder northbound on highway nine which is considered the bikeway there. The cost to date is approximately three million and that's been for the design and the right-of-way. And there will be other costs associated with that. The CTC is, the city was awarded five point over five million in grant funding for the project. So that money is set aside, but we have to go and Caltrans is our partner in this and they're going to schedule it for the California Transportation Commission for the required vote for the funding and to move the project forward. We're in a really tight timeline in that the grant funding expires in the fall. We've done all of our extensions up to this point. So this matter before the council is very timely. The traffic impact fee program pays for a number of intersections within the city of Santa Cruz for improvements. Some of the intersections that have been funded already are the two roundabouts in the beach area and a number of other projects. This is one of the biggest projects that's funded through the TIF program. There's also been some redevelopment agency funding early on in the project and the TIF has an adequate balance to fund the project. It's been funding as it goes and we'll have enough money plus some for paying the local match to the grant. The TIF program also 15% is of the TIF program pays for bike and pedestrian projects that are separate from the intersection improvements that we do that also include typically bike and pedestrian improvements and another 5% that goes to neighborhood improvements next to adjacent to a, shoot I forgot the word for it, but important development project. And the fifth question, I can't read my note. What was that? Yeah, that was about the possibility for additional measures to be funds if we could apply for the highway portion of that distribution. Right, I believe the commission is fully committed the measure defunding to highway one improvements towards Watsonville. However, it wouldn't hurt to ask, but I don't think that it'd be likely that they would allocate any money to this project. That's kind of what I was getting at because being on the RTC, I know that we have budgeted for measure D highway funds, but I just thought, maybe we could put that in the mix as well. Thanks. Chris, I don't think I got the answer to the commission. Do we have, or is there before us a recommendation from the Transportation Public Works Commission? No, we held it, we had a meeting, but the meeting was a public workshop where different projects were presented and that time the commission was part of that meeting and where the project was represented there. So they didn't want to weigh in on this huge project with the recommendation offered? They have in the past. However, the last several years, the item has been going to the city council directly because there's a variety of issues. The design had already been decided a long time ago, so it's mostly been the right-of-way acquisition and things like that and permitting that we can take into the city council the details of the project. I just kind of stunned one of our big commissions that we use for a lot of stuff just didn't have a warm right place. The commission wanted to have it at the workshop so that it could be presented to the public in a different format than the formal meeting. Sure, that would be a different format. We just, I think only yesterday, maybe I got this morning a really detailed letter from Rick Hyman on all the bicycles. I hope you've got a copy, can you? I mean, there was a lot in there and I think step by step, I hope you got it. There are about four items and they, and as I told Rick, we would discuss it with Caltrans. The majority of the items are on the State Highway and require Caltrans to approve before it can be included in the project, but we'll be forwarding that to them at our next meeting. Because he's a real kind of note what he's talking about, I think. Yeah, he always does that, absolutely. I want to go back to the CTC. So by the way, do we have a lobbyist in Sacramento? I don't know, do we? We're lobbying for this money? Well, these were part of grant applications. Okay. For Caltrans. Nevertheless, to go before the CTC, so there's a big grant sitting there and they vote on it, I take it. Is it scheduled for a vote? Well, it is not yet scheduled, but Caltrans is the one that schedules the meeting with the CTC and it won't be a city moving the project for the Caltrans since it's there. They're responsible for this election. I don't know if their meeting as often as ever. I've just had a lot of experience with that going before them for that final vote. Do we have any idea when it's gonna be? I believe it'll be in August. And that's the final approval, the up or down? Yeah. Yes. But I think most of my answers have been covered. So for the sake of time, if there's no other questions from council members, we'll open it up to public comment. So if there are members of the public who are listening or who are watching, this is now the time to call in. There should be a series of phone numbers that you can call that are on your screen. If the first one doesn't work or is busy, I encourage you to try another one until you get through. For those people who have already called in, please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. And when it's your time to speak, you'll hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the time will be set to two minutes. And I'd also like to ask that Rick Longinati, if you're watching or listening, we did approve you for additional time. So please let us know, announce yourself when you have been unmuted and we will give you the additional time. And with that, I'm gonna open up the lines to the first number of public. All right, you're on the line. Good afternoon, this is Brett Garrett. This project will bring more cars, more pollution, more carbon emissions. The city has declared a climate emergency, so it's a bad time to expand highways. The city has a serious budget shortfall, so it's a bad time to expand highways. The city is investing in transportation demand management and this highway construction will do the exact opposite. Construction costs will go up dramatically as a result of COVID-19. So again, it's a bad time to be expanding highways. I know you've received at least 60 letters asking you to drop this project. So please drop this project or at least put it on hold. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Hi, it's Rick Longinati from the campaign for sustainable transportation. And I have a PowerPoint that Bonnie's gonna put up and let me know when you've got it up, Bonnie, because community television's about 30 seconds behind, so I'm not watching the screen. Rick, so she just put it on. Yeah, what I wanna talk about is we have these aspirations. We have these goals of Vision Zero, Health and All, policies, climate action plan, and they represent really the aspirations of our community, really heartfelt aspirations that all of us care about. And so the opportunity today to decline, to proceed with this project, is the opportunity to close the gap so that we actually get to these goals. Next slide, please. And Action Plan had this goal that we reduced within Count Town car trips. I don't think anybody thinks that we actually did that from 2012 to 2020. And in order to get to that goal, we really need to put our investments where our aspirations are. Next slide, please. So this is a slide on Safe Streets. Hopefully that you're seeing what I'm seeing. Santa Cruz is number one in cities similar size in California in injuries and deaths to bicyclists and are averaging number 11 in injuries and deaths to pedestrians. And so this is what I mean about the gap. We're not on a trajectory to do better than this. And we have this River Street project which is great. It's one of the Water Street, I should say. It's one of the best things that I've seen in a long time makes me smile, but we're not getting out of that number one position unless we reorganize our priorities. Next slide, please. Aside from, you know, even if the issues of climate change and safety were not even around, we would have the issue of does this project make sense just from a cost effectiveness? Is it soft traffic congestion? And as we know from the research, you can't alleviate congestion by expanding highways. It just doesn't work other than just in the short run. Next slide. So the CalTrans did an environmental review of this project and they found that the vehicle miles traveled would increase by 10% compared to not building the project. So in 2030, if you didn't build a project, you would have less vehicles on the road than if you built the project. And of course the greenhouse gas emissions would go up. Next slide. So there's a shift in California, I hope that we can echo that shift here in our city. Sequa no longer considers traffic delay a significant impact. So in the IRs going forward, we're not gonna have a mandate to widen the intersections. Next slide, please. So hopefully you're seeing a photo of streets with 60 people and the amount of space that it takes to transport 60 people. This is what our general plan is talking about. What it says, traffic engineering in past decades generally focused on improving vehicle mobility by extending roadway capacity too often without consideration for increasing person trip mobility. We're in the middle of a transformation. And our city needs to catch up with what's written here in the general plan. Next slide. It says we should accept a lower level of service and higher congestion at major regional intersections if necessary improvements would be prohibitively costy and or result in significant unacceptable environmental impacts, which I would submit that this project does. It's one of the most costly projects we've got. It drains our traffic impact fee and it has a 10% increase in greenhouse gases. Next slide. We'll skip the trend. Sierra Club, I think we have a caller from Sierra Club. Next slide. So we do have alternatives. We have ways to reduce vehicle trips. We are seeing that downtown. There's more we can do downtown. We could do that city-wide. We could do that UCSC. We're making progress or safe streets for bikes and pedestrians. But as you know, we have so much more to go to get off that number one spot in deaths and injuries. So that's about one minute. Okay. It's not a safe project. The commission never considered this project. They never said send it to an open house. They didn't have the possibility of even having it on their agenda. The council really needs to, at today, to send it back to the Transportation Commission for their input. Thank you very much. Yep. Well, you have two minutes. All right. Thanks very much. Thank you for everything you're doing and good afternoon. My name is Bob Morgan and I'm calling representing the Sierra Club. I'm the chair of the transportation committee in the Sierra Club Santa Cruz. I have two statements to read. They're both brief sentences. We advocate the policies to implement charges for parking and highway access, ingestion pricing and transportation control measures rather than increasing road capacity for vehicles be considered before highway expansion. The first statement, the second statement reads, we ask all cities to promote alternative modes of transportation that prioritize white walking and bike over vehicles, building and supporting public transit, reducing and eventually eliminating parking. Those two statements come from the National Transportation Policy of the Sierra Club. Thank you very much for all of your work. Thank you. Are you up now? Yes. You're online. Okay. Good afternoon, council members. Michael St. representing Citizens Climate Lobby, Santa Cruz chapter. Our group is totally opposed to this one slash nine intersection five and any projects that increase greenhouse gas emissions in vehicle miles traveled. Also any project that will widen roads and highways causing induced travels should not be considered. And the funds from those car-centric projects be used for pedestrian safety, protected bike lanes, et cetera, throughout not only our city but our county. If this situation worked of widening and a lot of the widening has been done in California at Los Angeles would actually have no congestion. I have been an environmental advocate for four years now and the amount of projects harmful to the environment seems to drastically outweigh the environmentally sound choices. Some examples of these are Jeep dealerships, the bad ones down on Soquel Avenue and lieu of home housing. Possible 400 space garage between Lincoln and Locust, a library project which increases reduced demand. Ox lanes between Soquel and Freedom Boulevard a 29% increase in vehicle miles traveled. Sustainable Soquel project was shuttled in favor of a Nissan dealership. Capitola Mall is now considering a town square with over 3,000 parking spaces and another induced demand project. Kaiser Medical Center, 700 parking spaces induced demand for vehicles. Midpen project on Capitola Road and also suggested widening of Capitola Road to go along with that project, more induced demand for vehicles and your Highway 1-9 intersection inducing demand. Some of the good projects I'll throw in, protected bike lanes, which I see occasionally, rail trail is underway, free bus passes and the green paint on the pavement for bikes. Good projects, but they pale in comparison to the image that the mega projects will be due for our environment. This Highway 1-9 intersection. I'm gonna have to cut you off because that sound was in there two minutes, but thank you for calling in. Again, my name is Candace Brown from East Morrissey and also I joined the Transportation Public Works Commission in February and I can attest to that we have not had any official review of this project during that period and including our main meeting. Also, there was mention of the circle at 190 Westcliff. It wasn't clear that there was funding for that. So, and the comment was that he wasn't sure if that project would happen. So I think the traffic impact fees need to be reassessed relative to all these projects. We have so much information and we have so many decisions to make. We have to look at local versus regional impacts, different modes of transportation, both yesterday and tomorrow, and what will the economy look like in the next three to five years? What is now becoming into focus is a timeline of the vaccine for COVID-19 by the Pulitzer Prize winning and UCSC alumni graduate, Lori Garrett that says that the best case scenario for vaccine is three years best case scenario for a type of vaccine that has never been tested before, even on animals. So we are dealing with from this day forward with a new reality. We have to reassess decisions such as this that will spend all the traffic impact fees that will be moving forward. Otherwise, we cannot do anything for bike and public safety, pedestrian safety through the city, throughout the city, I should say, as people adjust to low cost transportation, what was true yesterday is not true today. As our leaders, you not only need to lead but you need to show courage, true courage. We are at a time that we need to reassess what we are doing with this money and if we make a mistake, we cannot make it up later. So we do need true courage in this at the moment. Thank you. Project is going to cost a lot of money and probably will not increase the traffic safety. There are better ways to increase traffic safety and they are the opposite of widening roads. They involve gradually narrowing roads so that human psychology gets people to go slower. We need the funds that would be spent for this safer bike and pedestrian venues and that could include Pacific Avenue and some other places who allow the businesses to flourish as they place, for example, cafe tables outside or clothing racks outside, taking advantage of good weather and social distancing. Save the money for better things, don't do this project. Thank you. If you have not had a chance to speak yet, please press point in time so that you can have your hand raised and then you can be called on. There are other members of the public who would like to speak on this item. Now it's time to call in. Please call one of the numbers on your screen and once you have entered the meeting, please press start on on your phone to raise your hand so that you can be called upon. Provide two minutes to speak. Sheila Carrillo, hello, everybody. What I wanted to say is, in light of our climate catastrophe, which is the crisis of all crises, we couldn't do anything less wise than facilitate the use of more cars through road widening or adding parking. I urge you to prioritize addressing the climate crisis and seek transportation alternatives for thinking, not backward thinking, just contribute to saving the future of our children. Thank you. Additional members of the public who would like to speak to us on this item, I thought there's one more. Yeah, good afternoon. This is James J. and Whitman again. I would just like to second the cautioning of spending these funds because it seems like what's gonna happen. So I appreciate at least the two other civic members that recommended cautioning these funds. Thank you. Do you have a council for action and deliberation? I want to appreciate those who called in. This is a project. I think the questions that council members had initially were answered. And this is a project that has been in the work for a very long time. And we are coming upon a critical decision point, a deadline. And so I'm going to join and move the recommendations before us, which includes approval of the plans and specs for the Highway 1-9 Intersection Improvement. Motions approve the construction management services request and there's additional language that goes with this. And motions approve an amendment to the contract with the engineers for additional work, incorporating the full language and the recommendations. We're motioned by council member Matthews. I saw the council member Byers hand was up. Did you have a question? Or were you gonna second the motion? Not seconding the motion and I will just have comments who are ready. Vice Mayor Myers, I saw your hand was up. Next. I will second the motion. The motion made by council member Matthews seconded by vice mayor Myers. And I'll bring it back to council member Byers for your comments on this item. Project has been going on for a long time. I think, I mean, way, way back. And I must say I paid a lot of attention to it all these years and it's never, ever been since to me. And even since that, now we have the emergency climate change that the council has determined it is an emergency. And here we are contributing an overwhelming amount of anti-climate change and good stuff happening. I don't, we talk about following the data all the time on the coronavirus. And for some reason we just don't pay enough to the data that has come out regarding this project. Accordingly it's gonna help 10% I think of the traffic by 2030 it's not even gonna matter. It's gonna be obsolete in that many years. We've seen that with the extended lanes on highway one. So it's a bad for our buck but more importantly is just bad for our environment and bad for our community who constantly is raising the issue of climate change. We have one letter about the pedestrian safety but if anyone ever parks they're waiting for the light to change. I wish we had stats on the number of accidents. How can we think that the accidents, some are minor but some barely get through but is overwhelming the unsafe conditions of all those lanes. So now we're gonna add lanes. I can't imagine how it could be safer not to mention. I know somebody even raised the issue all these trees are going to come down too.  We should be proud of and I hope we are proud of putting the tunnel for bicycles to tannery. But that's a way of doing it. We could have pedestrian and bicycle more tunnels and so people don't have to go to the current number of lanes which is so difficult. The general plan really did talk about reducing and lowering the level of worrying about congestion. This is a good example of that. And I know it's been in the works forever. There's always a grant out there and we're always running to catch the timing on that grant that happens all the time. And nobody wants to lose access to three to $5 million but sometimes you just say, whoa, we need to take this back. We need to re-look at the safety, want them to read, let the Transportation Commission really, they're our experts, I'm not an engineer. And no, no, commissions are not either but at least they delve into it. I delve into it because we got it on Thursday and didn't even know it was coming before that. So it was the timeline. And just the last thing, we're in a, we don't know what the future's gonna look like, absolutely nobody. All I see is more and more people are walking, more and more people on their bicycles. We may have a whole new look of how we go about our day to day. It just could be so different. And if we, this will scare people off for sure walking or bicycling but if we just delay it and just delay, sit back and watch our community changes or doesn't change or changes one way, we simply don't know. But I think at the minimum we should delay this project till we settle down and see what's going on and really take a much deeper look at the safety both for bicycles and pedestrians. I will be voting no by the way. Thank you. Council member Brown. Yes. Well, I won't repeat the comments that council member buyers made but I really wholeheartedly agree. I have been supportive of moving this project forward during my time on the council and at the RTC. I am, and so I don't wanna appear to be just completely changing course but I do think that the changed environment really warrants us stopping and taking a look at what we're doing here. We are in a fiscal emergency. We have clearly a climate emergency and I recognize that these funds are kind of, much of it would be extra funding and these pots of funding are not fungible and so it could lead to a loss in potential funding but I'm not really ready to continue to move forward at this time and in particular I'm gonna just highlight my concerns that the Transportation and Public Works Commission did not review this. I supported this moving forward the last time we voted with the understanding that that would happen and it hasn't and it could have because we've had lots of time between that vote and today and so coming up against this timeline, it is unfortunate but I think it's unfortunate that we didn't have that commission review as directed so I will not be supporting the motion today. Thank you. I understand the comments that were made in terms of hesitation and I too have seen this project evolve over the years and also somebody who patrons that intersection on a regular basis I have to say that it's definitely due for improvements for safety. I under general circumstances I pretty much drive there to work or patron the area on a regular basis and it's definitely overdue I'd say. I just wanted to get clarity if I may. My understanding was that the commission did review it but they decided to do it in a different way and I'm wondering if maybe Chris is on to clarify that for us. Oh, thank you. That's correct. The commission decided to have it at a workshop so they felt like they could get more input from the public in a more informal setting and that's why I took that. They didn't ask to reschedule it at another meeting after that. Okay, okay, thank you. And that's it, thank you. Maybe you could just highlight how community members were able to weigh in on this project there and what was the sense that people were getting what the commission got from having this in an alternative way. No, it was a little while ago. I don't remember the exact, all the exact details but I think generally people were supportive that the bike lanes had been added and were supportive of the design. The project has been through the public process a number of times through environmental review and the design and every time we're taking kind of action on it, essentially today is administrative actions to move the project forward. If the city doesn't take this action then essentially we're at risk of not doing the project and losing the $5 million in grant funding, not only to the project but to the region, it would go back to the state and they would use it elsewhere. So it's not just a question of losing the money for the project but it's losing the money locally. Great, thank you. Vice Mayor Myers. Chris, I've been taking notes that I might have missed. When was the public workshop held that was requested? Oh, I don't recall exactly, I don't recall the date. It was about a year ago, a little bit more. I can provide that information later. Okay, thank you. I mean, that was a significant meeting. I'm not surprised you don't need to remember the date but you think it was over a year ago, a year and a half ago, two years? Did they have pictures of the, I mean, a lot of information. Did they have what we're seeing in terms of the design? Yes, definitely. Okay, good. We had boards with all the design, the number of lanes, lane widths, all the information, cross section. Thanks, Chris. David, I want to thank first the public for calling and weighing in on this. I know that this has come before us on a number of occasions and we moved to get to this point at 19. There's concerns on both sides that need to be taken into consideration. I know that for one, many people now are really concerned with gathering in groups and being in situations where they are in close confinement spaces with other individuals, which really makes us have to wonder about how that's gonna impact massive transit, right? Are we gonna be able, are people gonna want to get on buses and trains? And so I think we need to continue to explore those options as we move forward and hopefully we'll have a vaccine to be able to invest in that. But there is, it's uncertain whether we'll see a trend in people wanting to drive more electric vehicles and the capacity for that. And so I think as we move forward, we need to continue to understand how we can make our city more environmentally friendly while also meeting the needs of growing populations and people who need to get around in a way that's efficient and safe. So those are the comments that I'll make on this and if there's no further questions or comments, we can go ahead and take a look all the way. So the motion before us is, and the approval recommendation that's been outlined by the staff, the motion was made by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Vice Mayor Myers. And so I'll turn it over to the clerk to call the vote. Mayor, Council Member Byers. No. Matthews. I'm gonna vote no, but I also just wanna comment that I just found the direction that we gave was last June 23rd at our meeting in 2019. So if the decision to hold a public workshop was after that, then okay, but that's not my understanding. So I'll be voting no, thanks. Boulder, Watkins, Vice Mayor Myers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. So I'm gonna vote no just because I feel like it's the Council Member's fire. The next item on our agenda, June 9th, 2020. And so the next item on our agenda is item number 22, amending the Santa Cruz Municipal Code related to election campaign expenditure and contribution limits. So I'll turn that over to Bonnie Bush, City Clerk, to provide that presentation. Thank you Mayor, Council Members. As you all know, we have a contribution and expenditure limit ordinance in the City of Santa Cruz and the last election cycle, I noticed it was really out of date and some of the dollar amounts needed to be updated. So it's really a housekeeping update to the current ordinance. Member of the public, would like to comment on item number 22, please call in at this time, Cooperation Council Member Matthews. Yes, this is really administrative housekeeping. I want to thank Bonnie for catching that it needed to be updated. So if there are no questions for others, I'll go ahead and move the motion before us. Okay, we'll motion by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Council Member Watkins at your hands raised. Yep, second motion. Okay, so we'll motion by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Council Member Watkins. There's no further discussion on this item. Then we can move to a roll call vote. Council Member is Byers. Aye. Matthews. Aye. Brown. Aye. Boulder. Watkins. Vice Mayor Meyers. Aye. And Mayor Cummings. That's unanimously. Next item of general business is item number 20, Parking and Business Improvement Area Assessments for Fiscal Year 2021. For members of the Public Works Strictions Meeting, if this is an item you want to comment on, now it's the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff for the council members who brought the item forward, followed by questions from the council. We then take public comment and return to the council for action deliberation. And so today, our presenters on this item are Bonnie Bush, Director of Economic Development and Avery Allen, Downtown Association, Interim Executive Director. Good afternoon, Mayor. I'm Bonnie Lipscomb, Director of Economic Development and I will just introduce the item and then turn it over to Avery. We are the fiscal agent for the Downtown Association, but the work conducted by the Downtown Association for this Business Improvement District is conducted by the Downtown Association and they prepare the annual report. So I'll briefly just say that this is an annual assessment, we've been the fiscal agent for the Downtown Association for many years. This is the annual approval of the assessment. The one difference this year is that there is a larger effort to consolidate the two assessments we have. So both of our regular assessments are on the agenda today. The Business Improvement District, which is this item and then the next item, item 24, which is the Downtown Management Corporation, which is a property-based improvement district. So we'll take both items. The larger project-based improvement district that's being considered right now will come before you potentially on June 9th. We're in the process of meeting with property owners right now and can answer any questions when we get to that item as well. But with that said, I'll turn it over to Avery Allen who can sort of continue the introduction to this item and then we're both available to answer any questions that you have. Great, thank you, Bonnie. Hello, council members. I wanna do a quick sound check. Can everybody hear me okay? Great, I actually have some incredibly loud neighbors. So if you start hearing a dog barking and children screaming in a pool, then flag me and I'll throw on some headsets and we can just roll from there. I did wanna briefly just introduce one of my colleagues who will also be speaking as a presenter on this agenda. I'm Sonya Bruner who you will see on this Zoom call as well. She's our operations director as well as coordinate our membership. She'll be speaking as well. As Bonnie said, I'm Avery Allen. I'm the interim executive director for the downtown association of Santa Cruz. And I'm here just to give you a little bit of background and some more context when looking at our annual work plan and budget that we submitted to the agenda today. For those of you that don't know, the downtown association is funded through an assessment of businesses within the downtown district boundaries. And that is a assessment in its current format that was created back in the 90s. The purview of the downtown association, there's multiple pieces to it and it evolves and changes. But most of it is working as advocates for our downtown businesses. And I would say that that's a piece that we're really strong at. We have very close relationships with most of our downtown businesses. We work within marketing for downtown as well. And then we also provide a lot of event support downtown, whether it be through events that we present ourselves like the downtown holiday parade or Santa or the wine walks that you see happening or working in partnership with other independent producers that are producing events downtown that we can support, whether it be Santa Cruz Dance Week or the Cabrera Contemporary Music Festival. Another piece of what we do is also clean space and welcoming services. And that piece of what we do has evolved and changed quite a bit over the years. We currently are contracted with through the Downtown Management Corporation to offer ambassador services. And we have our downtown chaos as well. It has been downtown for many years. This has been quite a big year for the downtown association, a lot of changes. Back in July, my predecessor Chip who was with the organization for over a decade stepped down and relocated to Boulder, Colorado. And I stepped in for a year long contract that was based on Chip's recommendations to pursue a strategic plan for downtown Santa Cruz, which the board approved and we move forward and we were able to partner with economic development on that strategic plan and hire an outside firm to oversee that outreach. And I have to say beyond the benefits of that strategic plan, partnering with economic development and Bonnie Lipskin and her team has been really invaluable in deepening the relationship and the partnership between our two entities so that we're able to offer better support to businesses downtown. So that's been great. Through that strategic plan, we did some pretty widespread outreach working with this firm, Progressive Urban Management Associates. Many of you are probably familiar or have seen that acronym at some point in the last year. We did a lot of work with downtown stakeholders. We met in focus groups. We met in round table discussions. And then we also offered an online survey to our community and received 3,000 responses with input around what people saw as where the need was downtown. And that work led to recommendations to form a PBID or a property-based improvement district. You will hear a lot more about that potentially as time goes on. So I will not speak a lot more on that topic beyond to say that through all the research that we have done across the country and certainly within the state of California, the PBID is absolutely our best way to move forward in streamlining our efforts around maintenance and management of downtown Santa Cruz. And whether it's something that we're able to move forward through now or we're able to move it forward potentially next year, it's something that is again, absolutely crucial. So I just can't reiterate that enough for moving forward. So through that outreach to the community and the strategic plan what you would see reflected in the PBID budget is a really significantly increased, clean, safe and welcoming budget. And a lot of that would look like a massive expansion of an ambassador program most likely contracted out to an outfit entity that does that kind of work in communities across the country. But on that note, I thought that it would be really important to hear a little bit more about the current ambassador program as well as the kiosk program that really does serve as that clean, safe and welcoming program currently. So I'm gonna pass it over to Sonia Brunner for just a quick moment to talk about those two programs. Thank you, Abrahach, can everyone hear me okay? Okay, Sonia Brunner, Operations Director with the Downtown Association. And my role is I oversee the programs, the information program and the downtown ambassador program which we currently manage in-house. And thank you, Bonnie, for bringing up the slides and we'll just talk through quickly. And I thought some pictures really would connect it for everybody to show the value and understand how wonderful both of these programs have been in our downtown community So starting with the ambassador program next slide, it started as a partnership of the City of Santa Cruz Downtown Association and the Downtown Management Corporation. It launched next slide in October 1st of 2018 and the map is showing the district of where the ambassadors patrol and that would be Pacific Avenue from Laurel to Water Street and the side street. The downtown ambassadors is to be the best part of people's day in downtown Santa Cruz. Next slide. They proactively look for visitors who might be needing assistance, proactively communicate with and update downtown business staff, identify and resolve vandalism, graffiti, waste, debris, cleanliness issues, they liaison with any relevant city staff and other downtown partners including rangers, police, public works, outreach workers, downtown streets team and really strive to track recurring issues and work helping to manage the downtown space and the landscape and anything that's happening, continually looking for ways to improve each block. Next slide. Things like replacing the doggie poop bags and the pet waste dispensers along Pacific Avenue and just following the best practices of downtown management organizations, being friendly faces with a smile and outreaching to anybody downtown that has questions needs help and just being welcoming and friendly and a support. Next slide. So manage the downtown app C Quick Fix. As you can see, there are a variety of shortcuts to access which has been very handy for a lot of businesses as w