start their cameras and microphone check. We are ready. Thank you. Okay good afternoon and welcome to the 12 30 p.m. public portion of the closed session of the May 10th 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. If you would like to comment on a closed session item now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. In this part of the meeting the council will receive public testimony. Thereafter the public line will be closed and inaccessible. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone and please note there is a delay in streaming so if you continue to listen on your television or your streaming device you may miss your opportunity to speak. I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Thank you Mayor, Councilmember Calentari-Johnson. Present. Golder. Present. Cummings. Here. Brown. Here. Myers. Present. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. Mayor Brunner. Present. Thank you. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to any items listed on the closed session agenda? If you're attending virtually please raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or select the raise hand feature on the webinar controls of your computer. If you are in person you can line up to the right of the dais and sign in at the front there. When it's your turn to speak you will hear an announcement you have been unmuted. The timer will then be set to three minutes and you may hang up once you have commented on your item of interest. Let me go out to our virtual attendees in this hybrid format here. Okay we have I'm not seeing any hands raised in our virtual attendee list. Are there any members of the public here in person that would like to speak to any closed session items? Okay. Seeing none this meeting is adjourned and Council will now go into its closed session. Thank you. Okay good afternoon. Welcome to our 2 p.m. session of the May 10th 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Thank you mayor. Council member is Calentary Johnson. Present. Boulder. Currently absent. Cummings. Here. Brown. Currently absent. Myers. Vice mayor Watkins. Gary. Is that my name? Yeah. Mayor Brunner. Present. Thank you. We will begin today's agenda with presentations and our first agenda item is a mayoral proclamation declaring May 15th through May 21st as national public works week. I'd like to invite our public work staff to come to the podium please. May welcome. Can you introduce yourselves? Yes I'm Nathan Nguyen, assistant director of city engineer for the city of Santa Cruz and up here I have with me APA APWA board member Phillip Edwards. Welcome Nathan and Phil. I'll stand up. This is always an annual tradition for the city and there's also currently a tour of construction sites that one can sign up for. There's information on the city of Santa Cruz website. Let's see if everyone can see me okay as I stand up. All right here we go. Whereas public work staff keeps the city of Santa Cruz strong by providing an infrastructure of services and engineering design and construction supervision, traffic engineering and maintenance, infrastructure and fleet operations, resource recovery operations, wastewater system operations, flood control, stormwater management, environmental compliance and parking management. Whereas the focus on infrastructure facilities and services is of vital importance to sustainable and resilient communities and to the public health, quality of life and well-being of the people of the city of Santa Cruz. And whereas these services could not be provided without the dedicated efforts of the city of Santa Cruz Public Works team who provide essential services and thus continue to work hard each and every day to keep our community functioning. And whereas the city of Santa Cruz public work staff are always ready to serve and are resilient in completing their work even when encountering additional challenges created by the impacts of the pandemic. And whereas the city of Santa Cruz Public Works Department continues to be recognized as a regional leader in innovative and forward-thinking services and projects that include energy efficiency and sustainability, active transportation, infrastructure, wastewater treatment, water reuse, waste reduction and environmental compliance. And whereas it is in the public interest for the citizens, civic leaders and children in the city of Santa Cruz to gain knowledge of and maintain a progressive interest and understanding of the importance of public works and public works programs. And whereas the year 2022 marks the 62nd annual National Public Works Week sponsored by the American Public Works Association and this year themed Ready and Resilient honoring the professionals who perform regular public works duties and are ready at a moment's notice to react as first responders during national disasters and overcome trials seen in the field. Now therefore I, Sonia Brunner, the mayor of the city of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim the week of May 15th through 21st 2022 as National Public Works Week in the city of Santa Cruz and I urge all citizens to join me in celebrating our public works superheroes and recognizing their substantial contributions in protecting our health, safety and quality of life that helped to make the city of Santa Cruz such a great place in which to live and work. Thank you very much. Thank you. Did you want to add anything regarding construction site tours? Yes, please. Thank you mayor and council members and thank you public for recognizing public works and all that we do so we really do appreciate that. Next week we do have some construction tours that are happening next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so up on the screen right there. Next Tuesday on West Cliff Drive we have a storm repair project tour so please come out and the following Wednesday there we have highway 1-9 project and on Thursday we have the Treviton storm-grade project so we welcome the community and the public and all council members to please come join. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next on our agenda is an update on the downtown library affordable housing project and I'd like to welcome director of economic development Bonnie Lipscomb. Thank you mayor and good afternoon members of the city council. I have with me today Abe Jason with Jason architecture and I'm going to turn it over to Abe in just a second to kick off the presentation and then he'll turn it back to me briefly to talk about the sources and uses specifically for the library budget and sort of component of the project. But Abe's going to kick it off and he's going to give you an updated overview of the recent community outreach meeting on the schematic design phase and and just sort of an overview of a summary of that presentation and then some of the survey feedback that we received from that as well. And with that I will turn it over to Abe. Mayor vice mayor council members it's great to see each of you again. Thank you for having us here. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and get this presentation queued up. So it's great to be here again with me here tonight or this could be this afternoon is Katie Stewart project manager for Jason architecture. Yolande Wilburn is the library director and then Bonnie Lipscomb will be participating in the presentation we just heard from. We have three components of the presentation. We're going to present to you the schematic design update. The community feedback we received on that schematic design and then Bonnie and I will update you on budget and schedule. This is a summary version of the presentation we gave to the community recently. So if you are looking for more information that presentation is on the city's website both the slide deck as well as the recording. So diving into the schematic design I'm going to first orient everyone via the birds eye view the site plan. You can see here the project site which you're all familiar with bordered by Cathcart Lincoln and cedar streets. I'm not going to go into a deep dive on each of these items but I'll point out a couple key things. Number one off cedar street that's the primary entry into the library and the library is primarily fronted on cedar street. Number five off off Cathcart is the automobile entry to the parking garage. Number eight is the solar panels that power this zero net energy library. Number nine is the large living roof on the on the top of the library and number six is the library patio and roof deck. Now we're going to go down to the first floor. The two primary entries to the building number one off off cedar street and then number three off the parking garage bringing you into the lobby. The lobby is indicated in orange and has adjacencies to the restrooms the main stair the elevator self-check the information desk and other kind of primary access uses. In blue you can see the public meeting space the large room on the right is the large community meeting room which will be available for public use after hours. The medium-sized room on the left is the multi-purpose room so this is a room that can be used for storytime events art classes and other types of activities. In yellow is the children's area the children's area has a prominent location on the quarter of Lincoln and cedar street and ample daylight because of that corner location and in green is the staff area which also has access to a nice large window off cedar street. Moving upstairs you can see the kind of large opening between the floors that brings daylight down to the ground level on the lobby that's number two and then the main stair between the floors that's number one. This level is primarily the adult collections and lounge areas the fiction and non-fiction and other types of collections. I'll point out a couple things in particular in blue you can see the small group study rooms immediately off the main stair in yellow is the teen area which is a dedicated area surrounded by a glass wall and then we also have the life literacies which is number nine that's an area for lifelong learning and a variety of programming activities and then number 12 on the right is the local history and genealogy collection that's a dedicated room surrounded by a glass wall and that's a really wonderful unique collection that the library has. Moving up to the top level the number 13 is the stair that takes you up to the mezzanine. So now up at the mezzanine level what you can see here is the kind of adult collection and lounge seating in orange that's the mezzanine level. This mezzanine looks out over number four which is an opening to the grand reading room below and it also looks out across the living roof which is number 10 so it's actually the same at the same height as the living roof and then has immediate access to the outdoor roof deck and patio which is indicated in orange. A couple other little fun features on this level we are thinking that there would be an area for local art a gallery space that's number five and then the library has had a piano donated to it they have a program called a munching with Mozart that would continue worth noting that piano will be locked so kids can't get up there and bang on it at any time. So kind of zooming out to speak about the sustainability goals for this project. The the city has set some really wonderful sustainability targets. First the project will be all electric so there will be no natural gas or fossil fuel type energy going to this project. Second it will be powered by solar energy on the roof of the library and the affordable housing and those two combined will allow it to be a zero net energy library that means the library will produce the same amount of energy it consumes over the course of a year. It will also have a large living roof a green roof and that's a wonderful feature that serves several functions it helps mitigate stormwater flow it really improves and reduces the urban heat island effect from kind of surface paving and kind of other roots and then also it's an opportunity for a kind of massive native habitat in downtown Santa Cruz. Lastly there is ample daylight through the building through large windows that front on the street and this kind of ample daylighting will really reduce the dependence on artificial light during the daytime which is a major contributor to the energy use of a building. In terms of the design approach to this project as you remember we have taken inspiration from the natural beauty of Santa Cruz. In particular the cliffs of west cliff and wilder ranch and the geological striations of these cliffs that are topped by greenery and plants kind of spilling over the edge. We've also taken inspiration from the textural qualities of the ocean. We have a very simple material palette three materials wood and in this case we're looking at pre-weathering the wood so it has a driftwood like quality and then applying it in different textural applications. Glass and we're thinking about glass you know with a textural quality as well taking inspiration from those images of the surface of the ocean and then you wouldn't typically think of it as material but in this case planting is actually one of the materials of this building because we have such a significant living roof that it actually becomes a part of the aesthetic and the facade of the building. Our first view is from Cedar and Lincoln and what you can see here is how the project really kind of steps gracefully up from the pedestrian level as it moves back towards the affordable housing beyond. There's a nice kind of tearing effect that gives it a quality of human scale. At the ground level we have wood siding and wood shading that that goes over some of the windows and that gives it this really kind of warm natural quality and then the second floor has the grand reading room kind of looking out over the street. We love the idea of the living roof grasses blowing in the wind on a breezy afternoon. Moving around to Cedar and Cathcart, you can see here a couple things. One we have a dedicated staff entry so staff is able to access the building before and after the public is open. Also a nice large window for the staff area and ample greenery down at the street level. You can also see how the kind of angles of the building play off the daylight and how the sense of the sun moving around the site will create these kind of wonderful plays of light and shadow on the textures and materiality. You can also see us adding texture and character to that glass through the ceramic frit pattern that we have on the surface and once again you can see how as you move closer to the building the scale really steps down and you know the affordable housing is is visible beyond but it has a quiet presence in the background. Looking across the street from Cedar you can see a couple things here. In particular a large prominent sign drawing your eye and interest to the main entry of the building. We're envisioning this in maybe a bronze or a copper material with a green and rough textural patina to it so something kind of artistic and really be fitting kind of the character of Santa Cruz. You also can see the kind of textural almost kind of filigree like quality of that ceramic frit on the glass above and then these sort of peaks of curiosity to draw you into the building. The main stair beyond some graphic elements inside the main lobby. Stepping in the front door you can see the impact immediately of that opening between floors and that claristory above. The fact that your eye immediately goes up. It really has a civic scale. There's also easy visual orientation within this main lobby space. The information desk, the elevator, clear access to the garage beyond as well as understanding about how to get to the upper level. There's new books this could be a new books collection popular titles potentially staff picks and you know sort of again clear visual orientation about how you navigate the space. For the children's area we have taken inspiration from the idea of a fallen coast redwood within the forest and the idea that this this hollowed out tree is occupied by gnomes and fairies and maybe some small children. And so we've created an element in the children's area that kind of mimics that a little bit. The idea of the tree canopy above with these acoustic light fixtures that add some color and add some warmth but also add a little mystery to the space. And then within these kind of little fun little discovery zones as we're calling them sort of toadstool like seeding and then cutouts of native species in this case we're showing a bobcat a banana slug a fox and a coyote. Moving up to the second floor the grand reading room you can see kind of this wonderful scale the amount of daylight in this space and also the really clear visual orientation as you come to the top of the stairs the local history and genealogy room beyond the mezzanine straight ahead and the stair to the mezzanine a clear navigation directory. Working on libraries we know it's really important to have a variety of different types of spaces those big grand spaces as well as the more intimate ones. We like to have spaces for two to four people to gather have a conversation a small study group read a book but we also need individual spaces individual study carols that have some acoustic properties but are also supervisable by staff and have access to technology as you can see on the left here. Moving up to the mezzanine a couple really wonderful things about this view one you can see how the view down over the grand reading room below is this wonderful perch and then the idea that you are actually standing at the same level as the living room so you're looking out on a native meadow beyond. We love the idea of sitting in one of these chairs and watching a butterfly go by or a bee buzz along looking for a pollinator. Also note that we're looking at a reclaimed wood floor to give it something of a boardwalk feel up here something that feels a little rough and worn and well loved already so it's not too new and shiny it has a little bit of character to it. From the mezzanine you can walk outside to the roof deck and the roof deck patio has two distinct areas on the right you can see the shaded area and in this case we've got cafe lights strung up above and you can see how that can be a really wonderful place to host an event in the evening and then on the left we have the open area this is the spot for the sun bums out there who really like to soak in the rays and you can see that we have planters that are big enough to support some lush planting as well as some small trees and then this roof deck looks out over the living roof beyond into the Santa Cruz Mountains in the distance so this is just going to be a really wonderful place to hang out read a book socialize or maybe even host an event. So we we reached out to the community for feedback about a week or two ago. We asked four questions of the community in survey form. The first question number one was about the use and functionality of the building so how would you use it? The second one was about appearance design aesthetics how does it look does it does it kind of meet your image of a library? The third was about sustainability and the fourth was really an open-ended opportunity to receive feedback about questions that they still had for us. There were a couple key themes that came out of these survey responses. We heard that you know there's a lot of excitement about the diversity of use within the building but in particular there are two spaces that we repeatedly heard enthusiasm for and that was the study rooms and the roof deck. Regarding appearance we we did hear that there was appreciation for the abundance of daylight and the contemporary design and regarding sustainability although there were comments kind of about appreciation for many of the aspects of green design in particular zero net energy was the most cited target that people were inspired by and then lastly we got a variety of questions but the the two questions that we did see repeated were some variation of when does it open and how can I help so that was really inspiring to see that people took away a real enthusiasm and an excitement about the project. We also received some constructive feedback regarding specific design features in in particular we had some questions about afternoon glare it's a totally reasonable question the building faces west as any of you who have a west-facing window in your home know that you need to draw a shade or deal with that west-facing sun in the in the late afternoon so in this case we would have motorized shades that would run the entire length of all the windows and with the click of a button the shades could be dropped. We got questions about green roof maintenance that's another valid question when you have a large living roof and in this case this is not like a rose garden on a roof that needs lots of tending this is really more akin to an open meadow so it's a native and drought tolerant planting strategy that will need minimal maintenance and then lastly we did receive lots of comments and questions about collections they they varied widely but generally it expressed an interest in how kind of books will be displayed to the community and the types of books they can access and while we're not at a point in the process where we have a specific layout and specific information about that we are working actively with the library to create a collection that really best serves the public so with that we're going to transition to talk about budget and schedule Bonnie I'm going to hand it off to you for these this first slide here okay thanks Abe so just as a way of overview again and just putting this in context to some of our past updates the update that we're going to go into detail with you today on the budget and then Abe's going to go a little more into the latest cost estimate are based on schematic design so our earlier cost estimates were on conceptual design and then prior to that we're based on the renovation model versus a new model back in 2019 so those those cost estimates are dated and Abe's going to go into that in a little more detail I think what you see today and what I'm excited about is that where we are right now is the you know a 21st century library that from our perspective and the feedback that we've received from the community engagement thus far it really exceeds the expectations for what the majority of our community were expecting for a new design and a new library in the downtown so we're excited about that we're excited particularly also about some of the sustainability features of the project this delivers a sustainable resource that will serve our community for decades to come so we're really proud of the work that adjacent architecture has done to date and really feel like this is a library that time and time again during the feedback we heard we want something that people come to Santa Cruz and they go downtown and they go to the library as part of this like special special elements and trips that they go to Santa Cruz other than just the beach you know and some of the iconic things that were known for in our community so this this is where we are today the schematic design we still will have one more cost estimate actually we'll probably have several but we'll have another one in the design development phase so this will continue to be to evolve as we go forward but I will say that the estimate we have today is the most realistic estimate so thus far and just to clarify what's different from the earlier estimates and the one that we provided which was just a very basic overview of sources and uses last December this estimate today does include the full cost of delivering the library portion of the project the soft costs which are typically roughly 30 to 35 percent of the budget are included as well as the project contingency as well as the furniture furniture and equipment fixtures furniture and equipment which I had not included in the previous update was which was based largely just on construction aspect of the library um overall the schematic design of the library has involved and is now approximately 3000 square feet larger than the conceptual design so as Abe mentioned earlier it's now roughly 38 000 square feet while this does come at an additional overall um additional overall cost we are recommending at this time keeping the larger building in the project as we mean forward and we move forward on securing additional funding sources for the project as I mentioned estimates on costs and sources are still evolving they'll continue to be further refined as we go forward it is easier to secure funding overall both on the library side of the project and on the project and particularly is true for the housing component of the project when the project gets closer to being entitled what is considered shovel ready many the grant opportunities we need to have the project entitled have our permits in order to apply for many of our funding sources so this is a snapshot in time and we will be working with the overall project team to continue to find these numbers as we go forward okay so jump an end to the project sources and uses on the I'm going to go through the left hand side first our first source is the measure s funding and I specifically want to note we originally had 27 million earmarked for the downtown branch we did go to council earlier and allocate 1.5 million to the completion of the Garfield and Branson 40 branches those projects are still in sort of the wrap-up phase of their budget we are anticipating and with the most recent update having at least 500,000 that is likely to return to this project budget I'm not showing that at this point because I want to make sure that's all wrapped up but our construction manager for the overall project is is making that estimate at this time it's actually a little bit larger than that so I'm anticipating we'll probably have closer to 26 million of measure s funding the second funding source that we are anticipating at this time is the building for a California state library grant as you all aware and we've reported and passed updates to council we did submit and we had a really quick turnaround of basically a month from when they issued that opened the application and when the project that actual application had to be submitted but we did submit for a full ask of 10 million dollars for the project we expect to hear later this spring or early summer on this we do believe based on feedback that we are a really good fit for this grant and that our application is very competitive we're also anticipating roughly a two million dollar funding source contribution from fundraising efforts of the friends of the Santa Cruz public library this is primarily for the fixtures furniture and equipment and this is something that has been an ongoing sort of placeholder in the budget so that gets us to roughly 37,500,000 or 38 million if you include the additional 500 and measure s funding so we do have a gap we have a gap of anywhere from roughly between two and two and a half million based on our current sources that we're identifying for the library portion we also have a few alternates we've looked at the budget and there are two elements of the project that could be added we want to add them right at the beginning but if we needed to we could add them a little bit later they could be phased and that includes the zero net energy the photovoltaic system for the library as well as some of the roof deck patio tenant improvements you know the planter boxes the lighting some of the landscaping and irrigation for the roof deck could come at a later time if needed and so those additional cost is roughly two two and a half million so we do have identified some gap sources for the library this includes some of our major affordable housing funding sources and grants including the ASIC which is the affordable housing sustainable communities grant iig which is infill and infrastructure grant and our epic grant for some of the electric sustainability components of the project we have received all three of these grants for our other uh mixed use affordable housing projects in the downtown and we do believe that we would be equally competitive for this project due both to the proximity to transit the mixed use elements of the project and some of the sustainability features so in talking with eden housing and for the future housing they're both feeling very very good about our ability to just secure additional funding for the project and that is part of their their anticipated funding sources so there will hopefully be some additional funding sources that could help close this gap on the project uses side i'm going to briefly go over this and but abe is going to really go into some of the detail in the cost estimate i just kind of want to break that out of what is the budget for the library the shell and core is what the developer is delivering as part of the overall project of the library that's roughly the heart the hard construction cost of that is about 8.3 million the tenant improvements the tis for the library itself those are all the interior finishes you know the mechanics everything inside the library is roughly 24 million and then the soft costs and some of these sources specifically as we look on the soft costs include all the pre-development work it includes architectural design ff and e and a contingency for the tenant improvements are anticipated roughly to be the 7.6 million which gets us to that base library cost of 39.9 the alternates i already mentioned so the total of everything we'd like to deliver on for a 38 000 square foot building is roughly 42 million we i just briefly want to mention before turning it back to abe that some of our gap strategies beyond the grants and i have a footnote on the bottom of the slide in addition to fundraising and value engineering is ultimately if we're not successful securing any of the anticipated grant sources or even the building forward grant we could come back to you with some value engineering there are some very high-end finishes in the library we really like them and don't want to eliminate them at this point but if we're in that position where we need to reduce the overall budget we will come back to you with some options as well as ultimately decreasing the size of the library as i said it's a 38 000 a little over 38 000 for the interior space of a library plus the roof deck so there are some options there as well and with that i will turn it back to abe to go into more detail on the cost estimate thanks pauney all right so i think it's always good to put an estimate into context and that's really what this slide is for so i'm gonna kind of orient everyone to the slide before i walk through the details so on the left the numbered column these are basically the cost components of the project on the top you can see there's five columns each of these columns represents kind of essentially a budget onto itself a budget scenario and we have a list out each of these five and then explain what they are the first is the 2019 renovation study that was our renovation study that we prepared on the existing building the second is the renovation study which has been escalated to a current construction date based on new timing and includes the cost of a temporary library which will be required because the library would be taken offline the third is the mixed use project that we are currently working on that's the base the fourth column is the mixed use project with alternates and then for context we have a comparable ground up if you just built a project from scratch okay now i'm gonna kind of walk through each piece of these so first what i'm i'll first kind of briefly say on the renovation study as a reminder you know when we go into kind of a process like that our goal is to get the best possible project we can get for the budget and as you probably recall what we found after going through that study is that to kind of work within the budget at the time we had to take off remove nearly 25 of the building and bring it down to 30 000 square feet and even then as was kind of outlined in our executive summary we were delivering a low quality building we then had a series of alternates which brought it up to a moderate quality building so those series of alternates things like ceilings acoustics you know graphics exterior planting and landscaping all those things are included in the mixed use project we have a ceilings we have acoustics etc etc so the best point of comparison is the base plus alternates of the study now the study was done in 2019 it assumed that there would be a sort of relatively quicker transition to starting construction that's no longer accurate so we need to add escalation into that renovation study in addition to make the renovation work the main downtown library would have to come offline for several years that's not really feasible for the kind of hub of the system so you need to provide a temporary library space so i'm going to kind of walk through the renovation study in 2019 and then i'll walk through each column after that so as a reminder 30 000 square feet hard cost of about 23 million because it's a renovation and the nature of the project the the soft cost percentage is high it's about 49 and this is what our study showed at the time so about 11 million dollars in soft costs for a total construction hard plus soft of about 34 million and you can reference our study that 34 295 that's exactly the number in our study at the time temporary library costs were not established orange shell costs would be included so that has a total project cost again of about 34 million and a cost per square foot of about 1100 dollars a square foot now to kind of bring it into kind of a full budgetary picture as a point of comparison we have to add escalation in the temporary library so what you can see is the escalation raises the construction hard cost to about 26 million and the soft cost to about 12.5 the construction hard plus soft costs to about 38 and then we've estimated the cost of a temporary library which is the cost of building out a temporary library space at a very basic level so carpet paint 88 code required 88 upgrades as necessary basic telephone data and internet infrastructure that would that would mean saving all of the furniture all the shelving very very minimal co-compliant low quality also a much smaller building so this would be about a 10 or 11,000 square foot facility is about 2 million and that also includes the lease costs at a rate that we discussed kind of is appropriate for downtown Santa Cruz on a monthly basis based on that square footage that brings the total project cost of the renovation to in the range of 40 0.5 million and a cost per square foot of about $1,300 a square foot so the mixed use project now a couple things to point out it's a 38,000 square foot building so 8,000 square feet more the construction hard costs are a little bit lower about 24 million versus 26 million and the other big kind of thing to note is that because of the efficiencies of the mixed use project the soft costs are significantly lower about 32 percent that's about a 7.6 7.7 million so the construction hard costs are hard plus soft costs are about 31.7 temporary library is not required however we do have to include the cost of the core and shell for the overall mixed use project so that's about 8.3 million so what you can see that that is the total project cost of the mixed use project is just under 40 million dollars and the big thing to note is the cost per square foot is significantly lower at about a thousand dollars a square foot so you're getting a kind of an immense bang for your buck with the economy of scale and efficiency of the mixed use project so moving over to the next column i'll go through this one a little quicker this is the mixed use project with the alternates included it raises the total project cost as you saw on the previous slide that bonnie shared to about 42.5 million and raises the cost per square foot to about 1100 a square foot still an incredibly good deal the last thing which i think really emphasizes kind of how good of a deal this is is we did run a cost model on a comparable ground-up project and what you can see here for a 38,000 ground ground-up project 38,000 square feet you'd be talking about a 50 million dollar hard cost give or take and a total project cost of course a 70 million dollars and nearly 1800 dollars a square foot and this includes escalation to you know the the current construction schedule so i think you know that's a demonstration of kind of the fact that the mixed use project is effectively a new building and the comparison of the ground-up new building really shows the efficiency of kind of coupling this with other project components can i point out real quick oh yeah please yeah sorry i have a request if we can move the the panel there uh that on the screen so that it's not covering the last column thank you panel thank you we're good okay sorry apologies can everyone see now there yes thank you okay so only one last point on the slide i'm happy to answer questions in the Q&A portion of this presentation one of the things you'll note you can see the little cross symbol next to the renovation total project cost line eight and the ground up those costs do not include the encumbered costs of money spent to date or through the end of 2022 now while the those aren't really attributable to to a ground up project or renovation the reality is those that costs would have that encumbered costs would effectively increase the projects by another about two million dollars okay i'm gonna uh just sort of briefly go over the schedule uh you guys are familiar with this but what you can see here again is the community has put an immense amount of kind of inspirational work into this project this has effectively been underway since 2012 when a master plan was done for the library system all the way through measure measure s and the various studies that the council and the city has done to determine the best path forward we are currently in the design and engineering stage we are now into the design development phase of the process we will be looking to start construction around the beginning of 2024 and wrap construction around the end of 2026 the last thing i'll note is each of these yellow dots on this line represents a point of community process community feedback community workshop community input there's been nearly 40 points of community engagement in this process so it's a pretty inspirational uh engagement with your constituents and with the community of santa cruise and uh with that i'm going to turn it over to questions um so bonnie i don't know if you want to come back online so we can feel questions together thank you abe appreciate the update and to bonnie lipscomb thank you for the visuals and the updates and uh it's made quite a bit of progress i would like to bring it to uh council members for any questions on the update and any specific okay so vice mayor wattkins well that was just absolutely beautiful and um inspiring to see so thank you for your work i have a question and i i think i know the answer but i just want to confirm in regards to the child care facility that's proposed as a component of the mixed use space is that and is that encompassed within the work of eden and the affordable housing uh contractors is that right as uh council member wattkins that is part of the overall affordable housing um component of the project and um the developer is pretty excited because um it's child care facilities are actually give them additional points on some of their funding applications so that definitely is solidly on the housing side of the project budget okay great thank you that's right thank you council member mires um i was wondering speaking to some folks who are out of town out of towners this weekend who were showing your some of the drawings too have you done um work with actually with like families and kids in terms of your outreach in terms of you know i mean your spaces are beautiful i'm just curious you know you just talked to little guys at all i'm just you know i mean it just looks like such a cool fun space but i you know it's more something out of interest than i think that you need to go do that but i'm just curious if if you've done outreach or if kids have involved their kids in this parents have involved their kids in some of these some of these workshops you've held thank you yeah we did um if you recall we had a series of stakeholder meetings kind of very early in very early in our process not early in the overall process obviously that process dates farther back but uh that would have been fall of last year and we did have stakeholder groups with families and i would say there were a handful of you know families that actually had their kids so if you remember those kind of sticky notes boards um from that that stakeholder group many of the comments actually came directly from kids um i think you know we could discuss with bonnie there may be value in kind of another round about reach i did it's always tricky in the era of zoom so uh you know that's sort of a a layer to the process but we did do a round of outreach at the early stakeholder phase we haven't done a round of outreach since the since the schematic design has been established the outreach to kids specifically right and i have one more question i just remembered um will we be able to in the soft cost and sort of the building planning um be able to accommodate at least you know spanish as another piece uh you know signage all of that have we thought about that bonnie in terms of trying to make as many spaces at bilingual as possible i know that's finishers finishing but you know just curious about whether or not we would be able to do a bilingual approach to immunity room signage those kinds of things thank you i think that and aid probably can answer good to this as well i believe that's included in a lot of the signage for the building i know it's on the exterior but i'm assuming it based on some conversations that it's included in the signage um for the interior spaces as well yes that's correct and it's actually in the hard cost of the building rather than the soft costs oh it is perfect okay thanks so much thank you councilmember calantari johnson thank you for the presentation i'm so excited to go and use the space in a couple of years um just to pick up the thread that councilmember mires was bringing up around youth um feedback the city is now working very closely with youth action network and we'll have youth liaison as part of our efforts with the children youth bill of rights so when it's appropriate i'd love to connect the project to the youth liaison that we're working with thank you councilmember um calantari johnson that's great i will say we had a specific you know family and focus group from family and children we did have a hard time getting specific children to sign up for that focus group we were more successful with the family focus group so yeah any targeted approach and particularly if you have an ability to get them at the table with us we welcome it so thank you thank you i was able to pop into one of those focus groups family focus groups and it was um very very sweet to hear the comments from the children and their imagination from swinging ropes from the ceiling to you know tree houses and all kinds of suggestions so um thank you and the teens as well i know that was also um part of the the outreach uh councilmember Cummings thank you mayor thank you for that presentation um i had a number of people reaching out to me with questions some of which were answered in the presentation um so thank you um but i did want to ask um a number of other outstanding questions one um just for clarification so this is going to be one building instead of two i know initially the parking was going to be separate i believe and so i'm just wondering if you could clarify that this is going to be one entire structure is this going to be multiple structures on the site um i i can start that answer and then maybe abe you can you can add to this but um it is a it's one project and there are many of the elements of the project that have a shared elements to it so shared foundation shared shell and core for the the majority of the project um we also have um the um podiums and utility connections are shared across the project and then additionally we're still working through um the library sort of site plan as it relates to the parking there may be an element of the um mechanical for the library that actually sits in what we originally were expecting to be the parking structure so it's definitely a very fluid um on design and some of the elements but it is there is it's not two separate buildings by by any means thank you and then i know it i know it was the last time but one of the previous meetings we had the heritage trees came up and so has there been any effort made to either alter the building to accommodate any of the heritage trees in accordance with the city's heritage tree ordinance or incorporating those into you know some of those green spaces um i will say we still have the arborist um report analysis underway um and aid can specifically respond to the overall design obviously with us maximizing every square foot of the overall site it would be hard to accommodate any of those interior trees in the project successfully and certainly not um cost efficiently um there are some of the perimeter trees that may still be um a possibility uh but uh definitely the interior trees you cannot accommodate those in the existing design not at a reasonable cost not actually at delivering the library and the overall project is envisioned but i'll turn it over to aid to really you know specifically a look at that yeah i as bonnie's described that is kind of you know a appropriate framing and i think what we are trying to be very thoughtful of is that we want the site to feel alive and green and so uh we have more trees planted on the site than currently exist as part of the proposed plan and i will say some of that it speaks to the overall project which is uh sort of bonnie can certainly elaborate on the the mix use project rather than the library specifically but then in addition to that there will be trees on the roof deck and then we have this living roof which is nearly 12 000 square feet of native habitat on the roof so uh we are i think giving back uh you know sort of in a significant way to habitat and green space and then just a follow-up with the living roof um some of what the discussions that i've had because of this has come up at previous meetings and there were some head nods with consideration for the living roof to be used instead of as kind of native grasses but for growing food and i'm just wondering if there can be any discussion or explanation as to why that might not be in consideration right now because uh perennial grasses can be expensive and they do require some maintenance for establishing having worked in community gardening for multiple years it's not you know just planted in and it's going to take care of itself there's a lot of maintenance to getting those grasses to establish they can be heavy and this would be an opportunity for people to grow their own food if we're going to have low-income housing we could offer classes on nutrition which would address food insecurity and educational opportunities people from the buildings could actually or people who had access to those gardens could maintain them to help with maintenance and it would still reduce the overall heat island effect and so i'm wondering if and that's something that fits within health and all policies for the city and also you know if we're talking about you know applying for grants that address poverty that's something that could be an additional benefit as well in addition to childcare so i'm wondering if there is that opportunity and kind of um you know what the opportunities are for us to explore that as an option it seems like a good fit i'll speak to you briefly then bonnie i think there's an overlay with the kind of overall project i think it's a really wonderful idea council member i think the the more likely location where there is a sort of a place for that could potentially be in the significant residential roof deck which we didn't really speak to but you saw on the site plan there's you know sort of as we've got about 3,500 square feet of library roof deck and then there is significantly more area dedicated to residential uses and there's certainly room for community garden type space there and bonnie i don't know what types of conversations you've had with eden or for the future regarding that that is something we've talked about and and you had given us that feedback before as well and that did resonate in some of our discussions with the affordable housing team there are like i'm going to call them open space sort of rooms envisioned for the the housing podium level and i believe and i don't have the number exactly in front of me but i believe it's close to 16 000 square feet of open space on that level for the housing and so there's like a community general sort of family open space area there's the children's in the teens area you know some play equipment and there is some vision that there could be an area where you could have the raised planter beds that could be for for food and different different you know gardening uses for the residents of the housing so that is something that's been part of the discussion a couple other questions so i'm wondering if if and when we'll get an update on the kind of parking structure and affordable housing because some of the questions that i have and since you know this is the mixed use project we didn't get this information today i'm just the questions that i have are related to you know what's the cost projection for the affordable housing and the parking and then you know what are the funding sources for those for the parking and affordable housing what's been secured what are we still waiting on so i'm going to speak to that a little bit as well i'll briefly just give you know a few sort of comments on that at this point i will say today's update really was focusing on the library because that's where we've been focusing and we had the largest number of questions from our last update is those that's the area where we actually feel like we have a gap and so we really wanted to do a deep dive and get really firm as firm as we can in the schematic phase numbers on what those costs are and really work towards what are the sources we have for closing that gap i'll say for both the parking and the housing you know those will predominantly be paying you know the parking specifically will be really a base paying for itself in effect it's we have an existing parking district and we're anticipating either issuing parking revenue bonds where the actual debt services based on income from the parking district so even factoring in sort of this you know post pandemic environment we've been running numbers and modeling and have started conversations with our financial consultants that actually issue bonds in this area we're feeling confident that the parking element of the project will fully be affordable and fund and be able to be funded with either parking revenue bonds or potentially direct loan financing you know as we get a little closer to finalizing the actual parking number we still have some movement on that we'll be able to provide more accurate numbers on that but the full range and i think in the last update we showed around 20 million so you know give or take a few million for the cost of the project we have sufficient anticipated debt service to be able to fund that for the parking so the parking will pay for itself as a component of the project and it will pay for you know a share of the foundation and all the related costs the housing and i mentioned this a little earlier the housing component of the project the library is really in the lead right now a lot of our focus has been on the design of the library because that's the most public-facing element the affordable housing we do have a developer and a developer team we've submitted a pre-application for that and to planning and so once we get some of those preliminary feedback we'll be able to refine the housing number right now we're sitting at roughly we think we're going to be able to maximize the housing we've definitely gone up to current heights and what we can exceed on those and the downtown core and have 124 units so we're excited by that so the next step is once we get a little closer to entitlements we can really then start applying for some of these major affordable housing funding sources and similar to our success on peck station south and north some of the grants and funding available will have funding that can also offset some of the cost of the library which is a major benefit of us being able to apply for these for these funding sources for the housing so even housing and for the future you know at a future update when we have a little more concrete numbers a little further along in the design process for those we'll have both of them available to council to give an update on kind of what is the overall funding picture and as as you know from past projects it is a complicated layering you know sometimes you have eight to ten sometimes even more funding sources in an affordable housing project but both of them feel very confident that the housing particularly the nature of the project with the sustainability features and its proximity to transit and the addition of the library is very fundable so they're feeling really good about where they are at this point in time with the funding great and then my last question and then I have one comment so it sounds like based on some communications I've had with community members that this ballot measure put forward by downtown forward sounds like that there's a good chance that it's going to qualify for the ballot and so I'm wondering if that passes how that's going to impact this project because if that goes on the ballot in November there's going to be you know potential consequences if it passes and so I'm just wondering if that's been taken into consideration and what that could look like well I think our current direction is a council direction to move forward on the project so you know we are continuing design we have existing contracts with Jason architecture and the developer team is moving forward on their design and application stage so you know currently we're moving forward on the project that is the direction that we have you know if the initiative passes on the ballot in November obviously you know we'll have to regroup and and come to you we will have as Abe indicated earlier there will be a portion of the funding for the project that will have been spent on this one per our current our current direction so we'll have to see where we are at that point with what we spent on the project what's remaining of both the measure s funding and the other project elements funding elements for the existing library site great and then I guess my last comment would just be I think it'd be great if these slides could go on the mixed use library webpage so that people can have access to them so absolutely yeah we put each of the presentations to council all the updates on our project page thank you thank you council member Cummings um just for quick clarification the ballot measure I believe was brought forward by our downtown our future um instead of downtown forward I know there's uh several groups that have formed around this library affordable housing project and um it's a little confusing to keep track but um is that correct that you know of that's right okay thank you thank you council member Cummings uh council member Golder or Calentari Johnson did you have any other questions for okay and vice mayor Watkins I don't necessarily have a question but just sort of one suggestion to get at students or seniors or other special populations I know during the pandemic and our alternative education programs students were looking for quiet safe spaces to to learn right and so part of the outreach strategy you know I found that works best for special populations is really just going to them and I know we know somebody here on the council who's got a good handful of folks that she could access but even you know the senior center and you know visiting the teen center others sometimes you'll you'll find more success with their input if you go to them that's just the only suggestion I have and happy to help if it's an education group or constituency you're looking for great thank you council member Watkins okay that concludes our update presentation of the downtown library affordable housing project thank you so much Bonnie Lipscomb and Abe Jason of Jason architecture for that presentation thank you so much for incorporating so many beautiful elements and community benefits thus far I look forward to the next update all right next up on our agenda we have our brief presentation this is a mayoral proclamation declaring May 11th through May 17th 2022 as National Police Week and I'd like to invite up any of our police staff Deputy Chief of Police Jose Garcia John Bush and any other officers that are present here in person welcome mayor nice to see you nice to see you too thank you welcome today it was uh very nice to learn of this week and to put this together so whereas the police officers of Santa Cruz have worked unselfishly and with commitment on behalf of the people of this community including intentionally de-escalating violent incidents in spite of personal harm or hazard to themselves and whereas these officers have safeguarded the lives and property of all in Santa Cruz through community policing and problem-solving and whereas Santa Cruz police officers have consciously worked towards inclusivity and advancements and racial equity by purposely seeking community engagement and updating policies and whereas by their service and their dedicated efforts these officers have earned the gratitude of the city of Santa Cruz and whereas in 1962 President John F Kennedy was authorized by Congress to proclaim May 15th of each year as National Peace Officers Memorial Day in honor of all peace officers who have been killed or disabled in the line of duty and whereas the presidential proclamation also designated that each year the calendar week in which May 15th occurs or precedes shall be proclaimed as National Police Week in recognition of the service given by the officers who day and night uphold public safety in our communities now therefore I Sonia Brunner mayor of the city of Santa Cruz do hereby proclaim the week of May 11th through May 17th 2022 as National Police Week in the city of Santa Cruz and I encourage all citizens to observe this week with law enforcement officers past and present who by their faithful and loyal devotion to their responsibilities have rendered a dedicated service to their communities and proclaim May 15th 2022 as excuse me I'm getting choked up as National Peace Officers Memorial Day in honor of those law enforcement officers who through their courageous deeds have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their community or have become disabled in the performance of duty thank you good afternoon mayor council members thank you so much I'm humbled I'm certain we're all humbled by the proclamation in your comments it's important that I tell you myself and my partner deputy chief acting deputy chief John Bush while we are here to accept this I think it's important to acknowledge the women and men that are out there doing the work the day and night work that you talk about are taking calls for service now and they can't be here to see this but they do an important thing and they work really hard and times are tough so I think it is it is very valuable to hear what you have to say and we'll share this with them I want to acknowledge a couple of those folks that are here now Sergeant Mark Evelith and Sergeant Josh Trog out there supervising during those night shifts that you talk about they do an incredibly tough job and they do it incredibly well and we're grateful but these are the folks that are most deserving of of the comments you know John Bush and I are just the folks that are here and we're grateful to have the opportunity to give them what they need to get their work done but thank you so much we very much appreciate your comments thank you next item on our agenda item number six is scheduled for 4 p.m hands Christian Anderson contest awards so we will return to agenda item six at 4 p.m moving on to our through our agenda this is the part where I'd like to ask council members if there are any statements or disqualifications today I forgot I was going to ask Tony about this just with the circles project and my house if it's close enough or you want to measure okay we come back to that because I was going to ask what agenda item is that item number 17 is getting looked into well I'll have an answer to that before the consent calendar okay thank you we'll come back to that item and are there any items of disqualification statements of okay I'd like to ask the city clerk to announce any additions or deletions um I don't have any but the city attorney does have thank you city attorney yes we noticed a slight inaccuracy in the description of item number 28 concerning district elections refers to adoption of a seven district map and an ordinance whereas the ordinance actually adopts both a six district and a seven district map it's not a big concern but out of an abundance of caution I'm recommending that that be put over to the next meeting for considering final adoption of the ordinance in district maps thank you does that require a vote the chair can I can move that to the okay so item number 28 is moved to our next council meeting I believe is may 24th thank you at this time uh we have a city manager report I'd like to call on the city manager to see if there are updates and a report welcome good afternoon mayor and council I'm happy to provide a brief update I believe Elizabeth Smith on my team is going to pull up the presentation and while she does that I will also be tag teaming uh this afternoon's presentation rosemary minard our water director will also provide a brief update on some recent polling they did of the community related to our securing our water future planning effort so with that I will go ahead and jump into it next slide please so as the council knows um our departments collectively have been putting a significant amount of effort leading up to the enforcement of our new sidewalk vending regulations that includes a significant amount of outreach over the last several weeks with with our local businesses as well as our existing sidewalk vendors both along beach street as well as pacific avenue the network was conducted both in english and spanish with one of our spanish community engagement outreach folks that we work with and wanting to ensure that we help all of the vendors be prepared for the new regulations as they roll out so as part of that work permits are now available and can be accessed through our planning department um we are also planning and moving towards enforcement of the new regulations beginning this friday on may 13th so this has been a major push across multiple departments i want to thank our code compliance team as well as elizabeth smith and in my office police department and our planning and calm staff for all contributing towards um what is a a major lift as we roll out this new program next slide as part of the highway one and nine intersection improvement projects we had removed the river street sign with plans of actually rehabilitating and reinstalling the sign unfortunately the sign was in significant disrepair and no longer usable um keeping us from being able to reinstall it at its original location so as a result we're planning on retiring the sign and we will be updating that corner with updated wayfinding signage consistent with our citywide wayfinding programs so just want to go alert the council and the community to to that change and we look forward to uh to the updated intersection improvements as well as the updated signage next slide so as uh bonnie mentioned earlier today we have a number of very exciting affordable housing projects that are moving through the pipeline and on may 19th we hit a major milestone as we celebrate the groundbreaking of the pacific station south project as well as the cedar street apartments and collectively these two projects will yield over 130 additional affordable housing units in our downtown they have been really decades in the making and i want to applaud the work of our economic development and housing team for helping to get these projects over the finish line they'll be very exciting improvements for our downtown the groundbreaking groundbreaking will be a bit of a tour we'll be starting at the pacific station south project site and then heading over to 525 cedar street and then a final stop at the site of the library and affordable housing project that you all received a very exciting update on today next slide as we move into the summer months i wanted to take a moment to also highlight a number of our summer construction projects we always have a lot of interest from our community members as to what's happening and when so i'll run through these very quickly the highway one and nine project will be moving through july of the summer we also have the west cliff path storm damage for para project running april through july the trevathin avenue storm sewer project this will be phase one of that project moving march through july sand lorenzo riverwalk lighting project is underway already some great improvements happening along the riverwalk path there and that project is slated to be completed around july of the year we also have the sand lorenzo river lagoon cobra project running may through october the murray street bridge project we've had a lot of interest in and that is running in september through october of 2025 that is a massive infrastructure improvement project we'll certainly have some impacts on traffic and our public works team will be continuing to update the community proactively so that they can plan their their routes accordingly and then lastly we have the coastal rail trail segment seven and that'll be may 20 22 through may 2023 and really excited to continue building out our rail trail corridor next slide so with that i'm going to go ahead and hand it over to rosemary menard and she's going to run you through some feedback we received from the community in response to a recent poll that the water department conducted thank you thank you matt and hello commissioner or council members and mayor we are as you know from a fyi that i sent out a little bit ago we were ramping up a process to really kind of bring the bring to a head and have some come community conversation about supply alternatives for the future so we had not talked to the community and a sort of a standardized survey for quite a lot long time and so we decided that now was a good time to get their feedback particularly on some of the topics of the different kinds of supply alternatives so we completed the survey in march actually and we just presented this information to the water commission at their meeting on the second of may and so go ahead Elizabeth please the next slide so the first question really had to do with asking folks what they thought about how whether there was a need for water today a great need a some need you know no need at all a little need or additional water supply for the future and you can see that there's a very strong recognition in our community that we do need additional water supply to make sure that we have an adequate supply to meet our needs particularly in light of climate change next slide please elizabeth and as you can see this is there's a significant recognition from this data and these are a number of questions that were asked over time about the degree to which you know we're going to need new sources of supply versus that we can just use water conservation or demand management to solve our problem and the number of folks in our community over time and went who believed that you know just using less was the solution in 2010 in 2014 and then in 2022 has really declined quite rapidly as a number of people who recognize that we do need supply augmentation has increased and I think that is aligned with what I would describe as the reality of the kinds of efficient water use practices that people have adopted and recognizing that there are you know there's no way to really very significantly additionally cut their demand and continue to meet their needs next slide please one of the things we did is we asked folks um you know what kinds of things do you think would be an excellent idea for but or excellent good idea for a ways to solve the water supply problem and you can see here this is data from this question from 2019 and then more recently that a lot of folks are still quite interested in the idea of using available winter water when we can and storing it underground aquifers this is work that's already going on in our community in the mid county groundwater basin we're making some good progress with that idea we also had asked about purified recycled water and for potable and non potable uses and you can see that there's growing interest in this as a strategy as well not so much on mandatory water conservation whether it's in restrictions as in you know curtailment or in additional sort of regulatory strategies as part of long term to management man management and a little bit of an increase in people's interest in desalination although that's a very challenging project to put forward on a scale of just a community as small as we are it's not off the table but I think there are many challenges associated with desal that we would want to think hard about before we sort of automatically went down that road next slide please this was a question that was asking folks to talk to us about what they thought as it related to what were the causes of why we needed additional supply and you can see that in the top couple of graphs that there's a pretty strong understanding in our community that climate change is really presenting some additional challenges for us in managing and planning for supply quite a lot of people 82% are saying that they think that climate change is a big driver of our need for additional supply the gross question which we hear on a routine basis also has a strong you know resilience or you know sort of connection to folks how they feel about what's driving supply and we are talking about how we plan for growth and build it into our planning in a way that you know recognizes that that's an important thing for us to be planning for and so there's a strong thing you know recognition of growth as a factor and when you put them which has the greater effect climate change is slightly greater resonates with folks than the growth and development argument but these are really important statistics for us to understand as we you know think about communicating with our community and also solving the ultimate problem and explaining to people why we're doing what we're doing next slide please so one thing that we we have not pulled on historically with any level of detail is purified recycled water and this time we have a lot of information from previous polls about upper storage and recovery using treated drinking water from winter availability and also from desal and we really wanted to know some more about where the community was on purified recycled water and you can see here the they're strongly favoring the various kinds of uses for purified recycled water as all of these laid out here watering for landscapes and playgrounds commercial industrial facilities which i think is an application that's being used in many places we don't have so much uh high water using commercial and industrial facilities here in Santa Cruz so that's obviously you know would be it it would be good but we don't have that necessarily that use home uses you can see here replenishing groundwater quite a bit of interest in that supplementing other water sources and then sort of more indoor sort of sanitation personal uses there still is some willingness and interest to pursue that idea in developing this as a particular source of supply next slide please and we did the thing that often happens in these kinds of polls which is we asked people a question about how they you know what was their response to recycled water and then we gave them additional information in the in the process about how the water is treated and in order to make it available and usable for recycled water and then we asked them their favorable question you know their the degree to which they favored that technology and you can see that sort of what we've seen elsewhere also is the case here that when people receive additional information about how recycled water is developed for use additional potable and non-potable uses the the favorability to that idea increases and that's what this slide shows i looked at the cross tabs myself and i think that it's not surprising that a lot of the younger population in our community both owners and renters are in favor more heavily in favor of this technology in general and get even more in favor of it once they understand what's what's involved with it okay next slide and then finally we asked some questions that we've asked historically about the the degree to which people think that water department is doing a good or excellent job and you can see the the results here you know it's been a pretty challenging year for all government agencies over the last few years with the pandemic and the economic downturn and just the general sort of you know stresses that we're all experiencing through the you know the national international climate and it's very gratifying to have um our community be giving us such a great report card so we're happy about this in particular in asking the further you know further information about why they thought we were doing a good job they did respond to positively very positively to the custom level of customer service that our staff provides and i'm very proud of those folks and really appreciate the hard work they do to work with folks who've been struggling with their utility bills as the rates have been increased and as the economic conditions have changed and also you know working on helping people to solve their problems in ways that work for them among the other factors it seemed to be a great interest to our community is the kind of accessibility of water using information that are going to come with the new meters and so we're also looking forward that process is underway now we're about a quarter through the the implementation of the system wide meter replacement project and we're getting great results from people who are you know really happy to be able to start to get access to being able to manage their water use by understanding how much they are using and i think that unless you have questions for me that's what i have for you today thank you rosemary happy to answer any questions related to the overall cm update mayor thank you city manager and water director rosemary monard a very good polling and very good data and information and and congratulations on the good report card i'm looking to my council member colleagues if there are questions and i see council member mires i just wanted to um also just recognize the work of the water department i think that's really important information as we move ahead um did you do any testing on i know we've already kind of basically adopted the rate structure but did you do any polling on sort of how people are feeling whether our rates are you know affecting the mechanism you know i know one of your really one of your goals is to try to really acknowledge that at some point you know even our utilities are going to be difficult for some folks so just curious if you did any polling on that thanks um we asked folks uh in one of the slides and i didn't share the whole deck with you but i'm happy to send that out to you because you know it's available but we asked folks to uh what what they thought about um our efforts to modernize the system and also to keep rates affordable and i can look at the data here um i think that on affordability there was a recognition that um we were you know that we still got good marks on that about 45 percent said excellent or good but it's obviously a big challenge right and and i do i have been continuing to engage with um other sort of regional partners and and others in the sort of state national level about the affordability challenges that were coming i think that the good news on that topic is that that i'm not the only person talking about it anymore um that it's becoming an issue and i i don't know if you noticed from the the coastal commission staff comments related to the d-cell plant in the uh honeyton beach area that got quite a bit of press coverage in the last few weeks one of their comments was their concern about the affordability of the water that was produced from that plant so that's not a surprise although if the water is needed um you know the choices between having water that's more expensive and not having water doesn't seem to be a you know a good choice but i do think that the affordability issue is one thing that people are starting to really talk about and i am continuing to talk about that um both regionally and at the state and national level thank you council member mires council member golder so i just thought rosemary would appreciate this a fourth grader at bayview asked me what the uh water bill at bayview is every month and i said i didn't know but i'd get back to them and um then the class was very surprised that actually the water portion was fairly low it was under 400 between three and 400 and the the trash was around i don't know a thousand so they were so surprised that that they were such good water savers um at school so uh that was cute thank you thank you council member comings thanks for that presentation um i wanted to just express um my congrats on the cedar street and pacific station south projects moving forward you know and i know a lot of people in the community want us to build more affordable housing and it's coming so i think it's really great that we're able to celebrate the groundbreaking of these two projects i did um have a question about the cedar street project so that's the uh parking lot that's across from cavalry that's adjacent to cavalry church correct that's correct and um i could call on body if you have a more specific questions council member comings but yes that's the location i just had um i'm just curious about how that's going to one impact parking at that lot so is that going to be like coming up like when is that parking lot coming offline completely and then also i know that there's some rvs and cars that are in the safe parking program that has been kind of utilized by the cavalry church in that lot and so i'm wondering what's going to happen to those um rvs that are utilizing that program council council member comings i don't have the exact answer about the rvs um but i can reach out and i'm looking to see if um a couple folks from our parking team are on this call um but i see lee is also um on so he may have an answer but i will say that we have been working um with just on the lease portion of a termination of their current lease but at the same time we want um to be able to extend that as long as possible so we're having the groundbreaking date you know next week next thursday at 11 but they're gonna we're gonna continue to use that as a parking lot until they they absolutely need it um to break ground so we we are working working on that um and i'll turn it over to oh and brian's on um brian and lee for the other parts of your question sure i'll kick it off um good afternoon council lee butler director of planning and community development and um we have um the building permits um essentially ready to issue we're working on some uh the final details and as bonnie mentioned we do want to keep that lot that parking lot in um operation um while we can so it'll take a little bit of time for them to mobilize the construction crews and so forth and um that's the specific timing that bonnie was referring to there in terms of when it will be coming offline we don't know the exact time but it is imminent and um you know within the next um it's it's a matter of weeks right um you know one month uh two months in that kind of timeframe is what i would say with respect to the safe parking program we do have um we have three spots um that are currently being utilized in that location we do have um the ability to move those over to um lot four and um that would be directly across the street we currently have three spaces that are in operation there and um we've got the excess capacity that's um uh able to be accommodated on that adjacent lot the team has also worked on and you'll hear more about this tonight the team has also worked on a plan to um scale that up once we have additional demands scale that up to the 30 spaces that council has directed and um i think that covers it but if you've got other questions i'm happy to address this no that's member comings i would also just add and i appreciate both lee and bonnie's responses that as as we tap into the potential of these lots that have historically been used for public parking to really try to achieve highest and best use and um you know obviously these affordable housing projects are exciting and welcomed uh we do anticipate that we are going to have a parking crunch downtown and so the parking component of the library and affordable housing project i think is another just great example of with all of these moving parts ensuring that we're planning ahead and being prepared for that great thanks and i was just um i guess the next question i had was related to water so i'm just curious um if there is any kind of update on the pure water soquel project i know that there's been a lot of construction i believe it's the construction that um build kind of the pipeline for the water transfer and i'm just curious about whether or not um what's kind of happening with that project as well yes so that project uh is under construction at well both at the shanticleer plant for the pure water the advanced water treatment plant and also um the the pipeline is on Broadway now it's heading i don't know that it's cross sea right yet i haven't seen it as i've been in you know going in and out of that neighborhood myself um but uh we'll go over to Frederick street and then turn and go up Frederick to soquel and um we'll be running on soquel till it reaches the the shanticleer site um on the south side of the freeway that that project is probably got at least another i would guess roughly a year to in construction um i think that by the time that Murray street bridge is under construction that project will also be in construction on soquel it should be a fun time i would think great thank you does that conclude your questions thank you councilmember Cummings uh vice mayor Watkins yeah thank you for the presentation a lot of really exciting stuff happening um as you mentioned rosemary i was gonna kind of comment on the on the Murray street bridge project and and then now hearing it also potentially being further impacted our community being further impacted by the soquel project um septembers around the corner and i know it's a three-year project i i guess for those who are regular users of that bridge and or we also know that is a major um you know bridge and overpass for a lot of our tourists how are we thinking about planning for outreach and awareness and traffic management when that's underway particularly thinking it's going to be underway for potentially three years yeah thanks for the question uh vice mayor Watkins uh we have Nathan here to speak to some of the plans that are underway there will most certainly be impacts as you're pointing out and uh i know that Nathan and our public works communication team have been thinking through how best to to help mitigate that so i'm sure Nathan has some some thoughts hi uh mocha Nathan wend assistant director public works thanks for the question about Murray street bridge we are working on getting a couple more permits uh before going uh being able to take out to bed later this summer so we're still holding on to the september date as of right now we are working with the regional transportation commission so they also have a project on highway one and we are talking about looking at the 511.org website as a way to help put our projects cities as well as rtcs and and uh counties projects on there as well to to help with um providing information on latest traffic impacts uh you know county wide and so there is a coordination that's happening in the background and as these projects move forward with um bidding and and once we get contractors on board we'll have more specific information of regards to those impacts thank you are there any other uh questions from council members regarding the city manager's update or the water director's update thank you thank you so much for that presentation okay now i'm moving to uh i'd like to call on the city attorney to provide a report on closed session thank you mayor brunner good afternoon members of the city council this afternoon at 12 30 the council met in the courtyard conference room to discuss two closed session items the first was a conference with labor negotiators involving all bargaining groups second item was one item of anticipated litigation council received a report from and gave direction to the city attorney's office with regard to that one item of potential litigation there was no reportable action thank you for that report is there an update on item 17 on the consent agenda regarding statement of disqualification yes uh thank you mayor brunner um i i've reviewed the fppc regulations and the um the distance between the project site and the council members uh residences and there is no conflict of interest great thank you for that update moving on to agenda number eight the city council will review the meeting calendar attached to the agenda and revise it as necessary i'd like to call on the city clerk to provide any updates to the calendar there are no updates thank you now we've come to the consent agenda portion for members of the public who are streaming this meeting now is the time to call in if you'd like to comment on consent agenda items number nine through 23 instructions are on your screen please remember to mute your streaming device and you can raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature on your webinar controls of your computer if there are any members in the public who would like to comment on consent agenda items nine through 23 you may sign in at the front podium to the right of the dais all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to comment on or pull any items council member comings i have a comment on nine a question on 13 a question on 14 hold on let me write this down nine comment yep question on 13 question 13 question on 14 question 14 comment on 16 comment on 17 and a question on 20 question on 20 are there any other council members council member brown thank you mayor i have a question on 14 as well and uh question any comments on 16 16 16 thank you council member mires i just have a comment on 14 okay and then uh for myself i had a comment on items 12 and 20 okay so we'll start let me get back to my notes i will start with item agenda item number nine which is resolution extending the emergency declaration in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic by 60 days and there's a comment from council member comings yeah i just wanted to um bring this item up because i've heard from a number of small business owners that you know there's been attempts and discussion about removing some of the outdoor dining areas um and also just um some frustration around being able to operate outdoors and i think that it's just worth this recognizing that um you know we're starting to see upticks in COVID again santa cruz county in particular is one of the areas in california that's seeing an increase in COVID and there's other states um i was reading an article about how main and Puerto Rico are also seeing even though they have high vaccinated populations that they're starting to see people who are being infected with COVID-19 and just wanting to for us to keep in mind that we're still in this pandemic and we really need to be facilitating businesses to operate and also making sure that we're keeping the community safe as best we can because we don't know where this is heading and as we saw last winter we had the biggest spike um you know a year after the pandemic had first started so i think just trying to keep in mind that this is going to take time and we need to be supportive of our community as we continue to grapple with this thank you thank you council member comings um let's see the next comment is agenda item number 12 minutes of the april 26 2022 city council meeting and i just wanted to um address a member of the public who had emailed a concern about the minutes reflecting in um our last meeting correctly uh regarding santa cruz police department's ar 15's being added to the ab 481 military equipment list and that was indeed the fact the revised list does include ar 15's in the military equipment list and um i just wanted to confirm uh that i was able to confirm that as well with the city attorney's office so thank you for for reaching out with that our next item is council member comings with a question on number 13 thank you mayor um this item is fees associated with sidewalk vending ordinance administration enforcement i'm just wondering if um maybe the parks and rec director if someone's available to just speak to what uh those permit fees would be and what we're anticipating in terms of um how much those permit fees would be i know that you know the intent of the law is to try to facilitate um local vendors or street vendors to be able to bend although you know we're seeing impacts negative impacts on the community we're trying to address though so i'm just wondering if we if someone could speak to what the anticipated costs of those permits would be uh council member comings um i will be able to answer that question um chairman head and jones the ministry of uh services supervisor for the parks and recreation department um the parks permit fee will be an annual fee it's $50 it's a flat fee and it's used for making reservations for the various areas that um folks will be able to bend in parks or downtown so it's not a per reservation fee it's a flat fee for the annual rate okay thank you thank you uh next we had uh two questions and a comment on item number 14 the california state library building forward library infrastructure grant resolution and i will start with uh council member brown you had a question thank you mayor and this is a question that i did send ahead to bonnie lipscomb and i think i got it answered but i just want to make sure that i um get it out here so the um and thank you uh thank you bonnie for responding um so the the state grant program that i had some questions from the uh members of the public about this under um sb 129 the state grant program is seems to be uh focused on uh in a couple of areas um and one of those is uh renovations and so i just wanted to so there's a low income priority category um which it sounds like we're fitting into in um some ways um but the on the questions around what the the purpose of the the grant funding um it appears that renovation is a big focus and so i'm just wondering i wanted to ask and members of the public were um curious about how that might affect our competitiveness for this round of funding because we are looking at new construction um thanks for that question council member brown and and i do appreciate you sending sending the question by email as well um so we were actually encouraged to apply for this grant by the california state library and they did give us feedback both through the application process in this middle that our application was very competitive and was a good fit for the program so specifically new construction is an eligible category for the grant particularly if it is more cost effective than repairing or rehabilitating an existing facility which applies to this project based on both the 2019 cost estimate prepared uh by jason architecture and mac five and the updated cost estimate um just prepared in this last last few weeks um by the cost estimator so in having these we did share uh these cost estimates you know the information from them with with the um with the state library um california state library and they did give us a feedback that absolutely what we were doing some of the features in the old one what we're not cost effective to um from a safety perspective um we're not cost effective to for uh renovation and that this is exactly the type of project that these funds are are made for thank you thank you council member brown council member comings you had a question as well yeah this um part of it was somewhat answered in the last response but um one of the things that came up in the agenda report was how this grant is for high-poverty areas and so i'm just curious how santa cruz fits with in that criteria and how competitive are we for that grant and maybe you can speak to how they base you know what a high-poverty area is um i am not looking at that part of the grant you remember my grant team at ed did pull together some of those elements of the project i will say overall for typical grants um particularly when we're looking in uh low-income areas the downtown is isn't is considered a low-income area that extends and includes the area of the beach flats and lower ocean so we typically when you're looking at from a census block perspective we fit right in there with this area in some of the lowest income areas of santa cruz so um that is based on census tract data um i will follow up after i touch base with my project team from that element of the grant if if the analysis was different than that but that is what i believe was used as the basis for this yeah i was curious because i wasn't sure if it was you know the um high-poverty area was the city as a whole or if it's just the neighborhood where the library is located so just trying to get some clarification around that because i think eddie was you know how competitive are we for this grant but if they reached out to you and said you should apply then obviously there's a high potential of success so thank you thank you council member mires you had a comment on item 14 yeah i just wanted to thank the staff um and i also want to recognize um our new county library director um yolanda will burn she is also i know working with our staff so on this grant um so this is an amazing opportunity and i'm just thrilled that you know we are working collectively to bring these dollars back to build a state of the art 21st century library in our downtown so um bonnie i just want to recognize you and your staff you guys do a lot of these grants and um i'm just thrilled that we're going for it and also just excited that the state of california recognizes that libraries are the most important institution a community can build and they wouldn't be putting these grants out if that wasn't the focus of what we should be doing to accomplish all kinds of things in our communities so thanks for your work thank you council member mires and i will say that uh library director yolanda will burn is watching this meeting and if needed she could jump on to the panel but she is watching and she has been and her whole library team has obviously been a huge contributors um to the library portion of the project and yolan particularly has connections with this grant and was involved on some of the original sort of grant eligibility you know uh don't have all the details of her involvement other than i know that she was very um intrinsically involved in the early stages of even developing this opportunity for libraries across the state so she has a lot of firsthand knowledge of the grant the eligibility and um the overall process so she's been our go to in both guidance and in following up with specific questions that we had during the process thanks for mentioning that bonnie i mean i think her guidance and her really her knowledge of you know this this opportunity that the state really wants to offer to communities around california is i'm not sure that in recent times we've had this kind of money that would be available so again you know this is just great and i've just been so impressed um in watching the two organizations working together so closely to try to try to bring this grant home so thank you thank you thank you council member mires next uh comment we have two comments on consent agenda items 16 and this is uh to award a construction contract for the monorail bay sanctuary scenic trail segment seven of the rail trail and um council member comings yeah i just wanted to thank the staff and congratulate them on all the hard work that they've done to help us get to this point um city of santa cruz has been making significant strides towards building the rail and trail and this is just another example of good work paying off to be able to get the funds necessary for us to move forward with this next segment that's going to be really critical in helping us provide a continuous trail uh in our community along our rail corridor and so i just really wanted to express my thanks and appreciation for all the hard work um we've made a lot of progress since i've been on council and i know that this is decades of hard work um you know finally paying off so just wanted to thank you all um for all your efforts and also that the community know that we are moving forward with building our trail and maintaining our rail and so i hope that uh we can continue doing this as we move into the future thank you council member comings council member brown you had a comment on agenda item 16 i actually have a couple of questions my comment has already been made so i'll just um say ditto uh thank you for all of the hard work to get us here and yes we can do we can build our build out our rail uh trail and get that trail built um alongside the rail line and um we're the city of santa cruz is really leading the way in showing our community that it can be done uh countywide as well um so my questions are one i had a question about the um kind of well there's there doesn't seem to be a fence um in the plans between the railroad tracks and the lagoon itself and so they're i heard from some members of the community that they um were interested in understanding why that is um there is you know some concern about encroachment on into the lagoon um with more activity along there which in many ways could be a positive um but just kind of wondering what um fencing yes or no and what the constraints might be around that um so that's one question and then i have a few others on lighting and some other things that someone wrote in about that i want to try to get answered sure uh nathan wendt assistant director of public works and happy to answer those questions there is a smooth wired cable fence that is required as part of the project that separates the trail from the rail it's the exact same fence that we have installed on the first phase of the coastal rail trail so it's the corp 10 steel posts with that smooth cable fencing wires about i think there's about four or five of them and that bottom wire is actually at a height about i think it's 14 to 16 inches to let little critters kind of cross the trail there thank you um but nothing on the rail on the other side not in between the trail and the rail but between the rail and the um lagoon itself is not specifically as a part of this project but there is discussions working with parks and rec as well as our wastewater team around trying to get some additional fencing around near you lagoon and the wastewater treatment plant to reduce impacts that um that are occurring in that area great thank you so much for that so these are the the next questions i'm going to ask are from a member of the public who wrote in and wrote in again today and hadn't had those questions answered so i just want to see if i can get them out there um one um and first she said that the the charts when you enlarge them or you're zooming in are kind of hard to read they get blurred is because of the pixels i guess i i didn't have that issue but um it was a comment so if i don't know if we can get higher resolution um charts in yeah i can work on getting working with the rtc i received those charts when working with rtc but i can work on getting some um a more higher resolution charts for the for the final agreement i'll make a note to work on that too at the rtc end of things um so uh there the um some of the charts make reference to light posts and lighting and security cameras um there isn't a plan attached to that to show where they would be i imagine that's gonna take time to sort out what the details on that would be um but just wondering um kind of what the thinking is on how those are gonna be mounted i think the concern is um one that i share related to the potential effects of lighting on wildlife um in that in that space so um just anything you could say about uh lighting and how what kinds of considerations we've made to keep our skies dark yeah i have to speak to the lighting on the on the coastal rail trail project um on our city of Santa Cruz dot com slash coastal rail trail web page uh the plans for segment seven phase two are on that are online and the uh they do include lighting so on the sheets the construction plan sheets on that plan set um does show the light posts as well as the type of lighting that's going to be installed it's going to be very similar or actually the same fixture as what you see at aronah gulch uh trail but it's going to be a little taller and then the security cameras right now the project includes the infrastructure meaning the boxes the conduits um for future security cameras to be installed on the rail trail and those cameras are going to be installed on every other light posts again that is shown on the on the um plan set that you can find online and that was the at the request of um you know uh fire and safety as far as having those additional cameras as well as having lighting in that area with regards to the specs of the lighting it is dark sky compliant i know that there was additional comments about potential glare you know facing up into residents and that is a common thing that we get with some of our roadway lighting projects or crossing improvement products we have in neighborhoods we do have the ability to install shields on those lights to help reduce that glare or reflection into people's whether it's bedrooms or you know front living rooms or front yards etc but we do want to make sure that we're maintaining uh lighting or having lighting on the trail itself uh you know making sure that we have that feature um for the community um so um one more question um i've been thinking about this a lot myself so i want to make sure i get this one asked um related to environmental mitigations for work on long this rail line um uh related to testing uh and any levels detected for arsenic and hexavalent chromium in particular in this case but just in general um you know environment the environmental mitigations um and and what you've found so far in the process yeah as a part of the implementation process of this project we've had to work with county environmental health services um and uh in doing that um we've done additional boring and sampling along all the segment seven so from natural bridges to um you know the Pacific Avenue roundabout um and of course this is a real line out there and over the years there have had some weed abatement so the the thing that we're finding as far as the highest level contaminants out there is arsenic and in working with the county environmental health um so what we're proposing what's being done as we did on phase one is providing a protective cap so that is placing i think what we have is four inches of asphalt and other four inches of base rock um as part of the trail section itself so the the trail itself actually acts as a protective cap and the fact that we have um a retaining wall on one side and then the smooth wire fence that i mentioned earlier on the other side we're really kind of keeping trail users um on the trail itself and not necessarily directing them to um the railroad which is you know we want to keep we want to keep the public actually off the rail line itself and on the trail thank you okay thank you council member brown i'm going to pause where we're at right now we still have a comment and a couple of questions on our consent agenda but we have a time certain presentation for four o'clock and that is the sister cities committee presentation the hands christian anderson writing contest awards and the award winners and sister cities we're pleased to have a special presentation of the santa cruz sister cities committee hands christian anderson writing awards this is such a wonderful writing competition for children for teens and adults and it's sponsored by the sister cities committee i'm pleased to introduce anita wood who is chair of sister cities committee along with isabel tuncer chair of the subcommittee for our sister city of siastre levante italy thank you mayor and city council all right santa cruz sister cities hands christian anderson essay competition is presented as part of the hands christian anderson fables bay competition held in our beautiful sister city of siastre levante hands christian anderson live for a short time there and it's considered a favorite sun this is the 55th year of the siastre competition and is part of a larger celebration of childhood and youth over 800 submissions have been received worldwide this year making this writing contest one most popular in italy the winners will be announced on june 11th during the anderson festival in italy the competition is open to writers in four age groups four age categories three to five years six to ten years 11 to 16 years and 17 plus the essays essays can be about any subject that must be an original folk or fairy tale a committee of readers determines first through fifth place of winners in each age group and these winning entries are submitted to the siastre competition we're so pleased to be back this year presenting in person and are joined by our fantastic writers without further ado i would invite mayor bruno to join me to present the awards thank you thank you it gives me such pleasure today to acknowledge these creative and talented writers and winners of the santa cruz sister cities committees hands christian anderson writing contest we're really proud of your efforts and we wish you the best of luck in siastre competition we ask that you please hold your applause until the end so i'm going to announce the winners for ages six to ten the winners are in fifth place the humble little woman by marianne hammer is is marianne hammer here please come forward to the podium and in fourth place tallow czar the dragon slayer by lohe vandemere please come forward welcome congratulations third place the mystery of the borrowing witches by jasmine harris shankin is jasmine here with us okay second place the two legos by leisle hildebrand congratulations first place drumroll the rich farmer and the poor man by sci zakariah sci is not here with us but congratulations to all of the age six to ten winners okay for ages 11 to 16 to 17 the winners are first place 19 by stella kukusa is stella here with us congratulations stella and in the division for adults ages 17 and up the winners are third place the big old farm the dutch dog and the little baby chicks by coach redowns second place finding friends by colleen douglas we'll save the applause to the end it's very exciting i know i have a tie for first place the first winner is jumping jaden by silvi patience and the second winner is windfall by jone f preblech okay congratulations thank you to all the participants in our sister cities committee we are really lucky to have such an active committee and such a talented group of young writers and adult writers in our community thank you for joining us today thank you very much have a good day we will now return to the consent agenda portion of today's meeting and we are currently in the uh comments and question stage of the agenda let me return to those notes here okay so uh we had a comment on agenda item number 17 from council member comings that is circle of friends community llc uh it's approving the final map yeah i just wanted to um make a comment on this because this was something that um we had a extensive amount of feedback on and um and i've still been hearing from people in the community about um what's happening at this site and just wanted to highlight that um you know there's been some people who have been saying that there's going to be a massive apartment complex and i just wanted to be clear to members of the public that these will be single family homes on these lots um and you know unfortunately the city does not own this property it's private property um and when the transaction went forward um the private owner the people who bought the the property have decided to move forward with creating residences there and so we're not in a position to you know really legally stop this from moving forward and um just want to acknowledge all the work that's been done around that the city you know did for the community with looking into a historic preservation and a number of other different items but we are here today to um you know um approve the final map of this project and um well i know there's a lot of strong feelings around the circles and the circle church um you know this is um a part of the public process and um and today we're here to to approve this final map which will be for single family homes built on on lots on that property so just wanted to acknowledge that this has been a very long process and i just want to acknowledge all the work and feedback that we've been hearing to get to this point thank you thank you council member Cummings uh the last item with uh item number 20 Kyuga street striping improvements budget adjustment uh council member Cummings you had a question on that i did um for members of the public um and i know that there's been some concern around safety on this street um it's a pretty wide street as many of us know and there's been speeding recently there was an accident where a member of the public was killed and so i just think that um in addition to the Kyuga street improvements that um i hope we can consider other streets in Santa Cruz i know that there's excessive speeding on almar there's excessive speeding on beach street especially in the early morning when there's no cars down by the boardwalk so just wanted to express that um you know there's there's definitely a need for us to look at many streets in our community and and look at improvements to reduce speeding but the one question i did have i know that um you know striping is one way of kind of bringing to the attention um where bike lanes are and you know trying to keep people to kind of stay within their quote unquote lanes pun intended but um having visited other cities i know that there's been um other ways that have been used to address kind of safe biking and and safe streets one is moving parking for example off of curbs so that the the space between where cars are parked and the curb can serve as a protected bike lane it also reduces the um width of the streets that ultimately slows traffic and i'm just curious if that has been taken into consideration and because you know Kyuga street could be a good example of a potential implementation for that kind of safe bike lanes and and slowing up streets and so i'm just curious if there are other um ways that have been taken into consideration around how we can create safer streets for pedestrians um bikers and also people who are driving cars i see that assistant public works director Nathan you and is here and um i'm wondering if you could speak to that sure how could i answer that question uh yes you know we did look at some uh different kind of initial designs or concepts i'll say on Kyuga street i think what you're referring to is considered a a parking protected bike lane when you move the bike lane off the curb and the bike riders are in between the parked cars as well as the the curb as you know that there's definitely uh pluses and minuses to a lot of the different types of designs and you know that one being that there's a lot of driveway approaches that you would cross and so um that makes it a little bit more challenging for sight distance as far as getting in and out of driveways and the turning radius is that you need when you move the car um you know in this case maybe seven feet off the face of curb um on Kyuga most of the street is while the fields wide now it is going to be considered a really a kind of a standard width street um in the sense that the bike lanes where they will be generous at six feet and the travel lanes are going to be reduced down to 10 feet in the southern portion of Kyuga we do get to get some buffered bike lanes so there's some new treatments there and that will give you some more space and uh to make it a little bit more low stress as far as riding in the bike lanes further south in Kyuga and i will say just add one last thing that this is really you know a what we considered more of a phased approach to that in overtime uh we'll be looking at evaluating the bike lanes and see how they operate over the next year and as you mentioned there are many streets in the city that um have been asking for this and um that is part of the challenge as far as is trying to find and uh trying to find funding and priority and uh and uh dedicating staff to this type of work so appreciate the comments that thank you for that clarification on you know why certain um protected bike lanes and bike lanes are better options than others and you know the issues with the driveways wasn't something that i thought about or had been brought to my attention so thank you for that i did have one follow-up question um on i'm just wondering um because i know that sometimes for construction sites um temporary um speed bumps are brought in or rumble strips that kind of you know make people want to slow down and wonder if there's any opportunities to implement some of those strategies on certain streets where there's constant excessive um speeding and yeah if there's any opportunities for those to be implemented in the interim yeah you know the challenge with having traffic calming uh doing pilot programs is finding the again the staffing the funding to kind of dedicate to that um in developing a neighborhood traffic calming program putting out uh you know potential uh you know like you mentioned temporary speed bumps um things of that nature is you know building the consensus and having uh again the staffing and resources to apply towards that um if in the future we are awarded a potential um quick build grant is what we'll be looking at maybe the following year an ATP cycle six uh grant where we can try doing some of those more um i don't want to say experimental tempting uh traffic calming measures but being able to pilot them to see how effective they are and then determine which path we want to go for next as far as finding funding to do more permanent traffic calming solutions and so but we're again what we have here is a kind of a phase approach towards that's to making kayuga you know and some of the other streets in our city you know a neighborhood creative way great thanks and yeah i'll just say that it'd be great to see if we can you know if there might be some consideration of some of these um intersections uh with the rail and trail because oftentimes people will be biking and those kind of bike out into traffic and if there's a way to slow um cars on some of those streets it could help so that people are more aware that they're coming up on those intersections and should be cautious of pedestrians crossing on bikes and walking so thank you thank you councilmember Cummings uh i also had a comment on item 20 and uh i just wanted to really call out all of the work that staff has done um to this point working with the neighbors um including uh uh on our police department our traffic lieutenant moray coming out uh to the neighborhood meetings and uh setting up the radar trailer and collecting data on speeding on the street and um assistant director and nathan ewin also engaging um extensively with the neighbors and their concerns and addressing public safety uh concerns and looking at um the phased approach for um this street as well as other streets in our city and how we can implement the best traffic calming measures for each location um so thank you so much for prioritizing safety on um our streets appreciate all the work okay that concludes our comments and questions from council on consent agenda items now i will bring it back to my notes this time if there are any members of the public that would like to speak to any item on our consent agenda now is the time to do so if you're a member of the public and have signed up please line up on the right of the dais and if you are a member of the public joining us virtually please raise your hand by pressing star nine or raise hand feature in your uh webinar controls on your computer you will have three minutes to speak and i will begin with our uh in person member of the public welcome thank you mayor bruna and council members jillian greenside i have to say uh it is very nice to be back here thank you welcome uh i'm going to comment on um item 16 and specifically about the measure d funding for the construction of segment seven phase two of the rail trail in 2016 measure d was very controversial and some of the strongest supporters of the rail trail were urging a no vote and the feeling was if it failed that a much stronger ballot measure could be put forward that didn't have some of the features that a lot of the rail trail people didn't support um i was conflicted about whether to vote yes or no um i did not want to have that money spent on constructing a trail and so when i read the ballot measure language and the fact sheet this is what it said and i'll read it the eight percent from measure d going to the rail corridor was for infrastructure preservation and analysis of options analysis including environmental and economic analysis of both rail transit and non rail options for the corridor rail line maintenance and repairs on the basis of that i voted yes so today to see that measure d monies is putting being used towards the cost of building the rail trail i feel is a violation of public trust the public i feel should expect with your when your ballot language is clear and based on that one decides how to vote and then to look ahead six years and find that the money is being used for what it was not intended for that that does not feel good the library measure s was the same issue the word relocation was buried in the fine print and i know many people besides myself voted yes on the assumption that the downtown library would be renovated where it stands this i feel is a disservice and leads to a lack of trust i'm not one of those people who does not trust government but this sort of bait and switch leads to a feeling of i don't think i would support any other measure if this is how it's going to play out thank you thank you okay at this time i will go out to hands raised in the virtual attendees list and the first hand raised is david heart trails ah good afternoon can you hear me yes hello you know i think most meetings would benefit from timeouts for sa awards just to remind us what it's actually all about so i wanted to acknowledge that in your efforts to work for the public good and most of the time we members of the public you know we stay home because everything is is just fine and silence i guess means you know thanks all y'all and then you know we only show up to comment when we're outraged about something so just for variety i want to actively say as a citizen thank you for all you're doing and of course especially for the several steps forward on the rail trail related items thanks and the new library looks super exciting too and that's all signing out thank you our next name with a hand raised for consent agenda item i wanted to look at the numbers nine through 23 on today's agenda and the name is whitney ramos good afternoon my name is whitney ramos as policy manager for the santa cruz county business council i'm here to express strong support for the library mixed use project we respectfully request request your i vote authorizing the submission of the california state library building forward library infrastructure grant program application and the acceptance if awarded as described in agenda item 14 the santa cruz county business council was founded in 1996 to provide a collective voice for countywide business owners executives and members of our local workforce today we continue to practice informed advocacy for projects policies and practices that will make the county a better place to live work and do business the library mixed use project is one of these projects the many opportunities for public participation has resulted in a robust community engagement and led to a project design and site program that exceeds our initial expectations as the project gets closer to its final steps we continue to see the city's thoughtful and proactive approach to designing the library mixed use project has paid off we thank you for your continued leadership on moving this project forward and look forward to supporting the implementation of the final design thank you thank you our next member of the public has the name i am watching you well thanks uh are you aware measure d is on the ballot in june uh why are there real trail spending items on this agenda at this time this seems fiscally whoopsie risky at this time what's the rush as to i am nine you seem to prioritize and always list as the first order of consent attention to business the extension of the covid emergency base solely for two reasons first the state's agabitator hasn't lifted his two-year-old emergency declaration so he can enjoy more of those dictatorial 47 executive orders and his suspension of 200 state laws and also maybe the something worse could maybe maybe happen fear monger reason i don't believe he gets it yet covid will persist in less of the emergency levels but so many of the covid mandate narratives have been so fairly discredited by courts and by those who look at all the real science and dare to publish it the powers that be have stopped pushing it and are going to let those vaccine and other covid mandates slowly sink into the abyss of silence without admitting to the atrocities of their mandates until they need them again perhaps you haven't noticed but the national narrative has moved on to war three and about face on a corrupt western puppet ukraine turned into a proxy war that could care less about peace and the leak the abortion debate ruling in an attempt to divert attention from about a dozen massively failed policies and prices of the biden administration including failed borders biden inflation supply chain disasters interest rates rising into a recession bear markets food supply issues energy issues the negative real standard of living affordability and creating a ministry of misinformation 1984 style free speech assassination just aside a few they know getting eight or ten vax doses into everyone isn't going to happen getting young children vaxed against their parents and any sensible notion of real risk to them isn't flying anymore mass are a joke i cannot think of one benefit to me personally state one if you can but i can think of several reasons to be done with it emergency is used by some to continue their unjustified vaccine apartheid venue admissions it perpetuates a climate of fear it renders the state assembly useless and powerless it circumvents the separation of powers has become nothing but just plain abusive to the rights of everyone everywhere it still exists because i suppose the power to abuse it seems irresistible to some thank you thank you our next member of the public to speak on consent agenda items 9 through 23 peter be here hello city council um i don't know if you can hear me um i just wanted to reiterate the city council member just in comments um comment on the the input on the item number 20 and also he's mentioning of beach streets and several members of the community from beach flat has also given me lots of all worrisome about the speeds on beach street just this morning or car almost crashed and also took over someone a member of the community last night yesterday was also scared and just some several members of the community also have mentioned maybe the possibility of having speed bumps in that area so i've also i know of a cat and a dog from the pets community have been killed by speedsters throughout the that area and so they're also just not only in kayu hoga but also in beach street the speed is everything you're getting out of control and i'm just sharing what the community at this time is working so i'm speaking through their voice thank you for your consideration and good work thank you all thank you peter are there any other members of the public that would like to speak to our consent agenda items today items nine through 13 nine through 23 thank you for the correction council member brown okay i'm not seeing any so um i'm now bringing it back to council and i'm looking for a motion i'm happy to move the consent agenda okay we have second that vice mayor Watkins and a second by council member golder and council member Cummings yeah i just wonder if someone from staff might be able to um respond to the comments that were made