So let's go ahead and get started. So good afternoon. Welcome to the 3pm public portion of the closed litigation session of the January 8th, 2019 meeting of the City Council. In this part of the meeting, the City Council will receive public testimony thereafter the council members will move to the courtyard conference room for the closed session. I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member, it's Crone. Present. Lever. Present. Myers. Present. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice Mayor Cummings. Here. And Mayor Watkins. Here. Before we open public comment, I have a brief announcement. The city attorney will provide a report on items listed on the closed session agenda at the beginning of the 3.30pm session. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to any items listed on the closed session agenda at this time? Seeing none or hearing none, I will adjourn this portion of the meeting to the courtyard conference room where the council will go into its closed session. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our 3.30 portion of the January 8th, 2019 meeting of the City Council. I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member, it's Crone. Here. Lever. Here. Myers. Here. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice Mayor Cummings. Here. And Mayor Watkins. Here. And if the clerk could please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I am going to the United States of America. To the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I've got to think about that one. This time, we'll have some introduction of some new employees of the City of Santa Cruz. And I'd like to start with our Human Resources Director, Lisa Murphy, who will be introducing Katie Cote, Administrative Assistant too. Katie? Good afternoon. I'd like to introduce Katie Cote. She is our new AA2 working in our benefits division. Read a little bit about Katie. Katie's a Bay Area native who's made her home in Santa Cruz for the past 18 years. She's a background in finance and customer service, and looks forward to growing in the Human Resources Department for many years. She enjoys raising her two boys on the beautiful Santa Cruz beaches in our parks and finding time to get outside and play as much as possible. Her favorite indoor hobbies include board games and trivia nights. You're on my team. Yeah, Katie always tries to spread her energy and cheer. I asked her what's a piece of trivia. She used to be her high school mascot, the American high school eagle. And another success story, Katie was a temp and we hired her as a permanent. So that's a great success and a great win. And we're very happy to have her jump right in. As you know, benefits touch each and every one of you. So, be nice, I guess she's got the keys to the city, great. So thank you, welcome Katie. Thank you, welcome Katie. Katie and I sometimes pass each other when we're doing our kid drop off at school, so congratulations and welcome. At this time, I'd like to invite up our Deputy Director of Libraries, Janis O'Driscoll, who will introduce Catherine Upton, Librarian, too. Good afternoon, it is such a pleasure to introduce Catherine to you because Catherine actually worked for us a long time ago in early literacy work. She helped us develop one of our most important early literacy programs, Read To Me. And she worked on kits. She worked with daycare providers. She worked on training, and she got this program launched and is still going today. And she kind of wandered off and became the school librarian for Baymont School for several years. And in the meantime, we were able to hire her for some special projects. One of the most exciting ones was when we began a project where we're training volunteers in the community to do story times to preschools. And so Catherine developed the curriculum and did the training for all of those volunteers and it's very successful, also still going. Well, we managed to attract her back to the library and she is now back in the permanent staff. She's currently assigned to the downtown branch and she will be doing story times and answering questions and all of the things that you would expect. But she's also going to take over a very important steam program at the library at the downtown branch and steam just to remind you, science, technology, environment, arts and mathematics. And so Catherine will be working with school-aged children and developing those programs for them. She's also going to be helping us keep the content current on the kids page of the Santa Cruz Public Library's website. So please join me in welcoming back Catherine Upton. Welcome back, Catherine. At this time, I'd like to invite up our director of economic development, Bonnie Lipscomb, who will be introducing David McCormick, development manager. Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the council. I'm so excited actually to introduce David to you today. This has been a long time coming. David's our new asset manager, property manager for the city. And some of you may know we've had this position vacant for a while. We've had numerous folks in our staff part-time sort of pulling together some of our asset management, property management. So we're really excited to have a designated person filling this role. David has a wealth of experience, and I'll get to that in just a second. But first, just a little background, his wife is named Catherine. He has two children, Mikaela, Mika, who's five, and his son, who is 16 months, Jackson. And he's lived in Santa Cruz over the last five years, most recently, and he lives on the east side. Most recently, he's worked for the city of San Jose in their parks and rec department. He has a lot of GIS background, so I'm really excited what he's going to do with our asset management portfolio. And we're talking about an interactive map. So I think that'll be really useful for our community. He graduated from San Jose State with an urban planning, urban development and design degree. He did grow up on the east coast in Vermont and Massachusetts. But his wife's family is actually from the Santa Cruz-Aftos area. And the interesting fun fact that I learned is that David's wife's family goes back five generations in Santa Cruz. And their family owned and ran the historic Garibaldi Hotel, or the Garibaldi Villa Hotel. That was off River Street. So some of you've seen some of those historic photos from the late 1890s, 1900. It's very beautiful and kind of a fun connection. David's going to be responsible, as I said, for property management. This includes our portfolio currently over 70, 80 properties in the city, including the wharf management, some of other properties. Acquisition development, property maintenance, and hopefully soon also the tannery commercial leasing. So we're going to have a lot on his plate. He's really hit the ground running. So excited to have him here. His favorite thing about Santa Cruz is the creativity and energy. I asked him what his favorite thing in his month's sort of long of working here at the city. And he said it's the positivity. It's sort of the good energy at the city and obviously no commute over the hill and being able to walk downtown. So you will welcome David and a round of applause for David for being part of our team. Welcome, David. And I would like to now invite up Parks and Rec Director Tony Elliott to introduce Isaac Steinbrook, a facility as a attendant. Hi, Tony. All right, good afternoon. My name is Tony Elliott, Director of Parks and Recreation. It is my pleasure to introduce Isaac Steinbrook today. I just had the opportunity to meet Isaac a couple hours ago, to be honest. And I realized that Isaac's reputation really is huge within the city. I think half of the chamber hall in here is filled with Parks and Rec folks. Who really love and respect and appreciate Isaac. Isaac actually started as a volunteer with Parks and Recreation at the age of 12. At Loudon Nelson, and has worked with seniors primarily. And is known really for his customer service, professionalism. Isaac went to high school at Santa Cruz High. He's currently going to Cambrio College, studying for degree in computer science. So I think it's fair to say, and I wish the whole Loudon crew could come up here and speak as well. But I think it's fair to say there's a contingent of our seniors. They're tech savvy and largely because of Isaac and the work and leadership that he's displayed. And so he will continue that work in a part-time role at Loudon Nelson, working with seniors, but working with this great team of Parks and Recreation. So on behalf of this team behind us, the cheering squad, please help me welcome Isaac to the team. That's wonderful, welcome Isaac. Okay, so at this time we will have a presentation from our police chief, Andy Mills, who will be introducing the police department volunteers. I also have two employees that I'll introduce first if that's okay, Mayor. Absolutely. So if Lori and Jody would come on up, please. They're shy, they said chief, we want to make sure that we're not talking, okay? But anybody who works in city government knows that who actually runs the organizations are the A2 and A3s. And we've been so fortunate to hire two A2s to help the chief's office. One works for Dan Flippo, the other works for myself, and they are busy all day long. And so I'd like to introduce to you first Lori Hageman. Lori came to California from Ohio, Michigan, but she's been here for 32 years, so I guess she's kind of a native. And lives in Boulder Creek, yeah, this is Lori over here. She's spent the last 25 years in administration and management, including having multiple employees, like eight or ten at one point, in the healthcare field. So she really understands healthcare benefits, which is another huge asset for us as an organization. I do have a question, who are you root for when Michigan plays Ohio? Michigan, you said? I'm a native. Okay, we'll have to argue this for the next five years. On her downtime, she enjoys the outdoor and helping raise her grandchildren who come over and visit her frequently. And so welcome, glad to have you. Welcome. And Jody Malloy came to us from Connecticut, where she worked as an executive assistant to the senior levels of corporate management in the New York area for over 20 years. This included more than 10 years as the executive assistant to the CEO of a multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 company that was traded in the New York Stock Exchange. I'm kind of looking for insider tips, but she's not giving them up. This included handling shareholders and board members and people who are constantly complaining about things, so she should fit right in. And Jody and her husband live in Santa Cruz and have four children, including two fur babies and two horses. And she goes down and visits them quite frequently. This time, it's been a little bit muddy, huh? Yes. Okay, so anyways, we're very thankful to have both of them. They've just been hit the ground running and can't wait to see what they can do in the future. So thank you, ladies. Welcome. Now if I can get all of our volunteers to come up. So what do you do when you have a really busy police department that don't have enough cops to go around? You find volunteers, and yeah, and so we're so thankful that this is just about half of the first class. And so we actually have 25 total volunteers, and they're responsible for a variety of things. One of which is walking the downtown area, helping people find restaurants and places to go. And then educating people as to what you can and cannot do, like you can't smoke downtown and we're happy to point that out, nor can you skateboard in the sidewalks and do other things that they can point out. But most importantly, what they're doing is they're creating a great visual presence. Not only the downtown area, but the beaches and the parks as well as we roll this thing out. And ultimately, they'll also be calling on senior citizens who are shut-ins and making sure that they're taken care of and that if there are needs that they can refer them to adult protective services and do invocation home checks. So they have a variety of things that they will be able to do as we continue to grow in this program. So if it's okay, I'd like to introduce them to you in no particular order. But if I can say this while I'm introducing them, where did Beth and Caitlyn, where are you at? Come up here, go and hide in the back. So three people really made this happen. And I just want to really recognize them for their unbelievable efforts. Joyce Blotchke was charged with putting this together and she just did a fantastic job. And we hired Beth as a part-time person who spent full time working on this project. And Beth did a fantastic job getting people backgrounded and going through the process. And then when all else failed, Caitlyn, who you can see is with child. We actually were looking for a uniform that could work and so she came up with this. Caitlyn put all the curriculum together. Everybody was trained for over a week with a variety of tools. She put the curriculum together. It was very thoughtful, including the next stages, so that when she does go out and maternity leave, she can continue with training. She came up to me a week ago and said, hey, I really own this project now, so I don't want to leave it. And so she has just done a stellar job helping put this together. I know that everybody feels that way because I've had multiple people come up to me and tell me how much they appreciate it. So I'm going to introduce that, volunteers to you. And if you would, volunteers, just step forward or wave your hand so people know who it is. Sydney Falcone, Haley Richmond, Veronica Charoche. How do they do, Veronica? Not good. Joe Netro, George Stagney, Thurman, you know, Margie Way. I'll get out of the way so you can actually see Margie. Colin Miller, Maggie Ramirez, Kyle Wave. Everybody knows this guy, JD Satello. JD? Where is he at? Yeah, I decided that. Ryan Perelis, Monica Young, Diane Lamone. How do they do, Diane? Actually, I can call it Diane. It's Diane. David Gianni. Giannini. Right behind you. Yeah. Jim Carreher. And Jake Dimetsch. So this is our volunteer crew. You'll see them out and around. And I would just, by the way, like to thank AT&T for paying for the uniforms that didn't come out of the police budget. And so community members have even stepped forward to help us. And we look for some great things. We're actually getting ready to start a couple of crime criminogenic experiments so we can measure to see how effective they are with this group. And we'll announce that in the future. So thank you so much for the time. Thank you, Chief Mills. And I just want to thank all the volunteers for being here today and for just choosing to spend your time supporting our city. There's a lot of volunteer opportunities. And I appreciate you choosing Santa Cruz and doing this. So thank you so much. I see Councilman Brownhouse. I'm really happy to see this. This is great. Thank you all for volunteering. This is really, how long is a typical shift? Right now there are two-hour shifts, multiple shifts sometimes a day. But we're going to expand that into three and four-hour shifts so we can get more bang for our buck out of them. How many days have they been out there so far? Have they already been out? Yeah, they've been out for about a month. I thought I've seen those. And the typical thing, what comes up most that you are asking someone to do or do they ask for directions or is it cigarettes? What I have done is gone into some businesses and just said how I can introduce myself. That helps. It's also helpful for us to be around when people that look like they're in need come up to us and say, gosh, can you help me with this something? Do you know you're like that? So we contacted Chris, who works at the office at the library there and could match up somebody that was in need with her. So we're just feet on the street. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Mathews. This is the first class. And what's your anticipated schedule for those who might be interested in the future? I assume you want to have an application period. We go through an application period. We also have to go through a rigorous background because they still are in the police facility. And we want to make sure that people have the highest caliber. You can see that we really have a high caliber of folk here. So it does take a little bit of time. So we would anticipate in the spring we'd like to do another class and see if we can take this up to 50 and then continue to expand from there. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions? I just have one. Are you guys doing evenings shifts as well or is it daytime primarily or one of the hours? Yeah, mostly it's daytime right now. We're trying to keep them out in the daylight. Yeah. Good. Good. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you so much. So I have a few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting. So I'm excited to invite everyone to the historic groundbreaking for the first segment of the coastal rails rail. So please come and celebrate with the city and county officials and the community members at the west base of the San Lorenzo River railroad trestle bridge at 12.15 p.m. this Thursday, January 10th. And I'll wait just a second to continue. I'll just repeat the time again. So there will be a groundbreaking on this Thursday, January 10th at 12.15 p.m. The lunch hour ceremony will be followed by a party with free refreshments and giveaways and there is going to be free parking and a bike ballet. So for more information, please visit the city of Santa Cruz dot com and I hope to see you all there. Today's meeting is also broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website. The city of Santa Cruz dot com. I want to thank Jennifer Cameron, who is our technician for both this afternoon and evening sessions and thank her again for her work. So all of our city council members can be emailed at the city of city council at city of Santa Cruz dot com. And if you would like to communicate with us about an agenda item, we'd like to receive your email by Monday at 5 p.m. before our council meeting. This provides us with an opportunity to review your email and include it with the rest of our agenda packet. Please do bear in mind that all items of correspondence with the city and city council constitute a public record and are generally subject to disclosure upon request by any member of the public. Accordingly, if you have any sensitive information or private information that you do not wish to be made public, you should not include that information in your correspondence. Our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left. And it is my job to keep the meeting running without disruption. And we ask you to respect your fellow citizens when you are inside and outside our council chambers. At this time, I'd like to ask if there are any statements of disqualification amongst the council. Seeing none, City Clerk, are there any additions or deletions to our agenda? No, there are not. Quick oral communications announcement. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda. Oral communications will generally occur at the conclusion of the afternoon business around 5.30pm, but may occur before or after 5.30pm depending on the meeting. At this time, I'd like to ask our city attorney to provide a report on closed session. Yes, thank you. Mayor Watkins, members of the city council, there were two items on this afternoon's closed session agenda, which began at 3pm in the courtyard conference room. First item was a liability claim, the claim of Wendell Turner Burgess. There was no reportable action on that claim, however it is listed as item 8 on your consent agenda. Second item was a conference with labor negotiators. The council received a report from its chief negotiator, Lisa Murphy, concerning the SEIU Local 521. There was no reportable action. Thank you. At this time, we usually have a city manager report, but is my understanding at this time we will not, okay? Thank you. So at this point in the meeting, we'll move on to our consent agenda. And those are items 2 through 10 on our agenda. 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'd like to pull an item? I'll just start by saying I plan to pull item number three myself. Are there any additional items that would be pulled? Council member Cooke. Item number two, the minutes from the last meeting. Item number two. Item nine. Sorry, council member Matthews. Yes, I'd like to pull five and six. Six, and I was going to pull six. I was going to pull six as well. Okay. So I see that we will be pulling items two, three, five, six, and nine. Is that correct? Okay. Are there any council members who wish to only comment on any of the items that were not pulled at this time? Sure, no problem. The items that were pulled from consent are items two, three, five, six, and nine. Are there any council members who wish to only comment on any of the other items? Not at this time. Are there any members of the public who would like to request an item be pulled or to speak to an item on our consent agenda with the exceptions of items two, three, five, six, and nine? That would be the time to do so. And you will be given two minutes. Thank you very much. Mayor Watkins, council members, Gillian Greenside, and I'm really here just to appreciate item number four. It's been a long time coming. That is the televising of the Santa Cruz Planning Commission meeting. For the past three or four years, myself and actually my late husband, John, spoke to this, although he hated speaking at the microphone. But he thought it very important that the Planning Commission meetings be more available to the public since so many important decisions are made there. And it was he who brought it to my attention that we're the only city that doesn't make our Planning Commission meetings available in that way. And I was even surprised when we visited his family in Vallejo to see on the television that all of their commissions are televised, parks and recreation, et cetera. So we've asked for many years and there hasn't been any progress. So I can only say with the new council, this is very heartening and I want to just express appreciation. That's of course assuming that it will be voted to go in. And I hope it will be on community television because I think that is the most available for the community. So thank you very much. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who would like to speak to the council on the consent agenda besides items two, three, five, six and nine? Seeing none, I'm now looking for a motion on the remaining items of consent which are two, seven, eight, ten and eleven. Actually not two. I'm sorry, four, seven, eight, ten and eleven. I'll move the consent agenda. Second. Okay. That was motioned by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Council Member Brown. Any further questions or deliberations? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. So now we are moving on to the polled items and so we'll start with item number two, which I believe is polled by Council Member Cron. Thank you, Mayor. I emailed Bonnie about it and I might have gotten an email back, but I'm not receiving emails, right? Someone's wrong with my machine. But this has to do with item number 27 from the last meeting and it was the reading of final adoption of ordinance amending chapter 221.03. A municipal code pertaining to relocation assistance for displaced tenants. And I was just wondering, I just thought there was all the people who spoke 31 expressed concern and I thought there was a four and against or speaking in favor of the motion or speaking against the motion. I thought we were going to separate it out like that. And I do. And I did respond to your email, but that particular item, there were people in support of the idea, but they shared concerns. That's why they fell under expressed concern because they weren't 100% for the item as it was. Okay, I'll move item number two. Okay. Is there any member of the public who'd like to speak to that item? Thank you, Mayor, Council Members. That last meeting was very long and I don't usually look at the minutes, but I did for this agenda. And I totally appreciate it's a hard job to do minutes and for that particular meeting. However, I was in many years ago, minutes were much more detailed and reading minutes who's got a sense of the dialogue. I understand that might be cumbersome, but the next iteration for Council was for and against. And it seemed to me, looking at all of the items, it was very hard to tell how many were for, how many were against. I think the category was expressed concerns. I spoke strongly in favor of one of those items or not strongly. I spoke in favor of it. So I think if that is the usual formula for and against, that would be helpful. And just lastly, on the oral communications, I think the minutes for those who read them gives a sense of what happens at Council and the public record is important. And under oral communications, I spoke and if it could, I don't think it would take a lot more to give a little bit more flavor. What I spoke to was the fact that on the wharf, the shops leave their doors wide open on a freezing day with the heaters full blasting. And I brought that as a concern, but the capture of it was, Green Sites spoke about shops and restaurants on the wharf. And thank the outgoing Councilors. So I just think to be able to capture just a little bit more accurately of what he's brought forward to you would be ultimately in the public good. But I do appreciate that was a difficult and long meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who would like to address the Council on this item? Okay. Seeing none, I'll return it back to our Council for Action and Deliberation. Oh, you moved approval, Chris. Is that correct? I'll move the item. Okay, so that was moved by Council Member Cron, seconded by Council Member Matthews. A question by Council Member Myers. I assume that for the new members we can't, we'll have to abstain for the majority until the 7pm session. I'll turn it over to our city attorney to respond. That has been a custom of Council Members in the past, but it's not a legal requirement. The approval of the minutes is the Council's official certification that those are the minutes of the meeting. It's not an attestation by Council Members that they reviewed it and made sure everything was accurately set. So, in my view, current Council Members can approve the minutes from the last Council. Okay. Thank you. And then, thank you. Just to address the concern of the community member, is it feasible, Bonnie, or to include or expand the detail in the minutes so that if someone weren't to just reference it, they would be able to get a stronger understanding of the decisions that were made in the conversations or concerns expressed? Our minutes are specifically action minutes, not verbatim or not summary minutes. They're action minutes. So that's part of a charter, actually. And just from what she was mentioning that there was description that she spoke about businesses on the wharf. So that seems pretty specific. Is there a reason that her specific complaint wasn't or issue with the businesses on the wharf weren't included in the minutes? No, there's no specific reason. It was an action. It was just a summarization of the people speaking. Okay. That's why we record the meetings. That's why people can go back to the video also. So that's why we do this action minutes because there is an option to watch the video. Council Member Cronin? Yeah, I would just say it's pretty difficult watching the video a lot of times and finding exactly where you want to find. And I'll just say for the record, I think having summary minutes would be, would do the city a lot more justice in terms of finding out what people actually spoke. Here's 31 people who spoke and I don't know what they said for that one item. The other thing about this is just the way it's been done for a while. But I'm going to say it'd be great to turn that around because it's hard to watch the video. Okay, great. Any other comments at this time? So we have a motion by Council Member Cronin and a second by Council Member Mathews. Is that correct? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. I was just going to point out that the minutes as they're currently prepared are pursuant to the council's policy manual. So we're the council to direct further elaboration on comments from either council members or members of the public in the minutes that would require an amendment to that personnel manual or the procedures manual. Thank you. Okay. So that passed unanimously. So item number three is the item that I pulled and I just wanted to provide an overview of the process. Traditionally the mayor as long as I've been on council and I'm not sure how much longer before my time is tasked at the beginning of the year to hear input from our council members. I'll ask seven, including myself, and to weigh and balance their input and a number of considerations, time commitment and travel availability, experience, et cetera. And then bring before the council a recommendation. And so that's what you have before you here today. And I just wanted to kind of provide that context so that you and the community are aware of how the process goes. What the sort of facilitator role that the mayor plays in that process and any questions that may be amongst the council or the community in regards to that. Are there any questions from the council at this time? About the process? For me or on the item in general. And then are there any members of the community who would like to address the council on item number three? Seeing none. We'll return for action and deliberation. Is there a motion to move the item? Some questions. Question? I just have a more, it's a statement and a question I guess. So after reviewing and I totally understand the process and the historic presidents that exist because of it. But when looking at some of the suggestions and nominations for considerations that were made. I find concern in some of the structure and also the selections that have been made because of a lack of representation. As well as, and I spoke, we got a chance to meet and talk about it briefly, but I noticed that on the document that's online still is still the same. So I'm not sure if any of those things are changed or not, but if not, then especially with regards to the public safety committee that have council members, there's Matthews and Crone on there doesn't provide any representation of lower income and or diverse representation from socioeconomic backgrounds in the decisions or conversation around public safety and Santa Cruz. And after speaking with the police chief and his vision of the direction that he'd like to see Santa Cruz public safety go, it seems like there should be some more representation there. As well as in some of the other committees or groups that were put together. So I just want to express my concern and ambivalence in moving forward with these suggestions, especially with the public safety error or lack there of representation. I want to share council member Glover's comments as well as, you know, the words you just said, you know, what it's been done in the past, there's been a fairer distribution of these tasks. I would say that a lot of these committees are really unknown to the public for one thing. Looking at them there's 12 primary ones that I think probably have the most interest and people want to be on as far as council members. One is the ad hoc committee on budget, the metro, the bus board, the public safety committee, the downtown management committee, the community programs committee, the RTC, visit Santa Cruz, which does public relations for the city and for businesses, marketing basically tourism, the farmers market, the long range development plan advisory to UCSC, the library, LAFCO and homelessness. And I just see with these 12 it just seems like there's a better distribution process. You know, I know the council member Glover didn't get any of his choices that he put in for and I received one. And yeah, I would just like to hear from other council members about, you know, having a fuller conversation about these committees. If I may just briefly and then I'll see if other council members want to respond. I certainly understand that when you express interest in an item or serving in a certain way as a member of one of these external agencies or committees that there is the possibility that there won't be an opportunity for everybody to serve. For example, if I have five requests for an opening of two positions, certainly three people won't get their request met. And so again, I just want to let you know that when considering these recommendations before you today was a huge variety of factors that I tried to balance. So I recognize that there's been times in the past where I didn't get the items that I wanted to serve on. And so I empathize with the disappointment, I guess I would say, knowing that that's partially what the setup is for if you're not able to meet the needs based on the allotted slots, essentially. Other council members wanting to speak? Well, I'll just say that the mayor does have a task to balance the, or consider the desires of individual council members, the range of options and also concerns for continuity on some commissions or assignments. And I didn't get everything I asked for and was surprised at a couple of others. So there I think we're all in that situation. But my experience is over the years that by and large the assignments, people rise to the occasion and or they learn new things. And it, to my mind, has in the long run worked well. I definitely understand the issue that has been raised here. I'd be prepared just to move this. And I think it's also important to acknowledge the prerogative of the mayor to do this. Obviously it has to be confirmed by council. But just to get this discussion moving forward, I am going to move confirmation of the assignments that are made in this item. I'll second that motion. So motion by Matthew, seconded by myself. Council Member Brown. I mean, I think it's worth just weighing in here to say that. And I know we had the conversation that I too was concerned about the spread in terms of those designations. I'm perfectly fine with the commission appointments I got. I understand continuity in addition to all of the other factors that you've considered. And I appreciate the challenging task of doing this. It's not fun. I know more I've heard. But I do think that at some point we ought to really be looking at how we are all represented and have opportunities to serve and represent the city on these various boards and commissions. It's been a serious learning experience for me. I'm looking forward to carrying on with some and taking on new ones. But I just want to say that I do think that certain council members have been a bit left out here. And I'd like to make sure that we find a way to address that. So just put it out there. I'll just add that there will be city ad hoc committees come up and come and go throughout the year as work kind of comes about. So there will be opportunities for more ways for us to collaborate and serve in that regard. And I had something else now I forgot. So I'll go ahead and move to the chair. I think that this is this is really serious. And I would I would like to make a substitute motion to table this item until our next meeting and have some time for further discussions and for their discussions to go on among council members as well as the public as well. Because they've been interested some of the folks who who I know who do read the agendas. So I will I will make a substitute motion to take this up to table this right now and take it up January 22nd. There's motion on the floor. Is there a second? They seem none. Can I say something as I enter into my decision or whatever I decide to move? My understanding is that the motion on the floor will die without discussion. If there's not a second, it could be reiterated afterwards. I'm I don't know if I follow what you're you're correct that the motion dies for lack of a second. But it could be reintroduced if council member Glover can make a comment and then the motion could be resurrected. Okay. So this item as mundane as it may seem to people that aren't behind the scenes and thinking about the totality of what's going on is essentially a. Symbol or it's setting the stage for our working relationship together as council members over the next four years, two to four years for some of us who knows how much longer. The concern I have is that if we're not willing or able to work through some kind of a compromising situation where people across the dais feel that their perspectives will be represented. And that their preferences have been taken into account through the appointment process. Then I fear that it will cascade into a culture of difficulty when trying to reach compromise on other areas of focus. And especially when looking at the public safety committee that is made up of all white people all over the age of 50 who all I've to my knowledge own property in Santa Cruz. That is impossible to get a diverse perspective of representation on how we can reform and change our public safety system so it works better in Santa Cruz. So to have a motion made to push it through and seconded when you understand the concern and you've heard from multiple of your fellow members expressing that the structure and makeup is not sound from our perspective. It is concerning and disappointing to me for this to be one of our first things that we're dealing with. So I will second the motion for Council Member Crohn's alternative motion to table this discussion for two weeks so that we can work through this and ideally find a way to come out the other side closer as opposed to farther away. Any discussion? We're now discussing on the substitute motion. Yes. Yes, I'm going to vote against that. Again, I thoroughly understand your concern and I didn't even ask for public safety. So there it's not a conspiracy. That's the one I was surprised to find myself on. And I told the mayor I'm happy to serve where appointed but an alternative would be to confirm this list but anticipate that there may be opportunities to change the alignment to tweak it rather than putting the whole thing in abeyance. A lot of these outside commissions particularly are gearing up for their January meetings and so forth and need to move forward. So I'd like to confirm globally but understand the concerns and there's always the opportunity to make a shift at a subsequent meeting in the very near future if that sounds amenable. That's fine. And if it's specifically to public safety and there's the consensus amongst council. Excuse me. I will acknowledge you. Point of order. When you table something, you vote on it without discussion, I believe. That is correct. Council member Crohn pointed that out to me and I'm just reading the rule. Okay. It requires that all discussion of the item under consideration at the time of the motion be halted immediately without further discussion. So I think there's been a motion in a second. You want to vote on the motion to table. So we're voting on the substitute motion to table the item. Without discussion at this time. Okay. All those in favor to table the item to the January 22nd meeting please say aye. Aye. That is no. All those voting no say aye. I would say no. Excuse me. No. Okay. So that fails for the lack of votes with council members. Council member Crohn, Glever, Brown voting in favor. Council members Matthews, vice mayor Cummings, council member Meyers and myself voting against. So we'll go back to the original motion which was made by council member Matthews, seconded by me to pass this and. Can I comment or ask a question? Sure. So at a later point in time if council members are able to discuss their interest in possibly switching between different committees or agencies. That could be tweaked. Then we can make those changes in the future. And we could. Yes. That's true. Absolutely. I would in fact amend my motion to be that we adopt the assignments that are put forward in this agenda report with the understanding that there may be tweaks in the near future. Absolutely. And I'd be happy if there is consent official word tweak. I was going to say. And if there is consensus among the council to reorganize public safety, we can make that the first task of the mayor. And then so that's the motion and I would just say for those council members who do have some further comments to communicate those with the mayor so that those weeks can be done at the next meeting. And then we can go forward through the year with the assignments in place. One second. Well, there's public comment. I'll just make a quick comment while Nicholas is coming up. Mr. Whitehead. With the tweak caveat, I would be prepared to move ahead. I do want to make sure that we read this. Okay. Certainly public comment. Didn't we already, didn't we, did we not, we did public comment. We did not do public comment. Excuse me. Are there, is there any member of the public who would like to speak to this item? You'll be given two minutes. I need two minutes. I would suggest that the public safety committee become a commission. And that would address the issues that Council Member Glover spoke to. I think that what goes on there isn't helpful for the community. It's a kind of safetyism focus on a lot of negatives. And it would be useful to have a broader representation of commission and televised. Any other members of the public who'd like to address the council on this item? Seeing none, we'll move it back to deliberation and action. And just for clarification, I, the motion is to pass what was before us today, knowing that it can be modified and tweaked as needed. But for my clarification of understanding of the council's will, the first request is to look at the public safety makeup. Is that correct? Okay. Council Member Cron. Could we get clarification on the, on the Metro Board? How many representatives do we have and how many? Not clear to me. Two from the city. It was Cynthia Chase and myself. Here it says alternate. So do we have one or do we have two? Maybe I'll look to staff to maybe respond to that. I believe we have two. Two? Yes. Okay. So where's that go on the list here? So the. It looked like there was an alternate. It says alternate. So perhaps that's not necessarily accurate. We would need to remove alternate that those are the two appointments. That's right. That's okay. Well, I'm, I'm disappointed that there's at least two sevenths of us who have brought this to your attention and you will not change it, which is kind of really interesting to me as far as collegiality, getting off on the right foot beginning of the year. I'm just pretty, pretty disappointed that there's not any changes that you, you, you would, you would make. It's disappointing. I'll just respond by saying it is the role of the mayor to hear input from the council and propose recommendations to the full council. These were the recommendations with balancing the various factors that I mentioned earlier that I've brought to the council for approval that does not preclude the council from doing whatever they may want to do with that. If that's the will of the council to change it, that's the will of the council to change it. So it, so it was my responsibility to prepare this and bring it forward to you. And that's what I have done balancing again that we're a seven government, seven member governing body from various sectors and have various input and considerations and, and making those appointments based on that. So that's where we're at. If there's the will to change it or do anything different, that's, that's the will of the council. I will say for the record too that council member Glover received none of the requests he made as far as I know. And I received one and some of the folks on this list received four and five of the request they made. Any other discussion at this time? I will say that this process has been incredibly disappointing. Not only in the response to the concerns that have been expressed, but also in the decision breakdown. It was disappointed in some, some of those that made the decisions that they did just to be completely honest and transparent. However, the fact that I received zero. Now it's okay to say, sure, not everyone gets what they want, but to receive zero out of the list that was provided of appointments speaks to me in a way that is discouraging and uncomfortable. So I hope that we can work towards figuring out ways to remedy and address that in a positive manner because I do not feel represented in the slightest by these decisions. I would like to hear from the mayor exactly what went into your decision making and who was consulted. You said that it was experience. You said to me anyway, and I wrote it down, availability and interest. And I was never asked about my availability on any of these issues. I don't know if other folks were. But how did you make these decisions actually? Who made the decisions and how were they made? Because it doesn't seem to me that I think we're making the case for experience. I can make a case for a lot of these boards and commissions. I don't really understand. I mean, I think from what I've already said, it's the balancing of those different factors essentially. And some folks did let me know their availability or unavailability if you will. And taking in all of those, that input is sort of how I tried to balance these recommendations to come before the council. Agree with them or not agree with them. That was what I was tasked to do. And if there is the will of the council for me to revisit the recommendation for public safety as the first modification, I'm happy to do that. Or if there is a potential shift on how you would like to proceed with this in the future, that's up to the council as well. But that's what I was asked to do. That's what I did. And that's what's before you today. And by the time that was made public with having heard the concerns, that was what I had already presented to the community at this time. So that's where we're at at this point. So if there's not any additional further discussion, would we like to move the item? I was just going to mention that now knowing that the Metro consists of two city council members, one of whom is not an alternate. I'm wondering if that might be taken into consideration to. Absolutely. Okay. So the motion is to pass this with tasking the mayor to revisit the Metro and public safety appointments by the 22nd. Okay. At this point is there's not any additional comments. We'll go ahead and vote on the item. Can we also strike the word alternate from the Santa Cruz and Metropolitan District Board? We actually have two council members who sit on the Metro Board. That's right. And we'll strike the word alternate from that. Okay. At this time we'll take a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nay. That passes with council member Brown, council member Matthews, council member Myers, vice mayor Cummings and myself voting yes. And council member Crone, council member Glover voting no. So the next item that was pulled is item number five. And I don't recall who pulled that item, was it council member Matthews? I did. This is a proposal to change the time and structure for oral communications. And I personally will speak against this. I wanted to hand out to the council, this is the actually the part of the Brown Act that talks about the purpose of oral communications. And you'll notice it's Xerox on the back of a precinct sheet, something that's familiar to all of you. But basically the fundamental purpose of oral communications as written in the government statute is to give an opportunity for the public to address the body on an item that's not on the regular agenda. And is within the subject matter of the jurisdiction. We kind of stray far afield of that sometimes. The government code also says that the local agency can adopt reasonable regulations limiting the amount of time allocated in total and for the individual speaker. And I think it's quite fair to say that there's an active engagement in oral communications here in Santa Cruz. It is correct, as was stated in the staff report that at one point it was in the evening, was moved at another point to late afternoon. And there's always a balancing act of those people who have demands of family, demands of work, etc. But my main reason for preferring it at the end of the day at 5.30 is it does accommodate those who have, that is for staying with the current plan. It accommodates those who have a regular daytime work schedule they can get here and they can get home and have the evening with their family. But of equal importance, the items that we have scheduled at 7 PM tend to be our great big items. It's a big public hearing on an ordinance, on a development proposal, people come. Those meetings are often involve complicated staff presentations but also a great deal of public interest. And typically, or often I would say, the experience of public oral communications is contentious, chaotic, and has over time been discouraging to the public. The general public that comes and wants to engage in the substance of an item and is frankly turned off of engagement with the public process as a result of the oral communications experience. So it takes up a half an hour of the evening time non-productively and in fact can often be a negative experience. So for that reason, my preference would be to keep it at the afternoon hour. If the decision is to go forward with this, there's some language that just doesn't make sense in the proposed language. Like it says, if oral communications, let's see, if the afternoon business concludes earlier than 7 PM, the council shall recess. Well that makes no sense if we're doing it at 7. I think the language isn't even consistent here and the language here says that oral communications will occur around 7 PM. If an agenda item is still in progress at 7 PM, the item will be concluded. Well, there again, that makes no sense. So I think at the very least, if the desire of the majority is to restructure the oral communications to 7 PM, this language needs to be cleaned up. Another thought would be if the desire is to go to 7 PM, that oral communications be at 7 and business starts at 7.30. That way people know, am I coming for oral communications or am I coming for the business section? So that's just another thought. Also, I think it's very important, items that are shown redlined as 5, I guess, on occasions when the speakers remain to address the council after 30 minutes of oral communications. Quite a long series of options extending maybe the comment period for another 45 minutes or a total of 45 minutes. I personally think those should be stricken. I think the idea, as the Brown Act anticipates, we set reasonable limits for the public to come and address us. And the public can communicate with the council in many other different ways as we all know with email, with private meetings and so forth. This is one opportunity, but it's really not to drive the whole evening. So I think it's important to leave to the mayor's discretion the management of the meeting. That is the discretion of the amount of time setting aside a maximum of half an hour and adjusting the commentary time as the circumstances dictate. So those are my comments. Others will weigh in accordingly. I'd personally like to keep it at 5.30. And if it goes to 7, to clean up the language and leave the timing to the mayor's discretion. Are there any other comments before I open it up to the public to comment at the time? It's something that's slipped in the last four or five years, oral communication. I see it as one of the essences of a democracy where we open the podium and we hear from the public on items not on our agenda. It's been extremely important, at least to folks that I've spoken to in the community. And it would be interesting to look at when oral communication actually started, meaning when it was at 5 or 5.30, it's been a floating time. It rarely begins at that time. And it's very difficult. People have often been frustrated. They leave. It started as late after 6. People can't guarantee what time it's going to begin. In addition, I don't know if 5.30 is not a lot of people are sitting on 17 when it's 5.30. And also the fact that they could be home and watching it too at a fixed time has been important in the history of Santa Cruz. So I agree with Council Member Matthews that we should advertise oral communications at 7 p.m. and then 7.30 regular business. And as far as the time allotted, if it's an issue that just happened that week or day in Santa Cruz and people are really urgently want to talk about it, I would definitely have the Mayor exercise her discretion in extending it to 45 minutes. It just gives it that. But 30 minutes, I think, is a good amount of time to listen to the public every two weeks. And if there's less than 10 people in the room who want to address the Council, I would like to see it at three minutes. And that's why I was in here. Thank you, Mayor. Are there any other comments? Councillor Brown. So I guess I'll just weigh in for a moment. I've been clear since I've been on the Council that I believe that 7 p.m. is an appropriate time for oral communications. I really appreciate the idea of having time certain. I agree with Council Member Matthews that if we're going to do it this way, doing it time certain at 7 p.m. and then having our business meetings begin at 7.30 is a good idea to eliminate that limbo that people sit in. And with the 5.30, out or around 5.30, it's been that way and it's been frustrating I think for people. So I really support this because of the time certain. I am really okay with this being up to the discretion of Mayor whether or not to extend the oral communications period based upon demand from the public. What I see oral communications is for is an opportunity to address us on items not on the agenda. Now that in our experience has been liberally used by regular commenters, communicators. It also has been an opportunity for members of the public to bring items to our attention that maybe have just come up. Items that we are not aware of in a way that really, that we hear it, right? So getting an email about something is different than somebody showing up and saying this is happening in my neighborhood or this has come up. And it provides an opportunity for us to hear from those folks and then hopefully agendize something and or get it addressed through staff. So I really want to make that as accessible to the public as possible. So I'm going to support this. I am really okay with the proposed changes and I think it's fine to have it be the discretion of the mayor about whether or not we extend it if there really is a major issue that people want to come and weigh in on that we haven't agendized. And so those are my general comments about the proposal as it is. Any additional comments at this time? I'll just weigh in. I agree that we should advertise at the 730, the 7 and 730 periods so that people who want to come from one or the other shouldn't have very clear ability to do so and know that it will be honored. Additional comments? Before we open up to public comment, I'll just say this is something we've brought, that's been brought before the council a couple of times. We made the modification to the 530. And one of the things that I felt good about when changing it from 5pm to 530 is that it does allow for that window of time when people are commuting home to get here in 5,530. And if thinking about who can access oral communications, one of the things that I've brought up in the past is that 530 for a working parent is actually a lot easier than a 7pm time when you're trying to prepare dinner and deal with the child kind of experience. So in terms of who that change in timeline and timing meets that need, I'm not quite sure who we're modifying for that. But I'm hearing sort of two things, which one is the assurance of a time certain so that the community is aware that we'll have an oral communication period and then a proposal for a change. I do share concerns that with the 7pm item like we have this evening that when you start oral communications at 7, it really does push back what will be often a very intensive long conversation. So there is sort of that personal concern around the 7pm time. And I know also that we have three new council members who haven't necessarily experienced oral communications at this point. So my preference would be to postpone this item and have the new council have a sense of what that could be. We could potentially discuss maybe of a time certain of 530, which would be a different discussion. But in terms of changing it to 7, I don't support that at this time. But at this point before I open it up, I'll bring it back to council, but I'll open it up to the community to weigh in and you'll be given two minutes. Mayor and council members, Gillian Greensight. For the first 30 odd years of my involvement with City Council, oral communications was always at 7. And the big items of weight and importance were always in the evening. And both of those changed so that oral communications was a floating time. And most of the big items were in the daytime. And often there was no evening meeting. In the earlier days, after oral communications, sometimes council went to midnight, rarely, but sometimes even longer. Hard for you and staff, but important, I think. The problem with the earlier time when it was shifted to the afternoon was that it was crammed in with the important items.  And it was an item near and dear to my heart and all of the council members were distracted. And I'm going, oh no, it might have been something I paid $500 for, like a tree appeal. So that floating time has been very non-public friendly. So my perspective, it would be good to have it at 7. I see one problem, though, with your trying to advertise 7 o'clock oral communications, which I think would be great. And a fixed time for your business, hoping now that more business will be in the evening, is that if there's two people for oral communications in eight minutes or four minutes, you could start your business. But if you've advertised it for 7.30, that's going to be a problem. So I think you have to wrestle with that a bit. But I really feel going back to 7 a fixed time. I know sometimes it can be tedious, repetitive, but it also, I think, traditionally was a much better public process. So hoping to see that. And I apologize. I have to go. Thank you very much. Is there any other speakers who'd like to speak to this item? Okay. Please come forward. You'll be given two minutes. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Such a great city council. Thank you for all your service. I want to support the 7 o'clock time certain oral communications. I think it would just work out better for working families and community members. I think the oral communications as it is, and it's already been stated that it's been all over the map. So I want to support that. And then it makes sense to start business at 7.30. I know that families, I mean, people are still on the road. I mean, many of us have the luxury of having, being workers here in the city. But there are many people on the road at 5, 5.30, 6, 6.30. And even though I do know that it is hard for families, I think that 7 o'clock works. I think it's hard for families anyway. I just think it's just tough having kids in the town the way it is with all the traffic and all. So I really wanted you to think about people who have to commute. So many people commuting, the commuting time is off the charts, and that 5, 5.30 is really not possible anymore, given the traffic. And if you really want people to show up and be part of government, I think we need to make this change. Thank you. Thank you. Any other members of the public? You'll be given two minutes. Namaste. And bula-bula. Bula-bula-bula. Bally-bally. Shoutouts to IIT and Marshall Systems. I have previously, under two minute comment periods, focused on predictions. Because it has a way of injecting the threads that are being shared and offered into the bowl of content in a somewhat wieldy documentary process. I just want to, could you pause the, I just want to let you know that we're discussing oral communications in the time. Right. And as Congress, excuse me, as council member Brown indicated. These two minute periods are really up to the interlocutor to optimize in a way that doesn't waste anyone's time. And I often try to keep it short anyway. And this brings up the collateral topic of congestion. And my, my, the bullet I want to share on congestion is that I anticipate a bond measure in the future. Again, Agent Orange is offering a prediction about the future. In this case, a bond measure, which will be between $400 million and $1.1 billion with potential sweet spots at $775 million or $883 million. Where these would facilitate the congestion relieving plan, the low hanging fruit that was identified by a recent study. Where shoulders on the highways, Highway 1 for example, for say four or five mile stretch, which can be optical fiber project enhanced. These can be superconducting metal levitating tracks the way Japan and China have not been depriving their citizens of speed rail. So it's possible to have a 21st century technology project in our humble little county. But. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. If there aren't any other members of the public who'd like to speak to this item, we'll bring it back to the council for action in deliberation. I'm going to actually acknowledge council member Glover for first. Thank you. I think our job as council members should be to make democracy more accessible and not less accessible. And from what I've heard from the community, both here and in communication outside is that oral communications, especially the way the city council structured it has made it so the democracy is not accessible. So I think we should be doing everything that we can to maximize the access people have to come and speak with us and make it so it's as expected as possible so that people can get here. Whether or not that results in us having as was suggested as a possible scenario, a gap of open time. If there aren't enough people to fill the solid and secured space in that situation, we could recess for a couple minutes as I'm sure we wouldn't mind getting up and going to the bathroom until we restarted our original original business at 730. And I do want to express some concern because with all due respect, Mayor, I think what I heard you say was that for parents with small children, it's easier at 530. And if that's the case, you don't know why we would move the time. Did I miss, hear you? You did. So I said, I don't know the intention of moving the time, but if we're thinking about accessibility, coming from being a parent of small children, actually 530 is better for me. And for a lot of the working people that I know, who then could stop by on their way home prior to going home, kind of engaging in dinner preparation, et cetera, before coming back for oral communications. So that was my statement. Right. I'm just concerned that with that perspective, because even in that one, it sounds like you said you don't understand why we would change it or something. It's the other people outside of the parental groups and outside of the people that are privileged enough to live in a family unit in Santa Cruz and be off work and home by 530. So there's students that are involved in those kinds of things where they're getting out of campus and out of school. There's people that are working in service jobs that are forced to be in Watsonville or come back this way. There are people that are coming from over the hill. And all of these other reasons why moving the time to a later date, even though it may not directly benefit people with small families from your perspective, thinking about the larger community outside of just that group. And it's very concerning, I would say, for that energy from my perspective to come. And I really, really hope that as we think about this and contemplate the value of changing it and providing a set time, we think outside of our own privilege and outside of our own lives and outside of the circles of people that we hang out with and to the people at the very bottom of our socioeconomic ladder that find it difficult to participate in the timelines that have been expressed. Okay, I appreciate your perspective. And I'll just for clarification reiterate that I heard that I don't know who we're trying to change this time to meet the needs of, but that was my experience. Until I do understand who we're not able to access it feels sort of arbitrary to me to change the time. But what I did hear was that there was concern and what I've heard from the community is concern around the moving time of 530 before or after depending on the agenda. And that I feel is, I have heard that concern, that it's more about the time certain. Are there any other council members- Can I respond to that? One second. Are there any other council members who'd like to speak to this item at this time or comment? Okay, go ahead. I would just say that in saying that changing the time to a later date seems arbitrary. I'm concerned that it illustrates a severe disconnect between the reality of life of low income people and what's represented on the perspective of the dais. Sure. And if there's data to substantiate that I'd be happy to revisit that at 7pm. So at this point would be the opportunity for action and deliberation. It was my preference to postpone this item and this change based on the fact that there hasn't even been one opportunity for all communications amongst the new council at this point, as well as we'll be revisiting how we do our council procedures and norms in a future time anyhow. Council Member Matthews and then Council Member Cummings, Vice Mayor Cummings. I'm going to be really honest here. My preference was to table this and give a time for new council members to have some experience. But I see that every single item is coming forth as a litmus test on where we fall on some spectrum. And as I said in December, that is the last dynamic I want to reinforce or perpetuate. So I am actually going to move that we may pass a modified language for this that would move oral communications to 7. It can always be changed in the future, but I would change the language. I think frankly it was just kind of sloppy here. Oral communications will be held at the beginning of the evening session, which will occur on or about 7pm. Strike all arrest. If oral communications concludes earlier than 7.30, council shall recess and reconvene at 7.30 and begin the business portion of the meeting to begin the business portion of the meeting. 30 minutes will be allotted. No individual will be allowed to speak for more than three minutes. Strike the next two items. No individual may speak more than once during oral communications and all the rest as shown. I would like to have the star, the asterisk at the bottom. Time limits may be increased or decreased at the mayor's discretion. Actually have a number attached to it. So that would be my motion. Second that. Is there further discussion? Vice mayor? No, my question was around the language. Okay. Go ahead. Who, I'm trying to figure out who put this policy statement here. Because that wasn't anything that the language that I, the three council members brought this forward or is in the discussion. I don't know where the policy statement came from so I didn't. Are you talking about the asterisk? You just where it says city council meeting oral communications policy statement. This is our council policy. I'm not, I don't have it in front of me, but this is an existing policy. It's an existing council policy. So it's an amendment to the existing policy. So that's been the one that's been in place. Okay, I'm sorry. What you see is a red line version. Okay, it was without the red lines. There was a red line version included. Next page. Sorry. Okay. Yes. Got it. I appreciate taking out the adder around 7pm because that time certain at 7pm is really, I think, helpful. But I'm going to go ahead and join you in voting yes on this. I think it's more than time has come. I'm just going to ask the city clerk if she caught all of the proposed revisions. Okay. So there's a motion by, oh, is there a further discussion? This is a statement pertaining to some of those mentioned earlier on this issue. Okay. Yeah. So it was just mentioned that this, every issue is turning into a litmus test to find out where we fall in the spectrum. I would say that every issue that comes before us as a city council is a litmus test to find out where we fall in the spectrum. And it is my duty to bring up every time when I feel that this body is not taking into consideration a certain portion of our community. Okay. So at this point we're going to vote on the item. I have a question too. Because I do also want to see improved communications amongst council members. I can interject here. As it relates to this item right now we're voting on the oral commission at 7pm. I think we have an opportunity. Because council member made a comment about wanting to see things improve. And we started that first agenda item and there wasn't no movement on boards and commissions. Okay. We already put it on the side. So now, but I am very much appreciative of the council member moving this item. I just want to put that out there. Great. Okay. At this point we'll go ahead and take the vote on the item. All those in favor of the motion made by council member Matthews with the modified language seconded by council member Myers. Please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Myself. So that passes beyond, that passes with council member Brown, council member Myer, I'm sorry, council member Matthews, council member Cron, Glover, Myers and vice mayor Cummings voting yes and myself voting no. Okay. So the next item is item number six. Which was the charter amendment committee. And I don't recall who that poop hold that item. Cynthia too. Oh, council members? Yes. I don't support the item, the suggestion to add five additional members. I think there was a great deal of thought given into the formation of this committee. It's an open application period with both individual and at large appointments. And I would say most importantly that committee has been seated. They've begun their work. They're, to my understanding, cohesive. They've had discussions that are not highly politicized but are focused on the issues that were presented before them. So I would like to just have that committee continue on its work understanding that there will be a lot of community interest in this community engagement. The committee that's been appointed will come forward with recommendations or not. And they will come to us for decisions. So this is the council that will ultimately make the decisions on whatever the result is of that committee that already is appointed and functioning. Any additional comments at this time? From what I understood from talking to our staff is that they haven't, they've had two meetings so far. The third meeting is January 30th. They haven't begun talking about, directly about the issues that we've tasked the group with. And in just in terms of fairness and parity, my sense is that if I was coming on the council I would like to also have someone, an appointment to this body. And this body is, I see it as really important or the potential for important work. There's a powerhouse of experienced people on there. I do think it is lacking more student voices. I know there's one student on there. And I'd just like to see us have a more robust discussion that actually represents many sectors of Santa Cruz. Right now I don't know if it's, everything's involved in that or everyone's involved, every voice. As a newly elected member, I actually would prefer that the committee continue its work at its existing makeup and size. While I always would appreciate having a voice into some of these kinds of things, I want to just acknowledge that the process is underway. There's qualified people on the committee. Adding five additional people brings the total to 18, which I believe is an excessively large committee. And so I'm going to speak for myself in this situation and be firm that it looks like from the process that was completed to seat people on this committee there was directly appointed folks from council members and then six at large appointed members. Again, through application and letter of interest process. And I'd like to honor the committee process and keep it moving and don't see a need to make this change. Any other comments before we open it up to the public? Thanks, Mayor Cummings. I know that this committee was formed during the previous city council and I have one of the questions that I've had regarding this and wanted to open up for discussion was whether or not the issues and items that are being discussed by this committee is actually reflective of the desires of the current city council as well. I do also feel like having representation on a committee that's going to be looking at direct elect mayors, district elections, compensation among other items. I feel that it would be good for some of the new members to have representation, especially given the fact that they've only had two meetings. I think that if it was further along in the process where if they were towards the end of their recommendations, I would maybe feel that it wouldn't be appropriate for us to include new members. But given the fact that they've only had two meetings, I think that this is an early enough stage to where if the council or members of the council feel that they would want to have representation that this would be a good time. And I'd also, again, as I mentioned before, would like to open up the discussion as to what the committee is actually addressing in terms of these different items. Okay, Council Member Brown. I agree with Vice Mayor Cummings. Well, let's just reiterate that this was a committee established by previous council. And at the time, there was a laundry list of items for that committee to discuss or to take up and consider. And I do think that we're at a place now with the new council members being seated. And from the conversations I've had with actual committee members, it's not entirely clear what our objectives are here. So I do think it's worth having that conversation. I also, you know, I signed on to this agenda report because I do believe that new council members should have representation, whether they feel like they want it or not or need it or not. I just think that actually is, you know, actually part of the democratic process. But I am willing to, you know, I just would like to see what people think if they're council members who feel like they don't have enough information, maybe the unclear mandate, you know, I mean, how do we proceed in light of that? I think that this is an opportunity to do that. I'll weigh in briefly and then I'll turn it over to Council Member Cron. One of the things that gave me pause when we originally brought this item forward was the fact that we were going to be having a new council pretty closely after we decided to move forward with it. But it was unanimously approved by the current council at the time to move forward with that structure regardless of that change. So I'm hesitant to switch that up knowing that we kind of made an informed decision at that time, knowing that the council would be changing, the makeup of the council would be changing. I do agree that it feels difficult if we're going to add members or ask folks to spend, volunteer to spend their time, and our staff to spend their time, that we want to have a clear purpose and expectation of outcome. And for me, that would come probably first before even changing the makeup of the committee. So that would be sort of what I'm hearing and I agree with in terms of what challenges sort of present themselves with this specific committee. Council Member Cron, and then I'll open it up to the public. Thanks. I'm just wondering if it's appropriate to ask Ms. Hemard to come forward and just give us a summary. I heard Vice Mayor Cummings might have had some questions there, and maybe we can just have some information exchanged about what's taking place so far with the committee. Thank you, Casey, and maybe we'll just have a brief summary about this item. Hi, Casey Hemard, Principal Management Analyst in the City Manager's Office. The committee has had about six hours of meetings. They've spent a lot of time getting to understand each other, try to understand the Council's intentions in the direction that was given, and those recordings of those six hours of meetings are available on our website, as well as our minutes and everything. And there was considerable work put into getting us to this point. They've developed a work plan. They finalized by-laws. And it's, Council Member Cron is correct. We've not gotten into the substantive part of the direction. We were planning to start that on January 30th. But considerable work has gone into it up to this point. Thank you, Casey. Are there any questions this time? Seeing none, we'll open it up to the public to see if there's any comments, and you'll be given two minutes to address the Council on this item. Happy New Year, Council. My name is Elise Kasby, and I'm just a generalist activist in the public interest. I just wanted to say, for my time, I'd like to ask a question at the Council, and that is a brief summary of what exactly is, if you could just, you know, just a short summary of what exactly is the Charter Amendment Committee so that the public might have a greater understanding, and I'd like to ask if I could stop my time there and then have it restored after you answer? No, I'm sorry. At this point, we're just going to open it up for a public comment, and then we'll revisit the Council, revisit the item, at which time we can ask staff potentially to come up and briefly cover what this is. Okay. So, I think my question illustrates what is a more typical position in the public, and that is that given the lives that we lead these days, it's extremely difficult to be able to keep on top of Council business. Even if you have a personal laptop and a smartphone and a stable place to live, you can still have a difficult time finding out what's really happening in our city government. So now I just heard some things, and I attend a fair amount of city council meetings. Government is my passion and interest. The policy and city participation that is citizen participation in our government is my complete goal and objective. So, I don't understand what this committee is almost at all at this moment. I admit I did not look into the agenda in advance, partly because I was in Sacramento yesterday lobbying Governor Newsom, the new governor, for a green new deal. So, I just want to say that I'm not even somebody who has a terribly busy life compared to a lot of people. It seems that this Charter Amendment might be absolutely crucial to the lives of our citizen in terms of jurisdictions, power and responsibility that is held by representatives. So, I just want to say that I would hope that this would go through a thorough vetting by the public and the council. And please don't vote fully on this today. Thank you. Speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor Watkins and members of the City Council. Congratulations to the new faces I see on the City Council. My name is Case of Kumar. I am a senior at UC Santa Cruz and I serve on the Charter Amendment committee. I'm here tonight to talk a little bit about my perspective. I think a lot of the substantive conversation regarding the logistics of this committee have already been had. I'd like to reiterate that there has been time taken to both get to know each other on the 13-person committee of which I'm the youngest. But there's also been time taken to start to discuss the items. And I think that what's been highlighted to me in discussion of those items is I at no point have had this feeling of, well, this person is saying this because they were appointed by so-and-so council member. And I don't believe anyone has thought that way about myself. For the council members who are returning, you'll remember that I went through the general process to be appointed to this committee. And in doing so, I was asked questions about both my qualification and the manner that I approached the committee in. And I responded that I wanted to do it in an academic manner. I believe I've so far lived up to that. Yes, the brunt of the work begins at this upcoming meeting. And at this point, I'm hoping that I can meet with the new City Council members, Council Member Glover, Myers and Cummings, before we make a decision about needing more, as we're calling it right now, more representation. I believe that I can fairly represent all three of your views in a way that will bring them to the table for conversation in a larger context. I don't see it as a very partisan battle about, or even partisan in Santa Cruz terms, battle about what's going to pass and what's not going to pass. There is a room of people, 13 people who are just discussing the issues. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. And you'll be given two minutes. It was Dave Willis. First, I wanted to say when the guy was saying something, that's the first information I've had pertaining to a committee. Like the lady came up, she said a lot of words, but she didn't say nothing. I didn't hear nothing. What exactly is the work? What is the committee? We need clarity.  You're in. You should be entitled to all of whatever the protections, whatever the good things about this is. Period. You being new has nothing to do with it. You're in.  Full power. Retourities, whatever come with that. Period. So whatever this committee is, like the lady was saying something, I didn't hear nothing. What work is it? I need to hear something. Not just a lot of words. I'm not here for that. Oh, and it's good seeing you new people. You look good to me. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Are there any members of the public who you'd like to address the account? Are there any additional members of the public in the audience who would like to address the council on item number six, the charter committee? Okay. You'll be our last speaker and you'll be given two minutes. On the charter committee? Okay. We haven't done oral communications steps. This is on the charter committee. And oral communications will start at 530. Yeah. Sorry. No problem. Yeah. Addressing the council on the charter amendment committee and you'll be given two minutes on that. Great. Thank you. So, bullet, bullet. So, Agent Orange in this case wants to address a D word directly and that is the diversity word. I was very heartened by what council member Glover was trying to express and also council member Myers did this issue of what's an optimal number for a committee size. I believe the overarching principles here are diversity scores, metrics, best practices. If anyone needs help on downloading a good PDF document in this category, I would go to GAO. If anyone needs help with GAO, please contact Homeland Security Secretary Kirsten Nielsen and just ask for the barn owl truck and we will optimize that for you even though we might be inbound to Houston, Texas, support the border National Guard action of 100,000 deployment by hopefully Friday midnight or Saturday midnight after tours to Orlando and New Orleans. Just to wrap up in my remaining 59 minutes, a second. It can be helpful to take a deep breath at Buzz Lightyear Lightspeed. I believe Santa Cruz will have great pride in delivering a caravan of products to the Texas portion of the National Guard and the deployment near the border with support from Air National Guard 138th Air Lift Wing, 147th Attack Wing which has the MQ-9 Reaper Squadron, the 149th Fighter Wing, the Texas Air National Guard headquarters which is at Camp Maybury in Austin and the Air Component Command of course which has embedded units in San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth, Garland, Houston and La Porte which also has a naval air station. The bottom line is I believe that the experience at the border will be a great giant big soft green blanket. Thank you. And I'll just remind members of the public if there's an item before us then the comments will need to be specific to that item and you'll be given two minutes. I believe we have no more members of the public who are interested in speaking unless you are, sir, in terms of the Charter Committee item. Okay, and you'll be our last speaker. Are there any additional members of the public who'd like to speak to this item? Okay, look, I lived in South Africa. Okay, my name's Nicholas Whitehead. I lived in South Africa. My parents took extreme risks so that everybody could be represented there. When I was in London, England, it was the Irish who weren't represented and we were killing them and jailing them and I was bitter about that. When I came to America, I heard Dr. Luther King and I saw his successor. In my opinion, Jesse Jackson, Reverend Jesse Jackson was not a troublemaker. He wanted a positive future for this nation. So please do the right thing here in our little town. Build the rainbow, will you? Put these people on the required committee. All right, so we'll now close the public comment portion of the meeting. I mean of the item and we'll go ahead and bring it back to the council for action and deliberation. Council Member Gulliver. So while I can appreciate the hesitation by some council members to add an additional five members, which would be the two at large nominations, I do agree with fellow council members that it is important, at least from my perspective, that we incorporate or allow for new council members to have one appointee to represent their position and or people that they feel are up to the task. A great example. I appreciate Kasev coming up to speak. However, if you, my friend, are the youngest person on the committee, then we need to really mix things up a little bit. I'm not sure how old you are. I don't know if I can ask questions, right? I can't ask questions. I don't know how old you are, but the, and I haven't, I personally haven't seen the committee, but I do know that from your statement that you believe that you would represent my position based off of that statement and following your political work over the last six months or so, six months to eight months, I don't believe that we share the same values when it comes to certain aspects of the community. So with that, and with that knowledge, I think it's incredibly important that as Mr. Willis said, that we have severe intention in our representation and make sure to give the opportunity for people to make those appointments and also to answer the, or to make a statement as to why it's so important, this charter committee is going to be looking at items like determining if the mayor is elected directly through elections instead of it being appointed by the city council. That's incredibly important. Whether or not we're going to break the city up into district elections so that each different area will have to do that. Some people say it's great. Some people say it will disproportionately impact people of color. So we need to seriously be thinking about that with the representation of who's on the body. Other things are compensation in the size of the council, full-time versus part-time pay and participation in our allocations. And then we get into the other aspects of things like ranked choice voting, which will completely transition the way that we do voting here in Santa Cruz and look at other aspects of ways to support the city manager's office and polling of the community. So these are incredibly essential issues that are going to be dealt with in these committees and to not have a representative that can echo and or represent my personal values as a council member I think would do us a disservice as a community. Reminders? And then Council Member Cron. I just want to make sure we're clear on sort of what this committee will be doing and then our role as the city council in terms of the final outcomes out of the committee because I think we may be a little bit, I think we're giving a lot of power to this committee right now and so the role of the committee is really to be advisory to the city council. The city council ultimately will make the decision based on the recommendations coming from the committee and I would imagine we might have at least one or two briefings from the committee. Usually I know when I've served on committee there's usually a couple of times when the work comes forward I don't know exactly Casey without seeing their work plan but I would assume that there will be bits or parts of things that are brought forward to us. Certainly we have a lot of representation on our council thankfully from all different perspectives and I think it will be our job ultimately to take the information brought by the committee and discuss the things that I think are of interest for example to Council Member Glover and maybe others here at the dais. So I think that committees can be a lot, it can be time consuming. We have assigned staff to them. There are efficiencies in terms of maintaining a committee that's a good working committee that's doing the charge. We certainly will receive I'm sure the work plan and the bylaws either as an information item. So I think it's incumbent upon the new members to engage with committee members, look at the materials, quaint ourselves with what's going on and try to make this committee as efficient as possible. These are important questions to our community. It's important to do the work and get it done. And again, I think there's efficiencies in the amount of people involved and I think there's transparency in terms of how we can potentially understand more and learn as the committee's going. So again, I just want to make sure that everyone's clear that this will come back to us as a body and that we will be engaged in our roles as council members. Yeah, I also agree with council member Myers about ultimately this will come back to the city council. So it's not really about a group of people making decisions for us, but I think enlarging the committee will be diversifying the committee and saying that I want to move this recommendation motion to add five additional members to the charter amendment committee with one member of each appointed by council members member Glover and Myers and two at large nominations made by a majority vote of the city council. Is there a second to that motion? Second. So that was a motion by council member Crone seconded by council member Glover. Casey, did you want to add anything? I'm sorry, I just saw you standing. I wondered if you if you want to add what I heard from council member Brown in terms of the committee feeling not necessarily clear in their ask. I just I wanted to clarify a couple things. And that in reviewing the direction that was provided to the committee from the council direction and then also watching the video of the when the council gave the direction multiple times. It wasn't it's not terribly clear. So the members of the committee looked at that and also and the understanding that the committee came to was that it was an initial review. They are conducting an initial review of these to recommend to the council whether or not they should look into these specific topics. And with relation to particular slant or bias. My observation as a staffer is that they are making a very concerted effort to bring in independent folks or people who are not employed the city to try and inform them as they're studying these matters. And as a staffer, I'm I actually like that because I don't want to be perceived as trying to push anything in a particular way. And so that they're really making an effort at trying to to maintain, you know, some independence. And and I will say my observation also is that they're not people who are going to be convinced or twist have their arms twisted to do something. Everybody's pretty vocal about their perspective. That being said, you all have a council and we're here to serve you. So I think I saw council member Matthew. Yes. Just for the information of the audience, those members who weren't familiar with this, it has been restated. This is a suggestion proposal to modify the composition of a committee that's already been established. This was an initiative by then Mayor David Tarazas in in August to establish a charter committee as I think most of you know who watch politics. There's been lots of interest for years. There should be district elections. There should not be district elections. There should be a directly elected mayor. There should not. How long should that term be, etc. Those those questions have been out there for years. And so the idea of this was to establish a citizen committee to investigate those ideas and report back to the council. Either yes, we think it's a good idea to propose a change in this way or no, leave it alone. That's entirely up in the air. So as a result of that, there was a study session and it came back and as has been explained already at previous council meetings. Each of the existing council members at that time made one direct appointment and there were some at large members. So the proposal coming back is in light of the recent election to add three more directly elected members and some more at large members. So just just for your information, that's that's the question before us. And I appreciate the confusion because I was at that meeting and it started out with kind of a discrete list of things to study and then everything in the kitchen soup kitchen sink got thrown in. So that list grew and grew and I imagine that one of the first jobs of the committee will be to refine that and say the most important things to study are the following. But I also appreciate Donna's comment that very often when there are commissions that they come back and report to council and basically say here's where we are. Is this what you had in mind something like that so particularly given the nature of this some priority items and then kind of everyone's wish list. I think probably be a good idea to clarify this is going to be a challenge. Having said all that, I would like to propose an amendment that adds additional direct appointments. I guess the amendment would be deleting the two at large just add the three direct appointments but delete the two additional at large. So if that's an agreeable amendment, we could move forward. Is that a friendly amendment to the issue? Yeah. Well, it's proposed as an amendment. It's not because it is we are talking about politics and it wasn't incredible. I mean, I work with David on crafting this. We've spent a couple months talking about it and coming up with various things and we don't necessarily share the same politics. And I ran into the other day totally understands to why new council members and you know, we want to add more members to the, you know, it started out like this and you know, you move it like that and you get more voices. I think it's real important to have more voices in a group like this because the city charter is a kitchen sink. If you look at the city charter, it is filled with stuff. So it's not unusual for maybe this group to be waiting through the kitchen sink. Are there any additional comments by council members by some air coming? I know this has been mentioned a couple of times, but it does seem like that one of the things that I think might be important is that we look at what we're actually directing this committee to address and whether or not that reflects the desires of the current city council, given the fact that this committee was formed in August and many of the items that are being discussed on this committee might not reflect what is the will and the interest of the current city council. So I don't know if there's any way to suggest that we postpone this discussion and this vote until a later date. But if that's possible, that would be our privilege. I have to agree. That would be the appropriate way to do what council member or vice mayor Cummings is suggesting because that looking at the scope of what the committee analyzes is not part of the agenda this evening. So if that's the council's, if that's the pleasure of the council, then it would be appropriate to bring it back. Thank you, Mr. Condati. I have to say and then I'll acknowledge you. I agree. I think we are asking people to volunteer their time and want to make sure they have clarity of purpose. And we can revisit that and then relook at the structure at that time would be my preference. So I agree with you at this point. So council member Matthews. Would the motion then be I'll just suggest to defer expanding the committee but agendize for a future meeting clarification of the charge of the committee. Yeah. In addition to consideration of the additional of additional members. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, council member Brown. I missed what I wasn't fully. It was to postpone action on additional members and have an agenda eyes for a future meeting, a clarification of the charge. Okay, I'm so sorry to postpone action on the addition of new members to the charter amendment committee and to agendize for a future council meeting clarification of the charge for this committee. I would suggest also as well, you did mention membership. I was going to recommend that that the makeup of the committee be brought back as general consideration because it just seems a little odd to me to have a committee composed of 15 members appointed by the council as a whole and three pointed by appointed by individual council members. So you might want to consider the structure of the committee as a whole as part of that discussion. Okay. Thank you for that. Councilmember Cron. The point of information, the committee, there's seven appointments and there's six at large. That would be 13. This would be three more appointments. If that's the case, then I certainly, you know, withdraw my comment. And the reason I brought this other folks forward quickly is because I understood that there's a meeting on January 30th. We are interviewing folks January 15th. If this is, you know, not clear, it's there's a lot of interest anyway amongst the community in these issues. And as council member Matthew said for years, people have talked about district elections or direct election of mayor and there's been a lot of recent interest in ranked choice voting. So I think there are clear issues for this committee to take on and discuss that, you know, the council would not really be able to entertain here in the council. I mean, somebody's looking into it. The committee's in task force and commissions are about bringing stuff to the council. That's, you know, bubbling over and not necessarily finished, but they've done a lot of research and looked into it. And that's why I think it's real important to get people on there right now because the next meeting is January 30th. Okay. Are you, if I may, for clarification, are you suggesting that this be postponed to the 22nd or to ask maybe that the committee postponed their meeting until we get further clarification? It could be. You know, this doesn't have a clock ticking on it. Right. And if I may. Yes. Perhaps what I'm hearing is that we could potentially ask that we cancel the upcoming January 30th meeting while the city council has an opportunity to revisit the purpose of that committee as well as its membership and then re-engage with the committee members based on that clarification. Yeah, it's so moved that language. And I think that that's really important. But I would like to see it come back on the 22nd postpone that meeting on the 30th. But I still don't know about, well, I guess it doesn't matter on our 15th and 22nd interviews and appointments. We can still appoint to this committee separately from that schedule. So yeah, I will move that language that you just said if it comes back to us. And I like what Vice Mayor Cummings wants to get, you know, up to speed up to, you know, I also would want to know more about this committee. So my understanding is then you'll be withdrawing your motion at the time which was to move the item as presented. And would that also withdraw your second and what you're now moving is what I originally recommended. Did you catch that language Bonnie or would you like me to repeat that? You can't make the motion. I know. So I mean, that's the language I would use that we continue the item to January 22nd that we postponed the meeting for January, that's scheduled for January 30th for the Charter Review Committee. And at that time we make a decision about whether to add members or not or to change the charge of the committee. If I may just add, and then I'm sorry, I'll turn to you. If January 22nd turns out to be a very full agenda, if the will of the council could be that at the earliest time it could be agendized to give it adequate timing, would you be open to it being potentially later? If it turns out that we have a number of items already coming back, which I already know is the inclusionary housing item. I mean, I'm sorry, the ADU item. So I think I just want to be careful before committing that that would be agendized. But I would just maybe ask that the council prefer it be agendized on the 22nd or at earliest potential availability. Is that okay? Well, it's an item that can go on the afternoon if we have the ADU at night. I mean, I don't know what else is on that agenda. Me either. So that's why I'm kind of reluctant to commit. Okay, Council Member Matthews. I'm sorry, Council Member Weissmeyer coming and then Council Member Weissmeyer. Mayor, do we have a second? I will second that. I was going to make the suggestion that we actually provide more time for council to actually kind of identify what are some of the topics that we want to have this committee address. And the fact that myself, Council Member Myers and Glover will be away in Sacramento for a training from the 16th to the 19th that wouldn't provide us with time to actually be engaged in this process of trying to identify. What are some of these topics that we would like the committee to address? And so I would actually suggest that we meet and we bring this up at a later time. Would the first meeting in February be okay? At the earliest, I would suggest either the first meeting or the second in February. And then we postpone. We'll just work at trying to agendize it in February. Say it early as feasible time. Early as feasible time. Ideally sometime in February. Are there any additional input or comments at this point from Council Members? Council Member Matthews. Is what's going to be discussed at that meeting going to be both the scope and charge of the committee and its composition? That's my understanding, correct? Is that what everyone's understanding is? Review scope and charge and see if we want to add anything. What needs to be. Well, that's included. Council Member Brown do you have any questions? The way Council Member Matthews originally put it, review scope and charge. I mean that was what you said and that's my understanding. Okay, so we have a motion on the floor by Council Member Crohn seconded by myself. Do you need any further clarification on that motion at this time at clerk? Okay, at this point I will turn it to a vote. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, that passes unanimously. And we are now at 5.30. Excuse me, at this point we will be breaking for oral communications. Let me just find that on my list. So I will just make a brief statement about oral communications and allow those who've been asked to have additional time come before the council first. So the oral communications is the time. Okay. I'll go ahead and let you, I'm going to go ahead and, you'll have your chance for oral communications. Okay, I want to, please excuse me. Okay. Use that cap. All right, I just want to let you know that one second. I'm going to make a few statements and then we'll have a chance to hear from the community. So oral communications is a time for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda. If you could please hold the conversation. Thank you. Are there any members of the public who wish to address the council? And please line up to the left as you see. And you will each be given two minutes to speak unless you've been asked, you've asked for additional time. And we request that you sign in so that we're able to capture the spelling of your name accurately. However, I want to also let you know that that is not required. At this point, I will ask that those who've asked for additional time, they will get their four minutes. I will have Serge Cagno from Stepping Up Santa Cruz come forward to have his four minutes. Are we shooting to be out of here by when I ordered dinner? Hey, my name is Serge Cagno. I met some of you before. I want to talk about homeless stuff for a minute. When you have a public safety commission and I hear for a lot of those topics, there seems to be an implication, you know, violence and safety. Sorry, I'll talk louder. Putting homelessness on that list, it feels a little like that's a safety issue towards the community. It's a safety issue towards the homeless people, which feels a little different. It's more of a social service issue. You had a citizen's task force at one point and you had a report on that. I would suggest the idea of having an ongoing task force or an ongoing citizen's group that's able to give feedback and to brainstorm, to come up with ways to solve the problems that balance it for public safety and police issues, but also for the social service level of issues. You have a lot of stuff going on at the Ross camp. You have a lot of stuff going on in town. Right now it's the city manager's office that is trying to solve those problems and putting a lot of effort in in the parks department. And that's not really their mandate or their specialty. This year is the least number of services for winter shelter that we've had. And I understand there's lots of politics in that, but there's no services in the city of Santa Cruz, which is half of the services that were before. And it hurts me that it's not a topic for today either. The rains happen and there are a lot of people that I know that I see downtown and they ask me what's happening for winter shelter. And I say, oh, I can send an e-mail to try to get you a reservation because there's not even an intake spot that you can go to and get out of the rain and talk to them. You can go sit at Coral and Lime kill at 6.15 where there's nowhere to sit, nowhere to get out of the rain, no bathrooms. And you can hope that they're going to pick you up.  And if they don't, you're going to have to go back and get your stuff. I'm just asking that there becomes you allow more people to get past the opaqueness of how decisions get made for shelters in Santa Cruz, in the city of Santa Cruz. And to me, it's an immediate problem. It's winter shelter, but it's also the Ross camp talking about brainstorming, talking about getting other people in who without the politics are trying to solve the same problems. You solve somebody on a social service point of view. You're also solving it on the discarded trash and all that kind of stuff issue too. Yeah, so that's my main point of just trying to get that conversation going because it's raining. And this is not something that we should have to try to solve later and their bumps in the road are starting. This didn't start in November 15th, like it started for the last few years. We're late in the game right now. There's also quite a lot of money. There's 10 million coming in and it's your city manager who is represented on the HAP executive committee and how those programs get decided for the city, how the site gets decided and all that stuff. Having that be a more transparent process of people trying to brainstorm and solve the problems. Just putting that out there, thanks. Thank you. I'd like to now invite up Phil Posner from Conscious in Action. You'll be given four minutes as you've requested in advance. City Manager Martin Bernal and old city council members and new city council members. I'm Phil Posner. I want to thank you for allowing we members of Conscious in Action and others to address you regarding the issues of homelessness as it relates to individuals who have to sleep in their cars or vans. The continuing lack of bathrooms for the homeless and the desperate need for a real campsite instead of the present mess of tents, tarps and mud that currently exists by the Ross parking lot called the Ross camp. I ask for your empathy. I know that you're good people. I know that you must see the mess by the Ross camp. Can you imagine yourself sleeping in the mud and during the rain, etc.? We are also here to announce that this Thursday at 130 Conscious in Action and Huff are sponsoring a rally to bring individuals together who are surviving in vehicles to show their, to share their experiences, how to survive, and to meet with chief mills who have graciously consented to be present to answer questions and concerns. The flyer says, are you being pressured or threatened to move your vehicle more frequently than the legal resting period of 72 hours? Are house neighbors declaring that you don't have a right to park on public streets? Is your attempt to sleep in a van or a car, not in one of our nice houses, being interrupted by pounding, shouting, or banging in the dead of night? Is your family or loved one being made to feel unwelcome when you have parked for less than the legal period of 72 hours? Lastly, unsuccessful with the previous council. We are also asking that one of you on this new council, either today or at the next council meeting, move to appoint a task force that will discuss and formulate a realistic proposal that will address homelessness, bathrooms, security, maintenance, etc., in the city of Santa Cruz. We will bring to the table a list of suggestions that we believe will help the task force implement the plan, but we want to listen to everybody concerned. We are suggesting that such a task force would consist of representatives of the council, parks and rec, the police department, the city manager's office, the homeless community, the association of faith communities, our conscience and action group. And I know that Steve Pleich and my son Micah and others have agreed to accomplish to work on this. To accomplish this, we believe the task force should be given a realistic timeframe to meet and bring a proposal to you for your approval. As I have previously said, as has police chief Mills, with empathy and compassion, I believe together we can do this. Help alleviate the present suffering of so many that comprise the homeless community in our city of Santa Cruz. Thank you. An additional person who asks for time is Mr. Robert Norris. You'll be given up to four minutes. Members of the community and city council. A new council majority, but the same staff, the same city manager, the same city attorney, the same restrictive rules of procedure and decorum, the same anti-homeless laws unchanged. Increased police power with gray-shirted volunteers. The same unconstitutional curbside punishment powers by police and rangers who can issue stay away orders at will for the most minor infractions weeks before a court even hears the case. We have the same city council grounds and the library across the street forbidden to enter at night, unless there's a meeting going on. In what was a blatant administrative action taken without public notice, public comment, or public vote. Done to eliminate homeless protesters and more recently homeless survival sleepers outside City Hall two years ago. And to spare the city manager and his minions, as well as the city council, the public shame of seeing its lack of services and punitive laws in full squalid array outside these chambers. We have the same restrictive curfews at night in the parks, the Pogonip and the Levy making criminals of those who seek shelter to rest and sleep in a city that has legal shelter for less than 20% of its homeless. We have the same parking bans targeting homeless people in Cynthia Matthews permit parking plague. Which denies the entire community parking spaces at night to cater to the prejudices and fears of the privilege in the neighborhoods. And we still have closed bathrooms locked at night. There are no open bathrooms at night. There are three ill lit porta potties not accessible to disabled people. The Loudon Nelson bathrooms are still closed. I'm speaking to Mr. Elliott who runs parks and rec and to the city council. The Loudon Nelson bathrooms are still closed to those favored except to those favored by Isethrae staff as properly documented program participants. Grant Street Park I'm told is still closed. The plans for any meaningful shelter other than the Ross camp and the camps homeless people themselves have set up throughout the town has been babbled about extensively by this council. Housing, housing, housing, chitter, chatter, chitter, chatter all day long. But abandoned after complaints from neighborhood biggest I'm talking about the car park and of course the campground that we had. We have no city funded facilities for laundry for storage for showers for most folks outside but lots of money coming in mind you. Endless talk about housing. And the council at the council hear appointments being rushed through ignoring recommendations by one of the more liberal members of the new majority. The regional rules have been contorted in the last few decades to target dissident activists and journalists here and in so doing the general public. The public has the right to demand a full discussion of one of the many important agenda items on the consent agenda which has been now reserved solely to privileged council members. Except for your two minute little bit at the beginning. The strange consent public hearings category has been added to extend the cutback of public comment time to public hearings. Rules threatening those putting an audio recorder here. It's against your rules to have this audio recorder here. That officer over there has on the past had me arrested not this particular in gentlemen but another one for having this recorder sitting right here. So I'm going to pass this speech around which is twice as long. I don't have time to give it all. I should be giving groups five minutes. That's what was previously the reality three minutes and five minutes until it was cut back by the Matthews Rotkin councils of earlier years. So it's the community that has to change this. It's not going to be the council unless it's well pressured by the community. We've already seen council getting out voted. Thank you. And you've had your foot. Thank you very much. And please try not to interrupt me even if I'm going over by a sentence. Okay. Thank you very much. And at this point, I'd like to get a sense of all those that are in the audience who are interested in testifying or speaking before us during oral communications. Are there any additional folks who are in the sitting down? Okay, sir. In the jacket in the back, you will be our last speaker. I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. You'll be the last speaker. And I will be giving you 90 seconds. And the reason being is we have a 7 p.m. agenda item as well as one additional item from our earlier agenda. So you'll be given 90 seconds. Go ahead. And if you can, please, if you feel interested, no pressure, but you're welcome to sign in for accuracy. I should be less than 90 seconds. My name is Eric Gardberg. Good evening, council. As a new council, you have a choice. There's a fork in the road. You're on the fork of divisiveness or conciliation and true problem solving around rank control and just cause eviction. You can respect the will of the voters and engage all stakeholders. If you could pause. This is actually for items that are not. I'm not addressing the item at 7 o'clock. I'm talking in general terms. Okay. I'll go ahead and let you continue. But if you're going to go into that. I'm not going into it. Go ahead. So this is around general terms about how you're going to handle this as a council. And if you respect the vote of the people and you engage all stakeholders in sincere dialogue, there are people of goodwill on all sides. Or you can engage in tokenism and ramp through your own program. I'm going to go ahead and pause. This seems very specific to the EV item. It's not. I'm not talking about one thing because that's what's happening at 7 is a temporary interim ordinance, right? I'm not sure what you're addressing then. What are you speaking to? I'm talking about in general. You've been talking about you want to have a dialogue around rank control and just cause eviction, right? I'm not talking about whether you should approve item number one at 7 o'clock. I'm talking about what you're going to do in general. Are you going to engage the community? You can go ahead and pause. Mr. Condati, my understanding is that if we're going to have oral communications, it's items that are not on the agenda. A just cause, a process associated with just cause is on our agenda for this evening. So which case I would say that your comments aren't necessarily appropriate for the oral communications portion of our agenda. If you'd like to return and speak then, happy to accommodate you then. I would just point out that there's also a discussion this evening on the process moving forward for considering additional public engagement and discussions concerning additional tenant protection. And that starts at 7 p.m. So you're saying that I am addressing something that's on the 7 o'clock? That's right. Thank you. Next speaker please. You'll have 90 seconds. I'll try to be fast. I've never done this before. My name's Alicia Kool. Alicia, thank you for coming and welcome. And if you can just please bring the microphone to- I am one of the people that they're speaking of that I do live in my RV. I have experienced things like this when I have not been parked for 72 hours. I do feel like it's a push to get homeless people out of the area, even though it is our legal right to park. I'm here to request for you to consider a safe parking program. I would volunteer myself to manage that program. I do see parking signs all over the place, permit parking, no parking, midnight to 6 a.m. I feel like Delaware would be a perfect spot to allow people to park. It's industrial, it wouldn't bother anybody. And I would just like your assurance to make sure that people who have been parked for less than 72 hours aren't getting harassed. There was some talk about the Ross Street shelter. And I feel like people who are housed in their vehicles, it doesn't do any benefit to harass them. It's like why would you want them to lose their vehicle? Giving them tickets and stuff like that just pushes them towards a tent in the Ross Street shelter. I feel like the push should be to help those people and not force them into a worse situation. And that's all. Thank you. Thank you. Nicholas Whitehead again. I would point out that the previous speaker, Alicia does have serious management experience. So she'd be a good one for that. We're approaching the time of year when we mark the existence of a truly great American spirit, Dr. Martin Luther King. We honor his existence and eternal existence. City Council, I have no doubt that each one of you is a noble human being. A sincere representative who hears the voice of your constituents. I have no doubt you wish to serve the needs of our future Santa Cruz. It will take the utmost care and mutual respect to achieve a workable harmony. Everything you say and do or neglect to do will rebound throughout our community. Please always show respect for divergent views, philosophies and inspirations. Above all, like a good doctor, do no harm. Try to overcome the divisions. We need harmony, not dissension. We know that on all the major issues you will have to form committees, subcommittees, subdivisions of your total. Thank you for your remarks. And you're welcome to submit them if you would like the council to receive them. No, let me finish this. No, we have- Making it unusual, please. I understand. Well, I shan't be back. I shan't be back. And we'd have the next speaker for 90 seconds. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome, council members. And thank you, Mayor Watkins. My name is Denise Ellarick and I'm here with Mayor Mary Mason. Anyway, we're very excited. And I'm very excited to hear you talk about health and wellness in all policies. And we're with the community prevention partners and SafeRx Coalition of Santa Cruz County. And we're very excited about a survey that we'll be releasing on January 29th. And we'd love to follow up with an email and invite all of you to share this information with your constituents on the social media page. And it involves drug storage and disposal policies and sharps disposal policies and what people's habits are. And we want to collect more data. We have data from a couple of years ago. And so we want to collect some more data so that we can learn more. And one of the things that came out of that data was the extended producers ordinance, which you all signed on for. Which is highly successful and the survey will have links to the 52 disposal places for people to drop off their prescriptions and narcotics and sharps. And we're going to be going to all the other cities in the county. Capitola, I don't have to list them all. And we would like to return in March or April with a follow up to this. But it's a very exciting time. And we know that youth have reported in surveys that they have easy access to storage of narcotics in their medicine cabinets. But we know that number is going down. Youth are using fewer prescriptions. And we think that part of it is decreasing access. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. You'll be getting an e-mail from us. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming. Next speaker. And those that may have came in late and want to remind you or let you know that we're finishing up oral communications. Our last speaker is on the left. And we will then return to our general business and reconvene at 7pm for our evening session. You'll be given 90 seconds. Go ahead. My name is Dave Willis. I just wanted to say, like pertaining to commissions or whatever, Ms. Myers was saying what she was saying. If it's that minimal of getting somebody on the committee, then you should definitely, it should be that easy to do it. To let somebody pick they own, they should have a person they're representing in itself. And also, I'm from a city of Geisters, which means that Mayor Daley was a mayor when I was coming up. And the way to keep people out of making decisions is to, okay, let's create this so that they can't get on that committee and this committee and we keep them down. That's dangerous. Don't do that. You got votes to be here. You've earned the right to be here. So you should have everything that you should have. And I want to say, try to keep your sanity and be strong and do what you know, feel, think is right. And hopefully, you'll be all right. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Can I say one thing really quickly before the timer starts? Nope, you're given 90 seconds like everybody else. Good try. My son and I have lived at the tannery for five years and have walked the levee hundreds of times. I and all the parents that I've spoken to at the tannery can no longer let our kids walk there alone. I'm going to describe the handful of times that I've walked by the camp in my experience as well as my sons. A month or so ago, my son who was 13 and three of his friends wanted to walk to Java Junction alone in the day as they've done many times. I love watching them as they prepare to venture off on their own, how excited and empowered they get before their journey. I hesitated this time because of the camp. As I said, it was new and they had not yet walked by themselves. There were four of them, it was daytime, so I allowed them to go. When they returned, they were all visibly shaken and afraid.  One of the friends was black and this did not make him feel safe. She also screamed, you're going to just let these four kids walk through here. On their return trip, they had to walk by a man swinging around a machete right next to their path. This really frightened them. I'm going to skip my experiences that were also scary and go to the conclusion. Many kids from the tannery walk or bike along this path and some take it to school. The children now cannot go anywhere by foot or bike alone without crossing the huge freeway intersection. Many people not just from the tannery use this path on their daily commute. This camp location does not seem like an appropriate long-term solution. The city has directly participated in creating this camp by providing resources, bathrooms, et cetera. Yet they are not taking the appropriate steps to regulate what they have created, thereby creating a public safety hazard. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next speaker and you'll be given 90 seconds as well. Thank you. Good evening. Coral Brune. I'm very glad to be here to address number one, the Ross camp. And possibly I would like to second the idea of task forces or similar. I feel in my time living in Santa Cruz, I've been in several different roles. So I would like to offer my expertise in roles to just make some observations. I also now live at the tannery. I have for five or six years this January. It's been a different change every year. The same levy path, the same structure at the Ross and Pet Smart and businesses there at that particular place. I'm an adult, but sometimes I ride my bike, I walk. I don't always and I'm wasting a lot of time here. I would just like to say that I'd like to suggest that kids walk in groups with parents with an adult. Also that if we work together, we can get to some kind of an agreement and find an improvement. Because the camp could be improved and there