uite apart from any off-based issues just briefly you know this is one of the inherent risks in land use decision making is that someone could identify an issue that does not merit and bury it in a letter that is mostly empty rhetoric and we don't have sufficient time to analyze it and flag it for council consideration so that's frustrating yeah I guess I'm kind of reflecting on the risk calculation right now as well and also just on the long-term sort of kind of ramifications of the various things that are sort of in the wings with regards to this area in the downtown plan and with our budget issues that we have this seems like a risky thing to continue to work towards today I'm wondering if the applicant or the applicant's representatives are available or wanting to potentially speak I don't want to put them on the spot but I don't know if we could hear maybe from the applicant kind of get a sense from them as obviously I don't know if they received this letter any earlier than we did but I'm just curious if we could hear maybe from the applicant if that's appropriate mayor the comments that have already been made I think just sort of following up on what you were saying mayor I think having a clear understanding of our path forward some of the legal considerations will be helpful in determining the best choice in regards to the applicant I believe I heard you say that he is on the call and would want to address and if that's the case I'd be open to hearing from him as well we'll provide that I just saw Mr. Waller on our video feed I'll make sure that they have an opportunity to speak I just wondered by our opening and up to other than the council members we'll need to hear from the public on this and have a before the council takes any action you would not be required to hear from the public if we were going to be continued but if you were I guess that's what I was trying to understand if we just set a date and continue it but once we open up we need to hear from the public well I still think I guess I've got the floor for a minute that we just our time being a date ASAP to continue this item it may be also that I have no idea of the legal issues that may be contained in this but it might be useful to have for the session discussion with council if we're going to tell it as well it would be useful I know we've had outside council giving us additional background as expected in the past on major issues so that's another possibility that's a possibility what I think I would probably recommend first though is we could certainly analyze it and communicate the analysis to council but if we continue it to a date certain then we don't need to re-notice it so I don't know that's exactly what I was going to say given that we do a thousand foot noticing radius for this it's got quite a few notices as well as the newspaper publishing and so there's a fair amount of staff time as well as direct costs associated with the mailing and the publishing our preference would be to continue to a date certain that would give us an opportunity to attempt to coordinate with the council commission I will be blunt here and say that I expect based on the tone of this letter that there may be some issues in which we agree to disagree on and they may just then it may ultimately be the up to the California coastal commission themselves you know I for example do not see that there is a visual impact associated with this and we've talked about that as part of the environmental impact report and so if that's the case that the coastal commission is making we would put it to the council to say do you believe there is a visual impact and if you do not believe there is a visual impact and I would call it up and likely would call it up based on what I'm reading in this letter and the tone of that letter I would expect that they do but I would request a date certain I think it would be helpful to try and sit down with the coastal commission and if nothing else have them revise the letter to correct some of the inaccuracies and then really pinpoint the issues where we're not in agreement and if the coastal commission staff aren't in agreement with some of those things with the staff and then the council wants to approve the project that they believe is consistent with the LCP and the coastal commission doesn't believe that's the case then the coastal commission staff do not that would ultimately be presented to the coastal commission itself for their determination as to whether there is for example an impact of visual resources. I would just add one thing if you don't mind if we do continue it to date certain and we're not ready at that point we do have the ability to write a report that says hey we're going to continue it again obviously we don't like to do that with the public seeing that it's agendized and so forth cost conscious when it comes to this particularly given the large number of mailings. And then I guess you know I guess depending on how long would you expect the review that we could aim for that first meeting in December which I believe it's the 8th we could aim for that I certainly think it would be challenging very challenging to get it done before the meeting in two weeks and so if we continued it out for a month that it would feasibly give us enough time to do that whether or not we can address all the issues whether or not we would have to continue it again I can't say because there may be some things in the coastal commission's letter where after sitting down with them you know what if we make this change the coastal commission would be okay or there could be some negotiation where they say alright staff would support it if you do this but not that and then it goes to the applicant to say are you amenable to making that change and then would staff be making a recommendation that is inconsistent with what the applicant is proposing or inconsistent with what the coastal commission is proposing you know there are a number of different paths that it could go down but hopefully we could do that within a month and not have to continue maybe that we would have to continue again at that point really tight timing by the time we organize a meeting with the coastal commission and then if there's any negotiation with them I think you know if we were one week later that you know the 15th of December that would be more feasible I know that it's pushing later into the and that would actually have a different council so we don't know they're available lots of things to consider if you would like to do it on the first you know we will certainly do our best to get everything squared away in that amount of time I just I don't want to make promises that oh yeah we can do that because you know it will be a negotiation a three-party negotiation us the applicant and the coastal commission yeah I just asked that because I was really you know well this appears headed to continuous and I do favor doing it to date certain it sounds like staff would truly feel more comfortable with the December 8th date to have time to do a good job on it I have no idea what you have planned for December 8th what time you intend to start December 8th what might be moved from the agenda of the 8th to the first you know just gimme any things around and feel more comfortable continuing it to the 8th to be accommodated by other changes in vehicles we haven't just you know speaking for myself I'm happy to keep that December 1st open in case we need to move agenda items around but wrap this one up I would prefer either the 8th or the 15th the first is not a good day for me with other conflicts but this time I'd have to move some stuff around and it sounds like it's also a little bit later side so if we're trying to get a date certain might that would be for the later date just kind of go back to just wondering if maybe we could hear from the applicant if it's appropriate just because we're scheduling things and I'm sure they probably have a whole team of folks who probably have some date things that first also is a conflict for me you have to press star 6 or something I don't think so is microphones unmuted as a if these always sound sometimes you have to press star 6 oh try pressing maybe star 6 if you're calling in from your phone I also don't know if there might be a mute button on your headset that's the case I'm not sure no there are other applicants here are there other folks here who might be representing the applicant that oh and maybe you can see if they want to speak maybe he could go out and come back in I was going to actually mention that you might be able to log out log back in and try that I would mention while we've got a little bit of downtime here is actually under SB 330 there's a limitation to the maximum number of hearings that we can have so it is a maximum of five hearings I think I'd like to get the applicant's concurrence that if we set this for a hearing and it's determined that we need to continue it for purposes of completing that negotiation with the Coastal Commission that the applicant would be amenable to having that additional hearing and so I would like to get the applicant's take on that if they aren't okay with that then I think we would have to say the approach that the mayor suggested of having a a re-noticed hearing once we've determined that we're ready could be better but that five hearing limitation just came to mind and we've had the Historic Preservation Commission, the Planning Commission this City Council meeting we also had a community meeting that was completed after it was after the project was deemed complete so that's four, this is the fourth meeting so the next one would be the fifth which the new SB 330 Regulations say is the last meeting if the applicant is amenable to that then it's a non-issue I see Steve Atkinson is on the line there he may want to weigh in on that on the applicants Mayor Cummings and Council, Steve Atkinson for the applicant that if we can schedule this for the 8th and that if that has to be continued that that that continuance shall not count toward the maximum meetings do I have correctly Lee that that's what you were asking that is exactly what I was asking so thank you for that concurrence an opportunity for you to jump up so again Council there was just a little echo of my past remarks so I'm not quite sure what happened there a creature of zoom I guess I see that Owen Waller is on and Owen would you like to say anything at this point can you hear me now now we can hear you Aaron Fox I don't think there's much more to add at this point I think like you said we'll open this up through hearing I don't want to give you the point at this point I think we need to review this letter carefully I concur with Lee Butler's analysis there's been a lot of work done here and we need to bring that along with the discussion of the commission I'm getting an echo so I can't tell whether you can hear me or not anything more to add at this time Mayor Cummings I'll belabor the point but I just want to express my extreme frustration with who whoever organized and sent this letter because I feel like it's so disrespectful for everybody that's here today whether they're members of the council members of city staff members of the applicants members of the public that came to listen and everybody's rearranged their schedule to be here today for this and having known that this project has been coming forward for months or years they have plenty of opportunity to put their comments in advance of this meeting and I just want to say that I'm always disappointed when I feel like people didn't do their homework and didn't get it in on time and I feel like it's just a deliberate attempt to stop the project and it's disappointing Do you need a motion to postpone this item until I'll go ahead and make that motion to continue the item until December 8th Thank you Mayor Council Member Byers Hi Brown Hi Golder and Mayor Cummings I can clarify that They're ready to start as soon as 4 because we weren't sure what time you would be able to start so I think they're available to start at 4 if you'd like but we did tell them that the latest that they would start would be 5 so that they would have an hour so it's really up to you Mayor and Council we anticipated that it could be as soon as 4 or it could be at 5 so they're prepared at 4 if you wanted to do it at 4 if you want to wait till 5 that's fine too How long did they want? I mean I want a full report I have not been on the 2-by-2 committee and I am interested in hearing this I know it's been a big deal so how long do they take for a good presentation? They're prepared to do they can actually do a comprehensive presentation that they did with the Board that was 45 minutes or what we had actually planned for was a 30 minute presentation and a 30 minute question and answer period so we had allocated an hour based on what we expected the Council to be able to accommodate essentially comprehensive presentation that they've prepared I'll just put out my defense it seems to make more sense to have them start at around 4 so to 5 or start at 4.30 somewhere in that 4 o'clock and then have oral communications that's at 5.30, 5.30 to 6 take an hour break and then come back at 7 for the presentation well I think thank you Mayor I'm not available from but you can go ahead I think I could just I don't want to interrupt that schedule that sounds good but I do have even at the University from 4 to 5 that I'm committed to I'm here can you hear me? I can't get my video to work can you guys hear me okay? Assistant County Administrative Officer here at the county and I've worked with many of you on issue of homelessness in the past few years I'm here today with Randy Morris our new Human Services Department Director I've done a lot of Zoom and team meetings but I actually have not done that many formal presentations in this in homelessness in Santa Cruz County so this is really the final deliverable in an 18 month engaged process we've had with focus strategy to perform an assessment with a broad set of partners including the city staff and city leaders and with really the intention of designing an action oriented focus improvement plan so my next step is going to be to try to share my screen so we can actually you can see this slide can you guys see that okay? No okay let's see I'll try a different one Randy here who will be co-presenting with me we have Kate Bristol who is one of our principal consultants from Focus Strategies who's really here to answer any technical questions so I'm hoping Randy's available as well but we do have our lifeline calls and I aren't able to answer all your questions today so with that I'm going to I mean I can actually make this move there we go overview of what we're going to cover today we're going to provide a little bit of background and context on how did we get here to this moment Randy and I will then tag team in terms of the summary of the framework we'll give a brief overview of our next step work plan then we'll be open to questions and discussion why an updated framework I think everyone is very aware that homelessness is a critical issue in our country and our state and especially here locally you visit nearly any west coast community and the impact of unaffordable housing, poverty addiction mental health challenges just to name a few of the root causes of homelessness really we see it all and in the city of Santa Cruz there's really a disproportionate share of homeless relative to many other communities and this graph actually indicates that where what we did some comparison with a variety of counties here in California and in terms of number of persons per 10,000 residents experiencing homelessness we're nearly 80 and that's double the state average we're not absolute highest but we have a much higher number and I think all of you are aware and when you look at large cities here in California who have numbers as high as ours or lower you don't get the same amount of funding that many of our major cities just across the state get to address this crisis moments just to ground ourselves in the the reality the faces of homelessness in our community so what we have is a little bit of a snapshot I'm sure many of you know this well from our last 2019 point in time count and though we are we're trending down just over 21,267 individuals as you know 78% of those folks are in sheltered those folks reported this count of homelessness as their first chance with homelessness and that's going to be important when we talk about the framework again what we see here is about about 403 individuals identified as chronically homeless we had 151 who were veterans we had 419 folks who were families 102 families comprising 419 people we had 51 children unaccompanied children that were counted and then this is one that I think often gets a lot of attention we had almost you know 569 transition age youth so nearly a quarter of our homeless population were in that 18 to 25 range so there are very different experiences of homelessness in our community we have folks that have lived on the street for a very long time and then as I mentioned this is a very new and tragic experience for them we have folks that are working we have folks that are disabled so it's a broad there's a broad experience of homelessness in our community but it's really that disproportionality and the fact that we look around and we're just not seeing a change in the county forward in engaging focus strategies in doing this work talk a little bit about the technical assistance that we started so really was when I first started working for the county in the middle of 2018 when the CAO asked me to do an internal review of county departments and their work on homelessness and that is sort of what I identified sort of led us to the recommendation that we needed outside technical expertise to really understand what was working and what was not working here so in February of 2019 the board allowed us to move forward to higher focus strategies a nationally recognized firm that worked solely on issues of homelessness and the charge of that engagement was really to carry out an inclusive and a collaborative approach and then really come up with recommendations on system level performance measures and targets how to improve our governance and decision making and a detailed action plan to get there and I'm going to talk a little bit about the parts here the timeline that has brought us to today that first phase of work was really where we started our qualitative assessment and engagement there were many many all key informant interviews they collected a bunch of information and data about how we were approaching this critical issue and they came forward with our baseline assessment in September of 2019 and in there that was for key early recommendations and those things really informed where we went in our subsequent phase and the second phase that was really through gosh march of this year focus really took our qualitative data our HMIS our homeless management information system data to do a deep dive into our system and by provider provider by provider projects to really look at what was working and what was not that report was finished up late in 2019 and then presented to the board in early March concurrent with that we had four different workgroups going around those interim recommendations one of those workgroups was on outreach one was on housing focused shelter and what was going on or not going on in our shelters one was focused on diversion and prevention and one was focused on governance and so there were teams that came together cross sector teams city reps provider reps, community reps that worked on those issues and so when we were just sort of wrapping up that initial work and coming forward in March to do what was going to be the kickoff for the actual action planning what happened the pandemic and it changed everything we did so you'll see in this slide you know we really we put a pause on that work literally we had sent out invitations for a two day community convening around system design and action planning for the end of March and obviously that was put on pause in that experience in that in sort of the aftermath of shelter in place home orders going into effect we actually did a lot together and I want to highlight that because it our experience working together on COVID response as it relates to homelessness actually influenced our framework quite significantly and I think everyone's well aware we work very actively with our city partners on standing up our COVID sheltering system the six hotels that we have in operation currently and as well as five different shelter in place programs so we have never had more shelter than we have right now but meanwhile it's still an incredible problem we just look around the community and we've got to do more that has influenced the plan so then also as you guys can imagine we had a little bit of a delay again in August when the county was basically dealing with the cdu lightning fire and that was an all hands on back moment for our team and so again we were still moving forward so one of the things we worked with our project advisory team to put together the proposed framework and that's what we have before the board today and really we are starting with a community engagement conversation and this is our first one after the board to get some feedback and understanding about where we go from here so we're really in this phase three we did the framework and action planning we have a proposed plan and we're moving forward and we're in that community conversation the intention is to go through a series of conversations and Randy will speak to that at the end of our presentation and then come back to the board in January with the month work plan to guide the plan's implementation and really just that final tease on this proposed plan happy to pause to see if there's any questions I'm talking about before we get to the action plan where we go from here what is the assessment identify about how we were doing things quick review of the findings they started with our strength coordinated entry our smart path system we had outreach teams we had shelters providing basic safety and service but not really focused on getting folks to housing and so we had these things we also identified some considerable gaps that we did not have a really robust good housing before they even entered a shelter system and that diversion is usually at the term for problem solving just working to understand what are the barriers what are holding people back from getting back to permanent housing it also identified that again our shelter was really addressing basic safety but not supportive service to get people on a path to housing case management housing navigation that that was not offered consistently across all shelters and really the result of that was a low success rate in terms of actual permanent housing placement we don't have really great outcomes another identified gap was our governance and decision making was not transparent or results focused our staffing capacity was pretty inadequate given the scale of the problem and we really have limited use of data to drive decisions or improvements it was this really honest assessment we had to have a systematic integrated connected approach from the first experiencing homelessness to hopefully a successful exit to housing that we had a loose coordination of activities that worked for some people but not for all people and we focus strategies our consultants really put it out there for us that we needed to move to a systematic approach where we had a shared vision and shared objectives at all levels that our resources and funding were aligned with those measurable outcomes that programs were designed and focused on meeting those outcomes and evaluated on a regular basis and that we used data so we needed a clear structure and process for governance and decision making so we would be accountable to results and that really if we could get there each person would receive timely and consistent we just want to say in doing this work all city jurisdictions people were very very honest and open about what was working and what was not it was a pretty hard look in the mirror and everyone has just been along this process said we know we need to do better we have to do more so that really brings us to the framework okay am I coming through okay can people hear me thumbs up okay so Alisa introduced me as the new I think new I guess it's at last for a year I'm still new Randy Morris the director of the human services department I started in February which is about four weeks before everything changed but I want to as a way of introduction but you know I worked for 25 years in Alameda County and to the topic that I'm presenting on here probably around five years ago I watched what I'm sure is Resonate to view all as city profound tensions just grow as the visibility of homelessness really blew up in the cities of Oakland and Berkeley and Hayward and just watched tremendous tension play out at Hayward and Alameda County where cities and counties are struggling with what's our role what do we do so I'm no stranger to these challenges when you have an issue that's bigger than you know a city or a county can handle I also just want to make sure the city knows it's in case you're not as aware because we've been discussing county world over and over I want to thank Alisa who on the backs of her and two other people handled a problem that's being transferred which is going to be on the shoulders of about seven or eight people and we still don't have enough people so I don't know how Alisa and her team did this but I understand way before Alisa the county didn't do very much at all so at least we started to step up and we're stepping up more of the county to be better partners to city if you don't know human service departments we basically have three big shops and that's the foster care division the kind of public welfare division like CalFresh and MediCal trying to work programs and employment programs and then aging programs like people protective services like is that but throughout California counties are struggling with who should be the administrative hub of this new vaccine public policy dilemma that no one can solve and that's a growing homeless crisis and it is happening throughout California that often planning departments or CAO offices are transferring them to direct service offices like health or human services so it's just happening next week if it's official Alisa happens to be this very big baton and that's why she and I are doing these co-presentations and Alisa will still be very involved in a policy role in our CAO's office but I have a new director who's going to be reporting to me starting on Monday that's why the transition happened I see Mark team not on video but we invited him to be part of the interview panel we wanted to have city hi Mark team city and community representatives to help us pick a good director to help kind of coordinate this work I want to say one thing about say just a touch more about what Alisa said about what happened when COVID hit which you know is literally five weeks after I got here if you don't know in California state statute human service agency in county in California are required to provide mass care and shelter during a disaster you know it used to be things like earthquakes and fires but this pandemic caused all county human service departments to have some role in what California stepped up and said we need to make sure COVID doesn't spread in our homeless community so that's why the federal FEMA money and the state money started flowing into the county to my department and we basically stood up a whole emergency operation which Alisa mentioned and that's been a dominant part of my first nine months here is sort of managing that operation in conjunction with all the work that Alisa's speaking to but I just want to if you don't know this I think it's important to share for two reasons one is with money and urgency we actually can do things pretty quickly as government but not to end with the glass half empty but put reality on the table as Alisa said it's still very disturbing that despite all the infusion of money and all the good work explained to you you probably more than anyone in the city see it has not solved the issue so I'm going to say with humility all the great things that have happened in COVID but recognize it still isn't enough because the encampment issue is just completely perplexing to everyone so I want to find the balance to share we actually in a very short order stood up a system that is touching a little over 1,000 people experiencing homeless every month which is a lot but again to what you guys see in the encampment it's still far short of what the whole total is and that translates to we have these six hotels that we've been able to lease through this program called Project Room Key which is a blend of federal FEMA money and state money which allows counties to move it forward and that has about 200 highly vulnerable people who would otherwise be at high risk of contracting COVID in their own hotel rooms we have been able to take about 15 existing shelters and this is what a lease of team did a lot of work on and help create social distancing and bring services there and make them 24-7 meal security staffing to kind of help support stability there we expanded and you guys know one of these two the Santa Cruz Zettall but also the Watson Vettall which has about 110 people who are able to expand into those spaces we stood up a Transition Age Youth site as a 7th Day Adventist location that serves about 15 plus people and then as your city knows all too well we worked in partnership with you all and are still working with it to stand up the Benchlands encampment that served at this peak about 100 people and then on top of that it doesn't get a lot of fanfare but mostly our health office and more is touching about 300 homeless people a month who are in various encampments around the community in the context of COVID trying to stop the spread by doing things like we stood up hygiene centers quarter parties hand washing stations bring water, fuel, food tents, sleeping bags and help wellness checks and ensures that people who have declined health are getting health care needs and as we can trying to refer people to all those systems into the very clogged up housing system that we have we just wanted to take a minute if you didn't know that all of that has happened and that is impressive but it is also disturbing that issues are still as pronounced as they are despite that and that is deeply on the backs of federal and state money that we're very, very anxious when that federal and state money goes away how are we going to keep not lose ground which we'll be talking about a little bit today. So I hope that preamble introduction a little bit of context setting was helpful as I now have the baton from Elisa as she described the three-year framework wasn't influenced by what happened over COVID in the last six, seven months and what is listed here is just kind of like describing the sort of backbone of what's in the framework so vision and guiding principles Elisa mentioned some of these actionable have to be county-wide have to be cross-jurisdiction we'll talk about that have to be data-driven we'll talk about the homeless systems are just sort of blowing with the wind without a good sense of what's happening and responding to anecdotal issues and crises without any real system without any sense of what the data is and seeing if the needles are moving in the right direction or wrong and then an equity lens we want to make sure that we're tracking demographics on all sorts to see if we have different groups disproportionately being affected Elisa mentioned something to repeat this has a number of goals that have very targeted results and capacity to measure success which we'll get to in a minute this is also rooted in a number of strategies and key objectives which I'll turn this back to Elisa in a few minutes and she's going to go a little bit deeper on it but you can read it in the actual plan itself and I forget Elisa we've sent it over to them and they're posted on your website but if not we'll get it to you so you can see this plan the second to last is very significant and that is that embedded in this three-year plan which serves as a framework is every six months to reset and reevaluate so that we have kind of very concrete actionable plans that help ground the work detail the work and then come back every six months the environment is very fluid it happens with the pandemic and the recessionary is very fluid so we're going to have to make adjustments every six months work plan process every six months and the last and I'll say a little bit about the end of my presentation is we have a number of assumptions that if those assumptions change that could impact kind of how we do until we need to name them because music city nor we the county can fix this alone so there are other parties that have a role in this particularly the Feds and States and more and then we also have tried to quantify what some of the resource needs are so we can be more clear and transparent with the community and between county and city about the distance between what resources we have and what we need and then we can figure out how to bridge that down the next one Alisa so this is a quick visual of if you have to just break it down to sort of what's the main thing we're trying to do just to kind of say in three years have we get our mark let me just put the elephant on the table this unlike some aspirational plans doesn't say we're solving all of this in three years but what it's trying to say is we're going to make a significant dent so we are hoping in three years if we are able to achieve everything listed in here that we will reduce the unsheltered homeless population by 50% and for those who aren't sure of the language unsheltered and what that means in this world if you look at the bottom left that's basically everybody but those who are in a shelter people who are in encampments or vehicles not their own home but then when you throw in people who are in actual shelters that's not their home but they actually have a loop over the head in the shelter system that's where we put all that together we want to use overall homelessness by 30% and there's a lot of detail behind that better on the slides that follow in the report so if you can go to the next Alisa so to break it down a touch more trying to look at two big goals is we want to improve the effectiveness of every single program we run we have a lot of details in this plan and they will be born out in the six month plan and we'll be tracking the data to see if we are getting these so reducing the length of stay you all probably know all too well the reason why shelters don't have any openings pre-COVID is because people are stuck in there and they don't move and there's reasons behind that rate of rehousing is something we need to track and do a better job of teasing out why is the rate so low and what we can do to increase that rate and same thing when people are stuck in some degree of homelessness why is it that we can't get them into programs so we're going to be tracking that as goal number one and then goal two it is not the only solution to homelessness but it is a major solution and a real conundrum for all of us how can we expand the beds capacity shelter is not a solution to homelessness so we need to have expanded shelter capacity we are able in COVID to expand significantly and we don't want to lose it if at all possible but really we need to focus on more housing slots and we'll say more about that because that's a big part where we need cities and county and planning departments to be working on this very very complicated issue that's very vexing in communities with not my backyard but until we crack this net we're only going to get so far in this plan the next one Elisa so this is my precursor to just put a big big frame on what I'll turn over to Elisa because her and her team and focus strategies and people before me get a lot of credit for really trying to figure out how to organize this very complex puzzle in a way that's somewhat digestible and organized so it really falls into these four boxes so the upper left box called better connect and serve that's basically saying four people who are at point in time in the moment experiencing homelessness in a shelter on the streets in encampments what can we do to enhance and improve our outreach our engagement and connection with people who are in the moment homeless the upper right box well we have to have an outlet we have to increase our housing stock and our housing options we have to have pathways to somewhere so that's the second the lower left is we kind of sorry this analogy is not appropriate but we have to stop the bleeding there are many many jurisdictions that including where I just came from in Alameda where you can track and track and track and people who are currently homeless and you can get them into housing but if the flow into homelessness is more people are as many people are becoming homeless you're not moving the needle and so there's a whole host of prevention strategies to try to help people who are currently housed even if precariously on the brink of to help make sure they remain housed so they don't become one of the people in the point in time count and then the lower right corner you know Martin and Mayor and Vice Mayor who on this two by two committee know a lot about this but we have a lot of work to do in the first six months of this to improve the administration of this this is the boring stuff that's not really interesting to probably public but in order to have a complex like system like this run effectively you have to have a structure that makes sense when you get to city and county you have to have better ways of determining how decisions get made these are very very trying issues that get people finger pointing really quickly and to do that you have to put some time and energy to figure out what the process is understanding what each other's roles are and get a better government structure some more transparency to get the relationships working better and that's even within county you know we have a lot of county departments who have roles and we're not we finger point ourselves internally before you even get to county city so there's a lot of work to do to get the administration right have enough staff I know you guys went through this you just hired a dedicated homeless coordinator you lost the person I saw Martin you're reorganizing all of us are trying to figure out how to organize the this because it's so challenging on all of it so there's a whole host of work that might not be as interesting to the community but it's very important if we're going to do our job right have that foundation in place so now Lisa's going to drill down a little bit more and what does that mean Matt so I will try to not go too far but I do want to get into the highlights of each of these and just before I jump into strategy one so we have these four strategies across these four buckets 14 sub-strategies and underneath these two of those sub-strategies are what we're calling objectives there are 48 objectives in this plan and that is actionable specific work we want to achieve within the next three years we're not going to dump all of that on you today but I do think it's very important as we reflect on the 2015 all-in plan great plan big plan but part of the challenge was prioritizing what to do and what specific steps needed to be taken when and by who this is not just for the county this lift is going to take all of us so we'll talk a little bit about that but so with that I'm going to go to the first strategy as Randy said this is really this is really focused on people experiencing homelessness whether they're in shelter or they're living on the street in encampments and outside it's also where we really have sharpened our focus on encampments and in terms of both that experience of being homeless but also the impact on communities of encampments Randy already talked about one of the capacity goals around this part of the plan is increasing our permanent shelter capacity by 150 beds and the target within the modeling focus strategy to the predictive modeling for us was that we would increase 130 individual beds and 20 family beds about 5 family units talk about that that's assuming our COVID sheltering system demobilizes and that this is our increase long term over time it's to me it's two location centers it's stuff we were talking about before COVID how do we have a stable full service shelter system where people came in and moved on but so that's part of this highlights in each of these buckets I'm not going to go into that 1.1 there's four objectives and this is really around COVID learning this is health and safety we did a tremendous amount of work with our new programs and our existing programs to promote access to health disease prevention and security and obviously from a public health standpoint we have to keep doing that for the health of our shelter residents the staff and the rest of the community so this is that commitment there the second piece in strategy 1.2 is and this is another COVID learning moment this is really where we learned about the value of low barrier shelter many of the folks that have been participating in the COVID shelter system have not been connected to services before which is kind of striking so this is really where you're being trauma informed you are trying to create ways for people to stay in shelter and stay connected sometimes folks have addiction problems and how do you work within that environment so this is really again about how do we keep people engaged so we can get them back to that this is where we start getting back to those questions about our gaps this is really providing robust services in shelters so people actually leave shelters and move on to pathways to housing so that is the case management that is the housing navigation that's the connection to benefits essential services we've had that in a limited amount in some of our existing shelters but it is not a common feature of our shelter system and we have to get there if we really want to get to those goals of reducing homelessness by 30% in three years the last strategy 1.4 is really the strategy focusing on people living outside in encampments and it has seven objectives this is where we start talking about more outreach that is focused on housing and links people to essential services that we train that staff in deeper conversations about housing one of the critiques of our outreach today is it's been very health focused but not housing focused and we need to do that we need to bring crisis response services to the streets and help people that are living outside connect to get better and move forward further we need to collect data about that and then the last piece of this there's two objectives that is really around working across jurisdiction and for us across county departments to develop a shared approach to managing encampments on public properties so that is all stuff that is in this part of the strategy around people living outside key partners to making this we need them to have the service capacity and training to do this better model cities and county departments those are going to be the key folks involved in standing up this part of the framework I'm now going to find the arrow here and talk about the next strategy and Randy said it it's one thing to meet people where they are but if we really want to address this we need to have options and supply to reach our three-year target strategy 2.1 really focuses on extremely low income folks that's the population we're talking about and one of the measurable goal we're talking about is 100 units of permanent supportive housing we need to bring that housing that specialty housing to our community to really make a dent in the results we're looking for we need to the county and partners need to utilize all state and federal resources to acquire and build units and there is the concept in there and that first strategy around interagency pipeline group to talk about permanent supportive housing and that extremely low income unit so we can actually move people forward strategy 2.2 there are three objectives here this is really about our rapid rehousing rental assistance programs rapid rehousing programs are where you provide some level of sort of tight traded rental assistance combined with case management and housing navigation from moving someone out of a shelter into housing and you stand with them supporting them for a period of time to help them stay housed and really address their barriers. Specific in this strategy is a goal of over three years adding an additional 350 units shall I say of rapid rehousing programs so it's not a physical thing it's a program thing where you're getting rental the rental market today just in contrast with that number that 350 number today we have about 118 units of rapid rehousing for families and 86 units of rapid rehousing for adults so this is a sizable increase and I will say and some of you know this from the 2x2 committee the CMC our Homeless Action Partnership as a function of recently was allocated about $9.8 million through HUD with the focus on rapid rehousing this kind of program and addressing COVID related shelter so to the state for using those funds is about half of it needs to go to 200 units of rapid rehousing and that case management and navigation to really get people out of these shelters and into housing and then about the other half of it is towards supporting those COVID shelters in the first part of next year as our funding our FEMA funding with that is always a little bit of other care act dollars that the county has been using currently those have to be spent by the end of December so that is something that is really important around supply is that rapid rehousing programming the third strategy with three objectives is really working with landlords and property managers like we need to have a stronger tie to our renting community and figuring out those barriers that rightly stop folks from renting to people who are homeless and how do we work through that and provide the right incentive and information is really around our coordinated entry system and some technical ways to improve that and make that work better and one of the key things there is that we commit that entry we have a housing specialist that can have a conversation with that person whether they're they've lost their housing or they're about to and they reached out to help them reconnect to try and figure out that strategy to support that initial touch partners in this strategy are really again cities, counties, housing providers, developers, financing entities and quite frankly our community welcoming affordable and permanent supportive housing units you can't address homelessness without addressing supply that is strategy two. Strategy three is where we really come back on that issue of problem solving and prevention at the beginning of this briefing I talked a little bit about how 40% of our respondents in the 2019 point in time count share that this is their first experience of homelessness 40% so the question there is Randy said is how do we stop that tide? How do we stop people falling into homelessness another really important piece of our our work with focus strategies revealed for us is if you look at who's entering our shelter system right now and are entering from a house situation they're not entering from being out on the street so what we need to do is not have that we need to be having using our shelter assets for people who are living outside and have a different way to respond to people who are cheatering on the edge of homelessness but that strategy starts focusing on it really starts focusing on again those conversations just stop people and help them with problem solving using flexible funding you know is it they need to reconnect with a family member another part of the community another part of the state to get to secure housing is it that they need a little bit of help with rent and they can stay in their housing they might need to buy a bed a friend how do we do that so they don't fall into the system and that's really this idea of intake specialists that are going to have those conversations right as soon as they reach out and touch the system strategy here strategy 3.2 is really focusing on within our safety net organization homelessness and get ahead of them when people are already participating in a variety of programs how do we keep them how do we get ahead of that precipitous drop and really make sure that we can limit people falling into homelessness partners here are going to be community providers volunteers and county safety net programs really working together on prevention and I think as we all know it's far more cost effective to prevent homelessness than having to deal with an active strategy and as Randy said this is not the fun but you can't do this without a strong backbone administration there are I think there are 17 objectives in this particular strategy area the first one and we had a bunch of bits and start really looking at governance but as we have to design a new governance and decision making model that aligns all of us around the same objective and prioritization of funds second one here is authentically involve get the viewpoint of people experiencing homelessness and designing our programs talk to our clients some of you know I one of the things that work on here is continuous improvement and we always talk about voice of customer understanding what is the experience of the person you're trying to help what they need and so that is part of this is how do we how do we understand one the variety in the experience of a homeless we have working people we have that we have folks who have been living outside for a long time they all need different things we have South County we have North County different things how do we honor that diversity of experience the next item is really about this new division and Randy has spoken a little bit about it that that administrative structure to lead and coordinate this work that is going to involve all of us it's not the county alone but you need to have a backbone that's driving this forward that is adequately resourced that this idea of the six month work plan sticks and within that one of the intentions is that it it really articulates what are the costs of these various interventions so we are not just sort of talking about it without understanding what do we need to buy and why and how we're going to move forward so the work plan piece of this is really critical the last element here is really being data informed we are we've learned a lot in the last 18 months we have a couple folks that are much more in how they use data we have some of our providing partners but many people do not and while people have participated in HMIS our data system they've done it just because they had to but not as a way to actually promote improvement and really evaluate what's going on so that's going to be a key component of this and quite frankly one of the reasons why the county in figuring out where we wanted to home our efforts with sitting it with our human services department a very strong data analytics team they've been doing this across their other programs for a long time so the core competencies around using data both internal operational improvement but also to communicate externally is there we're not recreating the wheel we're applying it to a new problem and I guess I just want to stress there in that you said data it's not just it's not just for insiders but it's got to be available to the public we need to be clear on what we're doing and why so that is and my phone's ringing that is the quick summary of the framework I'm going to pass it back to Randy right if this is an in-person meeting I think I'd say it's the time we stand up and we go through an icebreaker exercise and shake out and we're almost there hang in there we're where I'm in the corner to the end here so these are what I said at the beginning some assumptions a little bit of a way of introduction of me to you having worked in county government with cities with advocates with community providers I just feel like I spend so much of my time trying to hone in on what is the role of each jurisdiction you know what can the county do and hold myself accountable to what the county can do what can you guys do hold yourself accountable this issue of homelessness is a symptom of at least three decades of a complex puzzle of causes that include federal and state policy actions that neither city nor county have any control over but we sure are suffering from the decades of sort of decisions that can make and I think if we're really honest with each other in a community like Santa Cruz where you have a huge unincorporated footprint city and county shares and choices that are not in so bad over a decade there's not a lot of affordable housing that has been lifted up in this community and that's a contributing factor and I don't blame that is what it is so we have to put assumptions out because we county and you as partners in city there are limits to what we can do but we can at least track and name and be transparent and honest with the community what it is we're tracking and naming and then let's focus our energies on what's in our control where collaboration works and then we're really going to hunker down and lobby at the state and the feds to fix issues that they've caused so it's a simple solution which makes it very very hard to know where to point a finger because everybody has a blame everybody has a role in the solution so first we've got a massive set of crises and Santa Cruz and a few other communities in California have the fires on top of the pandemic and the recession that is followed so we don't know what impact it will have on the housing market it's like a title wave the earthquake hit a few hours ahead there's going to be the title wave but we don't know what it's going to be so there's an assumption that it's not going to have a major impact we don't know state and federal resources lately have been throwing enough we've been getting some resources to do some things pre-pandemic during pandemic we don't have control over what the state and feds decide those are major factors and just so you know like my department 90% of my funding is federal and state so my ability to run my programs the county board of supervisors can say what they want but when 90% of your funding is outside homelessness is arguably kind of that complex we have a lot of money right now from FEMA and the state we can't control that but we can lobby the division that I'm going to be lifting up starting next week with the new director we will be pretty transparent with the county and if we get into any cross-jurisdictional resource sharing that would be a discussion decision we don't know what resources we need we're just going to launch this plan we're going to talk it through we're going to do what we can to be responsive but if we don't have enough internal infrastructure to do what we want I just have to be honest with the board about that but we're on a good start and better than what Elisa was managing with just her and Mighty 2 people which I don't know how she did that the department prioritized funding that's a little bit of a euphemism for a lot of times you know housing programs and planning departments have funding come in city or county and they have choices to make and I really truly say this is a benign statement sometimes those choices are made they don't go to crack the issue of homelessness they don't go to extremely low income vulnerable populations they go other places and the service department can't control how planning decisions get made and those are very complicated they involve planning commissions they involve public feedback but we have to see how other partners prioritize funding and if they don't get targeted towards creating more housing stock for extremely low income we're going to have limits to how far we can move the needle and we'll say that in a benign transparent way same thing below there's a lot of providers there's limits to what government can do we need partners to help do stuff and what capacity of a community have to do this work is something we need to track and talk about and then to kind of end and this is where it really gets to the rubber hits the roll with city and county you know I'm talking to a number of elected officials city colleagues this is a complicated world and we have a lot of challenges that whether you're county or city you have to work with and we will do our best to be good partners have open conversations but in the end of the day if neither city nor county or anybody can find a place to even if we have money to stand something back we're a little stuck so I think that's going to have to be an open conversation during these three years the last is a little bit of motherhood and apple pie comment which is I truly believe I've been in the safety net five years non-profit and graduate school and 25 years government every year that passes I just keep focusing on what's in your control is how we work together what's not in your control is all these other factors like said in state but I'm going to say the inverse of that is when we're pointing fingers my experience has been so a lot of time and energy trying to prove who's right and who's wrong to the neglect of actually figuring out how to work together on something and that is in our control we can't change the divided congress we can't tell the governor of the California what to do but we can figure out how to work together and roll in the same direction and I hope that over these next six months and years to follow this history of the county doing nothing forever and now we're stepped up in the last few years that we just keep moving in this direction of stepping up and keep burning your trust and conversely that we can be honest with you where we feel like as city we would like you to consider a different way of work with us let's just do that it's in our control so at least I forget if we have the pretty little boat on the longer slides we can go to the next I'm doing I don't know do we have we don't have the boat we go to the board archive this morning we just filled this because we were given half an hour rest with you guys but there was a picture of a row boat and some comments about my mom is all getting the boat together so imagine a really fun picture that inspired you to call the action okay so the closing here I believe so this is our closing is just to tell you where we are the purpose of this just to summarize to be back on Elisa's intro this is really like the unveiling of this 18 month of work focus strategy sort of on the wings here if you have questions for their technical work they've worked in multiple jurisdictions throughout the country and have been really good guide for us there's an opportunity to present and unveil this plan and open it up to the public after this work to date we did the board this morning we're working with you now City of Watsonville tonight the other two cities stays ahead and then really for the next two months we really want to get some feedback and there's going to be a couple ways to do that some people in the city and some of your vendors and partners are on some of these virtual meetings that we're going to be having with partners and stakeholders we're going to go out and be talking to people with experience social distance and safe but we're also going to be putting an online survey that's going to be open to the community and I don't know if we send that to you Mayor Cummings and our team but we'll get to you when that hyperlink goes live so you can send that around to your constituents or yourselves and we're going to be collecting all this information over the next couple of months organize that and then in early 21 we're going to be coming back to the board about all four city councils and ask you to do two things I think the easier one if you don't mind me throwing an opinion out there is to actually adopt this three year plan which will be done, we'll put some graphics in it it'll be more aesthetically pleasing and it will be like adopted by the four city jurisdictions I think the reason why that's conceptually easier this is just a very big framework that involved your partnership in helping us develop this or I think the rubber is going to hit the road and that's going to be the second part of what we do over the next few months is the six month plan because the six month plan are the test we are going to outline what we want to do we want to get people's feedback about where we should focus but the real challenge is then who is going to work with us and be willing to sign up and say all do that thing and so we're actually going to be asking partners including cities and you'll have ample time to look at it we'll talk to you about it and it would be a great the first six month plan had a nice balance that sort of city partners and county governments and other stakeholders each taking a piece of kind of how we're going to break down doing work over the first six months of the three-year process so that we're going to work on over the next few months very openly and we'll bring that first six month plan back to your council and for anything where the city is committing to you'll hopefully have plenty of time to look at it and say yeah I can do that and that way you can adopt it as well and then we'll all hold ourselves accountable for the six months and we'll keep rolling in the right direction and really start to hopefully move the needle in the right direction or more in the right direction at least I believe that closes us out but I am losing okay so now we're all in best requires collaboration on the left is a quick summary of what we're going to work on in the right is we really need everybody to do it and there's the picture of the vote so we're all jumping together let's keep rolling in the right direction discussion, question I can do that, yes I mean comment and say how pleased I am this is probably like the most exciting thing I've heard all month and I'm really impressed with all of the work that went into it everyone that had a hand in it and Will in the future thank you thank you thank you my one question when you were talking about increasing that housing the very low was that for the city or for the county my only question is okay so then let's say someone individual or family gets in there if there's no turnover I mean obviously we want them to stay housed then like that's only 300 and something individuals or families does that make sense yeah so it is countywide so it's putting expanding our rapid rehousing programming countywide and this is where it starts I wanted when we talk about the modeling I almost want to say Kate help me out here part of the thing with the rapid rehousing is the concept is you provide rental assistance and support for a limited amount of time and then they get to a place where they can sustain themselves now there's still that as I mentioned that's like not new housing units it's basically new support for helping people get into housing units you did sort of sort of by way of your question we don't have in this plan a target around I will draw out there that it's not that's not there it's something that you know might we get feedback on that that's something we may want to discuss or not that it's something that the community the new governance structure wants to highlight moving forward I will say you know I think the city of Santa Cruz has worked very very actively do more affordable housing not all jurisdictions that's another piece of the pie that we're going to have to start honestly dealing with then the other follow question is I think one obstacle for individuals can be their credit and part of like the criminal justice system the ticketing you know affecting an individual's credit any collaboration with the courts to try and figure out how to overcome some of this and repair an individual's credit so that they can get to a place where they have more financial independence so I would say that I don't think that the framework does not get into that level of detail but when we talk about barriers that is exactly the kinds of stuff that we think that housing navigation and that care management needs to look at what is that specific thing that's holding someone back and have someone who is working you know whether they're criminally do or criminally injustice involved they're not but they have bad credit history so how do we bring the resources together and this is where I do think it's really important for us to again honor that it takes a village to address some of those things if that's the barrier that person has how do we work to make sure we can close it Renee I'd like to I don't know that informal it's told Santa Cruz is informal I should say council member Golder whatever the right way to identify I just want to say a touch more from my experience in the safety networking with vulnerable low income populations for many many years in a moment like this where we don't even have the bodies to get out there and work with people to dig down into like an exact issue like you're bringing up one of the things I hope we can work on is you can find out that you can just help someone navigate a complicated system and they can undo that and remove that barrier other time and this is really leading by main point you find out there's a systemic issue based on state law or federal law and what you have to do when you have communities all over California running the Jackson mission you have good data you can have a very thoughtful piece of legislation that says if you want to help solve this riddle of homelessness we need to do this and sometimes that's part of what we do but right now it's really hard to get organized because we're just responding to crisis and we have anecdotes so I'd like to think part of getting this organized better is we can be very targeted including trying to get legislative sponsors for systemic fixes that we can't fix at a local level thank you very much is that something that's under consideration like whether they're apartments or studios that as people are kind of stabilizing themselves they can move into where I may actually use one of my lifeline calls and say Kate help me because most of you know I am not a homeless expert I'm one of those generalists that your boss says go work on this and make progress but what I've learned is transitional housing that idea here you're in this one this thing for a little while and then you'll move to another thing that's kind of fallen out of favor it's like no just I'm going to use my lifeline call and say Kate is there anything you want to add about that concept of transitional housing and how we sort of what's the current best practice around that right thank you so actually so focus strategy actually does quite a bit of work in Demantale County where life moves is based so I'm very familiar with their program yeah I say Lisa's right and then I think I think what evidence shows from all around the country is the more people have to go from a place to a place to a place to a place to get housing the less effective that strategy is so I mean the goal is the few possible steps before someone's actually in a place where they can stay that's the most trauma-informed way to address homelessness and we'll get you the best results now having said that there certainly is a role for transitional housing for specialized populations that maybe need a little bit of a longer period of time to get stabilized but I think the thing I would tie back to is the parts of the framework that talk about bolstering the ability of the shelter system to provide people with the services they need so the idea is in a way shelter becomes a variant of transitional housing it's not as long but it's the same idea that people are able to get in from outside have a safe place to be where they're going to work on the things that they need to do to get to housing as fast as they can and really a lot of the transitional housing that life moves operates is really in another community which is called shelter because their lengths of stay are quite short privileged to work with these guys a lot through the 2x2 and I just mostly wanted to express my thanks again you guys have been under an incredible amount of pressure over the last six months actually over the last well coming up on a year it feels like so I just want to publicly acknowledge the amount of work that Randy and his team and Elisa and everyone at the county has been doing on this plan in particular is greatly appreciated I think that when you can kind of see a framework that sort of has the elements in it that maybe you don't quite exactly understand as a policy maker someone who is trying to respond to community concerns it's really reassuring even though it is in very hard road ahead it's just reassuring to start to see the puzzle a little bit more clearly put together for us so I think it gives us a really great guideline for how we describe the work to our community which I think is one of the most important things we can do because our community I think is compassionate about this issue they just cannot understand the ramifications or why it is happening and I think that just you know at a personal level it's hard for people to really understand how we got here and they want to help but they're just not really sure exactly how to do it within the system so I really appreciate you your presentation I think really shows that there's these pieces and these best practices and we have to knit these things together to build a road that we can all follow so again thank you for the presentation also I just have one thing because they are such a prominent part of our community throughout the whole year but I'm wondering if maybe you have done outreach with the university and potential just some communication with them around these goals you know we don't have a sense of whether students are becoming homeless or not we've had public presentations and public comments that does state that and I know the university has tried to kind of grapple with standing up and making sure that there's availability of understanding those threats to students but that might be one other audience to do maybe just a little bit of outreach with as well so I don't want to add to your plate but it just occurred to me that I heard the presentation so yeah thanks councilmember Myers thank you for that and honestly I have lots of conversations with university leadership around lots of things but around the edges of this so I feel like that's something we can and should do it's interesting we've actually done more work with Cabrillo around this I don't know if it's just of the student population and some of the experience but I think that's a great another anchor institution that needs, we're talking about getting in the boat they got to get in the boat with us we all need to be in this boat so I really appreciate that feedback thank you I'll just also express my appreciation of your time and just the comprehensive summary of this report it's really great to see this as a launch pad for our county and we stand poised ready to partner and to your point Randy I think it's really important that we remember that we are in this both together and that we need to think holistically about what we can do to leverage each other's partnership I just sort of maybe just piggybacking really quickly on Bisoner Myers' comment one potential way to really engage all of the education institutions is the Santa Cruz County College and Career Readiness partnership which includes the K-12 district the COE, the county office of education the youth state caprio and CSUMB so an opportunity really to hit all of those give it especially the breast unaccompanied youth and foster youth that are making up a good portion of our homeless population here in Santa Cruz County and really what an opportunity to help those folks who could maybe get out of those cycles early in their lives I think is really a hopeful space as well as just the heart of having to understand that these are the realities for so many kids and young people in our community I think this is really complex and I'm sure we can get into so many aspects of the many issues and causes of homelessness in our community just the whole the whole gamut of really all the deep rooted issues but one of the things there's actually a couple things I wanted to check in with you about is what is that you know if there's somebody who's experiencing mental health issues but is unwilling to accept to go into some sort of treatment and or substance abuse issues but unwilling to get substance abuse treatment and then they do decide at one point then the month long weeks long wait to actually get admitted so how given that that's one of the major kind of components of those who are experiencing homelessness in our community so I'll ask that question and then the second question is and then I know others want to ask questions as well as we hear from community members around what about purchasing old hotels and potential transitional housing so I don't know if you want to speak to that as well The question of on-demand treatment I mean that is a huge issue it's a huge issue for our homeless population it's a huge issue for our home population and really this is where I like need to turn to Eric Riera to like talk about that just the depth of what I can speak to a little bit in this specific area is our focused intervention team that we had a year of experience with but then with COVID basically had to put on hold and I have to say that was part of our problem we had some of our most challenging folk homeless well it wasn't a criteria to be homeless but it turned out most of the function that program were they almost all had alcohol and drug addiction issues and not only was it hard to get treatment many of them were they had to cycle through so many times programs didn't want them anymore so there is this whole question of where do you even place people what do we call it using jail time as a way to sort of one for people to get sober and maybe start thinking differently flash incarceration as I think what Eric called it but then that problem of placement and like I said that's not unique to homeless the question of treatment capacity what I know Eric has said to me is when he's paying what I would say market rates for treatment beds even though Medi-Cal covers a certain rate because he is literally competing with private insurers for those same beds so I mean I'll be honest this plan doesn't dig into that very very challenging component of addiction in our community and again you know it's an onion it's something we're going to have to look at for a portion of this population we have lots of people who are sober we're going to give you a hand I want to piggyback a little bit the first is just by further introduction the last position I had for eight years I was the public conservator in Alameda County which is Lantam and Pettus short LPS mental health conservatorship law so for eight years I watched the public homelessness and voluntary versus involuntary treatment had literally the public conservator so I just want to share I have that background where this issue has gotten so vexing and complicated you might have seen legislations been passed and only San Francisco opted in to try to figure out how to have conservatorship it's a very vexing issue because government has a horrible job picking and choosing who should have civil liberties even if it's due process in court number two what I did not say in my introduction but I think is enough on point that I'm going to say this Carlos our county administrator did not make the decision to have this office shifted from the CAO to human services he made the decision to have a transfer to health and human services and he left it up to me and Mimi Hall to make the decision how to do that because his direction the very big picture vision that he details he hires people like me in Alameda the population needs the vent the services of your shared safety net system and so I just want to let you know that but for the pandemic and some other financing issues that hit mental health more than human services this could have easily moved to the health agency because of some of the very issues you're bringing up but please know Eric and Mimi are actively involved behind the curtain in everything we're doing so we can keep working on that and then the last and please give Martina a little bit of credit here we had a community hiring process and who we hired who is the new director is a medical doctor public health professional who his last 13 years worked in the mental health system of a county as a housing director so this nexus of housing and mental health and policies and civil liberties needs more attention but I think we have the right people with looking at this so let's keep this conversational active because it's clearly need more discussion and more resolution. We didn't answer the question that simple question about go by hotels The application date was terrible and it was right when we were heading into the fire work to try and see if we could pull something together did invitation of the county we had I think we had one indicate they were somewhat interested in playing but at a very, very deep purchase price and part of the problem with that is the way that project home key program worked is you were most company you wanted to be around $100,000 $150,000 and $280,000 dollars per door so the amount of money we would have had to generate locally to do it was much more. The other piece of it was you needed an operator and because we didn't have a partner operator to actually run the program over time we were talking with a boat from over the hill who does a lot of supportive housing and affordable housing and rapid rental rehopping as well and because we didn't have an actual location they sort of said this is a lot of work and application that's not going to be very competitive so we did not we were not successful in getting it together for a project room key that said now that we've come out of the fires we've come through this project the team is coming back together we're bringing we're talking to other partners from other parts of places in the state about operators and we're going to go back at this again we're pretty confident that more funds will go into whether it's project home key or something like that moving forward just given the perceived success of the initial program so we're trying to gear up to figure out how we can be part of it moving forward. Thank you for the reminder Randy. This is really an impressive report I have not been involved in these discussions in any depth in last couple of years and I'm really impressed with the amount of work that has gone into this and structure of it I really look forward to looking at it in more detail I impressed with the idea of having more of the partners hopefully all on the same page about objectives and goals and so forth and a real focus on quality accountability, successful outcomes, whatever but feeling that we're making some tangible progress on this. The components just all make sense and I think there is the will to go forward it does seem like some of the assumptions that Randy mentioned are really optimistic in this horrible housing market here. It's way easier to do rapid reouthing in I don't know a central valley or something but this is brutal so I don't know how much that reality has to weigh into this anyway that's just my thought looking at it but I really was impressed with looking at the full report but it's not in the full report I would be interested in some kind of an org chart I mean you all know I'm not going to be sitting in this chair much longer but it is an interest and it's an interest to the general public. It's always been kind of a mystery to me how all these pieces sit together and whose charge of what and I know that people change that it helps to me it helps sometimes to see a map of who's in charge of what and who they work with and that's just a comment and who the key people are just to get a sense of how the whole animal fits together but it's really impressive work and thank you for this presentation. I just want to make one comment mindful I've never been an elected official but I've watched elected officials and worked with elected officials for a long time.  You know somewhere in here to your comment council member Matthews I don't know if you know when you look back 30 years and you think about all the different decision points over a long rear-view arc when communities have made decisions to not create housing in a way that catches up with where we are today in my experience those turn into blame finger-pointing it's very hard to have a conversation people have polarized but hopefully there can just be a more honest like here's where we are today can't do anything about what's happening but just a really honest call to action that's not pointing fingers and blaming or asking for the impossible but that's why this plan is a three-year plan we are going to just slowly chip away at this and hopefully have a less finger-pointing conversation about what can a community do during these difficult decisions when you have money that comes in and you can pick this or that or pick a citing issue they seem to be very complicated and get very polarized really quick but maybe we can harness some of the interest in the community really to fix the issue if we can educate and do so in not a blame way but in empowering here is part of the solution so I think your comment is spot on not to be caught in the center in the mix of the sessions I had one other thing around the reality of the housing market here and I think that this was something that those of us who were able to do the life moves to our that was December 13 that was almost a year away from that they had honest conversations with people about what does it cost to stay they also did a lot of work with their clients they had really strong relationships with major employers like Safeway and Costco and places like that they were living in the sheltered environment with support, with behavioral health with case management and they were actually working and saving and then they had conversations about you can transfer because of the nature of your employer to another community and let's talk about what the actual average studio rent is across the state had different kinds of conversations and so I mean we don't know exactly how that's going to look here but part of it is I think Randy was saying we have to have honest conversations about what it's going to take and that in itself is going to be a set of changes that doesn't mean no everyone has to move on to conversations about what it's going to take to stay here versus what your options are in other places so I mean that's we can measure but so much of this is going to be us coming together to have frank conversations about what's going to work and what's not thank you for those comments thank you for the presentation Ditto all the kudos for really giving us an amazing overview of the work that's been done and planning for the future it's really exciting and I feel like a really positive turn in our the ways that we think about an approach addressing homelessness in our community and if I went into the weeds I would have a million questions because I really want to know more about a lot of this stuff but for now I just wanted to ask two kind of bigger picture questions and I think one of them is related so one of them is related to you know Randy you said that we've been able to demonstrate that with urgency and resources we can you know roll out effective approaches effective ways of addressing these issues maybe not long term solutions but given that and given our CARES Act funding will be disappearing and we don't know what the future holds you do make some in addition to the housing market some optimistic assumptions and I hope those come true that we do have funding to maintain and expand upon the wonderful work that's been done I'm just wondering if you could say a little bit more about how you see that transition in particular with respect to the Benchlands encampment which has been from my perspective very successful and I've heard wonderful things I've been there and talked with people so that now we have to move and it's kind of the story with the fighting issues and all that we always kind of get something good going and then we either run out of funding or we have to move so I'm just wondering how you're thinking about that and what the potential is to keep given that we are trying to make a transition to expand states of the armory ongoing operations for that because the issues are not going to go away so that's one question and then the other one it's kind of more of a comment but I would be interested to hear if there's any big picture thinking about how you are intending to involve people who are experiencing homelessness in the work moving forward in program design and operations I'm really excited to hear that I think it's something I've advocated for pretty consistently in the long time that I've been working on these issues and so I'd just love to hear anything about that that you might want to add to help us understand where that's going I'm going to talk first so I can leave the hard question for you Elisa those are a couple different questions I want to start with under key assumptions I agree with you there was some ambitious optimistic heck I'm thinking in this community it's safe to be like maybe we have a little hope with something that happened at the federal level I don't know if that's an appropriate thing up here but there is an increasing amount of certainly state and a little bit of federal narrative that's forming that because of FEMA money and states like California that put project rooms money on the table large numbers of people who had been in the streets that were and again the context was not get rid of encampments because I don't like to see them it was stopping the spread of COVID we've been successful in this community we did it well now what so this gets back to one of these assumptions is this is federal and state money not city of Santa Cruz and county of Santa Cruz so how you know I'm talking to elected officials here but you bump this up to state elected and federal elected in my comment about federal we have a different we think federal administration there's going to have to be a lot of advocacy is this country and is this state going to accept the hundreds of thousands of people who have maybe for the first time in a long time a loop over their head thanks to federal and state money and then they're just going to go back on the streets where their finances are being pulled that's the political moment and that's going to be politics and you are elected and you know the city tensions you deal with with competing priorities but the state elected and the federal elected and the federal administration are going to have to make some hard decisions I think there's a lot of advocacy lobbying media et cetera so that the run doesn't get pulled and maybe they reset the funding to say let's atleast not make it worse and hold this base funding so I think there's a larger conversation all communities to really lift up in pressure state and federal and a recession. So it's tough. I've used that up so I can let Elisa talk about the bench lands because she has the solution. And then we do have your third but we'll come back to that one more time. So I guess I just wanted to say I just think pre-COVID as you know we were watching the state legislature start one of the key issues that was was coming forward was you know this one-off money every year from that date but that that you don't build a system with not getting not sure what's coming and what you can use it for and that was going to be one of the big focus points for the state legislature around starting to recognize that one local government cannot you know fund this problem solve this problem alone and that that was going to have to be a part of it hopefully we'll come back to that and in future legislative session. We do need to come up with local funding sources you know and one of the things that we we talked with our city partners about we were looking at raising our TOT with an idea that some piece of that would be focused on this community challenge so we I mean I'm not going to we have to figure out a way to find the quality programs moving forward. We have to and we have to you know turn every dial for that in terms of I mean the armory is a class is a classic one all of you know the struggle to get that location and we are so appreciative of the initial work of Ron Prince to make that happen and the fact that we're still there you know that we are all very fat acquisition did not happen we have to have locations to do this work and we're gonna we are just gonna have to you know roll up our sleeves as as you know appointed people like myself elected folks like yourself to really work through that problem and figure out where are we going to cite quality programs and by quality it's yes getting the outcomes but it's also been a responsive to community concerns that we that there is a there's a way to say we can do this we can do this in a way that does not cause undue negative impact to the neighbors around it the city started that with that with the River Street camp you know I think of everyone goes back we had the police mobile site you know mobile fan thing on site we had little by little back that up and you had neighbors at the end of that program saying it was fine it was fine so we have to have those conversations and we have to make the commitment to those conversations Randy so I hope that starts to be a little bit responsive it's not I don't have a but I mean I think those are the things we're gonna need to do open to the plan so I can actually read the specific items that we're talking about for how do we authentically get the voices of people experiencing homelessness that we've articulated but if there's something you want to speak to in that I'm happy to yield my time well I just want to say I heard you councilmember around to have the meaningful thing to you I just want to name in my career when I work in the foster system I had the honor of standing up the first emancipated foster board in my time in Alameda County it was painful and difficult and challenging but very rewarding to actually have to confront the real people who you serve and hear really from them how short you fall and then when I promoted into aging state law in California requires in the in-home supportive services program which is a blind and disabled medical client to get home and care and home a consumer board that I met with for eight years and to hear from people in wheelchairs what how hard it is to navigate this so I'm forever changed as a public servant having been a participant in consumer groups I want to answer that in two ways one is in our presentation we did say and it is going to happen it's going to be a sample there is going to be in the COVID context interviews to get feedback of people with lived experience now but that's just part of it the other part of it is there is expectations both by federal mandate but not heavily policed but it is best practice to figure out a way to weave in current and past people with lived experience into your thinking systems we don't do that here from what I can tell I mean there's different pieces but they're not built in and I can tell you having done those two previous efforts and cost to clear an IHSS it's not a simple task because you really have to build support and systems in place and sometimes it's very traumatizing for people to come in with a bunch of people who have a good life and then have to leave and go back to their life I mean it's there's a lot to it so I think part of this three-year plan I'd like to think that we can if we choose to have this be a priority we're gonna have to get the best heads together figure out how to do it but provide the support so that's real and meaningful and not just something that makes us feel good but something that actually we really truly listen and I've seen both happen it's I don't want to be part of anything that's in generous and tokenizing so we have to be really hold ourselves to task to do it correctly thank Randy's answers better than me reading anything from page 19 have the framework but it really I think we already have some experience well we we have folks who've lived experience on the half currently and they struggle to get gas money to come to the meeting you know they you know we we we need to look at this you know I'm paid to be there you know how do we as Randy said how do we support people to fully participate and and and not have it be tokenism one of the things we are saying about this is like create a working group of advocates and those experiencing homelessness that there's a group that comes together so they're not a single person that's on this larger team that's supposed to represent that experience and then that's the sort of commitment that you know they're squishy but they're real and those are the best and we're gonna and that's something that comes with trust you know you don't just move your magic wand and make it happen it's gonna it's gonna come with trust and just sticking with it and I actually I think you know when Robert comes our new director I think Robert has a lot of experience and you know I'll say that this is this is who we've hired he's not yet moving down to Santa Cruz but he plans to be here on a regular basis he's kind of leading a team and Randy shared this with me I'm sharing it he's like well can I just stay at one of the hotels that you guys are using for COVID shelter so I could be with the people that we're serving now of course our rooms are all full so no he can't you know I want to be with the people I'm serving I want to understand their experience he's here on Monday 8,000 other ideas and things that I'd love to talk about but I know you guys have somewhere else to be at six and we and we have other things to cover this evening so I was just wondering so for us or other electives to get involved in this new strategy like what's the timeline and can you give some more details about that you got the police are you on me well can I with a healthy and appropriate lean on the mayor on the vice mayor on my team I don't want to enter I don't want to tell you how to do your process but what I can say is you know there's this existing forum called the two by two where everybody I just named as a participant that will or won't be our recurring form over the next two months but we're really the doors open for a couple of months you can individually respond to the survey you can engage those and I know you guys are rotating those who represent you at the two by two or one off you know reach out reach out to us and again it's probably worth naming it's not as if the door closes in two months when we finalize the plan we can just celebrate the plan it'll look nice to be a frame throughout the three years there's gonna be ample and for ample conversation and a reset every six months so plenty of moments to engage in the process at least if you want to say anything more specific but I just don't want to get in your house I would just say the same exact thing I mean the framework we're gonna have to adapt over time this is not the last moment but what's more important is that you're involved moving forward and I think part of the conversations we have to have is what does that look like well and I don't know the answer what does that look like you want a champion that you want to watch that you want to challenge us on and and just you know that you want to say hey I can help you connect with this part of the community for this piece of the solution because that's what it's gonna take I mean we need to engage you know a whole bunch of our real estate and property management professionals to have hard conversations about what are people's fears about renting to very very low-income people who may have that you said bad credit or whatever there is work that we can share you know it's not it's not Randy's new team is it gonna do all that work we're gonna this is gonna be a collective impact we absolutely welcome your participation right now and moving forward so then I have my one idea I'm gonna throw it on the table so I know that we're thinking about this as getting these people into houses where you're thinking apartments or studios but there's a lot of people in our community that and I'm not trying to be rude but they're probably a little older than me because their kids has moved out but they might have an extra bedroom and maybe they haven't rented it out in the past and they don't need the income but maybe they have a part that wants to give and and then like reaching out to that segment of our community that maybe they could be an opportunity where they haven't rented before I think that's a great great concept and quite frankly there is a program with our with our YGPR youth homelessness demonstration project and we have a team that actually is trying to work on that and of course great ideas like that you know that could pandemic kind of put a big wrench in those kind of create approaches to riddle really utilize the assets we have in place so I think but that's exactly the kind of stuff we need to do you guys mentioned a new government kind of a new governance structure and I'm just kind of maybe just a few seconds timing kind of what this may mean I know there's a lot acronyms involved but probably from maybe the perspective of sort of elected and you know how you know we have the two-by-two but there's two other cities in the county just just curious if you could just provide a tiny bit on that on the continuum of care the kind of money has come in you know do we do we do we fix that the other idea that has come up is do we have some kind of commission right where it's like it has elected it may have some other stakeholders on it and and there's some functions that that the COC has to do that makes it challenging to mix the two up so we've been wrestling with do you need more than one and how do they relate to another each other work group that was convened talked about and actually I think was the really the strongest preference was ultimately and then we really mature as a system is you probably need a JPA need to do something that tension to how you manage finance and there's you know good and bad examples of that in this field area but we don't have the answer we have to I think we're gonna have to we're gonna have to move with something that where it's you know that classic don't let perfect be the enemy of the good or how about don't let the good be the enemy of doing some and it does have to I think it has to have to reflect the broad representation of the county as a whole you know because the issues of homelessness there's a lot of commonality but the faces quite frankly from me from a staffing standpoint I really would welcome the support and help of our elected officials with these dang citing issues because it's hard and it takes so thank you I'd like to throw one more thing out there the vision I would have to your question about what can what's the elected officials role so it's a little bit sideways on the government if we can do this right and we all agree to using this frame we all buy into the six-month plan and who's gonna do what and who's willing to you know help me on a committee I think it helps all of our elected city and county be able to have the same story they're telling constituents because people for the most part are very hungry you know what the heck's going on and it's hard to answer that so call of governance call something else if we all got in the same boat and this is where I think my department the baton being passed to me if we can start producing information that more consistent and tells the story and it's a story that's owned and embraced by everybody I think there's an efficiency there because I mean unless you are different human beings in my last 30 years experience in my other job I mean you all huddle behind we all huddle behind closed doors and figure out who to point a finger at what to do I mean a ton of time and energy that if we could kind of refocus it and but I think we have to get the system up and running and then get to a point where we're all telling the same story we're all communicating on more of a flow basis and it's just more efficient now it's the time to call in and once you dial then please press yeah this afternoon we got by email a letter challenging the work master plan a legal challenge and so I'm just wondering if Tony's had a chance to take a look at that and how you want to communicate with us about that prior to the hearing like street revisited yeah thanks your patience while I shut off my phone I have not had a chance to fully digest that but I know that the staff and our consultant from due to Stephanie Striello have been working diligently to prepare a response and I hope that they will be able to respond point by point at this evening hearing I think it would be appropriate an appropriate question to ask at the outset so that we don't waste everyone's time if there's a recommendation for a continuance but I'm not prepared to make a recommendation at this point and if I could continue do you think that that recommendation would come as I'm not hearing councilor Matthew oh my question was do you see any recommendation coming from the staff after their consultation with Stephanie Striello and due to deck if they felt there were substantive issues that we should continue that is the question be posed to them at the beginning of the meeting yeah yeah that's correct I know that they've made good progress in identifying the issues and my sense is that we're probably going to be recommending moving forward but I haven't had a chance to circle back during this meeting okay thank you thank you and welcome to the 7 p.m. session so if you continue to listen through your television we're streaming device you may miss your opportunity to speak an announcement that you've been unmuted the time will then be set to two minutes and you may hang up once you finish your council member buyers here Matthew here here Golder here what can your vice mayor Myers and mayor coming I would just like to add 5 or 10 seconds delay while my wife and daughter take our dog out of the house unfortunate timing there you get excited yeah so thank you I'm gonna make my comment there fairly brief the work master plan is a comprehensive document to update the planning for the fantasies for work for this the upcoming you know long-term future and it's an exciting time for the city to really think about potential future uses of the work preserving its character and history while still making it a more enjoyable place for youth by members of the public and the community I believe that the process for developing the plan started as early as back in like 2014 so it's been a very long-term process and in the course of that process we have also spent a considerable effort in preparing an environmental impact report pursuant to the requirement of the and generally the way that work is that an initial study is prepared that looks at potential environmental impact of the project and then the notice of preparation goes out in which members of the public have an opportunity to comment on and raise concerns about potential environmental impact associated with the project and those are all taken into account in determining whether or not an environmental impact report is required or if any potential impact impacts to the environment associated with the project can be mitigated to a level of insignificant then it's possible to go forward with a shorter process and adopt a negative declaration or a mitigated negative declaration in case the city went back tomorrow and prepared an environmental impact report and what happens then is that address is put out and it's circulated and and then it's distributed to all potentially responsible public agencies entities that have oversight over certain permit aspects of regulatory aspects of the project as well as members of the community have the chance then to come in and make comment and address what are perceived as issues that have been overlooked or deficiencies in the analysis and and then what happens is those comments are taken into account and each and every one of the comments are are analyzed and responded to and so the initial environmental impact report and the comments and the staff responses to the comments and any adjustments to the environmental impact report that are made in response there too are then compiled into the final environmental impact report and so that's what's happened in this case the the project here is the work master plan it has been reviewed by the planning commission and the planning commission has recommended that it be adopted and so now it's come before the city council for consideration of adoption of the work master plan and certification of the environmental impact report and here's what happens frequently in these situations is that there will be a potentially a flurry of last-minute comments that are made that require further analysis or at least a response from the city staff and that's what happened in this instance is that we got comments that weren't formally submitted to the city clerk as far as I am aware that they were sent to council members and and made their way to city staff and that happened late last evening and didn't cross my desk until after 1 p.m. that means the staff have been diligently analyzing and looking at these comments and as a result of that I'm afraid that at least as far as the staff recommendation goes this evening hearing maybe anti-climactic because we would like to have some additional time to review analyze and and really be able to more meaningfully respond to some of the last-minute comments that we got and so the recommendation and I'm happy to allow planning director or the economic development director to weigh in here but recommendation is to like we did earlier this afternoon as much as I would fit continue this item to provide us with more of an opportunity to fully analyze and meaningfully respond to the last-minute salvo that we got on this project happy to answer any questions respond to comments I think your sound is a little tell me now I don't like wasting time and again I just stop something because somebody's not happy about it and I think it's disappointing for both of us that are here prepared and have taken off work or wherever we're wherever these and we're here and prepared and I also think it's kind of almost weird and ominous for the public listening in that we've now canceled like both of our might cancel both of our main items I'm wondering I know someone asked about having that last correspondence the public record I'm sure eventually it will be but for this one I'm just like wondering is there a way that we can at least the public know why we're doing this and I just yeah that's because it seems you know disappointing for people that have been waiting so many years in such a long time for today and hear me my my sound was turned off but not my the letter is the public record it's been received by the city clerk and so it's available to members of the public on request and will also be included in the agenda packet when the item comes back to you if the council's pleasure is to to another meeting yeah yeah thank you mayor yeah I mean certainly disappointing I think I spent pretty much most of my weekend meeting with people about the war project looks like there was a letter received went to only four three of the council members not quite sure why it wasn't given to the full council but I mean I think to the point of Mr. Condati's I think it's important for the city especially with our financial straights that we're in to evaluate all necessary you know risks that we have to evaluate as we move through different project considerations and approvals so kind of a double strike today and also this afternoon's agenda item in terms of you know definitely working with a lot of folks who are very interested in trying to understand how to get more housing downtown and so it's disappointing to have two major items at this point time with these late letters arriving basically be postponed I guess my support would be that or my proposal is that I think we have potentially have the front street project coming back in December December 8 I hate to kick the work back and staff can correct me but I think realistically the worst gonna have to move back to January at this point and hopefully we can address some of the issues brought up in the letters and you know provide the opportunity for our community to weigh in on on this important feature in our community certainly we've gotten lots of correspondence on it and just yeah regretful that we've got two big projects and both of them look like they probably have to be continued in the late late communications so my preference would be to try not to load up the December 8 meeting with two big hearings and I think realistically the work should probably be pushed back to to January I know there's incoming council members but I believe that those council members can be adequately brought up to speed with regards to project and I think it's I think it's important to recognize their you know their role on the city council in moving something as important as the war forward which is a major piece of infrastructure that I think they deserve you have a vote on so those are my thoughts thank you mayor before I make a motion I just wanted to ask Tony Elliott if if I postponing this we that we would have had if we had moved the project or at least come to a vote today have a comment about that good evening mayor members of the council just one comment we would make is there was a there is a grant that we were hoping to apply for in December December 19th is the deadline so if it was possible if it would be possible to hear this at the November 24th meeting that would be preferable and I just got off the phone with director Lee Butler planning and he seems to think that's that's doable as well and David McCormick who is our asset manager has been tracking closely at this and so if you have additional questions about that grant opportunity he could answer those questions I mean I think Bonnie said it the FPP grant which I believe Claire from Public Works recently brought forward for the Riverwalk it's a substantial pot of money it's the last round of it it's my knowledge up to eight and a half million dollars and we're watching as the state continues to cut funding for grant programs across the board so it's very likely that you know who missed these rounds there won't be a lot of money for a while for anything on the wharf or more broadly as you may recall this summer we applied for a number of design grants for wharf landings we missed that timeline we were not able to get the IR certified in time for them to make the decision with the wildlife conservation board and so we lost lost out on the $10 million worth of design grants for these landings so every time that we defer this and don't take action because someone's legislating legislating through a lawsuit you know we're risking the future of the world so just disappointing but understandable can I go ahead and make a motion and I know those are the people that have comments so I can hold off if you want but maybe I'll wait till my colleagues make the comments and I'm happy to make a motion yeah I don't have any specific comments other than being disappointed as well and but I do think it's important for us to try to get this done to potentially be able to access some grant money I mean that's that's really one of the primary drivers of getting this done so I would suggest if we can't fit it on the 24th I mean I definitely be willing to all a special meeting and make sure that we get this done so that you have the time you need our air clear has the time and other staff to get a grant proposal and I think it's I think that's really important so thank you mayor yeah no I echo everybody's comments that's far and I'm just kind of curious as to whether you know the 24th is actually soon right in terms of preparing for a response and so in terms of the timing I don't know if you know Lee wants to share or others but what is actually necessary to have a response to the letter we received today so that we're able to make a decision because we absolutely don't want to miss out on planning opportunities we don't know if you want to weigh in or or Tony if you want to elaborate further sure I can just weigh in and say that for cause they come in during the public review period we are legally required to provide written responses we're not legally required to provide a written response to the information that came in today however through the conversations that we've had we have started preparing response and we're we're striving to be able to provide that information to the council tonight verbally if nothing else to establish that we can address those issues we while we don't have that legal requirement to prepare a written response you know having that extra time would give us an opportunity hopefully to not only more carefully analyze what has been provided to us but also to thoughtfully prepare a response that otherwise you know may have missed something through the quick turnaround that we had during the council meeting today if I may may or for follow-up then so if I'm hearing you correctly Lee then what you're saying is that you know essentially you were anticipating us to move forward with the item this evening with a verbal response but given that late nature of receiving this document that we're not legally required to have a sort of a written response but if I'm hearing Tony correctly then I'm hearing you say that legally we want to defer so I'm just trying to make sure I'm clear on what the recommendation we do want to continue this to make sure that we can provide a thorough and complete response it's not mandated that that is a written response but nevertheless we even though we were striving to provide a verbal response tonight in our in our hustle to respond we didn't want to miss something we said you know it's it's better to take a step back and make sure that we're fully evaluating everything in the comment butters you know we don't want to miss something and then you know have to you know start over from scratch six or eight months from now through a lawsuit as a result of not putting this off for a short period of time okay no thank you for the clarification I appreciate that this is disappointing it's just so far inadequate the work that's gone into this for literally years and making the decision to pursue an EIR and a very thorough process and vetting to the Commission and to have this come at the 11th hour again I think probably most members of the public don't realize how really demoralizing this is to those who've worked on trying to preserve the war both structurally and economically and as a as a couple destination for years and it's been it's been said we have and will continue to lose major grant opportunities to sustain what is really a community tracker it's very well spelled out in the staff report and I would suggest to those members of the public who wrote take time to look up the staff report and read at the agenda report it really is exceedingly complete so I do support unfortunately continuing this you know abundance of caution but I also do want to get questions answered and forward the FPP program is really centered around engagement with disadvantaged communities so there's a little bit of outreach and which is always challenging in this time but that needs to happen with the most likely the beach flats community and the areas around the work of each area as far as sort of focusing on a project and what they'd like to see out of it you know the abundance of hearings we've had helped support that case but potentially working through the community bridges or somebody I know no end parks was very interested in supporting the effort and to that end you know if council is able to support that or direct staff towards conducting that outreach even in advance of approving master plan you know that that's sort of a necessary steps done we were hoping that approved already so we could do that but just a written material coming forward I really think that the focus should be on analyzing the comments and then council with a more detailed response even if it's just you know a verbal response at the meeting at the when it when it comes back so I don't see any problem with getting that preliminary direction at this tone okay thank you given the the information we received this evening then I'm happy to make a motion I know that councillor Golder was planning on doing that as well so however we would like to do it in regards to sort of just to move that we would have this item continued until our next meeting and also give direction for community outreach and preparation for the grant application to occur prior to that official action on the 24th I believe again I just raised the possibility of putting this on a closed session agenda item as as a closed session agenda item as well so we can ask questions in that environment that we may have regarding legal issues I would note that the email thread that presented to you with the letter from the attorney mentioned possible concessions that might avoid the possibility of litigation so there is a threat of litigation that has been made in this case yeah I mean yes a threat of litigation yeah and so it would qualify for discussion in closed session as a significant exposure to litigation yeah with significant exposure right to litigation Matthew aye aye Golder vice mayor Myers