ilable for a year through the website that's why we walked folks through it last november so that they could understand these and give really uh standards are based on a lot of community input and one of the things that was really important to our local community is eclecticism so many of our standards can be met in multiple different ways so there's like three different ways you could articulate the facade of your building there's several different ways that you could include architectural detail right so we're not just giving folks one option we're giving many options to promote the idea that there are lots of different ways that something can look like it belongs in Santa Cruz and so these are more complicated than some standards in some places like Santa Barbara everything is just you know colonial mission style and that's like one way to do it and they're also just less they're less complicated than other places so you know the ones that are coming in some places like Palo Alto or San Francisco they're just more complicated they're more they're different types of cities so would this take away public hearings for development so we have brought forward some uh council to consider so a couple of things to note here first of all the streamlining option and i'll talk about these more later was recommended by staff and the planning commission in order to provide some incentives for projects to fully conform to all of these standards and really you know create some some reason for a project to fully conform if they can save some time and avoid going to a public hearing we're also in a situation where if a project fully conforms and it includes housing we can't deny it and we can't condition it to make it smaller to reduce the amount of housing either by square footage or number of units so we'll get into those policy options what was the environmental review that was required package is covered by the work that was done on the general plan and the environmental impact report the eir that was created for that document and adopted or um there are portions related to um you know the miscellaneous zoning amendments that are sort of part of this that are really part of more part of the common sense exemption is that they're very small changes and they're um there's no possibility that they could have any impact on the natural environment send it for me why should i care as a you know jope member jane public of city of Santa Cruz about doing these objective standards so these are creating local control that really has been stripped away by recent changes in state law these are creating design standards that reflect community um input and community values about what design should look like in Santa Cruz in order to fit in and look like it belongs here and adds positively to the urban environment they create transparency so people can actually understand what is allowed to happen and what can be built in parcels that are near them we've all we've had several examples in the last couple of years of people being surprised by the amount of development that is actually able to happen and so creating this zoning really ups the transparency of that they give us these design standards that we really want to get in place quickly as we're um receiving more development applications every day we're also going to get more street trees by creating standards that require them and the sidewalk widths that accommodate them we're getting dark sky lighting in all of our new housing development that's a requirement that's included with these design standards and then there's also things that are about really making the open space that's provided provided with a project meaningful and usable so it has amenities and it's appropriate dimensions and it includes a mix of private open space and common open space within a project so that we're creating really high quality places for our neighbors to live in so let's get into the public hearing policy option so there are three options that are included with your packet and i'm going to slow down a little bit here because this is really the place where your council has a policy choice to make um and so this is pretty significant make any change to our community outreach policy which is the policy that creates notifications it creates community meetings which are an opportunity for community members to meet and directly with a developer and speak with them change other any of these three options um public hearing requirements would continue to apply to lots of other things most commercial development will require public hearing density bonus will always require public hearing the changes that were proposed proposing are really here to reflect the limitations that state law has designed permit process and those 10 findings that we currently have in our code they just they simply can't function in the way that they were designed and intended to function so these design standards replace them and so the process that we use incorporating those design standards needs to reflect that those findings have kind of been replaced so we have to rely on objective standards for review primarily and we can't have any net loss of development capacity anywhere within the city ship housing requires a subdivision map and that is going to trigger that's a trigger for a public hearing so that will already have to go to a public hearing so we're talking about fully conforming renting rental housing so it meets every single one of the existing zoning standards that apply and every single one of the new design standards that apply would go through an administrative review so this is already the same process that we currently use for reviewing residential development in residential zones and for decades reviewed by staff and they only trigger a public hearing if there is some other reason you know one of the many other reasons that they would trigger a public hearing or if they're appealed is that we essentially take that existing process for residential and residential zones and extend it to mixed-use and mixed-use zones and residential would be to to create conforming hearings we've met every single one of our standards we're going to bring you into a public hearing to confirm that and so that we're recommending that those hearings would happen with the zoning admin and then the third option is to sort of take both the prior two options and create a hybrid that's based on the size of the project housing that has 50 units or fewer would go through our administrative process fully conforming rental housing if there are 51 units or more would be required to go to a public hearing with the zoning administrator so this is really a matter of you know whether you want to incentivize conformance and you know sort of the value of that because if you're bringing a if you're bringing an item to a public hearing to be fully conforming they may as well go for at least five variations because it's the same public hearing process that they'll have to go to so that's kind of our thinking is that like there's some benefit into creating some incentive to fully conform to the design standards and that's why that's our recommendation and this is just a policy choice that your council can make so just to reiterate this is the current process listed on the left so community outreach notice and meetings happen with based on the size of development we have public hearings for most commercial development for density bonus projects for plant development permits for variances coastal permits subdivisions being close to a slope and for residential currently and sequel review applies so these places where the highlights are these are the only things that we are proposing any change to so in option one in the streamlined option what would change is that lines for residential would go would trigger that need for a public hearing there wouldn't be a public hearing for something that fully conformed for residential in mixed use or commercial zones in option two we would require public hearings for conforming residential in commercial and mixed use zones and mixed use in mixed use zones and then we would also still be requiring those alternative designs for residential those are always going to trigger a public hearing in every one of these three options and so then in our third hybrid option again we're separating based on size so the public hearing would only apply to alternative designs or to projects with 51 units or more and those projects of 50 units or less if they're fully conforming and their rental projects they could be eligible for an administrative review streamline process see choice for your council to make about you know what kind of incentive do you want to create so I also just want to address the standards the findings now really just focus on conforming to those standards so that's really the first finding that the decision maker would have to make in any of these situations whether that staff or the zoning administrator or the planning commission and then for alternative design the decision makers would evaluate the proposed alternative against the goal for the standard from which they're seeking to vary and I meant to place in a goal here and I and standards they have a stated goal about why are we requiring you know new connections to create pedestrian permeability and create walkable neighborhoods essentially that's the goal I'm paraphrasing and so if someone wants to propose an alternative design to that standard and somehow do it in a different way that's the decision maker is going to be deciding if they are still conforming to that purpose that's stated for the concerns from folks who live in the neighborhood around Leonard Street so we're just going to talk about that briefly I think you've heard from them and they've also requested some extra time tonight so these three parcels excuse me parcels are the ones in question for those who haven't you know been following this process these are identified for that mixed use visitor commercial general planned land use designation density of development than these parcels that are here on ocean street which are identified in the mixed use medium density designation and all of our records indicate that this adoption was done properly and correctly and we have all the records just showed and we understand that there are concerns about this so if the city council is chooses to direct us to make a change here nation we could our recommendation is still that we proceed with the rezoning because that is going to create those height and step backer today and then you could direct staff to consider the these parcels as part of the updates we know we need to make to the ocean street area plan and those will be beginning sometime next year um we also would want to think about these in the context of our housing element update our downtown plan expansion so if there is going to be any transfer of density you know where is that going to go in the city taking a look at the housing element update the downtown plan expansion and the ocean street area plan updates all together as the whole allows us to really take a citywide look at these issues and think about this really holistically and comprehensively so that we can make sure that number one we don't get slowed down right if one if one project ends up heading on a slower track for some reason but then also that we can really think about you know are there other places that we may need to be adding capacity for housing and can we incorporate this you know any transfer of density from these parcels in with that process you know we'd want to look at that in a really um in a strategic and comprehensive way so another piece that we've added this time is a recommendation about transit passes had made a recommendation about transit passes when we um brought this item to them they were recommending that every project over 50 units require transit passes for everyone and at the hearing in august we were we were recommending that we kind of um hold on to that recommendation until we get to implementing with it in parking a lot has signed ab 2097 which eliminates parking minimums in locations that are within half a mile of transit for projects that include 20 dwelling units or more to program to create a contract to enter into with developers so with those two pieces in place it made sense to us that we would bring this back some code language that um for residential projects new residential projects with 20 units or more that are within half a mile of high quality transit they must provide um transit passes to all residents in the development and that that would be handled through a direct contract between the developer or the HOA so the property owner or the HOA um and metro transit and then this is a map of where all of our existing high quality transit stops are within the city so you can see it covers a lot of the upper west side and all of campus and most of almost all of downtown and portions of and now i'm going to invite chat us back to join me to talk about the updates to the street tree standards thank you sarah good evening mayor members of the council i'm travis beck super intended apart and would like to bring to you some updates that we are proposing to the three portions of tonight's item relating to street trees you can go to the next slide um as just a refresher uh there we go we did uh bring street tree master plan before the council um last year and many of the changes we're proposing are building off of that and the first of these is revisions to the tree ordinance chapter 13 30 most of the changes to 13 30 were reviewed in the staff report and presentation at the august 23rd council meeting but we are proposing a few additional changes in order to better coordinate between this portion of the municipal code and the heritage tree ordinance chapter 9.56 so those changes include adding some definitions removing language around tree replacement from one section of the chapter 13 30 in order to allow us to charge in lieu fees for heritage trees that are located in the public right of way moving that language as well as information about in lieu fees into a new section 13 30 0 6 3 and then two notable changes that we're proposing adding to that section are giving the director the ability to waive the requirement to replace street trees which otherwise applies anytime a tree is removed for example in the rare cases where we have an over planting of street trees and it's not necessary to replace also establishing criteria to waive the in lieu fee for a property owner that may be experiencing economic hardship and then finally making more explicit the requirements of the coast local coastal program and how those would apply in street tree replacement and finally clarifying when heritage tree and sidewalk removal permits apply as opposed to a street tree permit these changes were all made since our last parks and recreation commission meeting and therefore have not been reviewed by the commission the second item before you is a new resolution establishing the street tree replacement in lieu fee this was fully presented at the last council meeting but just wanted to bring it up here for completeness proposing fees based on the size of the tree in circumstances where replacement is not possible and this was recommended for adoption by the parks and recreation commission at their august eighth meeting and then the third item before you is a resolution establishing mitigation requirements for heritage tree or shrub removal there is an existing resolution that we use today which was adopted in 1994 and the resolution we're bringing before you tonight uh revises that resolution and would apply one single mitigation standard to all heritage tree and shrub removal regardless of the size of the tree and regardless of whether the removal was approved or unapproved and that mitigation would be to replant three number 15 container size or one 24 inch box container size tree or shrub in the case of removal and that is the primary intent of the mitigation requirements that the removed tree or shrub that be replaced and in circumstances where there it is not that is not possible charge a seventeen hundred and five dollar in lieu fee which is the same fee as for the larger size of street trees that we're proposing in the other resolution and these fees are based on calculations of the cost to purchase plant and water to establishment a new tree but this would allow us to charge the same fees for a heritage tree that's in the public right of way as we would for another street tree and then in the case of unapproved removal we would charge additional penalties if someone did that willfully or egregiously in some fashion so we did bring this resolution before the parks and rec creation commission at our october 10th meeting and they gave us direction for a different recommendation which was to charge the seventeen hundred dollar five seventeen hundred and five dollar in lieu fee in cases of approved removal but a substantially larger fee of approximately seventy eight hundred dollars in cases of unapproved removal in order to disincentivize unapproved removal the reason we're presenting the recommendation above that we are is that after discussing the recommendations with the city attorney's office we were advised that using a fee to create the disincentive is a legally inappropriate mechanism and would not necessarily be defensible since fees are to be based on reasonable costs according to state law and therefore we're separating the fee which is the replacement cost from the penalty which would be the disincentive and those penalties could be anywhere from two hundred and fifty dollars for a simple infraction all the way up to you know thousands of dollars if we pursued citations under title four of the municipal code so i'm joined this evening as well by our urban forester Leslie Keady so if you have questions during the question period we'd be happy to answer those we also have staff from the city attorney's office available thank you i just want to let folks know about the additional community outreach we've done since the hearing on the 23rd so first we created a frequently asked questions response and posted those to our website so those were available to everyone in the community and then we also grabbed all of the email addresses from everyone who sent correspondence to that item on the 23rd and reached out to them via email to make sure that they had the link to this FAQ document that was on the website and also to invite them to the community meeting that we had to go over the frequently asked questions and also then to answer any other questions that they might have you know they might read these might generate some more thinking or more questions from them so we also sent that same email to everyone who had signed up on our website for email updates about the project throughout the two years that we've been working on it so it was a total of maybe 250 emails that we sent out so we also publicized the meeting on facebook and instagram for the city and through the city manager update and through as i mentioned those emails to and the recording to the project website for anyone who wasn't able to you know join join us live and then we also created a summary of the ordinance so you know this is over 200 pages probably almost 300 pages of of ordinance text right and the municipal code is not something that's very awesome right so what we did was we wrote up a summary table where we listed out each code section that was getting amended which department was amending it what the purpose of the amendment was and then where to where which document to find it in so was it part of them or or part of the one that does not include changes to the local cluster program so hopefully people could scan through that summary table and you know find the code section or the pieces that they were interested in and then just go to those sections and know where to find them based on the code number and then just read the sections that they were really interested in so those were available on our website refresher on environmental review the objective standards and development standards the rezoning the public works standards street trees implement the general plan and are covered by the eir that was created for that document certified in 2012 sequa guidelines no further environmental review is required for that existing project and then we also have these other miscellaneous zoning ordinance updates and those are largely exempt from sequa under the common sense to bring this to a close our next steps tonight would be the first reading again of these two ordinances one for the sections of the code that are not part of the lcp the local cluster program and one for sections of our municipal code that are part of the lcp just a procedural distinction for folks following along at home these ordinances would take effect in most of the city 30 days after the second reading which will happen at the next available meeting and then they there are the one ordinance that includes lcp ordinance amendment takes effect inside the coastal zone upon certification by the coastal commission so at our second reading we will be bringing back a resolution for your council to direct staff to submit this packet to the coastal commission for review and then we would get to work in the planning department on implementing the we would begin implementation in january so our next you know next available meeting for a second read would be december 13th and then we would 30 days after that be in the middle of january and we these would start applying to new development projects outside the coastal zone and so we're already working on creating those implementation tools and figuring out training starting to train up our staff so then we also know that we're going to need to come back and amend the ocean street area plan and which will include needing to re rezone 15 other properties that we couldn't or we aren't rezoning tonight um because the height limits that are included in the ocean street area plan next in the general plan that we um had wanted to keep that to remove some language that's no longer enforceable under the state law um and so we'll be back with that sometime next year as well and then um these design standards or that we've written design standards to be used in this manner and so we're aware that we are probably going to find some change and so we're already planning on somewhere between a year and two years from now we're going to be coming back with um some tweets see how these really hit the ground on real life projects and notice that you know maybe some things aren't working the way that we had hoped and they need to be adjusted a little bit dissipating that that was going to be sort of a normal part of you know implementing these standards staff recommendation i'm not going to read this to you it's printed in your packet recommendation that you take action on the requiring public hearings we continue to recommend the streamlined option that instead with these design standards um and then we're also looking for your direction about the options to consider for the um 111 to 119 Leonard street and then of course you have resolutions to adopt relative to street trees and heritage trees so with that um you have a lot of staff here available to answer any questions we missed our mark of 20 minutes but we're ready to talk about anything you want to talk about thank you sarah i appreciate and thank you travis also for your presentation on the trees and the inlu fees i know that uh today i received many emails um regarding the five story height can you talk a little bit about how that was um came to be there were a lot of requests for three stories versus five stories and um i know you mentioned currently there is no height limit so um implementing this recommendation of five stories can you speak to how that came to be sure as we mentioned um in his intro um you know one of the pieces of this project part of the analysis that we did was called a test fit analysis and um we brought the results of that test fit to the city council in march of 2021 and then reiterated that again in november of last year and essentially what the test fit analysis does is it takes this like so we have all of these standards we have parking standards and setback standards and height standards we have a floor area ratio set by the general plan we have a density limit set in the general plan and the zoning code um and like so do all of these things fit together found is that in our residential zone districts they do all of those things work together areas where we have mixed use um especially in high density in the mixed use visitor commercial that have that 2.75 floor area ratio on the stage what happens on those existing standards the development capacity is essentially that developers get to decide how to build their buildings law says is that any standard that height limit is really important because that is what creates the basis for being able to apply all of our other design standards so without that height limit we can't apply we could be in a situation where a developer could decide three stories with no parking and no setbacks and no open space raised with like a partially how they want to build right they can decide they don't want to do setbacks they don't want to do transition planes they don't want to do parking um so it's really the whole zoning code is a lot of recourse to make those standards apply if we don't have an envelope that can fit the full capacity of the development that we know we need to do to set those height limits and setbacks and open space standards so that all of these things can work together with the design standards to create the kind of development that we really want to see so i know we got some correspondence that was really like let's keep the height low and then just let them raise the height if they want to but it doesn't really work that way because it's not just height they could really decide that any of the standards they just don't want to meet them they don't want to meet any of the design standards they don't want to do any parking they don't want to do any set things work together to create an envelope and then stick design standards to it and trying to pull that apart i think is um potentially leaves us very exposed and with very little control over development okay thank you i'm going to i know some other council members have some questions um so we'll continue asking questions and then we will bring it out to public comment as soon as we're done asking questions uh council member golder and council member brown did you have your hand up i did not okay i wasn't sure if i saw i want to hear from the public okay council member golder what's in my mouth so thank you for the presentation and i heard that through the objective design standards we're going to have a quantifiable design it does not increase density it actually shifts development control back to low local jurisdictions um some questions that have come to me um you know in correspondence this week since the packet came out are what would happen if we didn't make our rena numbers and why do cities like carmel the civic growth capitol appear to not have to build as densely as we're proposing and i know i may ask my colleagues to jump in on that as well but um i'll go ahead and get started so the consequence of not meeting our rena number so just for those who may or not familiar with that term the rena is an acronym r hna for the regional housing needs allocation it's the amount of housing the city is obligated to plan for in every eight-year housing element cycle every jurisdiction in the state state has a rena number that they are obligated to plan for so part of the reason that some jurisdictions get um numbers that essentially equate to greater densities than others has to do with a couple of factors economic activity and jobs so the state has a goal of putting jobs near housing near jobs so they assign more another component of cited is based on um what type of jurisdiction you are so essentially like are you a suburban jurisdiction are you an urban jurisdiction and just the place where we fall why santa cruz is going to look just ministerial review of development projects if they meet a minimum amount of excuse me affordable housing included and so three tiers that jurisdictions fall into based on how well how close they are to meeting their rena in different categories so jurisdictions that have fully met their rena are not subject to sp35 and are never subject to this streamlined ministerial process for affordable housing jurisdictions that have met um the market rate portion of their rena only subject to sp35 for projects that include at least half 50 of the units as affordable to low if you fail to meet some requirement uh the above moderate rena requirement a development proposal that includes 10 percent um be restricted affordable housing units is qualified for that expedited streamlined ministerial process under sp35 in santa cruz our inclusionary standard is at 20 percent so every market rate project that comes in has to include a minimum of 20 percent affordable housing so that means if we fall into that 10 percent here every development is essentially eligible for sp35 and goes through a ministerial process so there are some we have some concerns about that because ministerial means there's no sequa um it also means that there is no chance to use subjective standards which we can use subjective standards to a limited degree on other projects and um those are important because a lot of our area our area plans are not objective um you know they have a few ocean feed area plan is probably the best it's the most modern has a few objective standards um but a lot of them just really don't have any and we would like to be able to continue to use those documents to some extent as long as it's you know within the boundaries of the state law it's not you know changing how much housing can be built but it could still be used to talk about how are you going to do the streetscape in front of this building and like how are we you know you know sometimes these area plans talk about like the window treatments really specifically like the at the ground floor and um we would like to be able to continue to use those and in sp35 applications they just simply don't apply so that's one of the biggest ramifications of not meeting arena sort of legally um the last thing i'll mention is failing to meet arena means we're failing to plan for housing for future generations and i think that's a very big deal i mean we have rental properties out here that are getting 40 applicants i mean that that's just not a healthy housing market and that's a market rate rental right let alone what's happening in affordable rentals i mean i think all of that is really important but it looks like lee has something else thanks sarah um that's a great overview and i also appreciate you grounding that in some of the realities that people looking for housing are facing today um i wanted to point out one thing because um councilmember golder asked um what are the implications of not meeting the arena and you spoke to the category of if we if we have a certified housing element and we're planning for that and we're not meeting the arena targets but i also just want to take a step back and make sure that um the council is aware this was actually spoken to um by rafa sunfield um in the public comments which is the implications of not planning for the um full amount of arena uh targets that we have and the implications of that if we do not have a certified housing element then there are there's what's called builders remedy and um there are jurisdictions that are finding out about the builders remedy right now you can look at um at Santa Monica for example and see uh the four or five thousand units that they got um submitted almost immediately when they did not have a certified housing element and local control is essentially lost at that point cities are forced to approve housing projects whatever submitted when um we do when we fail to get a certified housing element in time so i wanted to add that as well as a separate component of what happens if we're not meeting arena and then there's just like two more things actually that i'll add that i thought i remembered while we was talking we also are vulnerable to lawsuits i worked at the county when the county was sued for not having a certified housing element and failing to provide affordable housing um and then we're also we become ineligible for lots of grant funding if we're failing to meet our arena or if we don't have a certified housing element lots of things go ahead and ask her another question so some so from what i'm hearing tonight is the sooner we adopt the sooner we'll get more control i know there was a couple projects that came forward this last year maybe last year a three one water and the project on pennsylvania that people were really upset about so is that true the sooner we adopt the more control we will have ultimately yes that's true and then and then yeah we're getting applications now and we can't supply these standards they're locking in the standards that we have today which are you know there are no design standards really today so to that end the one where Taco Bell was downtown how many stories is that or how would have that been modified if this was in place well so that one downtown so these these standards apply everywhere except in the downtown so the downtown already has its own design standards that are part of the downtown plan so that project wouldn't have been won't be affected wouldn't have been affected by this and then just another question is there a maximum height with the density bonus or would it be five stories and then you could apply the density bonus for increased height after that so we can't apply maximums to density bonus the way that density bonus works is that they have to bring in a conforming base project and then they run the calculation of either a 35 percent bonus or a 50 bonus depending on you know what they qualify for on the number of units that had they have been able to fit into their conforming project and then they get to fit them on the site in the manner that so they can do that by eliminating parking by reducing parking they can reduce setbacks they can increase height those are waivers so developers are entitled to an unlimited number of waivers to physically fit the number of units on the property that they are entitled to under the law so it's not a direct line i know people have asked this question before so we there's a project down one of the projects downtown on on front street it has a 35 percent density bonus it went up one story so that was on it was it went from a seven story to an eight-story building that was a 16 percent increase in height there's another density bonus bonus project downtown at 130 center that went from being a three-story project to being a six-story project that's essentially a 100 percent increase in height so it's not necessarily like a direct line between like 35 percent increase you know is always this a number it really depends on the site geometry and the type of project that they're doing and so like how the building just fits together i will say typically in in the past we've seen like most density bonus project add with a 15 percent a 50 percent density bonus we just haven't seen a bunch of those projects yet we've only seen a handful and then just finally would there be opportunities to make changes to this in the future or is this set in stone no yeah all of our the the municipal code is a living document we come back at least once a year to adjust and tweak and make edits do council members have any other questions at this time i just want to say i do have quite a few questions but i'd like to hear from the public who often wait until like nine o'clock at night to even begin to speak so and i may have additional questions because i as a council member do want to hear from the community and take that into account before we make our decision council member coming thank you council member brown i think council member brown brings up a good point because i have a number of questions i want to ask but if we go about asking all of our questions we will be sitting here for a pretty long time and many people may need to go put children to bed or might not be able to stay up very late so i'd be happy if we move to public comment and then we can continue with questions afterwards great so at this time then i will bring it out to public comment this is agenda item number 40 objective standards there are seven recommended parts to the motion that we will be considering if you are joining us here in person and would like to comment on this item please line up to the right of the dais if you are joining us virtually please raise your hand by dialing start nine on your phone or choosing the raise hand feature on the webinar controls of your computer and i will begin with the first person joining us virtually and that is rafa sun unfilled go ahead and press star six and unmute yourself thank you very much uh first i just wanted to thank sarah for for the really um well put together presentation i i hope that it was clear for the public um exactly what we're doing tonight and that we're not increasing the density or height limits or anything that is not already available to developers currently today under the law um i think that's a really important point and and i also wanted to emphasize the the part that she um made about or the point that she made about um how uh if we want to incentivize smaller buildings with less density and uh lower height limits we have to provide some sort of incentive for them to uh want to do that and and i think the the option one um the uh the streamline process is really the best way to do that and that's because currently we have a 20 percent affordability requirement um which automatically triggers density bonuses so any developer today can use a density bonus if they want they can add more height they can change the setbacks they can do all of that anyway um and and really the only like reason that they might not take advantage of that is if they think that uh the uh the streamline process is going to be beneficial to them so so i think realistically probably very few projects are actually going to to uh to not use the the density bonus options that are available to them they're going to they're going to have more units more units are more profitable um and and they're going to uh you know wave more more more regulations to make it uh easier and uh and more valuable for them to build so i i think most of the projects that we're going to see are going to have a public hearing anyway um if and so realistically we're not much is really going to change we're just going to have actually more control over our projects as a city and um and and i think we should have some incentive for for people to for the these developers to um have lower lower heights and and uh less dense projects and that's the the streamline process that we're proposing so that's why i think we should go with option one and once again thanks so much for the presentation i hope it uh is clarifying to to the other members of the community who are concerned about uh development in in our time thank you thank you for your comment i'm going to alternate and i'm going to um bring up the next person here in person welcome good evening my name is kate achilles and i live on lennard street and i'm a resident of the central park neighborhood i'm here on behalf of my family and also 100 plus neighborhood residents on dakota may and Leonard who shares similar concerns since 2007 residents of our neighborhood have been actively engaged with the city's planning department to develop an ocean street area plan that enabled development but also protected the integrity of our small tight-knit neighborhood adjacent to the main corridors of ocean and water streets therefore when studying the maps associated with the objective standard proposal we were shocked to learn that several parcels at the gateway to our community along Leonard street had their land use designation change from residential to mixed-use visitor high density which would allow for development that could have catastrophic impacts on our neighborhood and would be in conflict with the city's stated goal of neighborhood compatibility upon learning of this change our neighborhood again engaged with the planning department in city council to discuss the potential negative impacts that these put prior changes and the general plan could have had on our unique pocket neighborhood from these discussions we got an overwhelming impression that these prior changes whether implied intentionally or as an oversight do not make sense and should be remedied as soon as possible to minimize risk to our community to that end central park neighbors request that city council make a motion to one reject rezoning at 111 to 119 Leonard street and two immediately proceed with an off-cycle general plan amendment to change the land use designation to low medium density residential on those parcels to match the rest of the central park neighborhood and make any concurrent revisions necessary to comply with state law that do not impact our or other residential neighborhoods we sincerely thank the planning department especially sarah and matt our mayor and all the members of city council who have taken time to come and visit our neighborhood listen to our concerns and propose solutions that protect the central park neighborhood thank you thank you for your comment i will go to our next public comment is virtual and that is henry go ahead and press star six to unmute good evening thanks for the opportunity to speak my name is henry hooker and i believe that the council should pass the proposed standards that come before you this evening um the county staff has done a great job of describing all the reasons why it's good legislation i agree it's really just an opportunity to create the housing where we want it and what we want it to look like i also agree with staff that the review process should be as outlined option one which is the only option that provides a really strong incentive to follow the letter of the objective standards i wanted to just say a couple of words on the inclusionary rate which isn't necessarily included in this but it seems to come up for discussion every time that we're talking about housing and i believe that the effort to increase the inclusionary rate for new multi-family units is misguided there's good reason to believe that an increase will backfire and discourage the production of new entry-level housing it's tempting to think of inclusionary units as free affordable housing subsidized by the developers in fact the affordable units are subsidized by the purchasers of the market rate units raising the inclusionary rate can make the market rate units unaffordable to the middle income people who weren't too much to qualify for affordable housing and are in effect asked to pay a surcharge for their apartment it's notable and also unfair that no such surcharge exists for the builder or purchaser of single-family homes if we truly want affordable homes and lots of them which i do we need to be serious about finding or creating subsidies for them thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public here in person hi welcome my name is emma i live in central park neighborhood i am eight years old and i am friends with all the kids in my neighborhood some of the kids are really young and some are older than me but we like to play together they are my best friends and we play almost every day we love to play outside and play at central park we love to ride our bikes skater skateboards and rollerblades around our block there are not many cars in our neighborhood so you can play in the streets we are worried that if you build a tall building that it will be loud and there will be too many cars we might not be able to ride our bikes around the block anymore of the some of the kids in our neighborhood would have to leave if you built the building where they live now i also think that our barn owls might get scared and leave i see and hear them almost every night when we walk around the block and they sometimes like to sit in the big tree where the building could go our neighborhood owls are named dakota may and lettered because those are the names of the streets in our neighborhood we love the kids in the neighborhood wait all of the kids in our neighborhood have signed the kids petition to save central park neighborhood thank you for helping us save our neighborhood i hope you like the new cars that i made for you thank you for your public comment our next uh member of the public has a phone number ending in 5690 go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hello i want to know that there's nothing wrong with the objective standards proposed tonight but there is one area that does not need to be included in the objective standards and that's the base height the objective standards do not consider the density bonus why do that the density bonus that makes no sense this is important the density bonus will allow more affordable housing itself in our town this is critical this is what we need so badly the base does not need to be seen we'll put the same results into the density bonus what a developer wants more height the staff and the council can ask for more from the developer more affordable units more common spit more better designs that is profit mitigation profit life to think we need that will help these existing residents because without considering what the existing residents need as far as all these things going on right around all of us we need to think about this and how are we going to get any of these things you have to help an area to negotiate with this is critical the general plan to still be welcome to have the same height so requested in the survey yeah um and you know don't you don't know that there's a state law i'm not going so don't say one year we can review this it doesn't work like that so it's better to have the density bonus bring up the height then it's a win we get more affordable units that's critical we have too much market aid housing in the town the AMI will go up there's research to prove it it also hurts the lowest income residents and those for ones that are very difficult get affordable units built for we cannot make it worse on them we can fully meet the needs of the objective standards and yes we do want to speak up we don't just want things to go to the zoning administrator if it needs all of the objective standards the developers need to hear from the people who live here it's still up to them if they want to change anything we know that that it's still important if you don't know how can they even accommodate anything it's it's very democratic that's what we want and the developer they're not going to disregard as much as you think they're going to disregard they're getting a lot out of these subjective standards and they know that what's going on currently in sanity they will be fine and if they have to they want that that's the floor yes that will happen you do not need to raise the price thank you for your comment our next public comment here in person hi welcome good evening my name is Kevin Searhoff I also live on Leonard street and I'm a resident of Central Park neighborhood Kate and Emma nicely outlined an overview of our concerns and has proposed a potential solution we have heard the planning department's recommendation to allow rezoning because it affords some level of additional protections and what currently exists however we've been advised that a motion similar to what we proposed is a better path forward for our community we don't feel confident that if allowed to proceed as presently planned the issue will be revisited in the future and even if it was it may be more difficult to remedy these zoning changes more difficult to remedy if these zoning changes are implemented now to us the benefits don't outweigh the risks which is why we wish to proceed immediately with an off-cycle general plan amendment to change the land use designation to low medium density residential on those parcels to match the rest of Central Park neighborhood we understand that planning is just implementing the general plan that was established in 2012 but as we highlighted in our presentation during your visits to our neighborhood the changes were subtle and obscure enough that even our most involved and diligent neighbors were not aware of the land use designation on these parcels had been changed because if they had we would have tried to address this sooner i want to reiterate that our neighborhood is not opposed to development that is adjacent to our neighborhood but we do oppose potential development that could literally replace existing affordable housing and displace our neighbors many of whom have called this neighborhood home for over 30 years within the entire city of Santa Cruz these are the only residential parcels with existing housing that are being rezoned to a mixed use land designation and a designation that specifically encourages visitor commercial uses like hotels and motels we've done significant research on the general plan ocean street area plan environmental impact reports and much more and it remains unclear when or why these changes were implemented when we reached out to former mayor don lane he agreed that it was never the intent of these land use designation changes to have this sort of an effect on residential neighborhood and was likely an oversight to paraphrase the incoming mayor fred keely when he visited our neighborhood last month the role of government is to solve problems not create them this problem seems fixable and we should do so finally i want to reiterate our sincere appreciation to the members of city council and to the planning department who have taken the time to hear our concerns and work with us on a solution thank you again thank you for your comment our next comment is virtual and it's i am watching you yes hello as a serious standalone question i ask you to consider some time whether constantly prioritizing an oversized housing allocation for below average income for people will be an effective strategy to create a more prosperous Santa Cruz otherwise i'll repeat myself as i personally see little change in this proposed ordinance regarding trees i wonder as a matter of fairness considering these fines and fees if you've ever considered that some properties have a lot of trees others perhaps none it seems that those with a lot of trees would be more negatively affected by these fees and fines etc than those with no trees and given these new costs maybe they'll never want any now nowhere does that fairness as in who's doing their part to provide trees really matter as far as tree rule fees go but perhaps it should as before i objected the mixing of dual use of street tree code applying to both new developments and also applying these changes to existing trees generally in particular to their perpetual replacement fees that would never be applied that way to building codes as it presents exposed factor deficiencies i additionally regard existing street trees and parkway strip spot plan to maintain and liability assumed by adjacent property owners to be their property subject to the appropriate permit regulation issued at the time of planting i regard street trees for sure previously planted to be the private property of those who paid planted and cared for them to do as they wish the city has not earned any ownership stake in them the adoption of large and loofy fees to fund perpetual tree replacement including existing trees is a kind of exposed factor law banned by the constitution the idea an unelected bureaucrat has sold authority to issue tree removal permits or not or require perpetual replacement fees or not at whim and without a detailed list of valid removal reasons requiring automatic no in lieu fee for permit issuance including if a tree is dying or dead for instance those guys has 17 such reasons can be quite arbitrary parkway tree permits are no different than the permits that could be issued to allow street parking of a private property car cars always remain the property of their owners perpetual in a loofy tree replacement liability following one to the grave and beyond is not going to promote tree plantings quite the opposite you should be down on your knees thanking people for planting trees and assuming care for them instead it's all threats it's all stick i found the agenda package staff a response to these kinds of specific tree code concerns dismissive unresponsive and void of any real address of my concerns and overall also such in general a different issue i'd add there's a 40 foot tree in the Beth Bethany curve park park near Delaware that's been dead for years why don't you just deposit that 1700 when you finally get around to cutting it down before it falls down this ordinance should apply to the city also shouldn't it thanks thank you for your comment i will now invite our next member of the public here in person hello at least casby here i just want to say that i'm i'm a very interested member of the community i have gone to meetings that were noticed for the downtown area when i lived right at basically almost at but very close to the intersection of laurel street pacific it was really bizarre because the meeting and this was about a parcel that was going to be developed on front street where india jose is right there right across from the metro station i believe in there the notice went out months and months before the actual date of the meeting i believe it went out in april and the meeting was in july um so first of all i'm extremely interested so i got the notice and i held on to it in a prominent place for months and months and then the meeting took place uh the like the day before fourth of july weekend and so this meeting was noticed to keep people away but if you were like me and you were really really interested and you went to the meeting anyway what you found out was that owen waller and many city staff and the architects and certain people who are very interested in making sure that this development was ramrodded through were present a handful of activists myself included a friend of mine lisa johnson from the west side and others who are really interested in what's happening in the city in terms of development environmental concerns housing issues such as housing from many different classes in the city we were about ten of us and it was all stacked when i spoke up vocally about the lack of community participation that was clearly left out it was clearly not intended that the community really show up for that meeting and i could talk more about who was there people who lived in the area also came to that meeting people who live on pacific avenue for example when i spoke out vocally about my objections to that design and tried to find out more about the design like access to the levy and to the river i was actually treated with such hostility that when i went to go to the bathroom in the back of the room later i was hip-checked by one of the friends of the developer that's where you go like this it's a lacrosse term i was physically assaulted by people who are pissed off that actually showed up to the meeting to speak so i just want to say that i think that an education process should be offered to people in the city who are regular folks and not developers or architects or city planners and we want to know how you do this process how it happens from the very beginning to the end we want to know i want to know what a lot of these terms mean without having to become a total expert in what they mean i'm very disheartened about the design processes that are happening and i think you're excluding the community thank you for your comment our next member of the public is joining us virtually uh laura thank you again i have a question about the bonus part can we can you decide to keep it at like 25 or 20 bonus that way to limit the height that seems to be one of the biggest problems of developers just trying to stack more height and it seems from just listening to this that the developers are in the driver's seat they get to do anything they want they the the bonus could be 35 percent they can change the setback so i'd like for clarity of how the community can have more control over the heights and the ways around keeping development in check thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public is here in person welcome thank you madam mayor and council members gary patin i'm speaking here for safe santa cruz you received numerous letters from us and the last person who spoke in person the last person who spoke online really is why safe santa cruz exists and that is we have felt and i think correctly that the city has not been paying attention to what the residents of this community want and has not been involving the residents of this community in these very difficult planning decisions in a way that lets them participate effectively and that helps them understand what's going on and we're here to ask you tonight in connection with this item that you change that pattern and that you do something different if you will remember when the council and some of you i think probably weren't on the council at this time but when the council started the objective standards a process you said the council said adopted a motion that said the highest priority as you conformed zoning to general plan designations was to protect and preserve the residential areas of the city and to protect existing city businesses when sir noisy gave her a very comprehensive report both last time and this time you never once heard about what was the priority for residential areas and how to protect them you didn't hear about how these might these objective standards might change things for businesses in existing businesses in the city safe Santa Cruz hopes that you're going to take action on that Leonard street issue the way the neighbors want you to because in fact that is protecting an existing residential neighborhood and if you notice your staff wasn't interested in that we would like the public to be included the staff is recommending you cut back on public hearings we don't think you should cut back on public hearings we think you do need to do a little sequel review maybe not a full er but you need to see what has changed in 12 years or 10 since the general plan and the general plan er was adopted we are asking you to break up consideration of this item instead of having seven items at one meeting take a bite size piece at several meetings and let the public really get into it the way the last speaker here talked about we want you not to rezone uh change the zoning to meet the general plan our letter that we've submitted points out why that is an extremely bad idea if you care about the priority of protecting residential neighborhoods and we hope you do our next public comment is via virtual hand raised kyle kelly go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hey it's again yep this is kyle kelly give me just a moment here pull up my notes uh cool so uh yeah i'm speaking today in support of the objective standards i support option one streamlining for development review process and public hearing since it incentivizes projects to fully conform to the standards i think this is really important as we're leading into the sixth cycle arena because we we want to be able to have a compliant housing element done submitted on time before the builder's remedy and i'll say two two main points of why it's kind of like these things are stacking in a sense um if we get the pro housing designation we get our housing element done on time we show sufficient capacity we get access to transit and inner city rail grants right we all we all voted no on d we want to see the rail go in i want to see us get those grand dollars if we lose out on it because we decide that we want to have longer community process that we think that you know we can tweak the numbers for how much money we're going to charge people for building a thing we need housing um like all of those things are going to stack up and the reality of what's going to happen is we're going to submit a housing element to hcd and if this process becomes more convoluted then i and many other people will report back to hcd and say hey they decided to make it more difficult so all of these parcels aren't feasible enough they're actually going to have to zone for even more because they chose not to just meet a bare minimum like what's on the agenda today is effectively like facilitate development of more multi-family and mixed-use housing which is already allowed in the city um and like create standards that help build the housing we need ensure great urban design and and you know align the zoning code with the general plan like we're going to be behind if we don't move forward and figure out the way in which we can streamline that housing and i'll just point out again like i think i said back in august like this is for streamlining multi-family housing we currently streamline the most expensive most luxurious housing site the single-family home and we don't put any iz requirements on it people can just build a new single-family home all they want and if you look back at our dashboard that's most of what our market rate housing is it's actually single-family homes it's not like housing for the workforce it's not four plexus or eight plexus or whatever like we're only seeing like a few buildings going up right now it's barely enough to meet our needs so again like my recommendation honestly all the options are kind of great you can figure out how you want to modulate between them but i would prefer that you use streamlined multi-family housing thank you thank you for your comment our next public comment is here in person welcome good evening i forgot to mention my name last time i'm kandace brown for me some more sand transportation public works commissioner um first of all there's a very complex set of standards and i wanted to mention that downtown update plan was done with a very different process which is really unfortunate wasn't done here because it was done with the planning commission subcommittee they sat down for six months they met at least once or twice a week they came back to the planning commission often it went through an inner process and it was very carefully honed and in this case that was not done which is again very unfortunate but the point i wanted to make is three things one sidewalks sidewalks for collector streets are defined the collector streets are defined by the state so if you're going to define a standard based on a state criteria that's not clear to our public works department when i made my inquiry i think that should be investigated before determining the sidewalk widths also the maps are there's a disparity between the general plan maps and getting back to all these map problems and and the caltrans maps number two um uh events planning is asked for five feet additional and commercial saying that it's really to accommodate retail and that it has no impact on density or intensification of use but in fact that's not true you can have five feet increase and have five feet below five feet above podium parking and then you can add another story you could have a retail with mezzanine lofts and you have more intensive use you can have an office space with storage and you can have more employees where you have more patrons these all increase intensity of use so it does impact that so i would think that should not be added also i would like clarification on the general plan itself because i'm going to read you the general plan it says mixed high density designation allows a maximum far of 1.75 as of right including a maximum of 30 dwelling units per acre however a project that meets a number of specific criteria as determined by the planning commission may have a far of up to 2.75 including up to 55 dwelling units per acre i'm running out of time but i wanted to say that it's not clear that they're entitled to 1. to 2.75 in the general plan you can have three stories 1.75 it shows with the test fit you can even have 2.75 with four stories but they're asking for five stories because of economic purposes and it's not needed and it's really important to consider the height because that does increase the intensity of use and has all kinds of ripple effects with traffic parking you know the quality of life i actually sit and look in a three-story building across a landscape and i'm not looking at the rough but if it's five stories you can look across the whole neighborhood so it does really impact the nature of what we're doing thank you thank you for your comment our next comment is virtual has Zenon Uliate Crow go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi my name is Zenon Uliate Crow i'm president of the student housing coalition i just wanted to call today in support of these standards i just want to emphasize on a lot of the comments that we're hearing here tonight that there's a lot of community concern about density and speaking as a student who knows many people actually nine percent of our students at UCSC and countless other numbers of students that are not able to afford the massive houses that are essentially the only mandated form of housing within the city of Santa Cruz this fear mongering against more neighbors more people is simply a fear mongering against people who otherwise would be excluded from these rich housing types and so i really want to emphasize here tonight in a broader picture both in support of these objective standards because they help facilitate the construction of more housing that can help provide for students help provide for families help provide for workers i really want to or in general to the general public and also to the council members to keep in mind that when we talk about density fear mongering when we talk about the idea that oh there's too many people next to us it really is gatekeeping at its finest speaking as someone who will probably not ever be able to afford a home in the city of Santa Cruz just because i happened to move here maybe 20 years before some other people it's a frankly pulling up the ladder it's making it so my generation and the generations that are coming after me are having to have the undue burden when it comes to the cost of housing and so when you take this vote today i really want you to think not just about the people that are in the room now but the people that aren't there the people that aren't born yet the people on my generation who are dealing with mid terms right now i mean i'm literally typing an essay in the background right now um so i really implore you guys to please vote yes on the comments and uh thank you for your time thank you for your comment is there anybody in person that would like to comment on agenda item 40 i'll continue on with our virtual attendees our next hand raised is ryan mechle good evening council i'm calling in support of the objective standards tonight specifically in support of option 1 streamlining for multifamily housing as previous callers have mentioned the only form or you know the most expensive form of housing in the city is streamlined already that single family homes we should be incentivizing multifamily homes which are better for the environment cheaper for families and just overall better for the community if we don't want to see us sprawling out into our forests and open spaces the objective standards will give us more local control over what we see built here as sarah very well explained it's kind of funny to see the coin flipped a little bit and i would not be normally be the one arguing for local control but if we want to you know see the housing that's built in Santa Cruz look like Santa Cruz we should be voting yes on these objective standards i was fortunate enough to be part of one of the focus groups when these were first being put together and i thought that the consultants and staff did a really really really good job of taking feedback from all kinds of different people on all different points of what now make up the objective standards they have resulted in something that ensures really great urban design for our city and all they really are doing they're just aligning our zoning code with the general plan i think it's a no-brainer to vote yes on these objective standards and i hope you'll support option one when you do vote yes thank you thank you for your comment i don't see any other hands raised virtually i don't see any other members of the public in person waiting to speak for public comment so at this time that does conclude public comment i will bring it back to council for action and deliberation i know that there were some more questions to be asked so um i will um i see council member mires with your hand up council member mires you're muted yeah um mayor i would um i would yeah i would like to hear questions i had a couple of questions myself but i'm happy to have other council member scope first i know some i think jessen mentioned he had a number of questions so um i guess one thing that i would like to clarify i heard one of the speakers say um and i just want to make sure this is right there was a statement that our inclusionary requirement automatically triggers density bonus i was wondering if the staff could speak to that and i have one other question and then mayor if you would entertain it um i do have a motion just for the letter street group uh or letter street issue i should say i'm wondering if we might be able to separate that out as a separate motion from the seven motions that the staff recommended okay that would be amenable to you and i'd be happy to do that with questions possibly put that motion on the floor after questions have been asked but i'm just curious about that statement i think it's very confusing for some of the public this relationship between inclusionary numbers and the density bonuses and kind of how those two things interact sarah i don't know if you could help with that sir i can i can try thank you so um for those who may not be familiar the density bonus is a state law that applies throughout california that allows developers to develop bonus density so bonus market rate units in exchange for providing some amount of affordable housing so um the state law applies to every jurisdiction in the state and not every jurisdiction in the state has an inclusionary standard right Santa Cruz does the purpose of the density bonus was to encourage the development of like deed restricted permanently affordable or you know at least for a long term 55 year affordable housing throughout the state so the way that that interacts with inclusionary standards in cities that have them um changes things and inclusionary requirements so that means every development that comes in has to provide every development with more than four units has to provide 20 of those units at a price that is affordable to folks that make no more than 80 of the area median income and then larger units cost more hold a larger family so when we have an inclusionary standard that's already at 20 percent has come in to sort of clarify the intention of the state law it says that that inclusionary standard um towards the density bonus so the density bonus says that at 20 percent of your units in your base project that are affordable to um lower income households you are entitled to a 35 density bonus so essentially every project that comes in in Santa Cruz can request that not every not every project does so i i think i wouldn't use the word trigger but they are entitled to request that and then um we go through a process to evaluate their base project and ensure that it fully conforms and then we consider the waivers that they're requesting so waivers are um can be used to to remove site standards that preclude development so any site standards that wouldn't allow the full number of bonus units to be built the city's obligated to waive so most typically that is height and parking but it could also be setbacks open space other other standards that sort of physically preclude the amount of development and then they are entitled also to a limited number of concession which are um financially based so design standards that might be too expensive to meet or a project like that that's providing affordable housing they can request um to up to three concessions for most projects and four for i think for projects that are doing a hundred percent affordable so um considering the density bonus is definitely part of you know what we're trying to accomplish here creating all these design standards means that we have more design standards that will apply to density bonus projects because they're only allowed to get concessions for four of them and i understand people are most concerned about those waivers right because those are the big ones height parking setbacks open space that is state law that is not something that the city controls we had for a while a local density bonus but it has essentially been completely superseded by the state but the state program provides are much greater and so that those are the types of applications that we that we're getting are using that state density bonus program did i answer your question i think so yeah i mean it's it's complicated but i think that's pretty clarifying i i just wanted to i didn't remember it was kind of the the term automatically and i didn't didn't quite completely think that that was the case so it sounds like you've verified that for me um that was what my main question uh mayor um and again entirely up to you but if you would be amenable i'm happy to do um to put a motion on for regarding the Leonard street issue when it's appropriate after folks questions thank you councilmember mires thank you mayor councilmember brown and then councilmember comings thank you mayor i um so i have a few questions that i i guess there's some of them are follow-up to some of the discussion from the earlier round of q&a um so i'll try to be as clear as i can about it here okay so the first question i have is that you know i'm i'm hearing staff uh frame uh you know some of the community input that has been received as not um the the concern is that um our our standards aren't understandable the package is is too complex and it's not understandable um and then kind of explain why it must necessarily be complex and comprehensive um which you know i don't disagree with uh but but i'm i guess i'm what i'm mostly hearing from people is not so much that the i mean some people who are really following this closely obviously have that concern but what i'm mostly hearing from people is that the package does not help the community understand what the real impacts like on the ground impacts could be for across a variety of neighborhoods and locations and um so understanding that seems to i mean that's a that's that's a challenge and um and i hear you saying you want to be uh have transparency and so i'm i guess i'm wondering what are we doing to address that concern because what i worry about is that we are going to end up with neighbors like the central park neighbors um who are just surprised by this and um not really because it's it's just too much to you know and to be able to as i think um mr patin said um to be able to engage effectively and productively as community members is what people want i'm hearing people want and that's what i want as a public official i am working in the public interest i want the community to be able to understand this um and have a sense of what the impacts are going to be so what are we doing to address that concern uh the neighbor the the required meetings that the developers put on don't really do it i've been to them um they don't really do it the meetings that the city has um you know uh and focus groups maybe the focus groups i haven't been in those so you know maybe those are a space where this becomes more clear but i i don't really get that feeling of clarity when i attend the meetings so and i'm hearing from others that they're not so what are we doing to address that concern so that we um we don't terrify the community every time uh we you know some big change i mean these are major changes and um you know i think we have responsibility to address that to respond to that so what are we doing like what what do you yeah sure yeah so i hear you so i hear you um a couple of things that i'll say relative to this project and i i will say i'm not going to talk about how we handle you know new developments when they come in like that's that's really not on the table right now um that's you know that's not really what we're discussing um but it's so in terms of this process we have been working on this for two years and um i hear that you know a lot of people are just hearing about this now i i understand that that that kind of happens unfortunately with these long processes that take a long time a lot to to kind of take in and so that's why we've we've done things specifically like a year and go in november when we had the draft of these standards and the draft of the zone district we had a community meeting where we walked people through it how we were going to be taking feedback and then they of course could you know email us there were lots of people who just wanted to email their comments rather than going through the structured process which was fine too um and then we set up office hours so that as people were reading the document they could check in and come to us i don't understand why would you do this what is this talking about like what what would this mean in my neighborhood um so we wanted to make sure we presented those opportunities for folks to to come and get that clarification so i think your larger point of like you know how do we kind of keep people from freaking out about what can be built adjacent to them but every jurisdiction every municipality in the nation fan code or a general plan anywhere iowa is going to be different in most cases than what is currently on that site countering people who have never heard of zoning before until they're involved with is one of the best ways to create that transparency because then um if people ever do look at a map they can look whenever we go out as the planning department we are explaining what we do we're explaining land use 101 and private property rights and what we can control and what the whole new group of people and educating them about you know what is a housing element why to plan for this many housing units why do we have to plan for those housing units at certain density levels in order to qualify with the requirements for creating zoning for multiple affordable housing so i think that we are going to continue to work on so yeah follow it i just have i have two more questions and a little it's kind of a follow-up to to this this past question so i i hear you about the standards themselves and you know and trying the education process not everybody is going to spend time doing that but they are worried that they're not going to have any sunlight in their on their home or in their yards or i mean they're worried about a lot of things and i i you know i don't think that it's fear-mongering i'm just going to say i'm it offends me to hear that um from members of the public that anybody who's concerned about the impact on their their neighborhood is fear-mongering that's just that's just an aside i'm oh stop um but the the the challenge is that the the standards themselves don't really make clear um and the and the zoning doesn't the rezoning doesn't really make clear actually what the impacts could be and i heard and this um and so i i want to follow up on that because i want to i had a follow-up question uh to the response to council member golder's question about um you know how much height is would really be allowed um you know so and i had the question with a five-story height limit how many stories will developers actually be able to build so it was a similar kind of question um and as i understand the response to that question it was we really we must allow whatever the developer needs to meet their density desires up to 2.75 bar and um that that can mean one story it might mean or really so let's put aside the far because i know that gets complicated but that really whatever it is they want um and that could mean one story it could mean three stories that doesn't really make it transparent for community members when they're thinking well um we got a five-story height you know we're we're about to adopt a five-story height limit um and that could mean eight stories that could mean 10 stories that you know so um that that to me doesn't seem uh like it's really helping the community understand so how so again how do we how do we deal with that um and maybe there isn't anything more to respond to i'm just going to ask it again as a rhetorical question here um and then i'm going to ask you know a question that you know may sound a little bit glib but if if developers can build to whatever height is needed to accommodate their desires then why are we even bothering with any height limits why are we even doing this sure yeah so i do have a response to that um so i think so so we're mixing things again so um the 2.75 far conforming development that's standard that's without density bonus okay so the response i was giving earlier was in the context of a density bonus which as i said as part of that response is a state law and that is not something that we have the ability to change and yes it's true we cannot always predict exactly how tall a density bonus project will be nor how big the setbacks will be nor how much parking it has or how much open space it provides those are not things we can effectively regulate under the state law so the regulations that we are creating today are what will apply to um conforming projects so projects that meet every one of our standards and i hear you and i hear that the public is very concerned about density bonus projects and it makes it seem like developers are winning everything and it's really intractable and we no one knows what to expect out of any development site and so there are two there are there are two policy choices that the city is making or can make that impact how often density bonus is proposed the first is our inclusionary standard which we have set at 20 which means as i said earlier every project is entitled to request a density bonus they are automatically qualified for 35 bonus if they request it or they can just use that density bonus process to request waivers to cite standards and not take the density bonus units we get applications like that as well that's a policy choice that the city is making and we're not recommending any change to that the second piece is how do you process these different applications so the the two major incentives as folks have correctly identified for developers are money and time so the density bonus increases profits for developers it takes those required affordable units and it spreads those costs over more market rate units so that those costs are easier to bear for housing developers the second thing that developers are looking for is a is a predictable and fast approval process so that is a big part of the reason that staff and the planning commission are recommending option one to streamline approvals for conforming projects because that's really the only tool that we have to incentivize conformance with all of these standards so i understand that folks are concerned have concerns about that and again that's a policy choice and those are the ramifications that we as staff see as a result of those policy choice so height limits only work if you get a conforming project that's right yes exactly that's true everywhere in the city that's true everywhere in california right okay and so another question i have which is um related because it's it's about height um so your background slide um on rezoning i think i have it here so don't maybe need to pull it up but i'll just see let's see um the so the slide says that for buildings above three stories a transition is required for the to the adjacent neighborhood um does that apply everywhere for all neighborhoods because and i asked this question primarily because i've been talking a lot with the central park neighbors and it does not appear to me that they would have the benefit of that kind of transition were those uh those parcels to be developed as mixed or visitor serve i can't remember the acronym but the visitor serving mixed use sure so so the way that that how do yeah how does that work yeah okay i'm happy to get into that so um so the way that that standard is written right now it applies at property lines so when property lines but residential zoning so it applies to mixed use and commercial development that's doing mixed use development when there is um a residential property line that a but then they have to put in that transition plane and um at this point in time that standard does not apply across the street so in the case of you know those those three parcels on lennard that's correct they would not transition across the street for the um for the other um so so that's the kind of thing that would actually make this more transparent for the public to explain that um clearly because when we put it out there as well don't worry we're gonna have transitions you know it it doesn't feel to me like that is the case all over and here's one caveat right the across the street caveat so it it seems to me that we could maybe try a little harder to again explain you know do the analysis and explain that in a way that people understand um trend you know well so um that that's uh it would just be so that that's one area across the street so what are the other circumstances under which this transition that people might anticipate would be helpful would not apply so it applies when mixed use or commercial development is next to a residential development so it wouldn't apply to two residential parcels next to each other we have other standards that already kind of regulate those projects so um it doesn't apply between commercial properties it really only applies if your house is like literally on the other side of the whatever your house if your if a residential properties share the property line so behind a 31 water it would apply in that situation okay uh thank you um with respect to the those parcels i'm gonna ask this question i know i've asked you this question in our meetings which i very much appreciate you taking the time to have those meetings with the council members but i want to just ask it again um so that members of the public can hear this and i can also refresh my memory and try to make sure i understand it um the the land use designation for those three parcels is not housing and but there is housing on those properties now on those parcels no the the land use designation is is mixed use visit right so housing doesn't have to be built there but what i'm hearing the staff say to us is that we well we can't make any change there because we're not allowed to reduce housing uh you know housing possibilities under the general plan um and but it but the issue is that it's not it's not going to be housing that gets built there um it should this zoning go into effect and you know under the general plan now apparently so just again how does that why can we not um change the general plan for this small pocket neighborhood um and why would we what what would we have to move elsewhere because housing doesn't have to even be produced are built on that on those sites so to say i guess i'm just try maybe i'm not being clear but to say no we can't okay great thanks right about these um mixed use zone districts the whole point is that they are mixed right so there could be residential projects that include ground floor commercial but these are also in our existing commercial corridors so they could be commercial developments that come in that don't include any residential development um and so the zoning also reflects that that's part of the general plan land use designation and that's then also reflected in these sites have a potential for housing because housing isn't allowed use right that's right so the um what the state law says is that anywhere where housing isn't allowed use if you're going to reduce intensity on those parcels or change them in some manner that reduces the potential for housing so for example you could make a general plan land use change in this location that just removes the hypothetically removes the commercial component and leaves the residential in place and then we don't have to do any transferring of anything right like you'll want to think about the council want to think about you know the change of like removing some commercial capacity from the city but that wouldn't trigger the state law requirement the state law requirement applies because housing is allowed so anywhere that housing is allowed if we're changing that or reducing the intensity um we have to find a place to put that capacity so that that potential isn't lost there's no requirement that any site in the housing in the city be developed at all right like it can be zoned for high density housing and just not be developed there's no requirement for that but if we choose to rezone that site to just be a parking lot instead of being a parking lot that's currently zoned for high density housing we would have to relocate that amount of density and so i understand this is um this can be sort of opaque to the layperson because this is about maps that that project a you know envisioned future and not about what currently exists on on the ground but that's the nature of laws right they exist in on paper and we are obligated to follow them on paper and so this is what we're doing and the ideal like outcome of that would be that you know ultimately we do get this housing capacity that we've planned for that we do build the housing units that we know that we need so um we can make a change to the general plan your council can direct us to do that that is something we're allowed to do and we will have to find a receiving site for that potential residential development but that's that's where it starts to get a little complicated and this is my last question and if i recall that was um lee said somewhere between like 45 and 60 potential units something like that in our conversation okay so not a whole lot yeah no that sounds about right got it thanks thank you councilmember comings thank you mayor thank you staff for the presentation and for everybody for sticking around so late um i think i think the questions i had around height were have been answered so i'm not gonna really ask about that i did have a couple questions around the street trees so if park staff is here maybe they could answer some of these questions because this has come up numerous times in conversations i've had the years that i've been on council and it seems like if we're moving in a direction to change this ordinance that you know we may need to bring some items back for future consideration but i'm wondering if you can explain a little bit more about the requirement of private property owners to be responsible for damage caused by street trees to private or public property i saw this in in some of the language that was outlined and was just curious if there could be any comment on that because it seems um a bit of overreach to say we're gonna require you as a private property we're gonna require street trees to be put on on properties or new developments but then the private property owner is responsible if anything if any damage occurs to private property and and also there's a lot of mention about private property owners being responsible for the maintenance of those trees and so i'm just wondering if you could speak to that um because i think that's current concern and will become more of a concern with the direction we're going. I've been inside both our a lot of people coming on here but um start with our urban forestry Leslie Keady has experience on both the street tree and the public work side of this and then follow up comments as needed from city attorney Tony and our public works engineer Nathan okay so Leslie Keady urban forestry so um since the mid eighties there has been title 13 which is the street tree ordinance and i'm not sure of the date but similarly would be title 1520 which is a public works sidewalk ordinance so and Tony of course is a city attorney can maybe clarify since i'm not a lawyer but i'm the forester so um under those two titles the adjoining property owner has been required to maintain all the street trees and all of the sidewalks which is consistent with state law which this community has adopted and we have implemented i guess i could elaborate on that a little bit from the legal perspective the state law is in the california streets and highways code and it makes adjacent property owners responsible for maintenance of sidewalks adjacent to their properties has since i think the 1940s recognition of the fact that cities may be a huge fiscal impact to cities if it were required to maintain sidewalks adjacent to individual properties the mechanism under state law allows the city to put a property on notice that their sidewalk is defective and then um and direct that it be repaired and if it doesn't then the city can conduct the repairs and recover the cost of the repairs as a lean on property back in about 2004 in response to changing case law the city council adopted an ordinance that also makes adjacent property owners legally liable for failure to maintain streets or sidewalks including street trees should they should they fail to meet their statutory obligation under the streets and highways code and and it specifically makes the adjacent property owner liable for injuries to person or property that results in the failure to maintain sidewalks and street trees that has resulted in a substantial reduction in claims from before liability from the for defective sidewalks either when a tree branch falls and it's a car or if somebody's injured from tripping and falling on a sidewalk or that sort of thing um so i think in and councilmember Cummings was kind enough to reach out to me before the meeting to ask a question about that i think if there is consideration of removing that requirement it should also include a fiscal impact analysis that's it will likely significantly increase liability claims city costs for inspecting and maintaining street trees and also insurance premiums based on experience in other cities where as a result of adopting ordinance like ordinances like this city's experience modification factor or the formula that's used to calculate insurance premiums has gone down significantly so i know that public works is also available i think um Nathan might have a comment uh thank you but um one other thing that i would like to add that is that you know city staff isn't out targeting homeowners to repair sidewalks um we do work to uh apply for grants to do safe house of school projects or other infrastructure improvements and and also use this utilize these objective standards to um but the improvements on development projects um throughout the city um i would also note that a lot of the older street trees and and sidewalks and infrastructures didn't really take into account some of the you know newer or more modern designs with regards to wider sidewalks or selection of trees with roots that you know would grow down or putting in group bears etc and so um you know with collaboration with parks and rec the planning department you know the what's being presented today as far as proposed street trees and designs is to try to take that stuff into account so we don't have lifted sidewalks or bike or asphalt and bike lanes etc i think and i'll just say part of the reason why i bring this up is because there are street trees that have been planted when i was living in the beach flats um the building that i was living in down there had been owned since like the 70s and the city went in and put street trees in in the late 80s early 90s and now those trees are buckling the sidewalks and so the owner is like well the city is the one who came and put these trees in why am i now responsible when those trees that the city installed are now you know destroying the sidewalk because he had no decision over that he had no control over that decision so i just think that moving forward um you know the city should take some responsibility in that and so i have some some potential direction to see how we can address that or at least have that conversation but i don't want that to tie up everything tonight it's just something that has come up as a concern and i'm hoping that we can figure out a way to come together as a community and address that um i guess the other question i had around street trees was just you know the fact that when plants are put into confined spaces they can become root bound that can have an impact on the health of the plant and in this case street trees could potentially be impacted by being put in these new boxes and so i'm just wondering if you could speak to that a little bit as to um you know what trees are being proposed and um you know would people expect them to become root bound and therefore having impacts on their health that could you know come at a cost to private property owners who have those trees on their sites or adjacent to their homes properties so like a couple of comments and and invite Leslie as well um one is one of our actions directed under the street tree master plan is to work with public works to update our street tree planting details so that's something that we um are seeking to do as nathan mentioned so that we can avoid some of these problems both for the infrastructure and for the trees in the future um and additionally lovely and our working this year and updating our approved street tree list and a consideration of species that historically have caused that sort of damage is something it will be considering as we uh create that list and Leslie the more you'd like to add uh well just to mention two of the points that i was going to make um there is a product that we're looking into that other municipalities have looked at called structured soils and that creates more rude space underground and more porous space they're um somewhat experimental they're a little bit costly we'd like to do some pilot projects in front of city buildings before we suggest that private development uses these technologies but um there are some strategies that work with that and then also to speak to your previous comment of course we do have the heritage tree grant program and that also helps cost share on sidewalk repair now of course with budget constraints that's some program that you know is constantly being questioned but at this time if you're saving your street tree that's a heritage tree or a street tree we would pay and reimburse 50 percent of the sidewalk repair costs and then we also i i work when i give out free trees to people i work very closely with them to select appropriate trees for the side of the or the size of the tree well that is there unlike some of the trees that were maybe done in the 80s and 90s we know more about trees and tree species at this point but i'm also happy to talk to you directly give you more information rather than talking about trees all evening thanks um those are all those are all thank you and those are all the questions i have about street trees um so i guess the um the other question i had was a little bit around kind of transparency and process one of the the concerns i've heard not only on this issue but even some issues that some of the items that came before us was that um you know much of this has gone to for example with this item in particular has gone to our planning commissions our planning commission many of the items that around traffic what have you um to go to our commissions and come to council and one of the things that's been coming up is that council has not been receiving the recommendations that have been made by the commissions and therefore we don't have an opportunity to take those recommendations into account and in the case of the item that's before us this has gone to the planning commission twice and the planning commission has made some recommendations i understand that some of those recommendations have been made uh staff disagree with but i think it is important that we have those recommendations so that we can take those into consideration and the public can know what the planning commission is recommending and so i'm just curious as to why those recommendations weren't included and if and you know for city manager if something or if there's a plan for how we can address um commission recommendations you know and having those come to council when we have um the presentation of these kinds of items and so that's a that's a dual question for planning staff and the city manager because i think this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed i appreciate the the question council member Cummings and i will give sarin um lee butler an opportunity to weigh in as well i do know that typically when the planning commission or any of our commissions for that matter make a recommendation that ultimately is not supported by staff that's clearly indicated in the staff report including referencing the original recommendation that was made by the commission and why staff may be making um an alternative recommendation under the circumstances i also know some of the concerns that have been raised by the public throughout this conversation also had to do not necessarily with recommendations but motions that were made um at the commission level but ultimately not supported by a majority of the commission so i think we're we're talking about two things but i i hear you in terms of wanting to ensure that recommendations made by commissions are brought forward in a in a transparent way and i would welcome um sarin lee to weigh in on that as well if they have anything to add yeah sure i'm happy to talk about this i know that this came up um but the hearing um on august 23rd so the staff report that we brought on august 23rd actually included about two pages of text about the recommendations that had made by in kind of incredible detail interested or not recommending the same thing the planning commission recommended but their recommendation was included it was discussed at length in the staff report and the both the staff reports that went to the planning commission and the minutes from those meetings are attached to that item that came on the 23rd that had sort of the comprehensive background the same is true of the um transportation public works commission it's or in cases where minutes weren't available the meeting summary you know sort of draft minutes because we do want your council to have access to all of those recommendations and really understand diverging from your commission that's really important thank you and i guess i'd just add then that you know because this item was continued it might be good in the future to have you know the minutes or those the previous agenda attached because i think it was mentioned in the staff report that the agenda was attached but then when i looked through the entire packet it wasn't there and so it would be good for us to see those minutes and you know what was discussed at the planning commission meeting we can reference you know to the staff's comments as to why they disagree but i think it's just really important because we don't necessarily always remember exactly what was in the previous packet and if we hear about it at this meeting then we don't have time to look back to it and the community doesn't know as well so it's just a you know um piece of constructive criticism to you know really help provide that transparency and make it seem like staff isn't hiding anything from the public sure yeah happy to do that we um as we understand it the um process for attaching prior council items is to simply provide a link that's the direction we were given by city clerk so that's what we did for this um for this item but in the future we can be sure that we're always attaching those staff reports and minutes to you know every time it comes back i think all my other questions or answer our notes it's getting late and we're probably going to have a little bit of time of packing forth so i'll leave my comments there i do have um yeah i'll just leave my questions there are there any other questions or discussion at this time um councilmember mires thank you mayor uh yeah i'd be happy to uh put forward a motion i believe i i did send it to bonnie if you're amenable to maybe tackling the Leonard street um which is just a specific motion and we can pick up the remaining motions um to work through those so i would make a motion uh that we remove 111 131 15 and 119 Leonard street from the zoning map amendments so that is not the staff recommendation but that is first part of the motion secondly to direct staff to initiate a planning process through the ocean street area plan housing element update and downtown expansion plan to study 111 131 15 and 119 Leonard street parcels with the goal of reducing the residential density and eliminating commercial use for those three parcels and accommodate the lost residential density in another area as required by state law and then third direct staff to return to the january 24 city council 24 2023 city council meeting bonnie maybe you can add 2023 there um city council meeting with project schedule for the planning process for the planning outcomes within one year of initiation report out on the project schedule and return to city council for potential direction to pursue the option of a general plan amendment if the three part planning process described in two has begun to experience an extended timeline unforeseen by staff so just a little bit of background for my colleagues um i spoke a couple many times with staff about the general plan amendment as an option to address this i do believe very strongly that this needs to be fixed and met with these neighbors several times we also talked a lot about the complexity of what the city is faced with with regards to a lot of the new state laws but i do believe between the period of time that the general plan map was and the general plan was adopted and then the fact that the zoning and zoning code was not really not you know immediately brought into conformance with the new maps that this issue sort of really was just remained on the books and now with the new housing accountability act piece of this it's we're really tied up in terms of using a general plan amendment to pursue this but i also want to make sure that something happens here that this doesn't get lost in the mix again and many years later these folks are still worried about this use on their property so i i'm trying to combine um the ability to address this issue because i do think it really is a mistake i'm convinced of that um with also the recognition that things get things can get complicated anytime we're talking about planning in in Santa Cruz so i'm trying to also provide a way to make sure that there is some some way to continue to pursue this should these this other combined efforts between with the ocean street plan the housing element update and the downtown expansion plan if those three part planning kind of process gets bogged down in legal or what other types of delays that we again look back at this general plan amendment as a possible remedy to to the issue so that is my motion and okay we have a motion by council member mires and a second by council member brown and this is the um motion to replace number five essentially in in the staff recommendation yes okay um i had a quick question for staff on this motion can you um hi sarah can you speak to um the process of amending the general plan for these items when that work um like let me let me think about how i want to word this um so there is a direction here in the motion to return to uh council on january 24th um with a project schedule for the planning process for the planning outcomes what does that look like to you to the staff for you is that realistic i want to set set some successful outcomes here so i'm sure sure so so i think in terms of um reporting back to sort of a you know a plan of attack um this seems like a deadline that we can meet you know i think and then on that date we'll have a discussion about like how long it's going to take to execute the the general plan amendment because i think that's where we're gonna you know there might be some rub thank you that answers my question um and then bonnie bush can you add the year 2023 after the january 24th date just so we make sure that's in there thank you vice mayor Watkins yeah i i just want to um really echo what council member mires stated and really thank the neighbors and the planning staff for all their time to help us really understand this unique situation and that's what it feels like to me really unique and so i appreciate the motion on the floor i also wanted to see if maybe we can make a friendly amendment to have um maybe specific language around um including those parcels being designated as low density or low residential density or is that i'm amenable to that i can we yeah i'm amenable amenable to that if that's possible i think that is the intent um with regards to that particular outcome there okay i just want to make sure i okay great i just want to clarify in um number two of this motion it says with the goal of reducing the residential density is um that where you want it i just didn't know if we want to have that language specified yeah to make it more specific in that to have it be designated to be low as low density residential so it would be with the goal of designating of the parcels being designated as low density residential yes correct so rather just for those three parcels just for clarity sure essentially using a number two instead of having the term reducing it would be just to have it the goal of designating the parcels to be low density or low residential density if that works for the maker of the motion that works for me and is the second or okay with that absolutely can i confirm with staff that that language um mate is correct in this context oh lee butler i see your hand up thank you for the opportunity to comment mayor burner um i would just say that um and bonnie if i could share my screen really quickly i could um i can show the general plan map so i just wanted to point out here that the surrounding area here this neighborhood you can see if we click on any of these the general plan designation is actually low medium residential um and so if you were looking for consistency consistency with the central park neighborhood zone so then low medium residential that would feel more reflective but yeah make it more consistent if that works for the maker of the motion it does thank you thank you for that clarification and the seconder okay councilmember golder my only question is i know two of those parcels i think have an apartment complex on them is that going to change i mean what are they they're in this current zoning low that would be okay for that low medium councilmember calentary johnson but just a quick comment that um i'm really supportive of this direction as well and wanted to thank and appreciate the members of central park neighborhood for taking time to meet i think with probably all of us on multiple occasions and for staff to go out and meet and just it was a complicated and unique situation and i also am in agreement that i think it truly was a mistake um in terms of the i'm supportive of the motion um but i don't know if we need to do anything about item four on the staff recommendation or we can get to that when we get to that because we'll we'll have to exclude those parcels but maybe we just cross that bridge when we get to that item we don't need to do anything now so item four is the ordinance introduced for publication and ordinance making the proposed amendments to the zoning map as stayed in the ordinance and as shown in the associated map exhibit and parcels parcels lists for parcels outside the coastal zone and so i think those parcels are part of that map we like lee betler maybe you can comment on that sure thanks bonnie um can you pull that motion back up again please i was thinking that the first item within the motion covered that but yeah that's fine with that uh lee do you mean the motion that was just made or the staff recommendation motion the motion that was just made by council member mires thank you um you scroll up to the uh the first one uh or is that a friendly amendment uh here remove one one one one three sorry the first one yeah stay at the top it looks like number one there you go thank you remove one one one one three from the zoning map amendments yeah i i see that as inclusive of the um ordinance that you're referencing council member count sorry johnson thank you welcome okay are there any further questions on the motion on the floor can i just get confirmation that item one will then replace item five of the staff recommendation is that what you said okay all of it will yeah is there a question not to create any more confusion but just to be clear here so um i think if i'm looking at the original staff recommendations and the proposal item two would address item five original staff recommendation five and then um item one would replace item one just pull item one just just eliminates but i think that other motion needs to stay intact because there are it does need to stay intact this just i i chose to just remove this remove these lantern street parcels but the rest of that is a number four motion which should stay intact so again i was trying to pull the lantern street out as a separate set of motions and then i think the other ones still need action i didn't i wasn't planning to work through those but if but i can if if another member isn't but i would prefer another member before would have to be amended to just say as amended okay to reflect that item one because it's sort of like so staff recommendation number four would have to be amended to reflect council myer council member meyer's recommendation or motion number one that's right introduce for publication and ordinance making proposed amendments to the zoning map et cetera as amended as amended correct uh staff recommended the spot goes away yeah was that clear to everyone okay um okay so any other questions on that motion we'll move forward then with a vote may we have a roll call vote please council member calentary johnson aye boulder aye Cummings aye throne aye meyer's aye ice mayor whatkins aye and mayor brunner aye that motion passes unanimously and now we will continue with um the rest of the staff recommended motions one two three four six and seven sir anybody would like to make a motion on those items i'll do it i'll go ahead i got it i just want to make sure i have it correct okay so i'll go ahead and move the remainder of the items i was just wanting to say that i'm supportive of the of the hybrid proposal um now my paper's wrong in regards to the processes so let me make sure um so i will move the recommendation to reflect the agenda packet as presented in item number one um an item number two and and then i will modify item the recommendation in item number two or point number two to not include streamlined but to include the hybrid option because they have option one which is streamlined and i'm proposing the hybrid for big bigger project for bigger projects correct and then item number number three number four as amended from the prior motion removal of item number five given prior direction and proceed with six and seven i'll second that okay we have a motion by vice mayor whatkins seconded by council member calentari johnson any um further questions discussion council member comings i had a few comments and i actually was writing i was scribbling away which probably should have made this motion before but um i had incorporated some comments that i'd heard and you know i know that for many people myself included this has been a very confusing process it's a lot for anyone to take in and provide feedback on and so going into this process i thought we were really focusing on you know the exact objective design standards for new developments um but it it turned into a lot more than that including um zoning affordability heights you know things that i think many people weren't really expecting so i hope that in the future when these kinds of items come to us we can have more of a better description of what exactly we're going to be taking on when we're making these kinds of changes um one thing that was mentioned tonight that has me a little concern and i think it's something that needs to be like highlighted is that with regard to this you know process what was one of the things that came out in this discussion that was made clear is that the developers are the ones who are looking for a fast approval process not the community and i think it's really clear that you know if we want to have more community transparency um we really need to make sure that that option is available for people which is why i'm supportive of option number two um to clarify also there's a lot of discussion about regional housing needs assessment the rena numbers and this really doesn't have to deal with rena it really is to deal with the fact that state law has changed it's taken away us our ability to set objective and subjective standards on new developments and so now what the state law says is that we have to create objective standards for new developments which is around you know building articulation roofs things like that um and so it really doesn't impact the regional housing needs assessment and our ability to meet those goals um i had somewhat concerns to the Leonard Street neighbors and we took care of that unanimously so i'm very grateful for that support of that community um and then you know what was pointed out by the safe Santa Cruz group is that the council provided uh previous direction that was voted upon to preserve and protect residential neighborhood areas and existing city businesses as the city's highest priority level and encourage appropriate new residential and mixed use development specifically including enhanced affordable housing opportunities at appropriate locations along the city's main transit corridor and what was in our packet that was never discussed was addressing the affordable housing issues um there's a lot of things that were brought up in some of the policies but that is something that we really need to make sure that we have included as part of our objective standards so and some of these recommendations were made by the planning commission previously um i'm in support of them i know that the staff had disagreements but i've proposed a motion um and i'm i'm just going to propose as a substitute because there's way too much in there for it to be friendly amendments so i'm just going to propose as a sub yeah as a substitute motion i'm um i think it's doubtful that i'll get um support to approve it but i just want to make it on behalf of the many people who've been fighting for affordable housing um and the statements that have been made on our behalf about supporting affordable housing and so um i want to propose a number of uh changes to language since this is our first opportunity to make those changes as part of this um first reading of this ordinance so bonnie if you want to put the language up okay okay so um so i also want to add to this um that we include so within the motion we also include a direction that was previously provided by council but move that the staff recommend the staff recommendation be amended to add the following languages highlighted below to the ordinances two four point 08.1345 establishing low and moderate income occupancy add where appropriate and change to the numbering change the numbering to include the applicant shall arrange for the appropriate government agency to verify the rent that was charged the last time the unit was occupied and affordability of those units will be determined based on whichever tenant income or rent is lowest this has to deal with replacement unit housing to number three in the event that a tenant's income is not verified or the last rent charged cannot be verified the assumption shall be that the unit is occupied by a low and moderate income unit household add language to be vacant unit number two the applicant shall arrange to have the public housing authority verify the income of said tenant and arrange to have the appropriate government agency to verify the rent that was charged the last time the unit was occupied for the purposes of establishing low and moderate income housing units number three in the event that the most recent tenant cannot be located or identified and or the last rent charged cannot be determined the assumption shall be made that the unit was occupied by a low and moderate income household <IP_ADDRESS>0 relocation assistance add language to say the relocation relocation assistance shall be defined as two months red add an equivalent market rate and the equivalent market rate security deposit 1a the basic requirement is that 100 percent of all low or moderate income bedrooms demolished or converted shall be replaced either on site or elsewhere in the city of Santa Cruz for combination of both 1e the basic 100 percent bedroom replacement requirement could utilize section 8 housing vouchers to cover the market rate cost for providing the subsidized units and make projects feasible section <IP_ADDRESS> basic onsite inclusionary housing requirement add the following language to the last sentence under number nine projects with a 30 density bonus shall have a 25 inclusionary requirement projects with a 50 density bonus shall have a 30 inclusionary requirement and then number two so that's that's all the language changes and it's largely to address the fact that the many council members our incoming mayor has stated that for example in the new south alloral plan that we would want a full density of those buildings to have 20 inclusionary affordable housing the way we can get there is by attempting to increase the the inclusionary requirement in projects that get done city bonuses what this also addresses is the fact that the way that the city determines whether or not a room that's going to be demolished is based on the income of the person who lived within that room not what that person is being charged so for example i live in an affordable unit i'm not on section eight if that unit gets demolished it is not going to be replaced by an affordable unit the changes in this language would address that because we're going to start seeing a lot of older buildings where people are being charged affordable rents but they don't fall into one of those like income the affordable housing programs we're going to see a loss of a lot of those units and if our job and our goal is to maintain affordable housing these changes can help address that and so the objective here is to really get at us trying to maximize the amount of affordable housing that's going to get built and require that if older buildings where people are being charged low rents are being taken offline that we're replacing those units in our community so that's the first part the second is addressing the street tree issues so move that the staff bring back an item to amend section 15.20.210 and 15.20.220 and 13.30.060 to require the city to be responsible for sorry it should be for the to consider the city to be responsible for damage to private property caused by city street trees. Number three we'll skip because we just took action on that one so that will be removed. Number four move to amend the staff recommendation to not change the zoning designations along the major transportation corridors except to conform to the specific density and floor area ratio designations in the general plan and then number five would be under the staff recommendation number two selecting option number two for conforming hearings that's it. I'm gonna second that and if I could ask a question so well first thank you for diving in on the relocation piece because we know that all of this new building is going to cause displacement we already see that we've seen projects come through and say oh of course we're going to make sure that the existing tenant has you know affordable housing once you approve our plans and then guess what they just renege on that and you know there are other many other examples that we can think of or at least I can spanning over 30 years now so thank you for that. I do have a question though on the the street tree the way that you're you're the language around the street trees because I I do have a concern about the potential liability but I also recognize that and and do not believe it's fair to place the responsibility for new street tree planting on property owners private property owners without some they have no say over what the city does in terms of that street tree planting so I would like to see some way forward I do worry about the potential liability issues and so I'm just wondering if we could hear about that and but I am seconding your motion so that that's my question. Can I make a quick comment on that before we jump in I think the the whole purpose was to and the reason why it says bring back an item to amend and to consider the city is that I think that the way its word is a little confusing but the idea is that the item come back for consideration to determine whether or not we want to see the city take on some responsibility for street tree damage to private property so I'm probably not the best person to comment on how decisions relating to the installation of street trees are made so I'll defer that to city staff the way I read the motion it would eliminate a liability protection that the city has and has had for almost two decades and so therefore it would have a significant fiscal impact in terms of increased liability increased liability premiums as well as presumably