ew yeah i i tend to think of infrastructure meaning facilities and transportation that's not so much the housing project so you know over that outfit i i think it's the bottom line but what do we need by infrastructure and just moving forward if the goal is to identify some kind of a revenue measure for this in order to do this in this before and though it it's definitely a process of identifying what the public see the things they're most going to spend money on and then putting together a winning package and some things that we may think are very important in terms of really urgent infrastructure which may not stay very high with public so you know that that bridge will be crossed in the future well i'll just i'll just leave it at that okay okay so i think we we have lots and lots of ideas out um we're going to go ahead and and take a break now um we're going to take a 15 minute break let me look at time let's just let's come let's start in at six o'clock so a little bit more than 15 minutes give everybody a real break you've been sitting here quite a while so let's start at six o'clock sharp and um and then at that point we'll need to be refining these and then doing some virtual dot voting and determining what your top three priorities are what's that picture on the right here black woman oh we're indulging us in in such a long meeting um okay so um these are the eight so based on the comments that that were made um what i wanted to make i wanted to make a process suggestion to the council which is on number five um this was um a suggestion that was made by one or more one and then joined in by more which is supporting a green economy to move that into the list that we have actually on another slide that is more of the principles and process and that may be considered part of um i'm not sure if it's health and all policies but it's having to do with sustainability but it's more of a of a way that you approach your work uh and that's what what i certainly heard from council members so if as opposed to kind of a thing that you would be focusing your effort on um so if if i'd like to get a sense of the council if that would be acceptable to remove that from the list before we do any virtual dot voting and so that would um leave it with um seven things as opposed to eight could i maybe maybe just to make it easy to thumbs up if you agree with that now of course Cynthia is um eating so you mean it's like a visual thumbs up yeah well i mean it's fine you know verbal thumbs up is totally fine so okay so so we will do that and then Claire has has captured your various comments with regards to the green economy and so those comments of course will be provided to staff and much of the the emphasis of what council members have said is that you're let's move forward with what what you're already doing in some cases market it better perhaps name it brand it but to continue with what you are doing so then that leaves the remaining ones and i did hear the comment from some council members that different things on this list relate to others no question about that if we were to to put these in bubbles they would all be intersecting everything does relate there's no question that everything does relate to each other and each one of these represents a body of work either by well not either you know by the staff and by the city council as represented on either committees or council meetings and or community meetings and so forth but it's a body of work for each one of these and then each one of these are worked on within your existing resources although you're hoping to get some stimulus funds and so forth and and that's of course always um hopefully important to keep in mind that that might be on the horizon so um with that in mind i'd like to encourage the council to keep these as separate the remaining seven because they are all bodies of work even though they are um interrelated so with that so claire if you could just um we're not going to spend a lot of time going on through these slides but i just wanted just to do a quick review as you can see we have captured your comments and then for fiscal sustainability in addition to the comments that you have here there's a lot of other work that's being done in terms of budget balancing and the council of course is involved in that as is the staff a lot of work being done there and the next one homelessness i think we've captured the the comments there about the county needing to take the lead role a lot of other comments about the how the city can reconsider its approach yes council member matthew i had my virtual hand up as well okay sorry yeah i'm going to explain what you and others think about renaming the support solutions to homelessness rather than fine kind of general freedom yeah there there was a thank you for bringing that up because i think we had that in there and if um you know thumbs up to that support solutions to homelessness yeah um okay so yes and and mayor do you want to make a comment there or is your hand or are you just supporting that make a comment actually on the first one because it just occurred to me that we have that as long term fiscal sustainability but i was just wanting to see if our councilman just talked about short and long term fiscal sustainability because we do have to think about you know what what can we do right now to keep businesses stable in addition to the long-term sustainability so i just thought that it might be worth plugging that in there too because we do have to meet the immediate and long-term needs can you go back one slide please yeah so claire let's go back to that there we go so right now it says take actions to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability so you are certainly working on short term right now with regard to your budget balancing and and you've already taken some actions on that um and then a variety of other things that are more short term um but if that is a council consensus to um really address short and long-term fiscal sustainability it could be word smiths but but getting short term in there as well um so let me just let's just do a sense of the council as you think that that's a good idea to add short term in there and also this one incorporates the um encouraging new business and industry growth which is down in a separate item as well yeah it is because it is related but we're keeping separate that because there's a whole body of work involved in working with businesses and you've got a whole economic development you know effort um and so we didn't want to lose it but we can certainly acknowledge that it is part of fiscal sustainability no question about that so so without like collapsing that other one into this one because there's there's a lot of work tasks that need to be done um it certainly can acknowledge that that they are interrelated and martin anytime you want to jump in you know from the your perspective you feel free of course as you will okay all right yeah okay no i think that's true because i think the um in the short term the question of uh in particular of additional revenue will have to be addressed if the council wants to consider any kind of measure for say november of next year that's something that would have to be done in the short term certainly within the 12 to 18 month time frame good okay so Claire on that one um just add in um short term and long term on that slide if you would please so we can all right i have to stop sharing one second i'm having oh technical challenges oh don't don't worry about it then let me bring that back oh it's just fine i just had a little bit of an issue right there technology oh my stars they're still driving new bunkers okay that's okay well we we know that we're gonna do it let's just put it that way yes we will track it separately okay so um let's move on then Claire if you would please to just um number three so these are just the comments again we're not going to go over these but we did to attempt to capture the the comments on what this meant to council members in terms of providing for public safety um as a as a it's always a priority of every city that as a is the intent so i think we've captured that um so let's move on to the next one Claire uh downtown investment um try to capture that this has a whole range of things and and one of the things and takeaways that i got from this is that you have a number of projects that are already underway with regards to your to your downtown whether it's some housing projects or or other kinds of projects and keeping those moving forward again over a 12 to 18 month time frame as which is the focus of this that's capturing all of those comments martin did you have any comments on this one no i think that's right i think certainly the um the housing projects the metro project which is a transportation project as well and then there's also the the warriors arena is a piece of that too okay the farmers market improvements so there's a lot and it has both short-term and long-term of course because housing is considered a piece of a linchpin to having a strong downtown uh particularly some of the retail and and other sort of support services there that are downtown okay so keeping those moving forward so council member matthews and then i think council member golder you might have had your or no mine was just what's ut oh transient options and say tax okay the t ut is what confused me i know what that is i don't want the t ut oh the ut is the transactions in use tax so that's your additional sales tax on top of the baseline it's a more technical term we always we always have cost sales tax but there's two pieces to it you don't have to worry about it no don't worry about it uh council member matthews you had a comment i don't um it's your feeling that this whole package of downtown stuff should be a separate item apart from the fiscal sustainability yes and the reason is um that we look at it as a body of work i mean if if you were to throw it into the fiscal sustainability one then it's this giant thing and it still takes staff time and it still takes resources and and everything takes a work plan you know if you're going to get anything done you've got to have a work plan to do it and so by having it separate to say you know is is this really one of the top three priorities then um then it um is something that is more manageable okay and i would just say also that some of the really important projects coming forward are not necessarily city panic this project huh they may be privately funded but they will take a whole lot of staff time some of the private housing uh another project it's a number of projects yes it'll be moving forward downtown yeah so it's a deal of uh time to staff time to process yeah so it's acknowledging that that they're that to support downtown and and maybe the name of that downtown investment is not the right heading you know maybe it's you know supporting the the success of the downtown or so or something else you know you may want to you know we could wordsmith that as well but the idea is a focus on the downtown right it'll be some overlap with uh how to speak the housing one yeah okay uh i don't see any other hands up at the moment so let's go on to the next one i just wanted to before we do voting i want to just do a quick so the green economy we're going to move off to the side and not have a vote on that um in the local economy that one is really restart and grow the local economy with jobs and business creation so there's um a bunch of things um that were mentioned there some of which have to do with um you know grants that you might be able to get um others have to do with your economic development efforts that are underway and really focusing in on those um and uh you know this is one where i don't have bonnie's uh on i think he is on i think it might get for her to sort of weigh in okay sure what she's about these and whether were anything from the scene here good or good evening councilors mayor vice mayor um so i'm looking at this and you know one interesting thing that we're doing right now is we actually have a draft of a economic development strategic plan and we were waiting for the work that you're doing today and any follow-up work to finalize that so that we can incorporate any additional initiatives in it i think a lot of what you've covered this evening so far we have captured in our ed strategy we do have some additional things in there but um i'm looking at this and some of these are pretty broad strokes so i you know i support everything everything that's here um we do have a lot of initiatives that are underway both on the recovery um you know but i think we can sort of tear off a lot of the things that are that are here we do have existing partnerships i would say one thing that we are doing is which is is relatively new because of the pandemic is that we're looking um almost more regionally but certainly countywide as far as recovery efforts and so we are leveraging those partnerships um not just at the university in cabrillo um but with other jurisdictions other uh supporting organizations countywide chambers to really uh work together collaboratively to try to address uh business recovery and economic development right and i think the other thing to keep in mind here is that i mean though likely will be some kind of stimulus package i guess the one thing we don't know whether there'll be any sort of direct support to cities but certainly there there will be some support to businesses and i think uh local businesses small businesses and uh i think we'll likely have to play a role there so that was something that will be before us i'm pretty sure at one point or another here in the coming months say as far as the arena just since that that did come up earlier that we do have a deadline next year to decide or extend um on whether or not we're focusing at the permanent home in santa cruz for the santa cruz warriors so that is a temporary building and our agreement with the warriors and seaside company does end next year so um there are some decision points they don't necessarily need to be captured here but there are some big directions um and you already mentioned the warf as well so i think they've all been captured some of the big initiatives and project okay i think mayor had a had his hand up and then councilmember matthew so i just need to clarify this again and maybe martin you can clarify this for me when it comes to some of these big projects is the idea that they're going to keep moving forward or that tonight because i i just you know i don't think that in our best interest to say we're not going to focus on any of these big projects knowing that there's financial constraints around them and that you know it can lead to for example the warriors leaving which we don't want um but then like where do those fall into place because you know is it that you know warriors arena will fall under infrastructure along with the war from the library and the rail trail or is it that you know with downtown investors that would include the downtown along with the the warriors arena but it wouldn't include some of these other pieces so i'm just trying to get a sense when it comes to you know infrastructure like the arena the library rail trail or where do these fall and i think that's where we'll have to sort of bring that back to you so far as the work plan because i mean to a lot of extent these are what i'm hearing a lot of this let's continue to do some of the major initiatives and projects that we're working on and so then the question will be uh you know of these you know how do we treat them if for some reason resources become more limited or there's decisions that we made amongst them and so maybe that's where we can identify maybe some prioritization or criteria amongst amongst the different projects or so i have to think that that through to some extent maybe can we maybe set those projects under either infrastructure or some other category because it just seems like it just it just seems weird that some are going to fall into place with others and i don't think you know it seems weird if we're gonna if we're gonna make a decision on where to go tonight or if we're going to make recommendations on where to go it seems like all those projects should kind of get pulled out personally yeah there is and there is overlap in the infrastructure category because when i think of infrastructure in at least the way we thought about it it's more how do we how do we find funding to increase our infrastructure investment that's been sort of our rich challenge and so i don't necessarily think of is the housing projects as infrastructure some of these projects it seems to be more how do we again invest in our infrastructure that's where we've had deferred maintenance and not i'm saying that it's not a priority but it's really the issue has been identifying funding it's not necessarily show us the projects it's it's it's funding to to make improvements in unless the projects but it's it's you know the ones that we're working on we we know that we have opportunities for funding we know they can move forward because there's options to make them move forward but and in terms of generally when we talk about infrastructure it's about how do we make progress in areas where we don't have opportunities because of funding constraints okay so um and maybe some quick comments from first council member Matthews and vice mayor Myers and then council member Watkins um these things so repetitive in a way uh i'm wondering if a lot of this local economy can be pulled up into that first one can we talk about i think these things come forward and then um some of these facilities holding into downtown or i think those are the things like there are some obvious projects we want to carry forward we have to compress it to three let's not lose something critical and these are all kind of just a compilation of suggestions from all of us there wasn't any go waiting within which would be important ones within which category also right um vice mayor Myers yeah i just have a question went back through the the documents during the break and it occurs to me when i look at the project list in the back because ultimately the focus areas are sort of made up of projects and in some cases or um literally requirements so you know there's a number of things on here when i look at the projects in the back there's a number of things so i guess my question is like for example the housing element like we have to do that right by law you know i mean that's something that we don't get to say we're not going to turn in our housing i mean we could but that's not strategically very good um the other would be the lcp update and by nature of having to do that we recapture the resilient coast we also i know have to update our climate action plan this year because of you know the requirements from the state so my question is um kind of a requirement either under state law um do we assume that those things have to move forward or how do we handle that situation in the context of the areas of focus so those aren't insignificant projects in and of themselves so i'm just trying to remedy sort of the project list a little bit right now because that that's reflective in these areas of focus as well and so maybe i'm getting ahead of myself but i'm just curious if you just have a very short quick answer to that sorry no that's that's a good question i think from the staff perspective we we assume that we're going to be continuing to do the the basic requirements that we have in place so that we're assuming that those things are going to continue there are various things that we have to do um and uh but what we'll also do is once we get your priorities here we'll look at those also within the context of those but for now we're not saying that we're not going to do any of those basic things because a lot of those are supported by grants right martin so they're in some ways they're a little bit cost-neutral not completely obviously but you know in many cases those kinds of things are supported by grants for example the housing element some of that worked everything right okay okay we're going to continue to meet our obligations for some of our basic requirements right and some of the things that we have to do in the day-to-day basis so okay that's helpful thank you and then when martin and the staff come back with the work program for the top focus areas you're going to see a lot of those projects because they are moving forward but it but you know as i mentioned before they don't happen just because they happen but they happen because they are they are priorities and that you're allocating staff and resources to them so um but they will move forward uh councilmember Watkins thank you yeah no my question or sort of process comment is similar to what i think vice mayor mires is getting at in regards to what are sort of um what are these parallel tracks of projects that are already underway but then what are becomes the sort of crossroads where you have to reprioritize based on limited resources so then i was looking at the agenda and i see that you have established a framework for decision-making regarding new projects um work or services but is there also a recognition that there might be um kind of the integration of existing projects and how does that how does that fit into that framework around prioritization or i mean i'm i guess there isn't that really that christ are we going to establish that later in the agenda that's right here yet yes okay i will help i think that's good i think uh as jan mentioned i mean the work plan will kind of further refine and define so you're given a kind of what you what you're kind of overarching for the goals and priorities areas are we're going to take those and integrate them into what we're doing and create the work plan that will come back to you and then later on in the meeting yet we'll go through the sort of creating the mechanism or structure for uh making decisions around changes for adjustments okay so at some point it might be helpful to identify what's already existing in underway likely to be completed or mandated by law for us to complete versus what's a new kind of idea project that we want to have that discussion around prioritization okay okay uh council member Matthews you have your hand up yeah similarly um just looking at the project underway um it would be very helpful to know which ones are just going to proceed like highway one nine the contract is out i think that's going to proceed um which ones are which ones it would be crazy to not continue etc we're almost being asked to choose between things now that we haven't got the full picture of right yeah and again i think at this point you know we're not necessarily asking me to give us the specific uh projects it's really your areas that are important um and then we will integrate that and and obviously you mentioned some things and we'll take that into account and then and then incorporate it into everything else that's in the hopper and bring that back to you and and tell you given what you've made priorities what you've identified just what it means and this might be what would be the impacts would be the particular uh projects of things that are ongoing and you can say well that's acceptable originally it's basically operationalizing what you will end up with your top priority areas it's so that you will know over the next 12 to 18 months what staff and and council will be working on okay so let's take a quick look at the next one Claire affordable housing just to you know recap this you've got a bunch of projects or several projects that are moving forward already um and so you've made a number of comments there so if this is selected as one of the you know top priorities all of those will those things that are moving forward will continue and if they those are projects that will continue moving forward in any event and then the last one discussion about maintenance excuse me infrastructure so these are just some of the comments that were captured there so um let's go on to the hard part which is um selection of the top priority focus areas and again maybe just to revisit for just a second you know why we're doing this in the first place the council or the city of Santa Cruz is a complex city you have a lot of needs every all of these things are important and work is being done on all of them but the notion while you are in your recovery period is to seek some guidance as to what are the top areas the top three areas to really focus in on during the next 12 to 18 months it does not mean that everything else stops of course but that that gives some guidance to say out of everything we're doing these three areas really need to have extra attention extra focus and then after um those have been selected then martin and the staff will bring back as we've talked about a few times of a work program that says this is how we are going to accomplish those areas of focus over the next 12 to 18 months so that's the idea mayor your hand is up i didn't want to ask it maybe um you know before we vote with number six i think that you know there's the need to create but there's also the need to sustain affordable housing so i'm wondering if the language could be such that it reflects that although there is the need to create more affordable housing there's also a need to sustain sustain the affordable housing we already have so i'm not able to change there any any objection to that by the council to add in sustain i don't see any head shake okay um we will add that when when when claire can technically add it she can add that word sustain i don't um but in the meantime the way uh and she'll do the oh there okay it's like councilmember matthews has her hand raised oh i'm sorry i missed that thank you um i want to ask the question again even what bonnie described what she's doing um support local economic development to others not filled at five so this is put in to number one long-term physical sustainability office every we talked about new revenue which which i just mean a revenue measure but then in the discussion i mentioned uh rebuilding our taxes basically we're building our taxes i just put that out as a question i'm really hard to break well let me just say it is um always everything is interrelated and i can appreciate the interest in in wanting to combine those but there's a whole uh work element and work program that will be involved in in what bonnie describes and in working on the local economy that is related but it is different from um the the budget the fiscal sustainability it's all related but if you if you make it too big then it may be that um you know you went you you end up not realistically being able to really focus on three areas and then let me ask another question regarding number seven which is the infrastructure i seem to hear from the manager that the big infrastructure project like water wastewater you know the really big utilities um those will kind of continue anyway um and um that what we typically think of as infrastructure is different um project am i understanding that so that do a lot of these things that we looked on the last pages as projects in the work are those actually things that are going to happen anyway so we don't need to choose that one do you see where i'm going with my question or not yeah because the this kind of relates to the other piece of this that i think is important to keep in mind is that uh you know in the past when we've done our strategic plans you know they really are there's more to longer-term aspect to in that particular case we're doing in-term recovery plans so it's a little different because we're we're in this sort of crisis environment with multiple emergencies and so it's really about what are we going to focus on you know here in the immediate you know 12 to 18 months so it doesn't mean that these other things are important when they're going to work towards them but it's really and so infrastructure again is one of those where there's some long-term aspects to it uh but there are some long-term connections to the other items that some of you noted some of you noted that for example some of the housing partners are really infrastructure it doesn't work but it's infrastructure and whether there might be some things that we do in this 18 12 to 18 months around those items the uh the overall goal of infrastructure and putting infrastructure probably a little longer term uh yeah at some point you may want to pick up the the project that you started before which is a long-term strategic plan and under that um then you would be looking at least five years out and you're you're going to have more than top three you know you're going to have a lot more it'll be much more robust but for this one it's it's really the interim recovery period 12 to 18 months is the focus it's much more short-term focus okay so oh i'm sorry uh so we was uh councilmember what comes you had your hand waving i think sorry sorry i'm trying to make sure that i'm capturing what i'm hearing and i think what i'm hearing is there's an interest in really identifying sort of the broader themes of priorities give um our limited ability to really focus on everything but also recognizing that we're still for example going to partner with the county and try our you know play our role in preventing and combating um those experiencing homelessness or public safety is actually a core component of what cities do work so like but how are the broader themes essentially going to fit into our priority setting yeah exactly no that that's right and it's i i guess the advice i would i would give on all of this is that if you make things if you don't say what as a council what say your your top three areas of focus for this interim recovery plan uh period timeframe will be then you really do leave it to the city manager to do you really do because uh choices have to be made because you don't have enough resources to do everything and so when it's always helpful for our city manager and the staff to know boy for this 12 to 18 month period the council really would like the the top areas of focus to be these three things and so that that's just very helpful from a policy perspective to to have that so that's why we're we're trying to you know focus on in that regard so if that's if it's okay oh councilmember matthews you have your virtual hand up so i understand the down count in depth that does include um assuming um putting energy into a lot of the um affordable housing projects and other yep the whole package is down yeah great yeah and the wording on that one um if that you know may need to be modified slightly too you know so that it's you know a little bit broader once we get into wordsmithing a bit um okay so the way that we are um going to go about the voting is is um asking council members to uh select three and all you need to do is have the numbers so if you say my numbers are one two and three whatever your numbers are um and then we will go in order then you'll just call those out and claire is going to record those and we'll go in order that you typically go at your council meetings as i understand it i have those written down um oh the first one though is no longer here kathryn councilmember buyers so we'll start with um councilmember uh matthews then brown and golder and what comes then vice mayor meyers and then the mayor and jan i'm gonna um shift these back to the way that the numbers are in the workbook i just want to make sure that the numbers you have on your pages um match um because we removed number five okay okay i see what you've done okay so um councilmembers need more time to select your three you've all been thinking about it i'm sure okay then why don't we go ahead with um who did i say uh councilmember matthews just read off your numbers okay um something to change when i know what the particular how the particular shake out um uh one and uh if i could have a board to meet seven you only get three though 146 as a facilitator we always get complaints of i don't get enough dots okay uh next is councilmember brown uh thank you yeah uh so one seven and is councilmember golder councilmember what can i'm like the one that wants the dot but i can like cut you hear that one that i always have to watch at the at the workshop i was so hard rolled up in my mind how to do so i think i definitely one which i feel like could also encompass six so i'm not thinking so one and then four which i think can encompass seven and then eight one four and eight yeah okay got it okay uh vice mayor meyers i think you're next yeah i'm a i'm a dot cutter for sure i might even be a quarterer uh i definitely one and definitely four and i cut just just for the record i kind of think four i think seven can roll into four just because of the projects we have online i'm coming online um but i will say one four and eight okay and mayor coming and obviously i'd like more dots as well seven okay so i got everybody right because we have one council member isn't here okay um so we have only two that have a majority of the council um if you want to have three then we could do another round of one between six seven and eight if you want to have three and we've done that before as it's fairly simple to do that so um shall we do it you want to you want to get a third one in there okay so uh we'll go in the same order so starting with uh council member matthews you get one vote out of six seven or eight and we're going to start all over again yeah but no no one one vote of all you can only vote on six seven or eight because then we're trying to to reach um a majority and you can pass if you want i'm going to vote for number seven because i think infrastructure is mostly going to go along okay number seven that's my logic okay um council member brown uh same seven for the council member matthews stated okay claire um why don't you record those um on the other side of the line on the other side of the line just i don't want to keep all the don't worry i didn't lose them i just made another slide you won't be able to see it if it's on the other side of oh actually you will i'm fine to be me yeah just i can you go back yeah there we go i think so we can just okay because the ones that we had before that's what we had before okay so now um we've had two council members do their second round and both said number seven is that correct did i get that right okay um so then we have council member golder also think that um housing the the need to address and sustain affordable housing is longer term than 12 to 18 months and i think six is kind of the same as four and one and i've also heard our facilitator say twice that these capital investment and you know maintenance projects don't just happen and so i'm afraid of pulling in after a big storm in the next 12 to 18 months if we don't replace the piling so i'm going with eight still a stick okay um council member what kind of well housing efforts happening within the city under the downtown investment it's always hard uh vice mayor mires for the mutated oh let's see so claire i think we we needed to have another x under a so yeah two people also kind of lean on the sort of the Sabbath is sort of happening with four um i think so eight so eight has a couple of meanings for me one is that like i said before i think that outside of the enterprise funds um i think there's infrastructure that gets lost kind of in the mix of infrastructure and i'm specifically considering some of our parks facilities and and our parks and open spaces as infrastructure i think they're important green infrastructure frankly um so um and then also um there's there's work for example with the resilient coast um program that's coming online which is really around protecting our coastal resources which are both a tourist piece and also part of our green infrastructure in terms of protecting us from sea level rise um and i hate to see kind of lose that those things um even for 18 months i feel like those projects are important to keep online so uh i'm going to go with eight okay thank you and mayor coming on what council member matthew said and just with our conversations with the city manager it seems like a lot of the capital improvement projects that have been moving or infrastructure projects that have been moving along aren't really going to stop it seems like that train's going so but i do think that you know when we think about the need for and sustaining affordable housing i mean if there are stimulus bills that come out and the our economic development directors talk about this you know the more that we can have projects ready to go and identify opportunities to you know either create more affordable housing or the third programs that we can use to sustain and keep people in their homes like that's going to be really important as over the next 12 to 18 months we see you know the sunset of the eviction protections how do we kind of keep people in their homes and how do we kind of sustain affordable housing whether that's through you know credits that can come you know as part of the stimulus package that can go to landlords or the tenants what have you but i think that we need to keep a lot of effort on that so i'm going to go with seven um you have a lot of needs and so you really have ended up with two top priorities that a majority the council a strong majority the council really does want to focus on and that's okay because there are only you know seven focus areas there and something will be occurring in all of those areas that they just not going to be the the top areas of focus so there's nothing wrong with only having two there's nothing wrong with that and the city manager will be coming back with a with a work program on those two and indicating with the other projects that are that are already underway you know what will be happening with those so there's there's nothing wrong with with having two in fact i want to applaud you for only having two i think that's actually a best practice given given the kind of conversation that you've gone through so yes mayor it looks like there's a council member matthews had a question oh i'm sorry i need to look over here to see the participants the blue hand council member matthews um yeah i said at the beginning i wanted the ability to change my vote okay on the issues around number seven my interests are not so much in funding emergency relief programs because um i think our resources in those cases are short-term i'm hoping we will have more state and federal resources to do that my interests are more in policies and actually planning and matches and so forth so what we mean by that might be rather different um and i would also like to know again what what are we not doing if i don't vote for infrastructure i may have some images of how things are proceeding um i do think of them more as physical things either facilities or utilities rather than i think they're they're issues around our part but i don't see that as infrastructure so much um so you know before we come back for final quantitative i can have to say the infrastructure component is of no concern just like how are we interpreting these things before we sign the check okay so let's hear from council member watkins and then vice mayor mires and then any comments from the city manager i think i was just going to say that i think what i'm hearing this really be is for the city managers to have a sense of where the council is right now in terms of top space addressing affordable and sustaining affordable housing is a huge priority for our entire community and city and how are we going to immediately do that in the next 12 to 18 months you know with the housing movement study session and our downtown housing coming online like those are all for me i think just interconnected and if that's the at the point is for for our city manager to hear that and our interest in our sort of thought process for connectivity then i think you know we've expressed a real shared interest around around that as a council as well as how we're maintaining and supporting um the most vulnerable kind of aspects of our general fund and the infrastructure associated with that whether it be our coastal resilience or and or our parks and maintaining those critical resources so if this essentially it's not sort of throwing them out but saying i hope you know our city manager hears that that this is something i think we all pretty much expressed and shared and i'm not trying to make it so that we have four but i'm just not trying to say that i don't think it needs to be maybe now maybe i'm just throwing out your whole talk but like what you know only three either i think if it's just to express what we hope the work is to be i think we are in alignment in a lot of these areas yeah and it certainly seems that there is a lot of alignment for sure among council members uh martin do you have any maybe final comments on that and then we will talk about the uh the work plan oh did i oh i i'm so sorry yes vice mayor meyers yes i see you do have your electronic yeah i i see the immediacy of what we push with the focus on the 12 to 18 months i guess what i'll say is that um the way that i'm looking at eight and you know to council member mathie's sort of question is that um we're looking at um you know we're looking at this really crazy point in time right we've had this pandemic where people can't um be inside um we've had uh wildfires that basically have surrounded and burned the watershed above our town um we have just completed probably the first of its kind study of our coastal resources and not only those resources from a tourism perspective but how they actually provide buffering from damages from sea level rise as well as potentially the the disappearance of of world famous surfing waves and others so my perspective in this is i number eight to me is is a reach it's it's saying today that in the next 12 to 18 months we're not going to lose track of the infrastructure and the green most importantly the green infrastructure that provides the benefit to our town for the future and so you know green infrastructure is actually protecting it's doing what we've done well and over the last 50 years we've created a green belt we've um set back some some of our facilities from the ocean we've done things that we probably didn't know we were doing right when we did them but um this is a critical time when funding sources and other attention is going to be paid especially from our governor and our state to say you know these are the investments we see as the smart investments moving forward and that's why really i think we have to expand you know infrastructure is not pipes and streets anymore it's forests that are well managed to provide buffering from catastrophic wildfires it's a watershed that's you know managed so that we don't get catastrophic flooding it's you know infrastructure that is natural like you know living shorelines that actually buffer from sea level and and the king tide effects that we already see it's having places that people can walk when they're not when they can't when they can't be around each other so i see number eight as it's a reach goal but it is the future and so councilmember matthews that's my pitch yes councilmember matthews your electronic hand is up yeah it's a discussion um and i guess i want to get back to looking at the significant projects underway which things are going to continue we um have a consultant working on our objective standards for multi-family housing back to make a big difference in affordable housing we're about yeah study session on uh state all the state changes in the state law that could mean a lot for us we haven't had that yet we know there's a ton of changes that can make a big difference our actual affordable housing projects are centered downtown so in terms of physical um investments in affordable housing that's mostly where they're happening not exclusively so you know i think i the case can be made for changing my vote there and you know just voting for the infrastructure there again when it comes back i want to know what's dropped off and what are we keeping anyway and what's stopping off so that that's the future assignment for staff so i'll change my vote there okay so just to be clear so you're changing your vote from the seven to eight yeah okay okay and council member what comes you had a comment actually i just wanted to see if martin wanted to speak to that like i don't i don't necessarily see eight been being a trade off for seven i think that seven is obviously a priority for our city it's going to be an investment in our downtown with some of the projects naturally will include aspects of needing to have um you know tenant protections and looking at state resources are all like i don't think it's one or the other per se but i wanted to see if martin wanted to just weigh in on that yeah of course yeah sure um i'm sitting here thinking about how to uh how to sort this one out a bit because there is obviously there is some overlap in some of these things downtown investment we've all agree is incredibly important and a lot of that has to do with the the construction and moving forward of some affordable housing projects right so uh there's some overlap there but affordable housing means different things to uh the different aspects of it i think there's difference of opinion perhaps in the council around that the various policies that are different so um these are policies that we can will look to work on um and uh so i think i think what we'll have to do is as we prepare the work plan and identify the air you know the areas within each of these categories i think that'll help you uh with respect to determining you know what it means because there's a bit of a thing it's it's a bit hard right now to like fully define it um but i think once we put in the work projects between within each one of them i think that will help um and again this will come back to you so this isn't the the final um and and so i think your clarifications that you can provide today extend possible but what what it means to you and for example uh councilmember meyers talking about the infrastructure what it means to her uh that's helpful um so that we can uh try to incorporate in the work plan what exactly is to the extent possible what what what it means and what this priority should be so uh councilmember brown and then watkins so yeah just to follow up on that i um i also think that uh martin your point uh burnall martin your burnall your point about um this coming back in the shape of various projects within the the various priorities um will help clarify because it seems to me as we all know different departments take the lead and responsibility and much of the activity for certain functions and so infrastructure and affordable housing may not be the responsibility of the same people and so in terms when we talk about trade off we also i think want to be thinking about um staff capacity departmentally i mean it for the city manager's office they're all um kind of going to take time uh regardless but i do think that that's uh an element that we ought to be thinking about as we prioritize and so i'm going to stick with affordable housing but i don't see um them being you know that dropping off just because we've now got a two to four on that um i hope it wouldn't that that would be um a shame but um just thinking about who you know who has the responsibility and how that fits into the into the mix okay councilmember watkins i no i appreciate um those comments uh by councilmember brown i think it makes sense to think about how um you know it's not one or the other but this is information input for potential examination of various you know capacities of various departments and i think that given that there is an election you know to an earlier point made that we do want input from you know at minimum two new two new council members so there will be an opportunity for them to weigh in as well so given that one and four are strong i think that ideally the city manager heard that seven and eight are also very high priorities as we think about how this is returned to the council for refinement okay um mayor coming yeah i just wanted to comment because to uh councilmember some of the things that's been coming up it seems like you know when we think about interim recovery there's two things that come to my mind one is economic recovery and that has a lot to deal with you know job creation job stability and then community stability and that really for me is along the lines of you know how do we keep people in their homes um so that they're not displaced and put out on the street because we know what i but looking through this list when thinking about like public safety i feel like you know for um you know long-term fiscal stability and downtown investment is that really gonna take you know a lot of staff time from PD or fire probably not you know um versus economic development in the planning department and so i think there is an opportunity to kind of look through this and see you know if there are areas of interest that have a lot of overlap with certain departments obviously we want to try to tease apart what um you know and create a priority for those departments so we're not bombarding them with um work but you know when i think of improvements and maintenance infrastructure again to council member at these points i think of like buildings versus you know um yeah i feel like our water department you know is going to continue to try to you know work on how we can maintain the water infrastructure and look for funding fire is going to keep looking at you know how we can prevent and you know make our open spaces um more resilient to fires and then you know i think that um it's you know full of 18 months we've just passed our parks plan there will likely be funding coming down to help support our parks which does have a lot to do with tourism but then i also think you know the reason why push affordable housing is that you know what i heard about other times like after the recession for example that you know if you have shovel ready projects there could be more funding that goes into that and we you know we we but we have a decent amount in our affordable housing fund i think we should really be trying to figure out how we can get more funding from the state to make all these projects happen because a lot of concern that's come through the community is that um given the funding that we do have in our affordable housing fund do we have enough to create the affordable housing you know and to fund the products we have so i just keep that in mind and just think about you know if there's other opportunities for us to get more money towards affordable housing that's the right now we're also in really good position but again i think that to the extent that we can figure out um you know if there are departments where where our priorities are leaning there are there are departments that aren't going to have that big of a lift and we can figure out other things that we can work on with them on the side i think to that extent we should keep that in the back of our minds thank you uh vice mayor moyers yeah i i guess i'll just say you know i these are really tough choices and um i think you know we have some legs on affordable housing i again i keep pivoting to this investment in downtown um completing the projects um that we are looking at doing downtown that gets people back downtown it gets people living in downtown um it hopefully will um rebuild our metro our transit center which again comes along with additional commercial spaces that we can be creative about when we move forward thinking about um rethinking maybe some of how we use those commercial spaces and retail spaces to the mayor's point earlier this evening so i you know my intent is not you know i i was joking when i when i made that comment earlier i mean i i i thought absolutely value and i know we affordable housing is is probably the highest priority i think for most of all of us all of the council members um it's it's a target we have to constantly keep our eyes on and um so i you know i just believe that um you know based on my statements on number eight you kind of you kind of heard where i am but i just wanted to clarify you know i i'm it's difficult to try to rank these because they're all very important um and again i think eight is a reach goal and it's the kind of thing that we need to start thinking about now because many many communities will be doing that and so um i i just wanted to clarify that and then um there was one thing but it's gone out of my head so that i'll end it there but just to clarify i absolutely think affordable housing has to be a target um i think we've got some really strong projects and uh we keep moving on those and and hopefully we'll be successful okay thank you and then final comment from councilmember what tensor was that before you had your that blue hand up no no i mean that was before i had my hand up but okay i couldn't tell in general i you know i yeah i agree i think you know if the if the interest is to really give a broader kind of sense of where the council is with everything to the city manager i think there will be refinement more information to help us actually you know design and refine workflow for the next 12 to 18 months okay and then i'm clearly hearing that affordable housing is important as well as interest so we'll we'll keep that in mind as we prepare things to work okay so uh you have uh long and well short term and long term fiscal sustainability that'll be wardsmiths a bit uh the downtown and uh infrastructure are your top three so good thank you thank you for hanging in there with that that was not an easy process for you it never is um okay so if you could move on claire to the next slide that's just okay we can we've already done that so uh martin this was just your slide and just indicating um what you'll be coming back with and and roughly when you'll be coming back so our uh yeah so as we've discussed uh we will take your discussion today um and uh what you've identified as the as a priority areas here um and then the input that was also provided around things that might uh we might be able to stop uh that was in your packet along with uh everything that's in the hopper to bring back to you a work plan that outlines uh and in the in the interim if there are particular areas or uh questions we have about particular projects that we just want to make sure we don't forget about or that we include but you know let me know um what couldn't try to be as inclusive as possible but there may be some things that we might miss but today so they have to fix that that you can be aware that would be helpful um and then we will bring that work plan to you and I believe we're our goal is to try to get that to you in November is that right Laura I think that's what we're looking to be shooting for but also as was pointed out earlier too I think my mean that we will have a tune to the council um and so therefore we will need to touch that with the new council um as soon as possible so the new council probably won't really have their first opportunity to sort of weigh in until january um so we will see that martin I think the goal for November was not the work plan it was the actual translation of what we heard from the council members today to the interim recovery plan so they will actually receive a document that represents the interim recovery plan and these three components and that would be in November I think january is a more realistic time frame to give us time to work with the department to massage and categorize and organize all of the existing backlog into the different priority areas to bring them back for a facilitated discussion and um with a january timeline we might also be able to get the new council members input into that process so that it all hopefully would come together at that point so it sounds like there'll be another opportunity to kind of refine this a bit more yeah good okay so let's move to the next slide claire um so everybody hanging in there okay or do we need another break everybody hanging in there I guess you're used to long council meetings so for the moment we'll we'll keep moving so uh gloria if you could just briefly touch on this one sure um a list of um projects or items that the council during the interviews um and also the department has identified as items that could be deferred and the purpose of this is really to just give this feedback and this input to martine as the work plans are being developed so um we're not going to vote on them but I do want to because these came from individual members do want to give you um the opportunity to maybe comment on some of these that you do think they're important and can be or you do think they can be deferred or you absolutely don't want martine to consider them for deferral so as I said all of these items came from uh interviews and staff so just quickly um public works there's some public works projects that are funded and some that might just be um uh wish on a wish list um one discussion was about essential versus non-essential services so if there are any non-essential services left that the city's involved in that those could be deferred um not funding to non-profits was discussed the civic auditorium and I'm not sure if that's a bond program or uh that it's funded um the parks and rec programs especially during the covid time that a lot of those may not be happening anyways um housing projects some of the larger ones in big policy longer term uh discussions uh the university's long range development plan uh council initiatives that are outside the priorities project labor agreements um non-mandated advisory committees and commissions that still require staffing um and therefore city resources the rental housing inspection programs the arts programs the war of master plan um I'm not sure it's fixed costs that don't generate revenue I'm not quite sure where that came from and then county functions um that the city is currently doing that so there I believe there's some human services type functions that the city has taken over but that really belong in the county's basket and then some of the climate um and the sustainability programs so all of those came out of discussions and so I just want to give 14 some feedback on these from the council and I think we have the next slide to account for that although we might want to leave it up so people can see the list on this I'll take notes and then everyone can see um yeah when mayor mayor go ahead so couple comments one I think we just um we just had a lot of discussion on um infrastructure so I just say take those projects with the grain of salt obviously because if we just decided that um there was you know an agreement that that was the third um and you have like civic auditorium renovations well do we does that fall under one of those priorities or not so I think just taking that into account um the university I mean we just invested money in um continuing with our UCSC advocate so I just think it'd be a waste of money if we stopped if we were paying that person and then we just said we're gonna stop moving forward with that um and I think it's really critical because the university is not stopping with the LRDP so if we stop now and we will be like very far behind and I think that a lot of folks in the community will be very upset um with our you know lack of moving forward with that and I think as I mentioned earlier with with regards to climate and environmental sustainability that is probably one of the top priorities thanks to affordable housing in our community so um those I would say will probably keep forward and then I guess another question is that a lot of there's a number of items on here that are coming back um probably before we actually um you know before we actually decide on what this in a recovery plan is so I look at the warp master plan I know that's supposed to come back either at the next meeting or the following um so I just I'm just a little confused um but with with you know and we just have that long conversation of what projects are going to keep moving forward which is which versus which ones will get installed so I think that um you know those that are um infrastructure and kind of um you know university climate um or some of the ones that kind of concerned me a little bit the most yeah council member brown as followed by council member Watkins and again just input to the city manager that's all this is so um I I share uh mayor Cummings concerns about uh kind of how some of these seem to if we're going to be deferring seem to contradict what we just said we wanted to prioritize um but I also I have well when I have what a comment about the list and the amount of of time and resources really varies across these different um items so you know it's it's kind of hard to uh think about you know some of you know we could say I mean the warp master plan alone could be like four or five of these other items right so um so just thinking about which ones that to be deferred will actually um you know lead to you know opening up more staff time and then what the costs are I think we really have to consider that um so but then I'll just off the top of my head there's a couple I have questions about um and so the first one is the number three reduced funding to non-profits except food banks that is that a defer reduced fund reducing the funding or reduce the funding and how does that save staff time to cut non-profit funding if that's what we're talking about I don't um I don't get that that's the one question and then um yeah I so I don't know the question that needs an answer but um what staff time is the is the city really putting in on the university LRDP work I know our planning director comes to some of those meetings but it's largely been taken on by county supervisor and three members of the council and then the advocate that we're funding externally um well we're funding but it's an extra on position so um just kind of wondering about that and then um the last one I just well actually there's two more um I'm not comfortable saying that we want to reduce or defer climate adaptation and environmental sustainability programs I mean we have one you know one staff person who does the lion's share of that work and does an amazing job I don't know how uh deferring those particularly given that we've said we want to really be focusing on green economy and kind of and using that climate lens and all of our our work it doesn't seem like deferring that activity is gonna really be of any benefit or save much um in the overall staff budget time budget and then um the last point I would make is you know I understand the point of number 15 uh deferring activity actions around county functions the city carries out but I do um you know I just want to be mindful of the the challenges of taking that kind of stance I mean we just have to look to the Sentinel a couple of weeks ago and with a big story about how trash is not getting picked up because the city and county are in a standoff and whatever the story is behind that how that happened um it doesn't matter to me so much of the fact that that was on the agenda I mean that's what people are hearing and so to say that we are um gonna stop being you know just we're gonna defer any activity on county functions that the city is carrying out I just think it's one more step in that you know county versus city fight and we've moved to a place of what I feel like is pretty good cooperation and I would just hate to see that get undermined so um just a couple of questions and come and then the others will comment I'll leave it there okay and let me just remind you this is I'll call this laundry list came from the council interviews and it was also um happened before you took the budget actions that you took so um so we're just trying to give um our team just a general sense of this but these did come from council members um there weren't there wasn't necessarily any consensus but these are some of the thoughts that came out during the discussions okay uh let's see council member Watkins and then mayor comments I guess I I wonder for the purposes of tonight's meeting if um I think Martin heard that there was really two strong areas of consensus for the council um really four in terms of just wanting more clarification around um affordable housing being wrapped into existing initiatives around our downtown investments right now specifically in the next 12 to 18 months as well as looking at how we're integrating infrastructure as the most vulnerable infrastructure in terms of our parks in terms of our general funds funding around climate adaptation and environmental efforts um and then I think um also in all you know in kind of all transparency there will be two new council members but I feel as when I was a new council member not having my voice as part of the strategic plan um at minimum there's two new councils there's four openings right and so I think you know we want everybody on the council moving forward in the next 12 to 18 months to have their voice be heard and really the fingerprints on this document so there's sign and um coherent and so I think you know for general purposes I think I maybe I'll ask Martin did did you hear kind of where we're at is that good in terms of where we want to go and then more information will be forthcoming and opportunity for more input from from newer individuals as well yeah no I think I think uh I think you provided the input and again there'll be more input and again I think these were we didn't feel to these in any way I think we just what we heard we just stuck them on here and and I think as Gloria pointed out some of some of these things we've already essentially provided direction on through the budget process and some of these will be before you and you'll be there'll be an opportunity to provide direction as well so uh yeah to be honest I don't I don't help useful this may not be maybe maybe one final comment from the mayor and then we can move on I was just gonna say um again too I think you know it was good to hear that this came before and we had our budget because because um that provides some context and and I know it came before after we kind of just had our previous discussion but then I would just point out that with you know parts and rec programs and city arts I think that um you know the arts are underfunded and really don't you know need a ton of funding for what the men you know what they need to operate I mean they always could use more but you know I think to the extent that we can keep arts going it's a good thing and then additionally with the park and recs program I mean a lot of those a lot of folks in our community use those programs as their kind of outlet it helps with you know physical and mental health and so I think that you know to the extent that we can keep those going to provide members of the community with that outlet and avail you know opportunity to get into the open spaces or to you know have access to recreation I just want to say again you know trying to keep those moving is probably a good idea okay uh council member Matthews this really did this was really did represent just kind of brainstorming without discussion among council members so I'm going to comment specifically but in terms of engaging uh new council members in this you know we swear our men and then we go on vacation they come back and deal with some heavy-duty stuff so we have talked previously about the onboarding process it's something I'm really interested in I think every single person on the council will say boy when you first step into that as much as you think about what you know about how the city works etc there's so much you don't know and particularly to be asked to make really really big decisions just the orientation generally and on on the upcoming big decisions going to be so critical yeah and just you know that's that's being worked on now we also invited them to participate today recognizing that uh this might be helpful uh so they were all uh in form of the meeting today and so forth it looks like Tony wants to say something to you so okay Tony yeah thank you I just want to point out that I think the mayor covered this at some level but uh item seven is on dealing with the university's long-range development plan it's not really an option in so far as the university's long-range development plan is moving forward and so we really need to react with this uh plan forward so the extent I mean the extent we deal with it is is a question but um the timing is not because we are not in a position yeah but Jim I agree it's really critical to have any council members uh be unbored in as quickly as possible and updated as quickly as possible so we do plan to have a very robust program to get them on board okay so I think that's just input and uh martin has has that a little bit of input and as he's working on work programs to come back to the city council he can consider any of these that might may be appropriate and may not be appropriate okay so let's keep moving then Claire um so we now uh are shifting gears um so metrics for tracking recovery in our council interviews we we did ask council members what might be some of the things that that could help you gauge recovery gauge this and we asked department heads the same thing um at some point in the future the city may want a very robust performance measurement program to measure all kinds of things the intent for this is to have a a limited number of metrics that would help you gauge maybe even through a dashboard for the public but but be able to tell yourselves and the public you know to what extent are you making some progress so with that in mind um and as as this slide says um we we will have on some other slides to show you the idea is to agree on a limited number of metrics um we're suggesting up to 10 because that that would be reasonable for staff to be able to keep keep track of and for those metrics to be ones that uh there's readily there's data readily available for and that the staff is already tracking but that can put it together in an organized fashion so we there were a total of 17 possible metrics that were suggested either from council members or or from department heads and those are in the workbook and we applied some criteria and again this is shown in the workbook to each one of those and the criteria having to do with will the data actually help measure recovery is the is the city currently tracking the data if it's if the city is not is the data readily available which could be the case we wanted to know is the data available at least quarterly many cases it is some cases it's not that doesn't mean it's a non-starter but it's a it's a useful question depending on how often you want to report and then the final one is does the city have some direct influence over the outcome so we applied those those criteria to the suggestions these are 15 of the 17 metrics actually have data readily available that's quite a few so that's a good thing so we our firm actually has a lot of experience in performance measurement so so we used another individual in our firm who helped take a look at these and these are worded as a percent change because then that tells you to what extent you're making progress if you're measuring change so these are again in your workbook and i'm not going to read them to you because you can you can see them on here but they are they range from some of the financial metrics that you are currently uh gathering to business closures as a metric that data is available for to commercial vacancy rates unemployment you know permit you're already getting that data you have that you know some data about housing and homelessness as well as crime so there are actually quite a few data points that you could measure if you if you wish to and then the next slide Claire shows um there are a couple of suggested metrics that would be very interesting and that could be useful in the future if data could be found in a readily available fashion that they're right right now that is not the case and so we wanted to show those to you for instance the percent change the number of new jobs would be a great thing to know but right now there's not a good source of that so that may be something in the future that that could be the case and same thing with percent change in the number of housing evictions the really good information to have right now there's not a good data source for those so um what we wanted to do is to get some sense from the city council as to for you what would be the most important things to track so if you move on to the next one Claire um so again a little bit of voting we think this is not going to be quite as complicated um as the last one so out of these 15 we wanted to find out from council members what would be most important for you uh for the staff to track and we think that if you each select your top five we'll probably end up with you know eight nine ten you know in that range that would um be ones that could then reasonably come back in an organized way to report back to the city council and to the community in terms of tracking recovery so before we do that kind of virtual voting are there any questions or comments from council members yes um looks like council member what can followed by math is um yeah i guess i just i think some of this data seems pretty um you know consistent with what we already track and can be used as a proxy measure for some of the things that we're hoping to monitor so for me i think i'm just trying to understand what is the type of data that is more um i mean like we we we we track tot you know and we track sales tax and we track a lot of these things as we should as a city so i i guess i'm i'm not quite clear on what exactly this does yeah yeah well the the idea is to tie it to recovery so yes you do track it you definitely do track that historically um many of these have been tracked but to tie it to recovery so that say a year from now you'll be able to indicate whether you think the local economy has recovered based on these indicators i just i think i have one last clarifying question though if it is tried to recovery then um i think naturally some of them will fall into the areas of recovery in terms of for example sales tax revenues or commercial vacancy we're going to naturally like look at those as proxy measures for how we're doing as a community um and i don't know if excluding any really does as any favors really because we want as much data as possible so i i mean i maybe i'll open it up to my colleagues to see their thoughts on it but those are my initial kind of reactions sure okay council member uh mathies and brown oh council member brown i think council member mathies she i i lowered her hand but i think her camera was frozen oh okay sorry my internet was unstable oh okay um my impression is uh we were not just to throw out a few but choose our top five and i read the criteria is to pick indicators that are pretty available that are not going to be more work we're not going to start and try so forth so um i'm comfortable proceeding with that i did have a question number 11 is a percentage in the number of permits issued by any type 12 percentage change in new housing units permitted and 13 is percentage of all new housing units seems affordable now is that permitted or built because one of them is permitted and the other is unclear i mean it would be progress to know how many of the new housing units would be affordable of those permitted even if they are not yet built you see where i'm going with that yeah um i think that's a good question whether that would be probably permitted um if all new housing permitted would be one and then affordable permitted would be right 13 yeah it's a good clarifying question we both yeah so yeah it's you know up to the council's preference but if i said lee you you already collect this information so it seems to me we get it pretty regularly yeah on an annual basis we have to report this information to the state hdb the housing community development department and so um you know we have it at minimum on an annual basis and and we can produce that on a more regular basis as well for affordable you want both permitted and built laura did you want to add a clarifying comment oh i think you might be muted thank you i think it would be might be helpful for the council members to understand even if we do have all of this information um a subset of these would be used in the periodic reporting that we do back to council so you guys will see your focus areas that you've identified will have progress information at a brief descriptive level and then we will also have the key performance indicators that you identify in that periodic reporting information back to you you would still be able to get the full plethora of the data that planning and community development collects that ed collects that finance collects but this would come consolidated as a relate to this interim recovery plan progress good thank you laura okay council member brown i think you're next i just want to follow up on uh council member walken's point because i'm still uh a little confused as well about how to how to think about prioritizing these so if and if i pick five they get am i siloing well is transient occupancy tax more important than sales tax or admission you know like i i guess i'm just i'm still not entirely clear what the purpose of narrowing at least in certain areas are i can see mostly on the column on the right um perhaps some of those being a little bit harder to um you know gather that data and make sense of that data and and how that ties to recovery but in terms of the tax revenues i i guess i'm just not i'm not understanding and if i don't pick any of those and that's a whole entire you know i mean that's a huge piece of the you know the economic recovery picture and certainly the fiscal health of the city so i i'm still just a little you know i'm just not clear how that winnowing process would happen mostly with the um items on the column on the left one through eight one through seven i i think probably the maybe one explanation is to um to restate a bit what laura said um all the data points are being provided that the data is available but in the intent is to provide them together in one um in one report so that the council can see based on all of the data that that you have selected and the tricks you've selected um are we making progress in recovery so the idea is to not have so many that would um be a you know a challenge for staff as we're thinking about 10 but i guess i you know can turn it to laura or martin in terms of you know the number i think the other possibility process wise is to go through the process that you guys have identified see what the finalists are that the votes turn out to be and then if there are things that seem like they're just missing and we need to add then we can do that but i think trying to get into the actual vote process see where it takes you what the priorities come up to be and then if it looks like there's some from one through seven that don't make it that really fundamentally need to be there regardless then we can add them in if we try something like that yeah we could certainly do that uh by smear on wires going forward i'm going to give you five okay are you ready yep i like uh business licenses issued business licenses renewals business closures i realize the data is unreliable but if there is a way that we can get that and i would say across the city not just downtown percentage change in new housing units all types permitted and percentage change in number of housing evictions i know that's a hard one to get but i'm just hoping that somehow we can figure out to get it those would be my five thank you okay very good okay so she's got the ball rolling here okay mayor coming yeah i was just it took me a little time through our conversation but then um i did it you know kind of kind of realize that like yeah if we want to pick where our metrics for success you know and what do we think are those metrics and just kind of honing in on those um so yeah that makes it makes a lot of sense after our discussion so i'm going to go for it as well um i'm going to go with uh two um oh please it's 16 16 just appeared on here 16 i don't think it was one of one of the previously uh mentioned the percentage change in housing evictions was not previously included on this list oh no then that shouldn't be on that okay um yeah i think that would be when that data could be become available then right now there's no data available for that yeah i missed that that was that was Donna's uh okay yeah but if there's just no data available for that but it can be noted that when the data is available then then that could be something that could be provided there are two that would be my data becomes available while i've got them on that one as well yeah there was another one on that when the data is available to the other one was new jobs that was the other and there are two that there's just no data right there's right now so no way to report it really okay uh so then let's go to uh councilmember Matthews next so we'll go back to the order okay with an eye on how are we actually measuring our recovery um i would say number one percentage change in top number two percentage change in business licenses issued and i take that to mean both new and renewal that's correct um well those are actually two different data points but um so you could pick one of those and then we can we can talk about that because there's i know that one is one is new wins and ones renewals because that's very important too but i know they survive yeah exactly anyway yeah i would say business license issued yeah exactly yeah the percentage change in sales tax revenue i'm looking at our two big income things you would be in sales tax which have suffered the most um uh measurable our commercial vacancies that's something that we have a good handle on uh we were told by staff that that is available bonnie do you have a comment on that yes it is we have through loop net um we track that regularly and we can run actually run a report pretty much at any time i would say uh that's given our focus on recovery that's an important one and um the number of permits issued by tight very good okay and council member brown you would be up next one three eight nine and eleven okay and uh council member golder here up next i only had one question is what what's number five what's admissions tax four more movies one two three four nine okay very good uh council member wadkins i'll try to stand to the best of my ability so i um i appreciate this process and i feel like we don't want to um rush the metrics that could be the best metrics to assess our progress and um there are very specific metrics that fit very specific policies that we want to make sure we're aligned with so i hope that this is just sort of a sense but not necessarily um ignoring uh best practice as it relates to data collection and proxy measures for local government and economy and and um also trying to get um kind of like just point in time what's happening everything is happening really quickly so we want to always seek more information so i think i'll just i'm going to express my discomfort in this process having worked briefly for a data collection agency um but that being said i will um kind of share some of my priorities i do think we want to look at the um at number two um number eight and for sure number nine as well number 11 did i do five and number 13 actually i'm sorry number number 12 which i think covers number 13 and we've already heard from the vice mayor um let's see i think now i lost track because we weren't in order did the mayor did you already yeah that's the yeah you did that's everybody okay so so the ones that that have um the most interest are um looks like one two three i'm just looking at if it's three or more just the ones with the most interest one two three eight nine eleven could you highlight those in in a color cut clear just so we can see those a little bit easier the ones with career more just to get a better sense of of those because even one two three four five six something you really could have more i mean we were thinking of ten that that would not be too many for the staff to report on um as part of this interim recovery plan so um are there any we did get to ten total in terms of the ones that got exes by them although the rest of them got no more than two yeah i mean yeah you could as a council i mean you're going to be um tracking your sales tax and that certainly could be um that would be another one that you would be tracking this would be it'd be reported on if you wanted to and then your if you want to do ones with two then you would add number 12 as well laura do you want to comment on this i think i'm going back to what council member walk-in said one of the things that we can do at the um as we debrief this meeting is we'll go back to the top priority areas that you have identified and make sure that we actually have indicators to measure each one of those areas and when they're not we'll pick from this list or find additional possible ones to recommend to you and that's what you'll see in the November packet because there does have to be a measurement line of sight for the three to four focus areas that you selected to some sort of reporting mechanism for progress so we'll make sure that that exists and we can take and tie that so what this exercise then provides the staff is some preferences if these are the ones that are preferred by council and then there may be some additional ones as well good okay good thank you all right so then uh gloria i'm oh go ahead council member i just wanted to make one suggestion the league of california cities as well as the national league of cities also identify various metrics that local jurisdictions should be tracking so i just encourage sure as as we before but we reference best practice good okay uh we have some other hands up council member matthews did you have another comment well yeah we could go back i mean i i beg my fellow council members to pay attention to the sales tax revenues i mean if we are measuring recoveries that's a big one and similarly admissions tax you know that's a boardwalk for pp sake so um and that just plays out into tot and sales tax so that's a little other things but um and then the ones i don't know if they're so readily available our personal income um the homeless count happens um not as regularly so that may be a tough one the crime rate seems to be nothing that it caused for argument so um you know i think the things that we collect pretty routinely unemployment is something i think we get regionally anyway so if we could choose 10 things that we have some we do have 10 really credible the other ones that relate to what we're talking about so we certainly dare yeah so council member golder and then the mayor i was going to say almost the same thing is that the reason it was easy for me to choose and i didn't have any comments before is i felt like we're measuring economic recovery and so for me if i'm in economic recovery at my own house i measure my bank account i measure my income streams coming in and so like our big income streams bowls are easy to measure we could measure those once a month four times a year whatever it is and it's not going to take a lot of staff time from my perspective whereas somebody does things linearly abstract like the change in counter homeless people the crime rates the affordable units even the unemployment rate i don't know how often we have access to that and so i think if we're just trying to even the jet i'd urge for number six to yeah number five so i mean anything where we can just measure how much more money we're bringing in so that we can get back into got it okay um thank you mayor um to council member matthew's point um i do agree with both of those you know the sales tax and the admissions tax i think the one thing well yeah i know that retail obviously has been going down but that's not the only thing that we measure as as it relates to sales tax i do want to point out though to um my colleagues that one thing that's that's been tracking throughout the news during the pandemic is that construction actually hasn't slowed down so if we think about that and if we even think about the um you know buildings and proposed construction that's coming into Santa Cruz we haven't seen a stop in construction so if um permits issued is is an item is a you know a factor for determining recovery or not i mean i don't think it maybe our planning direction can speak to that but i know the national trend is that construction hasn't slowed down so it might not be as good of an indicator as opposed to sales tax and admissions tax if we're going to go with them so i just wanted to put that out there as well okay well i think we have a lot of uh input our own state counseling in the ground if you have another comment or i think or a comment i just want to make one quick comment yeah so yeah i mean of course it's a response to council member Matthews of course i think we should be tracking uh the sales tax and admissions tax isn't going to use up three of my five on the various tax revenues it's kind of back around to my question about why prioritize one of the taxes over the other i agree completely i kind of wish we could just put those in one category and then i just want to make a comment about the business licenses and i know they're both on here business license issued and business license renewals but i i think it's really important to think about those distinctions because when we look at business license renewals i mean we say we are about um you know a thriving local economy and you know local businesses but if we are not renewing a lot of those and new licenses are being issued perhaps to um you know out of town change or is that really a measure of health um it depends on what our you know our community values are so i just think that um that's a distinction that we really want to make sure we we are clear about when we get that data i just wanted to point out that economic development director has her hand raised as well thank you bonnie go ahead thank you um i i just wanted to make a comment about the business closures um and earlier in preparing for this we had some of these comments as well but the particularly that's uh not the most reliable data point i think we need to realize that it is it is really hard to track that particularly in real time um you know you can use utility data to help support that but it's it's it's not reliable as necessarily a snapshot in time um so we can come back to that um but as far as a metric you know a really reliable one it is not that i think laura you have a another comment yeah um i've been texting with our finance director so we can definitely add five and six to the um list just as a default okay good okay and uh council member mathies um regarding business closures i actually asked economic development about that maybe a couple weeks ago in reference to downtown and because you see the you know stores that are closed but it does turn out to be much more complicated and it gets back to the issue that council member brown raised so that business licenses licenses issues versus renews and but i think that is again something that's pretty um retrievable and i think most of the business licenses that don't renew are the small really small local businesses that don't make it and because we have so many really small businesses in Santa Cruz that that's a good chunk of it by impression okay uh vice mayor meyers yeah i'll just um i just wanted to reflect on um director limpscomb's comment and um you know i i guess i i feel like you know the expertise level in our you know between our finance department economic development planning um you know there's i think we i think we have sort of in place sort of a little bit of the pulse of so i guess long story short is you know i respect staff sort of bringing this back with maybe some refinements um again looking at some best practices through league of cities or you know um and and try to kind of maybe come with a proposal to us because i i think that's very helpful good thank you okay good thank you okay so i think we've got a lot of input that's some ideas from council members as to what you uh might like to see back and your um asking staff to provide some recommendations so good okay uh so we have uh one more hour before we are um supposed to be finished and we will be we're actually getting close to it does you need a break or shall we just power on through keep going keep going okay all right okay so um gloria i'm going to turn it to you okay so one of our objectives for tonight was to um work with councils is about the framework for decision making on requests that come up during this interim um recovery period and it is a request that are outside of the priorities that you've already established so you've established your priorities staff will come back with their work plan so you'll be moving forward but in this period most likely there will be new things that arise new requests that come up um the first question or goal will always be can it wake the regular budget cycle so if there's a new request that comes up a new project a new effort can you just handle it during the regular budget cycle and if you can that's going to be what you want to do but that won't always be the case and next slide so what we want to make sure is that um new requests are are at a minimum um you don't want to be revisiting new requests every week that's the purpose of having your priorities so um you want to keep them at a minimal and you want to um any new request to come forward you want to make sure that there's an analysis of the impact whether it's a fiscal a staff or resource impact so the criteria that we're developing is really going to be focused on new requests that require more than eight hours of staff time and I understand you have a policy for how council handles requests that require more than eight hours of staff time and that is that you have to have a council three council members um agree to to the request so when we look at these requests and in the next slide we're going to um look at the framework two ways um one some threshold questions and then the criteria so next slide so for each request these are some threshold questions that we would want you to consider so the first thing is it consistent with your recovery priorities so if something new comes up is it going to support your priorities consistent with the recovery priorities that you've already worked on to identify and then the second is um having other council support so you need to have three council members before you bring this item forward uh next slide and so then there's the criteria for council to consider these new requests uh and this um comes from input that we did receive from council again during interviews and also from some of the staff recommendations so the the first criteria and new request is is it urgent is it an emergency because if it's not urgent if it's not an emergency you can handle it during your regular budget process but uh as everyone's experience this year there are lots of emergencies and emergencies and certainly um at the time we were doing the interviews fires were going on so uh if something is urgent if it's an emergency certainly you're going to have to deal with it and part of your analysis is going to be um the funding impact where the funding might come from certainly on public safety issues like fires um you know you deal with the emergency uh and and deal with the second part later um the other criteria for consideration on new request is the fiscal impact so one part of it is what is it going to cost the city and where will that funding come from and what will we have to stop doing in order to do this new project or new effort um but there are also going to be instances where it could be new revenue or possibly new grants that come in uh and certainly on the federal side if new funding is available you still want to do the analysis because any new grant are there is there a match requirement um are there other resources that the city is going to have to consider in accepting new grant new funding setting priorities for the new funding so there's the fiscal aspect that you'll want to examine um the other criteria is mandates there are state and federal mandates um usually cities try to comply but mandates don't always come with funding so there will need to be some analysis is there a risk to the city if it does not immediately comply um what is the impact on other operations within the city yet a criteria is the impact on city resources so it's not always a fiscal impact sometimes it's a staffing impact the facility impact sometimes if if city resources need to be realigned it means other projects will be delayed or be funded so these are criteria that we heard from uh from the council and from the staff and so we wanted to offer these as um the criteria that you would use for council initiated request next slide and by applying these um then this helps the city manager um one um it helps him know uh your priority not only your priorities but the criteria you're going to consider helps him keep staff focused on the priorities uh it also is going to enable the city manager to set limits and also decline requests if they've not been vetted through the process if they don't have uh three council members supporting the request um and uh and also um it will help him continue to enforce that um council policy of three council members supporting the request before it even moves forward and I wanted to give martin uh opportunity if he wanted to chime in on uh on how this will enable him to move some of your request forward but also to ensure that you're staying focused on the priorities uh and not having multiple requests come forward that shouldn't be dealt with at this time uh yes uh and I think you you've essentially covered it but I think the idea here is to be able to um you know have some clearly understood criteria and and measures that we can implement equitably and fairly such that uh we can process request in a way that you know makes sense and picks into account of the various considerations and this consistent with sort of city council policy so that uh you know it's just a lot easier to to get clear direction and to prioritize projects as these requests come up and as uh uh was noticed uh by jan from the beginning we are busy sitting we have a lot of a lot of things going out a lot of requests a lot of really good ideas so this is always a challenge for us um and by having you know clear criteria I think that would be really helpful and we can then uh uh communicate it back to the council as requests come up so there's questions I think that'll be helpful to if everybody has an understanding of what they are it'll just be much helpful for us to to move forward with uh either processing the request or or or not so I want to give council a chance to to comment on the criteria um do you go back to that slide um the criteria um thank you I see a council member masses has their hand up but mayor um let's see where you want to just look at the slider do you have a comment I do could you go back to the previous slide just before this one actually go back to the next one because it has both the the threshold so those thresholds you need to pass through the threshold before you apply your criteria okay mayor go ahead so um just to start on the slide um one I think that as it relates to the threshold questions um instead of it is it consistent with IRP priorities which I think is good but I think at the same time will it impact those priorities because as we mentioned earlier you know there's it based on what we kind of broadly outlined today as our priorities there are also you know it it seems that those are really going to target a few specific departments so if there's for example uh something is proposed that's going to go to a department that is not being impacted by the workload that's going to be within those priorities then it seems like um council should have the flexibility to bring some move forward if it's not going to impact the work that's being done on those um priorities so that was one of the things I want to put forward and then um I think also within the criteria is you know um there's nothing really there's a lot of um mention of financial impact um but I think there also needs to be something included around community benefit because the policies that we um pass don't always result in a financial benefit because there's also community benefits and so I think that that should be a criteria as well as you know if there's something that's being brought that will also have a major community benefit then that should be a criteria for consideration for moving forward let me just ask uh martin to to maybe clarify something so the council adopts the budget you have your work program in the budget you have items that are that are approved um and then these would be things that would come up during the year these would be non-budgeted a non-planned non-scheduled items correct martin yes and and I think what the mayor is referring to are are items that uh do not impact priorities or uh that uh maybe they might not be necessarily related but they don't impact the priorities and so how would those be handled I think I think that's that's that's the question and I think there the criteria the criteria would be if it's going to require you know staff you know considerable staff time that's where that the council policy kicks in if it's going to require that additional uh time um and resources or funding then that's you know what kicks kicks that in as well um one and I bring that up because it's not like the community benefit portion is not mentioned in the criteria so I don't think it would be you know good for us to agree on something that wouldn't include that so for example with covid you know we you know drafted a you know emergency eviction protection ordinance that required more than eight hours of staff time you know we drafted a um price scouting ordinance that required more than eight hours of staff time I wouldn't say that those had a direct financial cost outside of the staff time that is required to have that taken care of but it did have more than eight hours of time time required for that and it had a community benefit and so you know all the criteria that we currently have listed really focuses on funding will result in new revenue but those are two examples of when council brought items forward that required more than eight hours of staff time that resulted in community benefit and if we agreed to everything under the um these priorities that wouldn't be something for example that we fit so I'm just using that as an example I think I think that mayor I think that would have fit under urgency you know that there was a community there wasn't urgency that that be addressed so I would have I would have brought it forward under the urgency for the community okay uh council member Matthew has been brown then what I'm just generally supportive of this approach I'll put it there okay and I you know I think it's easy for all of us to attempt it to add one more thing one more thing so I think we are in a period of furloughs and everyone who's doing even more work with less um it's a time that calls for discipline understanding there will be emergencies uh council member brown yeah um thank you I I'm just going to push back and reiterate the um the interest that mayor Cummings uh raised in um having community benefit the one of the criteria that could be considered because um the examples that he gave were could be could fit under emergency urgency but there are others that don't I mean the mission belt project you know there are things that come up that we have an interest in working with the community or particular segments of the community that may not take a lot of time but there is a clear community benefit and I feel like I mean we are we are representatives as council members of the public interest I would hope and so when there are things that we can do to help promote you know uh positive community relations then I think that that's that's a valuable criteria to use particularly for smaller projects that may come in somewhere around that eight hour threshold okay thank you uh council member Watkins and then by Senator Myers I do I appreciate criteria and I actually really like strategic planning and so I appreciate this whole effort and I think that there's been a lot of information provided and I think moving forward I think I a person would like to see it um broadly and then I believe I will have better a better sense of how it can can move forward I things are changing so quickly too there's such an important component around how are we constantly speaking the data to understand the need and and then adjusting and pivoting as well so I just don't want to lose um with any type of um kind of I think we need to have uh not like a strategic plan but like almost like an adaptability plan and so how are we thinking about this as a way that we can also be nimble as government at this moment because there's so many things that are underway I like structure in terms of criteria I think community input also um is needs to play a role in this um as well as the onboarding process for newer council members who can understand how this all flows in terms of their role as as policymakers so I think there's been a lot that's been provided this evening that I think can give our staff ample opportunity to come back to us with sort of a concept and idea of how to move forward in a way that will meet the needs of prioritization structure but also allowing us for um kind of nimble uh opportunity as well as as bringing in um kind of the new folks who will be coming on board in about a month or you know so those are just one of my thoughts thank you i'll vice mayor wires yeah I mean I I guess I guess my my my thoughts on this um I mean these seem reasonable to me I think that um you know we're gonna have an election in five days so you know this um depending on what happens you know these kinds of things can get you know kind of shaped very quickly from a new majority um but I think I guess kind of publicly stating that um you know we focused as a city we have a you know before us to keep our fiscal solvency to you know hopefully keep our employees employed um and I think kind of the intent in this is that as much as elections can bring um new energy new focus new projects new um uh you know new priorities you know that the intent with this is really to recognize that um absorbing those kinds of things this is really needs an evaluation process so I do think um the general criteria here outlined is is is fair um and I think it's realistic and and I think it provides a little bit of um a little bit of a kind of a reality check in terms of you know sort of where we are right now in terms of the recession and the covid issues and all the various things that we're trying to trying to juggle right now so I'm generally supportive of these and um I think it is important to um understand that even with an election change potentially that um you know our staff and the city manager specifically you know we we need to be guided right now and we need to um pretty much uh stay on course um because we if we get off course we can end up spending a lot of resources that we're not going to be able to to replace so those are my comments thank you okay can I add that okay I'll go ahead Martin I was gonna say that you know this does you know it does you know forces to really focus on the interim recovery plan I mean it does sort of recognize and acknowledge that we're in this essentially a an emergency type of period where that is going to be the focus and it really does impose you know a pretty high level of discipline here um uh for sure but I think that's again to recognize that it is sort of this uh we're in this sort of unprecedented sort of time in that our focus has to be on those immediate things given the the nature of what we're experiencing and where we're at so this as president here it does it does do that it does force us to really focus on those things and it means that there are some uh gonna have to be more saying no to constituents and to members of the public because we have to dedicate and focus on these things mayor go ahead so I you know I think with that when this comes back to council and obviously it'll be after the election I think it needs to be really clear with within these interim recovery planning priorities what departments are involved to what level and what degree because that's going to be really informative on you know work that's been done throughout this entire year that was really responsive to the public so for example as councilmember brown brought up you know um I've been working with Parks and Rec and with other community stakeholders on you know how do we reshape the story at the mission to include more of an indigenous perspective I think it would be um like detrimental to a lot of relationships we've been building over the course of this past year with the indigenous tribes and with our partners in the parks if we were just to say we're not going to work on this anymore because we're prioritizing you know downtown development workforce development and affordable housing you know and for example I've been doing a lot of work around public safety with the police that for example would not have fit in this criteria to have done that work in response to the murder of George Floyd and it was something that you know I said to the community I was going to be committed to working on and myself and the police chief have gone through the process of working with the community on bringing forward changes to police policy if we adopt this policy we would not have been able to do that work and we would have had to tell those people sorry that doesn't fit with our interim recovery planning so therefore we can't do that and I imagine we would have had more protests as a result of telling people sorry that's not in our interim recovery plan so we can't do that so there has to be flexibility built into this and that's why I think it's really important that we identify you know what are the departments that are going to be most impacted by the interim recovery plan so that we can figure out okay if they're going to be working on that what are the departments have flexibility what's some of the projects that we've been working on and by stopping those projects what's going to be the impact on the community because I think that that really we have to find that balance and I don't I personally don't believe that you know um for example you know that parks is going to be the this interim recovery plan is going to impact for example parks to the point where we can't keep doing the work at the mission or police to the point where we can't continue doing work with you know mental alternatives to mental health crisis response or you know ways that we can improve policing so I think that those things really need to be taken into account because there's been a lot of work going on and it can ruin some relationships with the community that we've been building over the past year given all the crises we've been facing okay let's see council member Matthews has a comment I think the incident you mentioned about Black Lives Matter and the work they're doing with the PD falls within that urgency category pretty plain pretty plainly in terms of the work with the mission bill that's worked that's well underway and headed I believe is well on its way I'll just give as an example council member Myers and I went to planning and said can we revise the B ordinance you know I actually didn't expect him to even get to that they were able to assign it to an intern and brought it to us but that was not urgent I mean we could have put that on the side so there again I think we you know we have to use their own judgment Laura did you have a comment you came back on I'm wondering if it would be more amenable if we moved is it consistent with IRP priorities to a criteria instead of a threshold I think that would address mayor Cummings and potentially council member Brown's concern so but it keeps the other criteria in play but it removes it from the threshold piece of it and Laura I'll say that's part of why I said impacts as well because it doesn't impact the interim recovery plan then you know it just becomes one of the criteria though so if it's one of the criteria and the council member initiated request that has three supporting council members has a really strong line of sight to one of our interim recovery focus areas and would really help us on on some recovery aspects it gets a little bit more weight than if it does not that's not to say it can't be considered anymore because it's no longer threshold it's just part of the other criteria so you're saying that the the sponsoring support would continue as a threshold and the IRP priority would be one of the criteria so we have one two three four five it would move yep exactly which does provide some additional flexibility by doing that right so there has to be you know a good amount of support political support to move forward with something and then they would have to sort of be urgent and or meet some of these other criteria oh yes council member Watkins I just looked over there yeah I apologize I'm sorry Laura can you restate what you're suggesting just to make sure that I'm following sure what I was hearing is the having the consistency with the IRP priorities as a threshold question so if it doesn't meet the interim recovery plan it's that's kind of almost a knockout knockout criteria and I'm hearing objections to that because there could be community driven work there could be you know event environmental work that things are going on in the in the United States that brings something sometimes it might have a sense of urgency so but if it if IRP is up at the top it wouldn't get through that filter so the only top level filter would be the broad sponsorship of the three council members it has that then it goes into the criteria and we move consistency with IRP down here with urgency fiscal impact mandate and and resources so it gets weighed with all of it but there's no quantitative value that if you don't have it you can't get into the process okay thank you that's helpful you're welcome yeah but I think the the fundamental idea is to issue the council and staff to be able to stay focused on on your recovery I mean that's that's the fundamental idea but of course you're a dynamic city and things will come up that are urgent and that have to be addressed of course okay I don't see any other comments on that oh the mayor yes please one other question so if you get advanced I know that there was um hit advance the slide Claire can you go ahead go to okay to this one city manager action yeah so I just want to get some clarification so by doing this would so by approving this for example with bullet number two I mean what that says to me is that it more or less gives executive authority over for the city manager to approve or decline whether something goes on the agenda regardless of the debt if it has the support of three council members or approval by the mayor and so I just want to get some clarification around that because I feel like the role of the mayor has kind of been removed from the process of being able to prove items going on the agenda and you know given that we're elected to represent people and bring items forward I just want to kind of understand how this fits with because I think it would be you know I can only imagine if like three council members or members of the public asked us to put something on the agenda and then the mayor has no you know ability to put an item on or to have that kind of you know um ability or for the council members too as well so I'm just trying to figure out how this fits in because it seems like you know we're more or less giving executive authority to them for the city manager to put items on the agenda talking about work that requires more than eight hours so that would be the first and if it does have the support of three council members then it would move forward through the process onto the agenda but if it does not have the support of the three council members or if it's work that is less than eight hours then it gives the city manager that the discretion to make executive decisions on the flow of work. Martin is is that correct? Yeah I think that's right I mean I think the I think the main difference uh mayor I think is that it would be the three council members uh sponsorship uh one from now and and then also the the criteria but I mean ultimately the mayor or policy you know gets to kind of set the agenda and and work to sort of do the flow but it's really it's really more about the work plan and how the work plan gets adjusted that uh kicks in this so this just kicks in the process to adjust the work plan and when to adjust it but not necessarily manage the agenda and in the flow of the meeting that's that's really the mayor's the mayor's role. So I guess the the three council members or the mayor would also be the criteria in the previous slide for for putting an item up for no I would be three council members I think for for new items I mean that is written as a way I understand it it would be three council members whether it includes the mayor or not. This is for new council initiated request. For new right for new right right but as far as managing the agenda again in terms of placement in terms of you know the regular agenda management process that's still within the purview of the mayor that's that's not suggested to be changed here it's really for new initiatives new projects. New projects or initiatives that would interfere with the work plan. And that's you know the policy council policy 6.9 it works that way already uh you know it applies to all council members so but you can you know you can put it on the agenda to make the request so that's still there I mean I think if you wanted to move forward the request you know that's okay so vice mayor Myers and then council member Watkins. Thank you I'm having a little bit of a flashback because I I think we I think there was a process a year ago where a lot of this was discussed and then there was a council policy that was adopted and then it was voted back down and we went back to the original policy and I guess I'm I'm just kind of reflecting that you know we're going to have some new council members coming on at some point you know not at some point but you know in the next 30 days and I I'm starting to feel like this has gotten what I thought was going to be a pretty straightforward discussion how I feel like has really gotten in a lot more extensive and I I'm I'm personally starting to feel kind of uncomfortable that we're making these decisions and we're we're basically setting the table for new members coming on and I'm just wondering if we can revert back to policy 6.9 and and and sort of delay this until after the election and and the new members are seated because we've already set quite a big table for them in terms of our priorities our metrics some other things and I I do think that it just seems this seems a little out of place to me this evening so I'm just wondering if there's the potential to try to bring this back once the new council's been seated thank you. I'm just saying that the yeah certainly up to the city council but you're not being requested to approve this today this would come back to you in the context of the the whole recovery plan goal as Laura pointed out before so it's you're not required to do it today but certainly if the council wishes to whatever whatever you'd like to do you can do that or if you want to bring it back after that. So the proposal is that you get feedback tonight yeah the final proposal gets brought back with the whole package okay sorry I lost track of that yeah okay I suggest maybe we I don't know we try to wrap it up yeah okay councilmember Watkins that I see the city attorney is also maybe wanting to say something no okay I'm just here if there are any questions of a legal prospect okay thank you action like this if there's a turnover on the council and the new council has different ideas about how these matters should be brought forward then obviously the new council will be able to make those decisions. Councilmember Watkins I think my my comments really just sort of echo what the vice mayor was sharing I I want to thank and acknowledge the the work that went into this this evening in regards to wanting to really just you know recognize the needs for prioritization and focus and unfortunately all the many projects will have to be you know curtailed absolutely and understanding that and what is the transparent process of that and I think that you know when I came onto council four years ago and I've shared this you know with Martine in the past there was already a strategic plan underway and you want to have I think we're at a we're clearly this time having we're at a window where opportunity for a new council to have their voice heard in this and to have ownership and commitment to whatever comes out of this so I think we can my my hope is that this can help inform sort of what a proposal could be to this newer council when seated and then allowing for additional input and buy-in and ownership so that there's adherence to it moving forward in the next 12 to 18 months if not I think there will likely be confusion and a lack of understanding and so I I do fully recognize the need to prioritize I know many communities have you know you know short-term and interim recovery strategies underway and I believe that's absolutely what's required here it for our city as well and I think the timing and the information that's already been received could really help inform the next iteration of this conversation without really putting kind of the the cart before the horse if you will okay I think we have all the input we're going to receive on this item so thank you for that so we can keep moving along so really the the last couple of very short pieces we did get some input from council members about ways to communicate the city's financial condition and the interim recovery plan with community we put those things on the slide and actually the very first bullet point on there a number of council members did in their interviews as well as this evening of course talk about the importance of orienting new council members and giving opportunity for to get their input into this and that's been a theme this evening as well so we wanted to acknowledge that as as part of this discussion so we're not asking for any council direction or certainly a decision on this but rather just for any other comments that there might be of any other ways in which the city could be communicating with the public about the financial condition and the interim recovery plan so just if there's anything to add to the slide now could be an opportunity to do that briefly and I see council member golder wishes to do that so I don't want to add to more staff time or any anything like that but I know I've expressed to the mayor and the city manager that one thing I think is important is including our youth and so if to the extent possible I'd love to start and it could be really small but just a kind of almost listening session where we're doing outreach meetings to the local high schools or just an open meeting a few times a year where where we're just kind of listening and it doesn't have to be everybody like I'd be happy to do it and maybe if one person wanted to join me and I don't want to take a lot of staff time for that okay thank you mayor to that point I actually met with 95th graders today so if you know about the member golder and during our city schools committee meaning I actually brought that point up too that there was a desire for there to be maybe not the same youth council but you know an opportunity for council members to meet with groups of high school students to kind of hear and gain their input so happy to follow up with you council member golder but I just want to let you know that I can express that with the city school committee earlier today and then I think that you know with regards to this list you know to the extent there can be engagement you know with the chamber I think with various contractors the unions the workforce development board because you know just letting people know who are involved with workforce development you know securing businesses develop business development sounds like construction that I think it's really important that they all know that we are as a city looking to partner with them as we think about our interim recovery and you know long-term recovery to bring jobs back in and and also I'd say you know I've been saying it before but also engaging with folks in the cannabis community to understand what are emerging opportunities for jobs in that sector as well so really thinking about up-and-coming opportunities and job sectors and how can we engage with the folks who are currently in our community to keep them here and and and help expand their businesses as well and I think that would also go for a lot of our green jobs as well good thank you okay any other I don't see any other hand raises uh okay so I think we're ready to oh yes vice mayor Myers you are muted right okay yeah I talked with our communications person about this and I think also Jan you and I talked about this when we when when we did our interview you know figuring out how just how we get how we get communication out there I think Jan you mentioned I can't remember what city you mentioned but you know some are doing it really well and if I know Elizabeth had a lot of really good ideas I mean I think it's really important I think people are really searching for this kind of information and really wanting to kind of feel collectively that they understand the where the city but the shape that the city's in and the and the concerns about services being cut and things like that so to the extent that we can I mean I I