Welcome to our 12 PM public portion of the closed litigation session of the May 14, 2019 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. In this part of the meeting, the council will receive public testimony and thereafter, council members will move to the courtyard conference room for our closed session. I could ask our clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council members, Crown? Here. Cover? Here. Liars? Here. Crown? Here. Matthews? Here. Vice Mayor Cummings? Here. Mayor Watkins? Here. So before we open public comment, which I see there's no member of the public here, I have a brief announcement. Our city attorney will provide a report on items listed on the closed session agenda at the beginning of our 12 30 PM session. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to our closed session? Seeing no one. I'll look for a motion on agenda item one to refer to closed session municipal war of agreement, Paradise Dogs. So move. Okay, and second? Second. Okay, I'll go ahead and second that. So we have a motion by Council Member Matthews, seconded by myself. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Now I'm looking for a motion on agenda item two referral to closed session 605 Front Street lease agreement with Carissa Cates, DBS, Santa Cruz Thread. So moved. Second. Okay, a motion by Vice Mayor Cummings, seconded by Council Member Cron. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That too passes unanimously. So we'll go ahead at this time then adjourn our meeting to our conference room as we go into closed session. Thank you, everybody. All right, well good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our 1230 session of the May 14th, 2019 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. I'd like to ask our clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member, it's Cron. Here. Glover. Here. Liar. Here. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice Mayor Cummings is currently absent and Mayor Watkins. Here. If you could, clerk, lead us to the Pledge of Allegiance. So at this time, we have an opportunity to meet some of our new employees. And we'll go ahead and start with our library employees. So if we could have Susan Nemitz come forward and introduce her new employee. I'm so excited to introduce Philip Bolton. Philip's actually been with us for four years working as a temporary worker and is now moving into the permanent ranks at our Felton Library. We're really excited because within the next year we're going to be open the brand new Felton facility. And we're starting to staff up and get some permanent staff there. Phillips lived around the world, was born in Great Britain, and has decided to settle in Santa Cruz, did get his degree from San Jose State in history. We're just really, really happy to have him on board. He's also a soccer fan. Corcoran. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Nice to meet you guys. Welcome, thank you so much. Maybe if we could have our public works director, Mark Dettel come forward and introduce his new employees. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. It's my pleasure to introduce two new employees. Right next to me is Aburto Zaragoza and Hernandez. He's working up at the Resource Recovery Facility as a recycling processor. He's born in Jalisco, Mexico. He currently lives in Watsonville with his wife and three-year-old son. He used to work in construction, doing residential floors, building walls, roofs. And he currently also has a job, a part-time job at Pizza My Heart. So you may see him in there cooking pizzas in the afternoon. When he's not working, he enjoys spending time with his family and going to our parks and spending time in the parks. He also likes to run, he's a runner, so please join me in welcoming Aburto. Next to Aburto is Tanner Barnes. He's a new environmental compliance inspector, works with our wastewater treatment facility. He goes out inspects the businesses and some of our major dischargers. He was born and raised in San Diego, currently lives in Santa Cruz, near the harbor. And has a brother that lives nearby in Soquel. Previous work experience includes working with kinetic labs as environmental scientist. And he also focused on watershed monitoring, storm water quality, sediment investigations with the harbors and lakes. He attended University of California Davis and has a major environmental policy and analysis and planning and also a minor in education. And when he's not working, he enjoys rock climbing, surfing and camping. And a fun fact, earlier this year he traveled to Morocco for the first time and spent two weeks learning from the locals, eating new food and discovering fun point breaks. So please join me in welcoming Tanner, as well. Welcome, thank you. Okay, and lastly, we have our director of water, Rosemary Bernard. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'm really happy today to be introducing two new employees to the water department. I'm going to start with Amy Roje. She's a brand new laboratory technician. Our water quality lab is fully staffed across in our fingers. We have challenges with turnover in that particular part of our organization. But we're really happy to welcome Amy. She grew up in a rural area in the Central Valley. When she told me it was Valley Springs, I actually knew where it was and she was quite impressed. And she went to college at UCSC and never left because who would want to leave Santa Cruz? She has a BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from UCSC. Before coming to us, she worked in biotechnology at Santa Cruz Biotech. And she also worked at a water pollution control plant over in the city of Sonneville as a lab in field tech. Sampling and analyzing pre-treated industrial wastewater and treatment plant samples. She has recently joined us as a temporary laboratory technician and competed to be on the list for the regular job. And she's thrilled and we're thrilled to now have her as a permanent addition. She lives in Soquel with her partner and in her free time she enjoys gardening, baking, reading, hiking, and backpacking. So please welcome Amy Roje. And next to Amy is Sonia Weeks, who's joined us as a utility services rep working in the Seattle Municipal Utilities Office over in our area. I think you might remember from when I was here last week, I talked about they take 45,000 calls a year and they deal with thousands of walking customers over the whole year. So this is one of our new employees who does that work. She has both AA and a BS in business and public administration. She's a business owner for ten years with a contract for California State Parks. And then she was born and raised in Napa, so she said she had a choice of being in the food industry or the wine industry. And she chose the food part, which will fit her in really well with all of the culinary experts we have in our customer service group. She has been involved in Twin Lakes Church for 15 years, local surf school. And she has a group of folks that she meets with once a week to talk Italian for an hour and a half, so that's really great. Maybe she can teach me. She has a 16 year old daughter and two cats and she loves to snow ski, surf. And she's getting over her shoulder injury and she just wants to thrive on her job and do it with integrity and care, which I really like and makes her a really great fit for our customer service group. So please welcome Sonya Weeks. Welcome to the city of Santa Cruz. So at this time, we'll go ahead and shift to our presentations and we have several presentations today. So we'll start with our first, and that is on recognizing June as San Lorenzo River Month. And we'll go ahead and invite Michelle Williams and Greg Pepping forward. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council members and staff. My name is Michelle Williams. I'm Executive Director for one more month of Arts Council Santa Cruz County. And we are so delighted to once again thank you for your partnership in ebb and flow. Which is not just a tremendous movement for our city, but a fantastic party as well. I also want to take this opportunity to thank you for your investment in the arts as a city. As we know from the Arts and Economic Prosperity Study, the non-profits arts sector in Santa Cruz County generates $38.5 million of economic activity every year and supports nearly 900 full time equivalent jobs. We are proud to support the city of Santa Cruz in this way and work to make our community stronger. Ebb and Flow is one of the ways we do this. Ebb and Flow, part of the magic of it, is that it helps so many organizations meet their discrete missions. It does so many things. It creates stewards of our river. It drives our economy. It strengthens partnerships, and we do it all making great art. Ebb and Flow is a little bit different every year. Last year for me, the highlights was the fire dancing next to the Soquel Street Bridge and also having the Vertical Dance Pioneer's Banda Loops dance off the sides of the buildings at the Tannery Art Center. This year we're focusing on place making at the Tannery Art Center and focusing on that part of the river right next to the Tannery. And it's going to be an extraordinary event with some really wonderful artists. And I'll tell you just a very little bit about all of them. So Jason Fan is a Bay Area artist and he is taking driftwood that has floated down the San Lorenzo River and ended up on Main Beach, which has been collected by the city and re-delivered back to the Tannery Art Center. And he is making giant life-size sculptures that are like human nests that are going to be really stunning. And we're doing community builds as part of making that happen. And if you drive by the Tannery, we've installed a sister installation that's very similar to this one that he made in Marin that's already up. So you can see what sort of thing is going to take shape and that's going to be happening over the next few weeks. We're also working with Wes Modes, who is a local artist and UCSC lecturer, who has spent close to a decade documenting the stories of people who live adjacent to rivers over the last ten years. And he has interviewed and filmed more than a dozen people who live next to the San Lorenzo River. Or are there often including fishermen, environmentalists, Tannery and Ross Camp residents and kids who regularly play along the river banks. And his stories are going to be incorporated into multiple parts of ebb and flow. And then Shade Church is this extraordinary international artist who makes these giant life-size sculptures inside of places. And he does them with wet clay and then they slowly degrade over the course of the installation. You can see them morphing and changing, much like our environment and our history and what not. And so this is happening at Radius Gallery up through July 7th. So that's going to be an extraordinary installation to see at the beginning, the middle and the end of the installation. And then finally we're working with Molly Katzman in Tannery World Dance. Molly is creating a multimedia dance piece incorporating excerpts from West Modes River Stories. And all this you can experience at First Friday, June 7th at the Tannery. This year's festival is focusing on that river segment around the Tannery. And we like you to think of it as an eco-conscious block party for the river. And it's going to have fantastic artists, musicians and performers, family friendly activities, food trucks and beer. We invite you to bring your friends, bring your family and come celebrate the river, the Tannery and creativity at Ebenflow. One of the things that the only thing that makes Ebenflow work is incredible partnership. It takes not just a village but an entire community with so many wonderful partners, including the city. And one of the most important partners is standing next to me at the Coastal Watershed Council, Greg Pepping. Thank you, Michelle. Good afternoon, mayor and council members.  And as I do that, say thank you for the acknowledgement for the month of June for the proclamation from the mayor to name June 2019 San Lorenzo River Month. The river is actually the reason that Santa Cruz became a community in the first place. And many of us have forgotten that. Many people still feel a connection to the river, but your official proclamation of June as river month helps people remember that. And it helps them build an emotional connection to the river, a personal connection to nature, and that's as important as it ever was. It's as important as it for individuals, for all the neighborhoods next to the river. It's important for community health overall. And that's what part of this month is part of. So we get to slow down and go a little bit slower into the fast pace of this world today, right next to a river that goes right next to downtown. So the proclamation that the mayor has signed has a bunch of where as is I want to share a couple of why's. Why is the Coastal Watershed Council focused all of our energy on the lower San Lorenzo River?  It adds economic vitality. It means cleaner water, improves water literacy so we know where our water comes from. It's better habitat and it's safer parks and public spaces for people to enjoy. And so that's what part of this, that's what this is part of. Our effort is to get 2,500 kids to the river this year. I'm wearing a watershed ranger badge. Some of you have been sworn in officially as 2,500 kids have. So we bring kids to the river and we want the river walk to be a place for every kid and every family. We want every square inch of river habitat to be restored. We were just this morning with Coastal Commission staff along a part of the river walk restoring habitat. And we're working on that throughout the year and then every drop of water. So every kid and every family member, every square inch of habitat and every drop of water are focused. And we believe if we focus on the lower river so that that vision that we've heard the community wants of a thriving urban river front, if we can succeed doing that in the lower river, then the entire 30 miles of the river will benefit. The entire 137 square mile watershed will benefit. So that happens a lot with city parks, city public works, the water department and others, and through partnerships. So then when we bring arts in, it just gets more fun. It gets more dynamic. It gets more interesting. People come in through the side door into science and learn about the river that way. And ebb and flow is a perfect example of that. So please join us at ebb and flow at the tannery on June 7th. And thank you for your leadership. And I know that even the agenda has other issues related to the river. And just this agenda for City Council today is a perfect example of how many ways the river touches this community and how your leadership includes the river. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation, your advocacy and work and sharing with our community and us the upcoming events. I won't go into the where as is because you were able to cover that in the wise. But I will say the final statement which is that I, Martin Watkins as the mayor of City of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim the month of June 2019 as San Lorenzo River Month. And encourage all of our residents to learn more about the San Lorenzo River and to participate in the river festivities throughout the month of June. And especially during the ebb and flow River Arts Festival on June 7th, 2019. So I'll go ahead and come down and bring you the proclamation. Thank you. Thank you. Michelle, who did your photography? Those really, really nice pictures. Several people, but mostly Crystal Burns. Thanks. All right. Well, thank you very much and we'll go right on to our next presentation which is a proclamation declaring May 20th through 27th, 2019 as National Beach Safety Week in the City of Santa Cruz.  We're looking for him. We could go ahead and pause this presentation and move on to the next while we wait. Okay, let's go ahead and maybe do that. So we'll come back to this one and we'll now move on to our third presentation, which is the Mayor's Proclamation recognizing the week of May 14th, 2019 as Public Works Appreciation Week. And we have Mark Dettel, Director of Public Works here with us. Mark Dettel, Director of Public Works. I'd like to invite Josh Banger, Senior Civil Engineer with the City, as well as Rodney Cahill, who's the President of Local Chapter of APWA up here. National Public Works Week is an opportunity to thank the employees that provide you the daily services that typically you don't think about if we're doing a good job. You don't think about your trash being picked up or recycled. You don't think about the streets being swept. You don't think about your wastewater going down the drain and going away. It's almost where the magic happens. And I'd like to thank the employees. There's a lot of work that goes behind that to make that happen. And if we're doing our job right, we're not interrupting your daily lives and we're actually making it better. And so this is really a week just to recognize that and just acknowledge the effort that goes into that. It doesn't happen automatically. There is a lot of work behind it. And we have a lot of people that put in a lot of hard work. It also includes water department. Water is a public works, you know, provider. We just separate them in the city. But I'd like to embrace the water department as well in this effort. But I'd like to turn it over really to Josh to say a few words, as well as Rodney to make a presentation. So, and then I have a closing statement. Yeah. Mayor murders the city council. I was up here last year as member of the board of APWO, which I still am. But this year we're fortunate to have our president here for the local chapter to address you. And I'm really just here to hold the poster this year. Thank you, Josh. And thank you, mayor and city council for proclaiming next week to be public works week. This poster is a, it's a game, game board concept. And it shows the many responsibilities of public works professionals who design, build and maintain and manage the city's infrastructure. And Santa Cruz is very fortunate to be served by an award winning public works department who have engineering design, traffic engineering, stormwater management, streets, resource recovery, waste reduction. Wastewater management, flood control and parking just to name a few. And the city staff are enthusiastic, knowledgeable, smart and innovative. And their service to our community improves the safety and cleanliness and quality of life for our citizens. And it's my honor to present this poster and thank the public works team for their work. Thank you for your presentation and for the poster. I do have a mayor's proclamation and similarly I won't read all the where as's, but I'll just sort of briefly cover the final statement. Which is that as mayor of the city of Santa Cruz, I do hereby proclaim May 19th through 25th as National Public's Week, Public Works Week in the city of Santa Cruz. And encourage and urge all citizens to join with the dedicated employees of our public works department in activities and events. Celebrating the important projects and daily services of public works professionals, and to recognize the substantial contributions that they make to protecting our health, safety and quality of life. So I'll come and give that to you. Thank you very much. Just one opportunity to participate in that. We want to remind people on Wednesday, May 22nd. Between 1215 and 1245, we are having a ribbon cutting of the new San Lorenzo River Trestle Bridge, the pedestrian path. Just a few months ago, we were in the groundbreaking and it's already been completed. We're getting ready to open it, so please join us for that ribbon cutting. It's a great event. There's free parking down there right by the beach area. You can just say you're coming to the ribbon cutting and it'll let you park. But please join us for that ribbon cutting. It's a celebration of a quick success, which we're very proud of. So I don't see our fire chief here quite yet, so he's on his way. So we'll go ahead and move right along and we'll have our next presentation. And before we do, I'll just, if I could, bring your attention to the poster to my left. And the students that were here visiting City Hall and our fire department yesterday created a poster for us with symbols that they felt reflected the city of Santa Cruz. So that's their images that I promise to share with you all, with the community. And if you have a moment to take a look, please do so. Really lovely symbols there. Okay, so right now we'll go ahead and move on to our presentation. And we have our climate action plan annual progress update. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members. I am Tiffany Wise-West, the sustainability and climate action manager for the city. And just waiting for my slide deck to come up here. Okay, so we do have a lot to get to to share with you today on our progress on the climate action plan. I wanted to note that this is the 10th year that the climate action program is in existence and to thank you for your continued support of the program. All right, to start out, just to orient you to the plan and what it contains. So our climate action plan, we are trying to achieve 12 climate action milestones. They are tracked through 13 indicators or target metrics from a baseline year of 2008 and the plan sunsets in 2020. And in order to achieve those goals and those targets, we have 254 actions specified in the plan. The plan of course spans energy, transportation, water conservation, tree canopy and waste reduction. And there are a number of folks that help to implement the plan. First of all, I wanted to mention that we meet every other month with department heads to review major work and decision making. Notably, a department head subcommittee is participating in the health and all policies endeavor where sustainability is one of the three pillars. So you will be hearing much more on that throughout the year. Second, our community climate action task force consists of members of the community that are interested in this work as well as vice mayor Cummings. Our new task force was just set at the beginning of the year and some of the notable contributions from that committee for 2018 include our keep it cool energy conservation campaign, an anti-idling campaign, some work on that in promotion. A lot of work from this group on supporting our climate adaptation plan update in terms of testing activities and providing some assistance at outreach. We have a new working group as part of this group that's looking at green leases and rentals. And they continue to participate in the scoping of our climate and energy action plan 2030, which we will be embarking upon next year. We also have an internal employee sustainability team. A few things that this team does regularly is prioritizes and awards carbon fund projects and we give out about $63,000 per year. We also, as you probably have noted on your budget, we also complete an evaluation to determine which CIP projects implement the climate action plan and for the first time this year the adaptation plan. And you can see there are a number of other things that this internal team has worked on over the past year. I also just wanted to share with you some of the key divisions throughout the city that we work with to implement the plan. And then outside of the city, in addition to our task force, we collaborate with the Green Schools Committee, the County Commission on the Environment. I chair the Central Coast Climate Collaborative and we are active participants in the Monterey Bay Regional Climate Action Compact. Okay, so these symbols that we've developed are what tells you at a glance where we're at with each target. Green says that we have achieved the goal. If we're on track to meet the goal, it's orange and if we're not on track, it's red. We should be, if we're assuming a linear pattern since 2008, we should be at at least 83% progress on any of these goals at this time to be on track. We have three milestones that we have achieved, targets rather that we've achieved, five that are on track and five that are not on track. And of those 254 actions, a third have already been completed and another third are either ongoing or in progress. I think it's really important to mention at this point that when these goals were developed, because of our environmental ethic in Santa Cruz, the baseline starting points for these metrics were very high and the goals are ambitious. So as you note, we aren't necessarily going to achieve all of our goals. All right, so let's jump right in and there's a lot here, so I will go quick, but I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have at the end. It is unfortunate that I need to start with this slide because we have had to use different sources of data to track this particular milestone that are not exactly apples to apples. So you'll see some decreases, some increases here. So I'm not very confident in the data, but I did want to present this to you and what we're looking at here is a reduction in municipal energy use, but that's for buildings only, so it does exclude wastewater treatment, water treatment and conveyance and straight lighting. We do spend about $3 million a year on electricity. I will show you that breakdown in just a moment, but I want to share with you three major projects that potentially could get us to our goals, and that is our California Energy Commission Loan Project, so those are energy efficiency projects. We have not yet realized the savings from those yet in 2018, so this year we should realize those. We also have the California Energy Commission Grant Project that is installing advanced building controls at both the Annex Building and the Police Department. Again, haven't realized the savings on those yet. And lastly, our Public Works Facilities Division is finalizing some on-bill financing for some additional energy efficiency projects throughout the city. And here's what the breakdown looks like in terms of costs. I will point out that between wastewater treatment, water, wastewater collection and public works, that accounts for about 75% of our costs of about that $2.8 million, $2.9 million. And as we continue to make investments in energy efficiency, we may not necessarily see a commensurate reduction in the costs because there are escalators on our utility costs year to year that we are experiencing. I do want to highlight a couple awards that the city is receiving for its energy efficiency work. We've learned that our Facilities Division of Public Works and notably our work by our energy project coordinator, Andy Shatney, that the city will be receiving a 2019 Clean Air Leaders Award.  And that's due for primarily our lighting retrofits that really aggressively were pursued last year. Secondly, I'm really proud to mention that for the first time the city will be achieving the 2019 Full Beacon Award. So this is an award that recognizes an agency's holistic approach to addressing climate change. Participating agencies are required to complete each of five elements to win a Full Beacon Award. This is our sixth beacon, but not only the first Full Beacon Award. So again, big props to our Public Works Facilities folks for really being aggressive in taking advantage of the low-hanging fruit on energy efficiency and some of the not so low-hanging fruit. All right, our next one is to expand energy efficiency programs to 30% of homes and businesses. So those are households and businesses. And we do that in three different ways. We track the number of permits that go through the Green Building Program. We track Central Coast Energy Services jobs in Santa Cruz, so that's a low-income weatherization provider. And for the first time, we're including Keep It Cool, our energy conservation campaign for businesses to keep their doors shut when they are running AC or heat. And so you see, this is a difficult one for the city to really make some real impact on. We did have a nice uptick from the Keep It Cool campaign last year where we had 215 businesses sign on. And again, our Climate Action Task Force and Santa Cruz Climate Action Network were very instrumental in the progress with Keep It Cool. So we're looking at about 1,700 homes and businesses. Our next metric pertains to solar, and there are three targets. First is to achieve 5,000 installations of residential solar. Last year was our biggest year. We had almost 500 installations. This year, that was cut in half. And it's not entirely clear why that is the case. I am expecting that PV installations will increase because the 30% federal tax credit starts to step down at the end of this year, which is pretty significant. I also wanted to note that in 2020, the new California Energy Code will require all new single-family residences to be installed with solar PV. So that is something that will also help us, although we are almost to our sunset year. One other thing here is that we are finalizing the contracts. I believe they are just inked with grid alternatives, who is a low-income solar provider. And there are six installations that will be installed through that provision of our CDBG funds for that purpose. The next one is to increase solar to 500 businesses. Again, last year was our banner year with 10 systems installed. And this year, in 2018, we only had two systems installed. I should mention that the source of both this and the residential data is the California Solar Initiatives interconnection database. And again, really hoping that we'll see some uptick here with federal tax credit going down. Next is to provide 33% of municipal building load. So again, excluding wastewater treatment and water treatment and conveyance as well as streetlights with renewables. And how we have defined renewables is both our electricity from methane that's produced at the wastewater treatment facility and goes through our cogen to be produced into electricity and our electricity from solar. You can see on that pie chart on the lower left side kind of what our breakout is, what kind of fuel we use in terms of natural gas and electricity as well as renewables. And you can see that we have been chugging along with solar installations. Our last one being at Bay Street Reservoir in 2017. In 2018, we just realized the first impact of that, so you can see an uptick. We are also in the process of developing power purchase agreement, RFP, for expanding our solar facilities at the corporation yard and the landfill. Couple really good decisions made by the city to enable those really highly impactful projects. Number one, the city applied for the best solar rate that's ever existed in 2017 and was able to get grandfathered in for these two projects. And number two, one of the limiting factors at the corp yard was the installation of a transformer, which through our 16 level two stations that are in development, we're getting that transformer upgrade for free from PG&E, which was estimated at about $100,000. So some good decisions made to help us to achieve this goal. And if we do get those two projects installed, we should be very close to achieving this target. Sorry, wrong way. This is one of our goals that we've achieved is to partner with UCSC on 25 sustainability projects. We're at about 31 right now. A number of different projects, many of them pertain to the Green Wharf. There's been some tree plantings and some new collaborations with the Coastal Science Policy Graduate Program on our Resilient Coast projects and collaborating with the Sustainability Office on their staff sustainability leadership certificate. Next is to ensure the rail corridor supports bike and ped use. And how we track this is through the percentage of the 3.5 mile trail that is within the city limits that's funded either for design or construction. And so we have about 92% of that funded. There has been no change since 2017, so this has stayed static. But as Public Works Director Mark Dettel shared with you on the 22nd, we'll be having a ribbon cutting for the Trestle Trail, which is a major improvement in achieving this goal. Next, with respect to water conservation, we do not have specific metrics for water conservation, but we do point to a few different, a couple different things. On your left, you can see residential per capita water usage. The green line is Santa Cruz, red is Central Coast and blue is California. And as you can see, our residents continue to use much less water than other scales. And on the right-hand side, we track what is our annual water savings compared to 2013, which was when we were released from our emergency rationing. And as you can see, we continue to conserve water about 21% for 2018. So again, big kudos to our community for continuing to conserve water without really having to. Next is achieving 75% total waste diversion and maximizing organic waste. So we have had a decline after many years of an upward trajectory on this. We're at 65.5%. Again, we're trying to get to 75%. Our refuse division indicates that that decrease is most likely attributable to a pickup in the economy, more building and construction debris, and maybe very minimally China's national sword policy. But that is not the driver of this just decrease according to refuse. I think it's also important to note that the state most likely will require food waste collection from both commercial and businesses and handling of that in 2022. But we are waiting for the final version of SB 1383 to determine what will be required. And there's been a lot of conversation on what that looks like. Next is to increase bike ridership to 12% of local commutes. We had a 10% target that was achieved in 2016. We then up that to 12%. How we measure this typically is by the five-year rolling average of the American Community Survey. That shows right now it shows a decrease over the past two years. However, the Census American Community Survey was done on a one-year time in 2017, so not the five-year average. They occasionally do a one-year point count. And that showed for 2017 that we're at 13.2% ridership, which would mean we would achieve our stretch goal of 12%. As you know, we've been implementing significant infrastructure, green lanes, the jump bikes, which isn't reflected here yet really, and transportation demand management programs that are going to be coming online later in the year. This does give us the second highest bike commute mode split in the country right now. And I think you all know it's bike month. You have two and a half more weeks to get your five rides in and get a chance to win 7500 bucks. Just had to plug that. Next is to switch 20% of cars to low carbon fuels. So what we're talking about here are electric vehicles and hybrids together. They represent 8.1% of cars. 1.2% are electric vehicles. And contrast that with the state, which is about 4.7% electric vehicles. You know, although we're not going to reach this goal, it looks like there is a lot of activity going on in this space. The city has led two proposals to the VW settlement agreement. Organization electrify America and has been successful in bringing two to four DC fast chargers and an unspecified number of multifamily housing charging to the community. We are having a kickoff meeting on that later this month. Right now Monterey Bay Community Power has generous incentives available for electrification. Both personal vehicles as well as fleet as well as the air district has their regular incentive program going on right now. Another thing that I want to mention regarding this is that the city does have in development. I already mentioned this, 16 DC fast, I'm sorry, 16 level two chargers and two DC fast chargers going in at our corp yard to prepare for the electrification of our fleet. As you know, Governor Brown has set a really aggressive goal and our region will need to do its part to get to this. I also wanted to share with you, I think this came up last week about what do we have in terms of alternative vehicles. And we have many hybrid vehicles, some electric vehicles. And I want to make sure that it's clear that there are not electric vehicles available for every use case that we have here at the city. And we have piloted in the past hybrid refuse trucks, for example, that haven't worked out. So we are moving forward on this kind of thing. We don't have an electrification plan, but that will be part of our climate and energy action plan next year so that we have explicit goals to work towards.  And I apologize for the error on that. One other thing that I think maybe isn't clear also is that we actually tax ourselves 5% on our fleet fuel. So on those costs, we spend about $900,000 a year on those costs. And so 5% of that goes into our carbon fund to reinvest in carbon reducing projects. I should mention that that amount that we spend fluctuates greatly depending on what the market is and what the cost is for gas and diesel right now. Okay, moving along we have 175 green businesses trucking along to make that target. This is the first time we've been able to report on urban tree canopy, so we are to increase canopy by 10%. So that the goal is to go from 36.4%, a very high starting point I might add, to 40% tree canopy. We're at 38.2 right now, so moving along on that. We completed this analysis with the Center for Integrated Spatial Research at UC Santa Cruz. And we are in the midst of planting 500 trees from our Cal Fire Grant. And our RFP for a GIS based urban tree inventory is out on the street right now. All right, our last one is to reduce single occupancy vehicle commutes 10%. And you see here we have unfortunately had an increase. And again, this is the five year rolling average of the American Community Survey. It's not entirely clear why that is because if you take a look at our mode split, everything aside from carpooling, we are beating every other scale, whether that's County, California, and US. As you know, the TDM program will be coming online later in the year. And so I think that we will see some improvements in this as we move into our sunset year. Finally, our community greenhouse gas emission goals. We are able to achieve our 2020 goal a year and a half early due to Monterey Bay Community Power. So that green slice that's circled, 59% of that goes away because of Monterey Bay Community Power, where the carbon content is zero. And we are moving along towards our 2050 goal. A couple of things here, it is very likely that our goals will change with our new climate and energy action plan. It's likely that we will adopt a carbon neutrality by 2045 goal to be consistent with the state. And one other thing here is we do have our 2018 greenhouse gas emissions inventory in progress. Not all the data are available for 2018, so we were unable to prepare that in time for this meeting. Okay, just some final thoughts here as we, as I close out and I look forward to your questions is that, you know, the urgency of this issue is very real. And we definitely are going to need to be more creative and strategic going forward in our investments.  Developed collaboratively with our community and have the experience to develop tools to be able for us to look at different scenarios of investment and what are their corresponding impacts. Again, I look forward to working with you all on this. Going forward, I think that the health and all policies work that's happening right now will really set us up nicely for that work. Next year and I'll take any questions that you might have. Thank you. Well, thank you, Tiffany. Thank you for the annual update and presentation and just for your tirelessness and work and this issue for our city. It's outstanding. I just want to remind the council that we're not taking any action today. This is a presentation and I'm sure we could go into each of these individual items and topics in depth and for the entire afternoon. But knowing that you're available for us, that if we have really wanting to kind of dive deeper with you, we can maybe set up a time to do that. And if possible, you could email us your slides. Of course. But since we're on limited time today, I'll just say is there any sort of brief questions or comments from council members? Council Member Brown? Well, I do have quite a few questions. I want to thank you for all of your work. This is a great presentation that just scratches the surface of all of the amazing work you do. I just want to appreciate that. And I do have a bunch of questions. I'll make a time to talk with you. But perhaps for the benefit of those who are watching and paying attention, if you want to say anything about the key areas that you see for really getting more aggressive and making progress for the coming years, it would be great to hear that just as an umbrella kind of. Absolutely. You actually are allowing me to mention something, a couple of things that I forgot. So the two major target areas are transportation electrification and next we'll be building electrification. Those are high impact areas. The rest of the region is going to be pursuing that. Monterey Bay Community Power has an electrification plan in development right now that's going to help us to set targets. And then they will be providing incentives and we will work with them on what those incentives look like to make the jump to electrification. As I noted previously, that's already in place for transportation and should continue and potentially be expanded. But those are the two major areas that I see going forward we will need to focus on. Great, thank you for that. You're welcome. I have a brief question. Are there any constraints or currently are there any air quality monitoring programs in the city? And if there aren't, what are some of the big constraints around that? I don't know of any air quality monitoring going on. That's not to say there isn't any going on. The Air District must be doing something, however, because we have disadvantaged communities and low income communities that are designated by their air quality. We do not have disadvantaged communities per that definition in Santa Cruz, but we do have low income communities. So I can check into that and find out what exactly is going on from the Air District. I don't know that. Great, thanks. You're welcome. All right, Councilor McCormick. Thank you. While you anticipated some of my questions, thank you so much. I was going to ask about the relationship with UCSC, but you're on it, you know, getting your PhD up there. I just want to thank you for having those relationships that you built all these years and some of that is panning out. I love it. With respect to the vehicles, thank you for taking that up. We said 20 vehicles out of 800 that was mentioned. What is the possibility of electric vehicles in that department then? Out of all 800, how many could be electric? Yeah, I talked to our public works folks about this. And of the passenger vehicles, there are an opportunity for about 20 right now that could potentially be shifted to electric vehicles. In addition to the 20 we already have? The 20 we have are Prius. We have seven EV Leafs, and we have a number of electric maintenance vehicles and street sweepers. So that would be, in addition to the seven Leafs that we have would be an additional opportunity for 20 more. And the solar, I'm hearing for the courtyard and the landfill projects, how do we make that happen? It's my understanding that public works is working on those RFPs right now. There is a time factor involved that we do need to get those done by the end of the year, and I believe it's their intention to do so. So at least break down by the end of the year. That sounds great. I think the council would share our hope that that happened because that's a really good thing. Yeah, that's the plan. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Well, thank you so much for the presentation in the annual update, and we'll keep at it. All right. Well, indeed. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, so at this time we'll go ahead and go back to an earlier presentation that we have on our agenda, which is the mayor's proclamation declaring May 20th through 27th, 2019 as National Beach Safety Week in the city of Santa Cruz. And as our fire chief walks up here, I'll just also share some appreciation I have for the Santa Cruz fire department who is always willing and open to have students from throughout our county come and experience what they do and thank them for their time in sharing what they do and all the good work they do for our community to our youth. So thank you for that. Thank you very much, and I appreciate you taking the time to be here for today. So as you know, the summer months are a busy time for tourism and just engaging in beach activity, and we want to put it out there in a proactive way that we want you to be safe. We have a short public service announcement that we filmed last summer, and we're going to play it. And then the USLA, which is the United States Life Saving Association, which is the parent ocean lifeguarding organization within the US, they declare Memorial Day to be the kickoff for water safety. So I'm going to play. Since 1965, more than 100 people have lost their lives off our beaches. That's nearly two people every year, and that's two people, too many. Don't be next. Don't be next. Don't be next. Swim with a buddy. Swim near lifeguards. A bay posted signs and flags. Don't be next. So this was a public service announcement that we made in conjunction with MySafeCalifornia, their nonprofit. We also made another public safety announcement about the toilet bowl, and we're going to be pushing this out on our social media as well as to our business partners in the community. And every year, kicking off on Memorial Day is Water Safety Week, and we have a list of recommendations that are in the proclamation, and that's learn how to swim. We have a number of programs within the city that can help you with that. Swim near lifeguard. If the odds of drowning on a beach that has a lifeguard in place are one in 18 million, you're five times more likely to have a drowning incident on a non-lifeguarded beach. Swim with a buddy. Check with the lifeguards for the ocean conditions for that day. Use sunscreen and drink water. A bay posted signs and flags. We have a number of them in the city, especially on West Cliff. Keep the beach and water clean. Learn current safety. We have some handouts for that. Enter the water feet first and wear a life jacket. We have a number of incidents every year where people dive. And unfortunately, a lot of times there are some catastrophic consequences to that, and unfortunately alcohol can be involved. So we put this out there to try and raise awareness. If you come to the beach, go to the lifeguard tower. They know what the conditions are. They can tell you where to swim, where not to swim, and they can offer advice for what to do safely during that day. Thank you, council member and mayor. I'm Jill Bates with Parks and Recreation, and I am the supervisor for the junior lifeguard program. We work hand in hand and cooperatively with the fire department. We share our staff, and this is a very important kickoff to the summer for us. It's prevention. So we want everyone to go out to the beach, but be educated, have fun, and make informed decisions. So we have over 900, almost 1,000 kids registered in a junior guard program. And this organization, MySafeCalifornia, we partnered with last year, and they helped to teach over 200 children in our junior guard program CPR, a hands-only CPR. And we're going to continue that this year. So once again, thank you for your time. And remember, don't be next. Thank you so much. And before you go, I have a mayor's proclamation here, and I won't go through all the where-as-is, but I will say that as the mayor of the city of Santa Cruz, I do hereby proclaim May 20th through 27th, 2019, as National Beach Safety Week in the city of Santa Cruz, and urge everyone using our beaches to enjoy themselves at the beach this year while also taking appropriate measures to protect themselves and their children. So thank you for the work you do to do that as well. Thank you. And also, I have some inquiries into MySafe. We just re-edited this video about getting it into some different languages so that we can reach more of the population that's out there. Okay. So last but certainly not least, we have a couple of presentations from our parks and recs. We'll go ahead and invite Tony Elliott, our director of Parks and Recreation, for a proclamation recognizing Kids in Parks Day and addition a 10-minute walk to the park campaign. All right. Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. Tony Elliott with Parks and Recreation. I'm also with Judy Russell with Santa Cruz Public Libraries here as well. This Saturday, May 18th, is the ninth annual Kids to Parks Day, which is organized and promoted by the National Park Trust. Kids to Parks Day empowers kids and encourages families to get outdoors to visit parks across the United States. The City of Santa Cruz has taken significant efforts over time to ensure that more than 1,700 acres of parks, facilities, open spaces, and beaches are available to residents. In addition, the city has a long-standing tradition of embracing and encouraging a diverse array of recreational opportunities. First recorded surfing in North and South America to some of our unbelievable facilities such as Loudoun Nelson, the Civic Auditorium, our trail system, so on and so forth. Before the City Council today is a proclamation to proclaim this Saturday, May 18th, as Kids to Parks Day in the City of Santa Cruz. As part of the Kids to Parks Weekend, I'm claiming the whole weekend here, the Parks and Recreation Department and Santa Cruz Library encouraged community members to visit Play It Forward, which is on the screen here. That will be at the Loudoun Nelson Community Center again this Sunday, May 19th. So to tell you a little bit about Play It Forward, I'd like to introduce you to Judy Russell with Santa Cruz Public Libraries. Hi, so I believe everybody was passed out a flyer, so I just want to encourage you is to check out this flyer. There's a QR code on here that you can just go ahead, hold your phone over, check it out, and it will pull up the website for all the different events taking place at Play It Forward, Santa Cruz. And so what I just wanted to share just a little bit about is the background of why it is that we're doing Play It Forward, Santa Cruz. So this festival was born out of a vision that was a result of the library for the past couple of years having conversations about having strength-based community engagement and asking ourselves how do we work with the community and look at community strengths and what the community has to offer versus where are we lacking and what don't we have enough of. And so when we stepped back and we kind of looked at it and said, what is it that Santa Cruzans are really good at? There was one thing that stuck out more than anything, it is that we know how to play and that we will do anything to play. We will do anything to help others play with us. And so based on that strategy, we said, okay, so how do we connect that to also serve our community? And we came up with the idea of Play It Forward, Santa Cruz. And to start with, where can we look where organizations are already using Play or their platform of Play to transform lives and strengthen communities? And so the first step to that, once we had that vision and we had the title and we knew where we wanted to go with it, was to put that in action and going to organizations that have that strength and going to the city of Santa Cruz, Parks and Rec, whose logo is Parks Make Life Better and knowing that they have that and own that strength. And so that's where this co-sponsorship came about from Play It Forward, Santa Cruz. And as a result of that, then we moved on, we secured through the city of Santa Cruz, Parks and Rec, Lauda Nelson, the adjacent Laura Park and closed down Washington Street. And we have over 20 community organizations that currently use Play to transform lives and strengthen communities. Anywhere from if you want to take a free karate lesson, waltz lesson. We even have out on Washington Street shared adventures is coming and they're building on site a wheelchair obstacle course. So that people can go ahead and get in a wheelchair and have a fun playful way of discovering what is it like to go through life living in a wheelchair. We have the other highlighted organizations, the Santa Cruz Warriors Organization, the Boys and Girls Club, the Museum of Art and History, the Natural Museum of History, something like that. Laird's Karate studio, we have waltz lessons. One reason why we chose the waltz lessons is we really wanted to make a festival that focuses on all generations, all ages. Oftentimes it can kind of might be considered just a little bit more around one group of people. And so waltz, we recognize that Peggy Pollard, she does waltz lessons and she does social seniors really speaking to senior loneliness. And so that was the criteria we used for play it forward. First we identified the strengths where we're really good at play. And then we said what organizations play that way or use that form of play to then speak to other issues that are important and that people are struggling with. And so we hope that you will make it out and that you will encourage others, that you will share however you wish to share whether it be with a flyer or on social media or smoke signal doesn't matter. But to come out to play it forward to Santa Cruz, there's also going to be a beer and wine garden and live music and a really fun time. So thank you. Thank you. What a wonderful slogan and presentation. Thank you. So I too have a mayor's proclamation that I can go ahead and just, I won't share all of the where as is, but we'll say what the end has and what it's trying to express. Which is that I as mayor of Santa Cruz do hereby proclaim Saturday, May 18, 2019 as Kids to Parks Day in the city of Santa Cruz. And encourage all residents to celebrate by taking their children and their lives to a neighborhood, city, state, or national park. So I'll go ahead and bring this down and thank you for that. All right. I'll go ahead and move on to the next one here. The next one is the 10 minute walk campaign. The trust for public land in partnership with the National Recreation and Park Association and the Urban Land Institute is leading a nationwide movement to ensure there's a great park within a 10 minute walk of every person in every neighborhood and every city across the United States. Recently Mayor Watkins and I in the Parks Direct Team heard from several residents with questions about the 10 minute walk campaign, whether we participated, kind of what was going on with this. So wanted to just bring a very short kind of announcement on a little bit related to the 10 minute walk campaign. So in Santa Cruz we are well ahead of many national standards for parks and recreation. Locally within Parks and Recreation though I would say that our goals are very, very high. We are guided by the city's 2030 general plan, which establishes a level of service goal of 4.5 acres of neighborhood and community parks for every 1,000 residents. While the majority of Santa Cruz is within a one mile radius or a 10 minute walk of parks, we are just shy of our 4.5 acres per 1,000 goal by about 40 acres. So we're shy and we're a little competitive on how we're going to get there to cover that gap, that goal. The Parks and Recreation Master Plan provides a really data rich geographic representation of where we are most and least served with neighborhood and community parks in the city. While our city truly provides world class amenities with some of the best service standards in the United States, the data from the master plan will guide our improvements and actions well into the future. So the city and parks department's commitment to the 10 minute walk campaign is really memorialized by the 2030 general plan and the Parks and Recreation Master Plan as well. For residents and visitors seeking any of these maps or this data, the city's website is a great resource with information on the 2030 plan, the master plan and so forth. So research from the trust for public land indicates that parks boost well-being for the entire neighborhood and for the local economy. And most importantly, great parks foster community where everybody is welcome. So on behalf of Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation, we pledge to participate in the 10 minute walk campaign and encourage residents to engage with us to find their park. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for your presentation and for closing us out on such a high note with the Play It Forward campaign and blending all of our great efforts here in our city and aspirations as we move forward. So thank you very much. We'll go ahead and now close out our presentation portion of our agenda. And I just have a few announcements before we get started. So today's meeting is being broadcast live on Community Television Channel 25 and is streaming on the city's website at CityofSantaCruise.com. Lynn Dutton is our technician for both this afternoon and evening sessions. And I thank you, Lynn, for your work and for being here with us today. All city council members can be emailed at citycouncilatcityofsantacruise.com. And if you would like to communicate with us about an agenda item, we'd like to receive your email by Monday at 5 p.m. before our council meeting. This provides us with an opportunity to review your email and include it with the rest of our agenda packet. Please bear in mind that all items of correspondence with the city and the city council do constitute public records and are generally subject to disclosure upon request by any member of the public. Accordingly, if you have sensitive or private information that you do not wish to make public, you should not include that information in your correspondence. Our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left, and it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption. And we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you're inside and outside of our council chambers. So we'll go ahead and move on to see if there are any council members who have statements of disqualification today. Okay, should I make that announcement now? We'll go ahead and make, I overlooked an announcement. So we have an additional announcement, forgive me, before we go on to the statements of disqualification. So I just want to remind the community and I'm thrilled to announce that our first segment of the Coastal Rail Trail, the Trestle Trail Project, is nearing completion ahead of schedule. And we will be hosting a ribbon cutting on Wednesday, May 22nd from 12.15 to 12.45 p.m. And we invite all community members to celebrate with us at this special lunch hour event. We will assemble at the west space of the San Lorenzo River Railroad Trestle Bridge with free parking and bike valet. All of the details are on our Facebook and website pages, and I look forward to celebrating with you all next week. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay, now we'll move on to our statements of disqualification. Is there any council members who have a statement of disqualification? Council members. Yes, all be disqualified from number 28, the downtown library project due to owning property within 500 feet of the lot for relocation. Okay, thank you for disclosing that, and the record can reflect that. Any others? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and move on. I'll ask if our city clerk administrator to announce any additions or deletions to our agenda. We have none. Okay. So briefly, an announcement about oral communications. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of our community to speak to us on items that are not on today's agenda. Oral communications will occur at or around 7 p.m. We'll go ahead and ask at this time if our city attorney can please provide a report on our closed session. Yes, good afternoon. Thank you, Mayor Watkins, members of the City Council. This afternoon's closed session began at 12 p.m. in the courtyard conference room. The following were items discussed in the closed session. The first two were referrals to closed session that was in an open session prior to the closed portion of the meeting convening. Parcels are real property negotiations matters involving a license agreement for the municipal wharf concerning the business that's currently operating there called Paradise Dogs. Second is real property at 605 Front Street, a lease agreement with Carissa Cates doing business as Santa Cruz Thread. Those items are also on your open session agenda this afternoon under consent as items 12 and 13. There was one item of anticipated litigation involving significant exposure to litigation in which the council received a report from the city attorney's office and gave direction. There was also one other item of real property negotiations involving what's commonly known as the Sky Park property, APNs<PHONE_NUMBER> and 09. City of Santa Cruz is the owner of that property and the negotiating parties are City and Scotts Valley Town Greenland LLC. Under negotiation was potential sale of that property. Council received a report from its negotiator, Bonnie Lipscomb, the economic development director, and gave instructions. There were no reportable actions taken on any of those items. Thank you very much. Okay, we don't have a city manager report today, so we'll go ahead and move right along to our consent agenda. And so those are items 7 through 20 on our agenda. All items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is polled by a council member for further discussion. Are any of the council members interested in polling any of our items on consent? Council Member Glover. Yes, items 10, 14, 15, 18, and 2. And that's it. I'm sorry, okay, 10, 14, 15, and 18. Yes, please. Okay, are there any other items to be polled? I had a question about 13. Okay, so we won't poll that. Okay, we can go ahead. Okay, so we have items number 10, 14, 15, and 18 polled by Council Member Glover. And we have our Water Director Rosemary Menard to speak to us on item 20 if you noticed. It's quite a large item, so she can answer any questions about that. I know she reached out to us in advance, and then we'll hear your question for item number 13. Thank you, let's see if we can. This is an item for the council to certify the environmental impact report, the final environmental impact report, and to adopt the mitigations, monitoring, and reporting report that came out of that process, and to approve the project for the purposes of starting the clock on a formal opportunity for challenges to the EIR under the CEQA process. The project is a replacement of the inlet outlet structure for the Mill Creek Dam at the existing facilities about 60 years old. The current estimate of the cost of this project is about 75 million, and it would be replaced, the yellow existing facilities in this picture would be replaced by a new tunnel that would go around the right abutment of the dam and create new intake structures in the reservoir. It's a large project, it's very challenging for construction, and we're ready to kind of move to the next step with these actions we're asking the council to take. In addition to those activities, because of not wanting to go back into this area and do additional work in the future, we're replacing about 2,000 feet of the 14 mile long Mill Creek Pipeline as part of this project. So happy to take any questions that you might have. Do any of the council members have questions for our water director? This is item 20. This is item 20. Did anyone pull item 20? No, this is not. This is just, okay, thanks. It's a big project, and I know the council hasn't really done certifying EIR, at least for a water project. We think since 2011 when we did the Belch 12 Well. But this is the beginning of you probably seeing more of these kinds of things from us. So just thank you. Highlighting the magnitude, thank you very much. Okay, Councilor Brown. I just appreciate you being here and thank you for giving us some additional information in advance. So, absolutely. I think that's a lack of questions now, maybe. Exactly, I think that's very true. Okay, so we have the remaining items on consent that we can go ahead and move at this time. So for our consent agenda items other than item 10, 14, 15, and 18. Are there any members of the community who would like to speak to us on those items? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and return back for council action. Second, okay, motion by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Council Member Myers. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes unanimously. And so the first item pulled on our consent agenda is item number 10, and Council Member Gleber. Thank you, yeah, this shouldn't take too much time. It was just, I was curious about the fiscal impact because the agenda report says the only costs would be for travel expenses which would be pulled from the City Council travel expense account. And so there is a fiscal impact, I'm just curious as to what those are. So is there an estimated fiscal impact based off of previous trips that have been taken from representatives that filled the position? Does the expenditure need to come to City Council before it's approved or is it just a blank check? And then are we setting maximums for expenses like hotels and travel just to ensure that we're being as frugal as possible since we are in a budget deficit? I'll go ahead and look to our city manager, Martin Bernal, because I think it's pretty typical in terms of council budget. Yes, so with respect to there's a council budget for the purposes of a variety of different council related activities, whether it's to attend conferences, and to participate in various policy committees or organizations. And it varies from year to year because the level of participation varies. I understand from this one, and Council Member Myers might have some more specific information. This is the meetings of this type, they're not generally overnight or long. So it's just really daily travel and they don't happen that frequently. So it's a fairly small cost impact relative to travel, is my understanding. Any other questions, Council Member Matthews, Vice Mayor Cummings? Not a question, but just to point out that the League of California Cities has a number of policy areas where it has representatives from throughout the state, transportation, I can't remember what they are. There's six or eight policy areas and we do get announcements at the beginning of the calendar year. If people are interested, they can notify the president of our division, they can get nominated. So it's a great way to engage and the city has over the years had both council members and staff members on a number of the policy commissions. It's a great way to get involved and we're very lucky when we have people who can really contribute something in these areas. Tiffany was a member of this commission, I think, last year. So it's a great way for us to stay connected with what's happening at state level at a pretty much minimal cost. Okay, Vice Mayor Cummings, then Council Member Glover. I was going to ask if Council Member Myers, if you could just provide a little bit of background on what the League is actually looking forward to working on right now. So yeah, they have a full strategic plan that they have produced for all cities in California. And environmentally, their main initiatives are climate change. And they are also looking at bills related to the recycling quandary that the state is in now with China's decisions. So they're actually looking at potentially supporting measures to actually create industry within California itself so that our products could be potentially sold here within our own state and re-recycled here and used for manufacturing. There's also work on the stormwater bills related to cities being able to actually do fees or support stormwater benefits in a way that doesn't hit the city budget. Air quality, so it really runs the gamut. Water, air, definitely equity, social justice issues. A big platform for the Environmental Quality Committee, so yeah. So it's on the League website, which if you click on policy committee, you'll see all the work. And there is about 10 policy committees doing work this year, including a homeless committee and also a housing committee that's quite active. Great, thank you. Council Member Glover and then Council Member Kern. Thanks, so yeah, I just want to reiterate that I, or maybe I didn't say yet, I understand the scope and I'm glad that everyone else now has the perspective as to what the purpose of the group is. My issue is fiscal accountability with regards to how much money it could or would cost. So that's just a conversation. I know that it's slated to potentially not be expensive. I just did some back of the napkin calculator math to get to and from Sacramento, which is the farthest one, it's about 11 gallons if you do a 25 miles per hour, or 25 miles per gallon car. So are we anticipating taking a fleet vehicle? Are we going to just allocate up to $200 for gas travel? I mean, just so that we can make sure that we have some kind of an understanding about what's happening. I would expect the same thing if I was taking a trip as well, so. I'll go see if City Manager Martin Bernal wants to respond, but I'll just say that generally there is a travel reimbursement sort of process amongst government entities that have a reimbursement rate that is pretty standard. So I'm assuming that that would be applied in this regard, but if you have anything to elaborate on, you're welcome to do so. Right, I mean there's a mileage reimbursement taking the city pool vehicles also an option. So both are available and we get that charge back too. So again, the budget is adequate as I understand in terms of what the costs would be here because it's primarily day travel for a limited number of meetings throughout the year. The committee doesn't meet on a super regular basis. Yeah, so it's very small and with your approval today that approves the Councilor Myers participating in those costs being covered, which again are not really significant. Okay, thank you. I'll just make the motion to approve. Did you, before you do, if you will. Councilor Bergeron, did you have some? So how much is the mileage right now, just standard? 50 cents a mile. I think Council Member Glover was just looking for, when you say small, does it mean under 500, under 1,000, under 2,000? So when you say small, is it under 500? I mean, I can just sort of say, because I've traveled up to Sacramento a lot for my other job. It's usually about $100 or $200 for round trip and you do it by mileage and usually provide backup of a map quest or something like that to substantiate. Yeah, I think it's, or maybe not, maybe it's about, well what is it, about 100, maybe 300 miles per round trip. I have a leaf and I will just drive my own car, it won't cost the city a penny. Okay, and I'll stay at my friend's house, so I think we're good on that. For Council Member Myers, if you would be willing, there's two big issues that we, in the climate issue that you referred to in the League of Cities, as well as I think the bottle bill needs to be reformed too. And I'm just wondering, would you be willing to discuss with them about the elimination of plastic bottles and also raising the deposit fee, which hasn't been raised, I think, since the 70s, I don't know, early 80s? I do know there's a number of bottle bills. There's bills in process right now, and the League's tracking all of those. And they will provide, through this committee, a report on whether cities should support those. So it's a great way for us to just get the information and then we can take action as a council. So I'll be in June, I'll be getting an update on all those before bills are passed in August. So I'll be bringing back recommendations, and I can certainly ask those questions. Thanks, I appreciate that. Okay, so we'll go ahead before we maybe come back to the council. We'll go ahead and see, is there any member of the community who wanted to address us on this item? This is item number 10 on our consent agenda. Okay, and you, feel free to come forward. You'll have up to two minutes. I didn't prepare for this, I'm not quite sure. But I wondered about the League of Cities Environmental Quality Policy Committee about whether that has, they have anything to do with the Neary Lagoon wastewater treatment plan and possible missions of toxic metals and toxic gases from it. If that, because that is an issue that I think applies to these kind of facilities all across the state of California and whether that is something that has been discussed there. We'll go ahead and pause the time for a second. This is an opportunity for us to hear from the community. We don't generally respond to a community member. Okay, well I'm just putting it out there because I made a public record across the ground. And it's being stacked, so I probably won't get the results till six months from now, and okay. Okay, thank you. Okay, please come forward. You'll have up to two minutes as well. Hello, Elise Caspi, I'm just here to talk about this item number. I just wanted to say that in general, I think our country has been just very sadly and quite shamefully politically held back in terms of our environmental policies. We know that the 70s were a great time. That's when the Clean Air Act was established, I believe. I'm just kind of ballparking it. Maybe it was late 60s, but Clean Air Act was established as well as the Endangered Species Act. And since then, we have had what I'm just going to call reactionary because I think the F word that is fascism is a little bit too strong and possibly insulting a word to use. But we have seen an incredible double down by reactionary forces, especially since the end of the Cold War, when certain actors and groups within our government, especially at the federal policy level, realized that they no longer had the excuse of having a major Soviet enemy to use. And so they came up with other ideas as to how they were going to keep their, what they saw as their entitlements to the resources such as the oil of other countries and so forth and so on. And so I consider our environmental policy in this city in particular incredibly important. As activists, we all know that other states do what California does in terms of environmental policy, especially. And I'm looking at Donna because I know that she's kind of a leader in this area. So I just wanted to say that I do consider your involvement on the Metro Board and here. Santa Cruz is a leader within the state of California because of the university here and our politics historically. So I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing your leadership. And I'm glad you have a good background in that, thank you. Thank you. Okay, well, go ahead and return it back to the Council for Action and Deliberation Council member Glover. Yeah, I agree with that last speaker that I think Council member Myers will be the ideal pick for this position because of her experience and knowledge in environmental sustainability. So I will go ahead and make the motion to approve Council member Donna Myers' appointment to the League of California City's Environmental Quality Policy Committee. And authorize the use of city council travel expenses, account to cover costs of travel. Second. Okay, so we have a motion by Council member Glover. I'm going to go with Council member Brown for the second. It was really close. All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? Okay, and that passes unanimously. So the next item is item number 14 and that item was also pulled by Council member Glover. Thank you. I just had some questions about the fiscal impact as well as the selection process for the, I'm going to call the shuttle because it looks more like a shuttle than a trolley. So in the fiscal impact it says there is no fiscal impact. The confusion for me comes from the cost that's noted in the agenda report where it says that the plan is to buy two electric shuttles and two electric charging stations totaling $341,000. And then in the description it says that we've secured a grant for $171,510,000, or $701,510. But just doing that math that leaves $169,490. So where is that extra $169,490 coming from? Hello, yes, my name's Amanda Rotella, Principal Management Analyst in the Economic Development Department and the trolley program manager. So this is an item that sort of couples with an item that came before you, I believe it was January 8th where we did a budget adjustment. So this was just some additional language that we needed to add to that. So a portion of it, about 230,000 is coming from the California Hybrid Zero Mission Truck and Bus Voucher Program, or HVIP for short. So we're getting a significant incentive voucher from the state, which will offset a portion of that. And then as previously budgeted and approved in the January 8th budget adjustment, we are putting some redevelopment bond funds towards that as well. Those are the funding sources in addition to the 172,000 that we got from the Air District, which we really appreciate, so big thank you to them. And then regarding the selection process, so this has been sort of a multi-phase process. Back in probably 2017, we began looking at what possible alternatives could look like. So we looked at electric shuttles similar to what the Monterey system has. We actually have electrified trolleys. We looked at could we convert little VW buses and to make those electrified. So we kind of looked at the whole gamut. And really the criteria that we came to with the electric shuttle was that it was the most affordable. The maintenance cost was most reasonable as we're seeing with electric. The fuel costs obviously were greater than our CNG options and then the benefits to the environment. And we went with this provider because of the cost. Given the kind of financial constraints we had, based on the amount of money we were likely to get from the Air District and what we had as a matching grant, we were restricted in that way. We are also really struggled to find street legal vehicles. There was a number of shuttles that are available and you can use them on campuses, but because ours is 100% on California roads. There's a significant amount of restrictions in that way. So we went with Phoenix and this particular shuttle because of cost and because of timeline and their ability to turn around the vehicles within kind of our time frame. Okay, I'll be here if there's any other questions. Is there any member of the community who would like to address us on item number 14 of our consent agenda? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and return back to council for action and deliberation. Councilor Mathews. Well, I'm thrilled to see the trolley shuttle system on track to be up and running and robust, so I will go ahead and move this recommendation. Okay. Okay, so we have a motion by Council Member Mathews, seconded by Council Member Glaver, I'll give it to you next time, Vice Mayor Cummings. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. No, I had a question before, but I can ask it after. It's fine. Okay, so all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Thank you, Council Member Cronk. Yeah, I'm equally as happy that we're going this route. I would just like to put a footnote in that it would be great for future reports to see where the money is coming from. Maybe just make line items. This is coming from redevelopment or old redevelopment money or wherever. It's just helpful for the council. Okay, thank you for the suggestion. Okay, so item number 15 is the next item that's pulled from our consent agenda. Council Member Glaver. Thank you. I just had two questions for the public. We'll start with this one first, because there's another one coming up that is the next one. So just I'm curious, I noticed that there's a pattern of going with William Thayer construction. That's wonderful. I was just curious, are they using union labor? Mike Hopper, Public Works Operations Manager. They do not hire union labor, no, but they do pay prevailing wage for this project. Okay. And how, I mean, I haven't discussed it with our labor folks, but that's cool. That's compliant, yes. All right, cool. I think that is, and what was the justification of the project? I mean, I know that there's the overall wanting to upkeep of the golf course. But with the previous one, which was the restaurant remodel, there was the plan of a five-year return on that money as their financial plan for the $251,020 that were spent that came over 1.4% over budget from the original estimate. Yeah, this is a project that council approved. The contract with Thayer was approved a little over a year ago. We had a lengthy discussion about budget adjustments concerning the overall cost of the project. Thayer was the largest subcontractor on the job and the only one with costs greater than $100,000. And therefore, I need to get a notice of completion to be able to pay him his final payment. Right. He was chosen using a cooperative purchasing agreement at the time this project went out to bid. General contractors around the county were too busy to even look at the job. Thayer subscribes to a cooperative agreement administered by the Gordian Group, where market prices are used to determine a vast number of line items within the project. So they are the selected contractor without going through the bidding process. Okay, thank you for that. And then just was there a price or an analysis or a plan to recuperate the $251,000 on the project during the conversation with the council? Or is that just a loss to the city and a redevelopment of a lodge? No, that's part of the city's responsibility to maintain the building and give it in a condition to the tenants so that they can do their improvements and begin to pay rent. Right, but- Recoup the investment. But as opposed to the restaurant which had a planned reimbursement plan for the city, this was just an expense. Yes, but their rent goes toward defraining that expense. Right, okay, thank you. All right, any further questions? Okay, we'll go ahead and see if there's any member of the community who would like to address us. It seems that there's one. Feel free to come forward and you'll have up to two minutes. The city, according to the Sentinel, is in the red by $3 million. And we have a climate crisis, which we should be reducing our footprint, especially with regards to water. And then the DSAL plan, which has been proposed and still is being continued to desire by certain city staff. Why is the city operating a golf course? We're not Las Vegas, we're not Palm Springs. Why are we spending, how much money are we spending on this golf course? It doesn't make any sense to me, it's ridiculous, it's laughing stock. Why is the city doing this? Why can't the golf course be shut down, the city use it for something else or sell off the land to someone else and basically take care of that $3 million shortfall. All right, is there any other members of the community? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and return back for council action deliberation. Vice Mayor Cummings. I'll just move to accept the staff recommendation. Okay. We have a motion by Vice Mayor Cummings, seconded by Councilor Matthews. Further discussion, Councilor Glemmer. Thanks, I will just make more of a statement. I just want to emphasize that as we go into the budget conversations and we're trying to replenish our $3.2 million budget as reported by the Parks and Rec director the other day at our budget hearing, the city is spending $750,000 a year on water for the golf course. So just with the cost of water for the golf course and the cost of this structural repair for the lodge, which is the golf course that does not produce revenue positively for this, it's not an enterprise fund. We spent a million dollars on subsidizing the golf course. And we're dealing with a fiscal emergency and lack of housing, people on the streets, cutting community programs, we're cutting community programs and we're spending a million dollars to subsidize a golf course. There is something just abhorrently wrong with that and while it boggles my mind and I think there's something that we really need to do to readjust the way that the city operates and prioritizes our funds. Okay, so we have a motion by Vice Mayor Cummings, seconded by Councilor Matthews. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Okay, the last item and our consent that was pulled is item number 18 and that counts in more clever. Thank you. So just to, yeah, so City Hall, Annex remodel, prevailing wages but not union labor. Correct. All right, since it's the same construction person. And did we, I was talking to Council Member Crone, was there the implementation or incorporation of air conditioning in that remodel, what were you saying? Council Member Crone. I just had a general question on what the policy is of the city and its incorporation of air conditioning into building that it does on its own. Because I've just seen, I was here in 982002 and there didn't seem like to be a lot of air conditioning and now there seems to be air conditioning and frequently people are freezing. Instead we just open windows. In this particular case, the existing HVAC system was replaced with a more energy efficient system and it was heating and air conditioning prior. As a general policy, we install air conditioning when it's requested by the people that occupy the building. Did people in City Hall ask for the air conditioning in the conference room and that whole part of the building? I believe so. It got to my office, so it must have been approved at a much higher level. Council Member Brown. We're asking questions here. I'm curious about timelines. The staff report seems to imply something about consolidating sections of planning and economic development departments. And I'm just wondering, is that in phase two that we're talking about there? And then if so, when will it happen? And kind of get a sense of that. Yeah, so the project is divided into two phases. The first phase, actually three phase 1A is the east side of the building, which is nearly complete. We're waiting for three windows to be developed or to be delivered and installed. The windows have arrived but the labor is not available to install them yet. And then we're also working on the west side of the building, adding some walls and sheet rock and then carpet goes in. And then once planning staff moves downstairs and everybody is on the first floor, then we'll start phase two, which is work on the upstairs. Work on the upstairs is much smaller scale project than the work downstairs. Thank you. All right, is there any member of the community who would like to address this on item number 18 on our consent agenda? Okay, seeing them, we'll go ahead and return back to the Council for Action and Deliberation, Councilor Matthews. Yes, I'd like to move this item and note, particularly in the staff report, what it delivers is a real operational improvement, better customer service and some really major ADA improvements throughout every aspect of the physical nature of that function, the planning function. So it's a real improvement in customer service and ADA accessibility. Okay, so we have a motion by Councilor Matthews, seconded by Councilor Glover. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes unanimously. So that concludes our consent agenda items and we'll go ahead and move on. Council Member, Vice Mayor Cummings. So I had a question about item number 13 with regards to- Forgive me, okay, sorry, I'm sorry, go ahead. With regards to item number 13, I was just curious about, notice that the rent for the threat lease agreement is tied to the consumer price index. And I was just curious if that's similar across most of the city rented properties. I'm not sure who can respond to that. Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the council. So typically we do tie certain increases to consumer price index as far as increases on leases. There are some exceptions on some of the very long term historic leases, for example, that we have on the wharf and those have pre-existing terms for increases. And some of those have, based on gross profit and different terms. But typically all of our new leases do have some tie to CPI. Okay, great, thank you. Thank you for that. I just like to see that the city is tying rental increases to consumer price index and- I was just going to make that comment. It's a nice practice for landlords within our community. Councilmember Myers, I just want to just recognize for the community the work of the public works department. And actually city managers department in getting the San Lorenzo River Lagoon Management Project funded. It's item number 19 on the consent agenda. And this will greatly increase our beach safety for the coming season as well as improve water quality on the beach, the main beach. And actually help folks who live down in lower ocean and beach flats areas with the flooding that they experience in their basements and their backyards. It's going to be the first of its kind of project in California and it's a really significant environmental achievement for the city. And so I just want to congratulate public works and city manager on that work. Okay, thank you. All right, so I think that then concludes, we have one more. Councilmember Matthews. And let's just add to that. That's a spectacular achievement involving the agreement of what four state agencies and a whole bunch of federal regulating. I mean, getting to that was stunning. And it's going to help the steelhead quite a lot. Win-win. Okay, so we'll go ahead and move on to our general business portion of the agenda. And first up is item number 21. And we have Lee Butler here. Is that correct to speak to this item? Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilmember, Councilmembers. We are recommending that this item along with item number 22 both be continued. The council requested month or so ago that we report back with some information about how to best promote the city's ability to control wireless facilities as much as possible and look at case studies. And our attorneys and our public works and planning staff have been looking at that. And we're recommending that this item be continued to allow for both that information to be fully researched as well as to get the public works ordinance to respond to that potential ability for council to maintain the utmost discretion. And then the item number 22 is connected with this. It actually refers to the changes, you'll recall. It refers to the changes that we're expecting with the public works ordinance. And so the timing of those should align. Okay, thank you. We're available for any questions. I have any questions, Councilmember Clever. Thank you, really appreciate it. And for continuing to do the due diligence and finding out what our different options are when it comes to small several technology, 5G and public health issues. We did want to just point your attention potentially to an article that came out of Syracuse four days ago, where their city council delayed a vote to approve 600 of the wireless towers in their city while they asked for more safety information. And then they also worked in a stipulation that said that the city was also negotiating the right to be able to test the equipment at any time. They would go out physically and then they would be able to test the equipment just to ensure that the numbers were matching up with Verizon. So just something to look into. Thank you. Okay, so the motion that's prevented or the recommendation presented before us is to continue this item. Is there any member of the community who would like to address this on continuing the item? Is that correct? You're not required to, it's up to the pleasure of the council, but you're not required to take public comment on merely continuing an item. The Brown Act requirement is that you allow members of the public to address the council on items before they are, before or during they are considered by the council. Okay. By continuing you're not really considering. Okay, thank you for the clarification. It appears that this wouldn't necessarily be applicable at this time, but you're welcome to come back when we do address this item. So we'll go ahead and ask council member to move the recommendation. Council member Matthews. I will move, actually item both 24 and 25 for continuation if that's appropriate in one motion. Item 21 and 22. Did I get the wrong ones? Item 21 and 2, please. Yes, I'm on the wrong page, sorry. Okay, so we have a motion by council member Matthews to continue both items number 21 and 22 and a second by Vice Mayor Cummings. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. So we'll address that at a future time. Okay. So we now have consent public hearing and now at this time that would only apply to items, item 23. Is there any council member who wishes to comment on item number 23? Is there any member of the community who would like to address this on item number 23? Okay. Seeing item 23, do you have up to two minutes? I don't know if this is totally applicable, but I've been informed by people who are in the cannabis industry that Santa Cruz is the, or staff planning or whatever is basically moving towards the commercialization of cannabis with what's called designer pot.  So that's a concern of mine because this genetically modified marijuana has been, as expressed to me and I'm going to be doing research on this with some forward request to the NIH, is that this genetically modified marijuana is extremely dangerous. Is there any other member of the community who would like to address this on this item? And this is item number 23, which is the second reading and final adoption of our ordinance for commercial medical and adult use cannabis regulations to adjust to our state regulations. Council Member Glover. Thank you. There were some community members that had asked me for clarification about what the difference is because they noticed that on the agenda, there is the consent public hearings and then there are the public hearings. So can we just clarify for them the difference between consent public hearing and public hearing? Mr. Kandani? Yes. This is a practice that the council recently instituted when there are more than one item on the agenda that is generally considered routine and is not anticipated to generate a lot of discussion. And so it's noticed as a public hearing, but the thinking was that because, for instance, at the second reading of an ordinance, there's generally not a whole lot of discussion about it. And so the other two examples from today are the continuance of an item that has been previously agendized. Those were noticed for public hearings, but we weren't expecting to have a substantive discussion on any of them per se. And so the consent public hearing gives the council the ability to move on all three of those items by one motion. Thank you. Council Member Cron. Just to follow up, are there any other cities that you ran across that also do consent public hearings? No, but there are some cities that I'm aware of that place those items on the consent calendar. So the public hearing concept really relates more to the notice that's provided than it does to the format of the hearing itself. Thank you. So if we'll go ahead and look for a motion from a council member, Vice Mayor Cummings? I'll move to take the staff recommendations on item number 23. So we have a motion by Vice Mayor Cummings seconded by Council Member Myers. All those in favour, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Okay. So next on our agenda is item number 24. And let's see, we'll have a staff presentation and we'll go ahead and see if any council members have questions at that time. We'll then open it up to the community for public comment and return for council deliberation and action. And we have our planning department here to kick us off. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. It's lost the presentation. This is an item that came out of the last council regularly scheduled council meeting where we discussed the item that was just got its approval of its second reading. And at that time, we had asked direction from the council on a couple of issues, one of which was dealing with the definition of proprietor. The council at that time gave us direction to go ahead and change that definition to basically align with the state definition. And that is what we have done here. So what we did was we added a definition of a cannabis retail business. And we revised our ordinance, basically took out the old definition and added a definition that it's not word for word, the state definition, because we thought we had better words than the state. But it's almost word for word and the intent is totally identical. So this, because this definition aligns with the state definition, any business owner within the city would have to meet that definition anyway, so should make everybody happy. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Any questions from the council? Any member of the community who would like to address us on this item? This is item number 24 in our agenda. Please come forward and you'll have up to two minutes. Good afternoon, mayor and council. Sorry, I just ran in here. I'll have it out of breath. Thank you, staff. I appreciate you guys taking the time and I know you guys have been going through an amazing amount of work. So just thank you in general for everything, okay? Because you guys don't get that enough. And this is a small thing in comparison, I understand that. I think at the step in the right direction, we've accomplished slowly, but surely, putting together an ordinance back in 2017 and then slowly peeling back those layers of the onion. As the state has come forward and put their own regulations in place. So the more we can align ourselves with the state, that is certainly appreciated. And that's something that we want to advocate for. Additional layers at the local level do make it difficult for our industry to just survive and stay compliant. I think that we are headed in a good direction too. It sounds like staff's going to come back in September and revisit this issue with respect to how ownership changes could actually take place. So I just want to demystify a little bit what's happening today. Where the ordinance that goes in place will essentially attach the definition of ownership for prior ownership and the ability to change ownership together. So that 20% threshold is the same thing. At the state level, that's not the case. At the state level, there's a definition of ownership, which is 20%, which again, I'm happy that we're aligned with today. But they have a different approach to how ownership changes can actually take place. And they do have a process for that. Just from a personal perspective, I plan to run and operate kind peoples for as long as I possibly can. But we are operating in a really difficult environment right now. And I would really appreciate the ability to discuss with each of you individually why I feel like we're disadvantaged and having a difficult time competing with not only the illicit market, but also large companies that we can no longer prevent from delivering in Santa Cruz. So thank you. All right, next speaker. Yes, this amendment in this ordinance have been, I haven't heard any public discussion of this and this is really, really important. The city could be opening themselves up to liability by litigation because I believe that it may violate the civil rights of medical marijuana users. I've heard reports from many marijuana users that after marijuana was legalized in the state of California and the city and the county started managing it and commercializing it that the cost of their medical marijuana has skyrocketed. That these, the only people being given permits or who might be considered a proprietor to sell marijuana has basically priced them out of the market. They can't grow it anymore. They're not allowed to grow their own marijuana. So they're pushing the situation where they have to get it from a commercial provider who has jacked up the prices. And so it defeats the whole purpose of medical marijuana because it was supposed to be an inexpensive medicine for people who didn't have access to other kinds of medical care or it worked better for them with less side effects than other medicines. Okay, vice-mayor, can you? I'd just like to move to accept the staff recommendation. Okay, I'll go ahead and. I have an additional recommendation on here though that I would also, I noticed in the staff report that there are additional items coming back to council in September of 2019. And so I just wanted to add to that that staff bring back for consideration retail ordinance licensing and or permitting regulations as they relate to on-site consumption for cannabis retail businesses along with these other items in September of 2019. And just to provide some background on that, we're continuing to see the cannabis industry increase. We're seeing more businesses open. And I think that it's important that we focus on people understanding what they're consuming when they go into these businesses. There are a variety of different types of cannabis products. There's waxes, there's dabs, there's flour, there's CBD, there's THC. There's different ratios of these cannabis products. And many people don't really know what they're consuming and don't understand the effects. And I think that by allowing for safe on-site consumption, people can be in the presence of a professional who's working in this field, who understands the effects and can allow for safe consumption of these products on-site so that people are in the presence of a professional when they're trying something that they're not very aware of, how they might react to it. Okay, so we have a motion by Vice Mayor Cummings. Do you want to go ahead and repeat the language for the additional recommendation? That staff bring for consideration retail ordinance, licensing, and or permitting regulations as they relate to on-site consumption for cannabis retail businesses in September of 2019 with the other related cannabis regulations. Second. So we have a motion by Vice Mayor Cummings, the second by Council Member Glover. Yeah, through the mayor, if I may. I think that given, I love this idea. I think it's great. I appreciate the intent to move forward. I am a little concerned about the timing given some of the other things that we have on our plate, on Catherine's plate. So what I think we might be a little more able to do is come back. So we have not done any analysis of this previously. The previous council wasn't necessarily in support of this. And so we have not done any preliminary analysis related to this to this point. So I think what we would like to do is take that time in September, have gone back, do some due diligence, do some research on the types of things, the best practices out there. Potentially bring that information back to council, and then get direction from council on how you'd like us to move forward. And then do some community outreach as a part of that if that's comfortable. I think that's fine. Great, thank you. So modified sort of language to reflect the staff recommendation as it relates to the timing and the content and process in regards to the intention, I'd say, behind Vice Mayor Cummings' proposal. Does our city clerk have that? Okay, so if I could, I interpreted the difference being as opposed to having really tangible policy coming back to us in September. What most likely will transpire between now and then is a preliminary research sort of overview exploration that will then come up to us in September to kind of accommodate existing workload. Does that reflect your? Absolutely, and then that gives us an opportunity to really dive a little more deeply into it and give the council some good content and some good things to weigh and then give us direction on what you'd actually like us to craft out of that. Absolutely. So that is the modified motion. Is that still accurate? Okay, so Vice Mayor Cummings accepts that as modified language to his motion in addition to moving the recommendation forward for us, does seconded. Accepted. Okay, so any further discussion? Yeah. Vice, Councilor McLever. Thank you. Just out of curiosity, could you let us know what is being done to ensure that medical marijuana is readily accessible and low cost for people in the community as well as for the distributors? Private individuals have the right to grow up to six plants, whether it's medical or not, there's no limitation on that. And I'm not an expert on all the individual regulations because they don't have to do with us, they're at the state level. But my understanding is that there can be designated, I think they use the term caregivers, who can have individual patients registered with them that they can grow the plants for. And so there is a process that medical patients can go through. I do believe it changed with Prop 20 and then Prop 64. And in 2017, there was a new language that was added to the whole marijuana regulation that sort of melded the previous medical marijuana regulations with the new commercial. And it's now called, I don't remember what the acronym stands for, but it's Mercursa. And so the medical regulations did change. But patients still do have the right to grow their own or to have a designated person grow for them. Okay, thank you, because I just want to ensure I share the community member's concern that they brought up about the potential of distributors and or people that are in need of medical marijuana not having access because of the businessification, essentially, of the process. But thank you. So clearly this is an iterative topic as it unfolds in our state and our community. So we'll go ahead and see if we're ready to go ahead and take the vote. So motion by Vice Mayor Cummings, seconded, Council Member Glover, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Thank you. And maybe we'll take just a short, maybe two, three minute break as we transition to item number 25, which is marked at all, I believe, coming forward. Transportation and Public Works Commission bylaws. And we'll go ahead and have public works come forward and. Good afternoon, Mayor Watkins, Council Member Scott Rubble, Principal Management Analyst, Public Works. I believe Mark Dettles and negotiations right now, so I'm happy to cover this item. I also staffed the Transportation and Public Works Commission. So happy to bring to your body these recommendations for changes to the bylaws for the Transportation and Public Works Commission. The bylaws are essentially three main points. They wanted, what they wanted to do to codify in their bylaws one open house per year. So essentially it would be rather than the typical meeting which we have here. And it's very much like the format of your meeting. It'd be more of an open house where staff has tables and projects. And we open up the ATP and talk about what people's priorities. And that's a prospect which we certainly welcome and have done many of those times, there are many of those types of open houses in the past as we're working on various projects as something that we do very well. The board wanted to create an annual work plan, which is actually in the bylaws for some other commissions. And we also supported that. And in fact, on the 20th of this month at the Transportation and Public Works Commission meeting, they'll be hearing and presumably adopting their first annual work plan. So that's also great. And lastly, they recommended increasing the number of meetings from six to ten per year. So we support these recommendations. The bylaws are very similar to your bylaws are kind of the guiding document for that body and for all advisory bodies that are advisory to council. They're not changed very often. The last time this commission had changes to its bylaws was 2010. We have a great transportation and public works commission right now. They're very engaged and very active and very interested. So we're really lucky to have such quality folks on our commission right now. The only exception that we made in our report was our recommendation differed slightly from what the commission had requested in terms of the number of meetings per year of six to ten. And the reason that we would ask you to consider keeping it at six at this time is a number of reasons really. Typically, so I've been the staff member to this body for four years. And the six meetings have typically been enough to handle the business that the commission has before it. I think in three of the last four years, we've actually had to cancel one meeting due to a lack of items. At the end of each agenda is an item called items for future agendas. Typically that's blank so there's not a lot of, it's not like there's a lot of work typically stacked up that the commission wants to see in coming to them in the future. Our meetings started at seven and usually we do a pretty good job of getting out by 10 so again just based on past performance. It hasn't been a problem handling the workload that the commission handles with those six meetings per year. That said, what's the problem? Why not just put 10 on the calendar and cancel them if need be? Well, each commission meeting and I think probably all other departments would say the same about their advisory body. Commission meetings are a lot of work, particularly for staff when they're preparing items and doing research for the members of the advisory board. And the impact that this body has really falls pretty heavily on the Transportation Engineering Division. Even though it's the Public Works and Transportation Commission, generally probably at least three quarters of the focus of what that body deals with usually is transportation related. It's really what most people are interested in, most people are interested in the wastewater treatment system or the refuse collection system. But everybody just want to talk about protected bike lanes and safe routes to schools and those sorts of things and that's absolutely understood. That said, transportation engineering is a staff of five and half people over the last couple of years. There's been at least one vacancy, sometimes two. And the amount of work that this group is trying to get done is just, it's kind of mind boggling. Right now I think we have about $120 million in grants sitting on our table to fund active transportation projects, but we don't have enough staff to get them done. So we try to prioritize them based on what the public need is, what the council priorities are and what the advisory body priorities are. But the amount of work that needs to get done, the staff's just not there to do it. And I think the advisory body agrees with that and feels that. And in fact to that end, the Transportation and Public Works Commission Chair sent your body a letter I think maybe two months ago or a month ago recommending an additional senior civil engineer for the traffic division because they've got so many projects, so many great projects they want to see get done. Unfortunately, the reality of that is that's not, can't happen right now. The general fund can't support it. And the majority of what traffic engineering does is a general fund cost. Sure, some staff time is reimbursable through grants, but by and large, it's a general fund expense. So to make that unit any bigger to handle the workload that we all want to see get done is just not a feasibility right now. So to prepare more for meetings and to create more reports and do more research for this advisory body is something we'd love to do. But it really will come at an expense of project time working on grants, on projects and all the complications that go with them. We're constantly applying for grants, we're constantly working on design for projects, we're constantly bidding projects, we're constantly finishing projects. Doing even after projects are finished, the amount of reporting that's required by grants just goes on and on. That on top of all the public outreach that the division does, reporting, etc. And so that's why we recommend keeping the number of meetings at six at this time. Doing the open houses, certainly, that's not a problem, we can do that. And then again, the annual work plan was also something that we supported and that they're bringing forward at the end of this month. So those are the only perspectives I wanted to share from the staff perspective on bringing this report forward and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you very much. And just for clarity, what I'm understanding is that you support two out of the three recommendations, it's just the additional meetings that you are feeling you wouldn't be able to accommodate at this time, correct? That's what we're asking for your consideration on exactly. Okay, any questions from our council or we'll go ahead and open it up to public comment? Council Member Cron and then Matthews and then Myers. Thank you. What was the vote on the commission? Did everyone want to have more meetings? Yep, it was unanimous support for these changes to the bylaws. I mean, find it interesting that the whole group wanted to have more meetings but we can't seem to accommodate them. I mean, as you mentioned, there's some really great expertise on that commission. So wow, I would really, is there any way we could, can we revisit the adding a senior engineer? Wouldn't the grants help pay for that position? So it wouldn't all be coming out of the general fund? Yes, when the advisory body first asked about what kind of help do you need? We want to provide more help. We want to be able to help see you get the work done that we want as the advisory body. We looked at what a position like that would look like and how it might be funded as a senior civil transportation engineer. And certainly some of it would be grant-fundable in terms of reimbursement. But I think the majority that would still be have been at a general fund expense. And so that's why when I kind of hit the floor here at budget time, we realized that that was kind of a reality. Of course, you make the decisions on where the general fund money's are spent. But that was the kind of situation on that. Also, staff is always available for advisory body members outside of meetings. So I correspond with the chair quite a bit. He frequently will email me questions as he's thinking about things that he wants to do or thinking about his work plan. And I work outside of the scope of a meeting to get that information form and provide the information that he or any of their ad hoc subcommittees might need. And can work with them outside of the formal meeting framework. And I'm happy to do that. So I just want to make sure that that's clear too. And that's frequently common between staff and advisory body relationship. Councilor Matthews, Meyers and then Vice Mayor Cummings. My understanding from speaking with staff was the idea of holding an open house could be accommodated within the existing meeting schedule because the bylaws do provide for other special events as appropriate. So that wouldn't necessarily require bylaws change. Is that correct? Correct. Although I think that the chair wanted to see an open house called out in the bylaws. And I think that from our perspective is also fine. But it does not need to be there. You're correct. The commissions could say, hey, this is what we want to do in open house. And I can't ever see that ever being a problem from a staff perspective. Right. I guess I'm reflecting on our, I noticed that the commission took action on this December 10th, 2018. So quite a while ago. And I am reflecting on sort of our current budget constraints as we move forward. And serving on a commission for many years that was met every other month. That was the parks commission. I did feel like we did have adequate time. And my experience with operating on a commission that was on that schedule was, I felt quite appropriate. So I'm supportive of really evaluating whether or not we should go to 10 meetings. Primarily because of the budget issue and the likelihood that those costs could add up. And at this point, it doesn't look like we'll be able to add any staffing that could offset that. So I like the idea, certainly have a work plan, and I like the idea of an open house as actually a separate meeting from the commission. Vice Mayor, can I? Just a general question about how these special meetings are scheduled for the planning work commission. Sure, special meetings happen as needed for the transportation and public work commission. There's been one to two a year for the last four years. Generally they're related to an appeal. For example, some of the bike share locations were appealed. And so those had to come to the body and there was a little bit of a time sensitivity to it. So those weren't able to wait till the next commission meeting. So we did a special meeting for an appeal hearing. But other special meetings can be called as needed. I'll just, I have a quick question and I guess comment as well. Having served on a commission before, I've also experienced when meetings kind of fluctuate. And I think it's really wonderful that our commission wants to meet more and do more work. I just really want to applaud that and also recognize our constraints. But one of the things that when we sort of shrunk our meeting calendar was we had the opportunity for ad hoc work. So commission members at that time could form an ad hoc to get to some of the issues they wanted to address. Sometimes that was not staffed, but allowed for the process to kind of take place in that way. Has that been discussed or considered as an option? Yes, and thank you for bringing up Mayor Watson, that's a good point. This current advisory body membership, which as they currently are formulated, I think is just beginning their second year. I think they're about two months into their second year has done, I think, four ad hoc subcommittees. One to work on their work plan that they're bringing forward. I think they did one for protected bike lanes or other kind of hardened bicycle protection. And two more on something that is eluding me right now. And that is a great tool for sure for the commission and for all the advisory bodies, quite frankly. And they have done a great job of utilizing that and we're available to meet with them on those. They aren't staffed, you're right, but there's been a couple occasions where we've met with them. They've said, okay, here's what we've got so far, here's the questions we want answered as an example. We will go ahead, Council Member Brown, you haven't had a chance yet, and then back to Council Member Krohn, Glover, and then Myers. Yeah, I guess since we're making comments here, I just want to comment. I appreciate the presentation, I appreciate the expression of concern about staff workload. But I also want to acknowledge that this is an active and engaged commission in a community that is very active and engaged. And my understanding is that the commission itself established one of those ad-hoc committees to develop this, the work plan, and to look at by-laws changes. And to request this increase in meeting schedule, given that the amount of time that commissioners have had to officially work and because of the Brown Act are required to work together in a public setting. Over the years has been diminished with the merger of transportation and public works. I just find that I want to acknowledge their interest in advising us and doing the work that they've volunteered, signed on to do. We have major projects coming before us that are relevant to this commission. And so I would support finding a way to support their recommendation to increase to six to ten meetings per year. If we say six to ten, then they don't have to be canceled, my understanding of the schedule. But it allows for that to happen and if the commissioners think it's necessary, I tend to- Council Member Crone, Clever and then- And if I could maybe just, if we could keep it to, we went to comments, we kind of bled into the comments, I apologize for that. We'll go ahead and if we can't keep it to questions. Transportation and public works commission, they used to be two separate commissions, right? Correct. And how many meetings did each one of those have a year? You know, that happened in 2009 or 2010, I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that question. Yeah, one of the commissioners told me there used to be 12 meetings for the Transportation Commission when it was a separate commission. So even though there was only ten, there was 20, and now we have six. So I think if we went to ten, I don't know. Okay, Council Member Clever, do you have a question? That's a comment, I'll wait till then. Okay, so at this time then we'll go ahead and see if there's any member of the community who would like to address us on this item. And we have a request for additional time that's been granted on behalf of the campaign for sustainable transportation and we'll go ahead and start there. Yeah, thank you, Mayor and Council Members, good afternoon. So this is kind of a small decision, six meetings or ten meetings, but it's in a bigger context and makes it important. The bigger context is that there's really a revolution in design of streets coming out of Europe, but being really embraced in this country. There's Vision Zero coming out of Sweden through the movement to reduce to zero the number of serious injuries due to traffic. That commission also in December, the Transportation Public Works, adopted Vision Zero. So I expect that you'll get a recommendation to adopt Vision Zero as a city. What this means is all of us need to change. It's not just our public works engineers that need to change, it's all of us. It's me, I've been riding my bike forever and I need to remind myself how dangerous certain intersections are for an 11 year old kid. Someday it'll be considered barbaric that we put bike lanes so that kids are in the door zone of parked cars. So that when a car door opens, somebody not only hits the car door but might spill into the lane of traffic, those are really serious injuries when they happen. So with the idea that I've got to change and inviting you all to change in terms of our perspective about what we tolerate in terms of bicycle and pedestrian safety, we need to enlist everybody. And we've got, what is it, seven members of this Transportation and Public Works Commission that want to work harder on behalf of all of us. This is the catalyst that we need to move forward together, better together as my slogan. It's when city staff and elected and their commissioners and the public work together to design a safer street environment. I wish that somebody would have written up in the Harvard Kennedy School of Government journals about our city because we had a bicycle and pedestrian committee that was a model. We had a citizen by the name of Rick Hyman who basically wrote the active transportation plan for the city and the bicycle plan before that. If you've got seven members of a commission wanting to work harder and you say no to that, then what message does that send to them? And what message does it send to the citizens like me who want to participate as well? This community had to take a risk when we put bike lanes on Soquel Avenue because there was a loss of parking. Who was it that went out and did the door to door work to talk to merchants about the loss of parking, you know, with citizens? Staff can't do everything. So let's not be, what is the expression, penny wise and pound foolish? Let's, you know, use the staff time to catalyze this wider movement of liberating citizen energy and let's make our streets safe. Thank you. All right, next speaker. Hi again. I'm also advocating for the 10 meetings of the two groups that have now merged transportation and public works. Rick Longinati is one of my most, I admire him amongst all of the activists that I know about in the campaign for sensible transportation because he really is very mildly spoken. He speaks in a way that's moderate and peaceful and I don't and the way I speak has cost and it costs me a lot. But I think that we're in a time when we need to fight for our future and our right to survive. I think that the, some of the old guard as I call it in the Santa Cruz city government is extremely unwilling to really move into the future. I'm not going to name names here because to be honest, I still don't feel I know enough about it. But I have seen transportation speakers come in who are just some of the most excellent analysts in the world speak to this council about parking. And their recommendations are very politically completely shot down in the most smug way. So I just want to say, I almost got killed the other night at the intersection near where I live at Pacific and Laurel. It's very unsafe. I really did almost get killed. I missed death by about a foot, that person just didn't stop at the red light. But what I really think what I'm trying to talk about is not just personal safety. I'm talking about the safety of our democracy here in Santa Cruz. It's deplorable and certain people should no longer be on certain commissions. This is a political move. Let's keep more democracy happening and let the 10 meetings happen so that we can really look into these issues. Thank you very much. Okay, did you have a question? Thank you, Mayor Wilkins. I just wanted to address a couple of points. Parking in the downtown, the parking, downtown parking district, parking garage is transportation demand. Those are all under the purview of the downtown commission and not the public works and transportation commission. It's an entirely different subset of work. It's a massive subset of work. And that also is work that falls onto the five and a half staff at Transportation Engineering. I'm not sure if there's been an instance where in governance, the answer was more meetings. And has been shown to be more meetings. And lastly, again, there's nothing to prevent the commission from having as many ad hoc committees as they like. And they have shown that they are willing to do that and know how to use that tool. And in some of their previous ad hoc committees that they've had thus far, they've done that. They've gone out and talked to stakeholders and had their own meetings with all host of groups, from organize