the city council I'd now like to ask the city clerk to please call the roll thank you mayor council member it's crone here Matthews chase Brown here Naroyan is currently absent vice mayor Watkins here and mayor aturazos here all right thanks for everybody coming back from break it's our first meeting from break and getting right back into it we're gonna take a pause and turn it over to the city attorney for statement of disqualifications for an announcement to start the meeting yes thank you mayor aturazos members of city council there are two items on this evening's agenda as you know the first is a resolution to rescind a prior resolution that the council adopted placing a sugar tax measure on the November ballot second item concerns the deadline to submit arguments for the rent control just cause eviction measure that is has also been ordered on the November ballot by the city council by resolution as I've advised the council previously due to an opinion letter that we received from the fppc I'm recommending that council members Matthews and crone recuse themselves from that matter there has there is also another issue related to this that came to my attention last week concerning the attorney that employs the mayor representing the Santa Cruz together group in advocating for extending the argument deadline that was specified in the June 26 resolution I received a letter dated July 31st from Mr. Brad Braritan in which he first of all asserted that there is no disqualifying conflict of interest by virtue of his employment relationship with the mayor and then in particular said that his work on behalf of Santa to Santa Cruz together is strictly on a pro bono basis a financial conflict of interest according to the fppc regulations is or rather the fppc regulations typically pertain to a financial a conflict of interest that arises out of a financial relationship in this case given that Mr. Braritan's work on behalf of Santa Cruz together is on a pro bono basis there would not be a financial conflict of interest that arises from that however the regulations also encourage officials to look carefully and to avoid the appearance of impropriety and in this case given that an attorney representing one side in this debate is the employer of a member of the city council there is an argument that the appearance of impropriety would would create a basis for recusal and so therefore it would be advisable to for the mayor to likewise recuse themselves so what that means is we have a bear quorum that would be still qualified to participate in this second decision relating to the rent control measure with council members crone matthews and the mayor terrazas recusing themselves okay thank you any further discussion on this can I just before we get further into that discussion I would point out that when the issue came to my attention I sent a letter to the fppc to ask advice on the question with regard to mr. terrazas and unfortunately given the short timeline the fppc was not able to get back to me on that so we do have advice from the fppc that council member brown does not have a conflict of interest and so may participate in this matter thank you okay at this point then for item two council member a crone council member matthews and myself will not be participating and I'll turn the gavel over to vice mayor Watkins however we'll move right into the agenda and go into the the first item which is the removal of the sugary sweetened beverage tax measure from the November ballot and I'll turn it over to the city manager for to initiate the meeting thank you mayor just a really brief background here so on June 26 the city council adopted a resolution placing a measure on the November ballot to put before the voters a sugar sweetened beverage tax on the November election a couple days later the trailer bill was signed by the governor that essentially injected a poison pill into the ability of cities to be able to enact these kinds of taxes basically with the passage of a b 1838 the path to create a adopters sugar tax in Santa Cruz became more risky because what it does is if the voters were to approve it and we were to move forward with implementing it and then if it was challenged and determined that it was valid we would then not be able to have the state franchise tax board collect ourselves tax and would require us to do it ourselves which would be very complicated and costly and risky a thing to do as we receive about twenty one point eight million dollars in sales tax revenue so essentially they really created a mechanism to deter cities from from bringing forward these kinds of taxes and adopting these kinds of taxes as a result of this legislation so given the risks that we face and the circumstances of his face with respect to this item the recommendation is that you adopt a resolution rescinding the matter the this has to be done by the election the county elections that line which is August 10th which is why we're here today to put this before you with that I'll be happy to answer any questions we have are there any questions at this time council member crone yes martin I see that it says removal of the tax from the 2008 in the fiscal impact area the 2018 ballot will result in some cost savings proportional share of how much is that that would cost us to place this on the ballot if we were to go ahead and do that I recall what that number is do we call Bonnie by chance it's a dollar 50 to 250 per voter and so you paid after the election thank you okay at this point see no questions I'd like to turn it over to public comment this is item number one for the sugary sweetened beverage tax measure for the November ballot are there any members of the public that wish to speak to this item see none I'll bring it back to the council for further discussion in action mayor if I may so I've prepared a couple comments about this because this is an item I felt really feel really passionate about and incredibly disturbed and discouraged by what took place in Sacramento and then I'm prepared to make a motion so first of all I want to really acknowledge the process that took place I think we had a really thoughtful process amongst the subcommittee as well as amongst the full council I'm making this even more disturbing because I think we came up with something that was really good for Santa Cruz the soda industry had done their actions were shameful and they forced the hands of our state legislature legislators and have essentially robbed our city and other cities from the benefits that accompany a sugar sweetened beverage tax and our local authority has been thwarted and we are unable now to meet and have the authority to decide how we want to move forward locally for our jurisdiction and these local sugar tax sugar sweetened beverage taxes have been a really effective way and catalysts for several Bay Area communities and provided funding to invest in community well-being installing hydration stations in schools investing in community parks and recreation programs millions of dollars have been generated and reinvested in the community in ways that have only benefited the Bay Area communities that have them so given the recent recent actions that we've seen by the state legislators later with their hands being tied and with the exception of senator state senator Monning I don't think Santa Cruz can seriously count on Sacramento when it comes to protecting the health of our kids in terms of sugary drinks at this time and there are current there currently are two bills that are moving through the state legislator SB 1192 which has been introduced by senator Monning and that is to make default drinks for kids meals a healthy one as well as AB 111335 which would place health warnings on sugary drinks and I am deeply disturbed as I'm sure you all are as well that big soda was able to derail Santa Cruz's efforts to improve health of our own residents and although I am discouraged I know that we have every intention of working to limit the impact sugary beverages have in our city and support health well-being through our policy decisions and one policy option that we have that we can make as a local jurisdiction is to make children's meals healthy beverage choices healthy ones and creating policies such as SB 1192 that requires a restaurant which serves a meal primarily targeted and marketed to children to make the default drink option served in those bundled meals a healthful beverage water sparkling water flavored water with no added sweeteners or milk consumers can still explicitly ask to replace healthful drinks with a sugar beverage at no cost but the default beverage offered in the children's meal must be a healthful option and in practicality if I think about my seven-year-old if I was to hold up the option of a chocolate milk or a soda or water nine out of ten times I'm assuming she's going to do chocolate milk or soda so it's just really changing the choices that are before the children and although this would pale in comparison to the millions that Santa Cruz could receive from a sugar sweeten beverage tax if it were passed I'd like to propose that the council join other local communities like Long Beach Stockton Berkeley Daly City Santa Clara County and the City and County of San Francisco that have with business and community and support enacted city ordinances to make children's beverages healthy choices so at this point I'm prepared to make a motion to incorporate that or unless there's other comments that would be made sure Councillor Mathews I fully support your suggestion that we endorse a state level measure I think that's in fact going to reach going to have a much broader impact I just asked the city attorney this hasn't been advertised as an item for action so I wonder about introducing it now I'd certainly be quite happy to co-author something on a future agenda if if that's the appropriate that would be appropriate action to take would it be appropriate to ask staff to research it and return to council for action okay sure I think that's yeah that's that's part of putting it on a future agenda so with that I'm happy to second the motion okay okay motion by vice mayor Watkins second by council member Mathews any further discussion council member crown yes um well first I want to say I appreciate the time I spent with councilman Mathews and and council member Watkins on on the subcommittee that put this forward to the to the council and I really appreciate the unanimous vote as well I know I was looking at all the various press stuff you know the the chronicle called it you know blackmail in a shakedown and I think the voters will not get to vote I mean in Sacramento the city of Sacramento and the city of Santa Cruz both had we're gonna have these on the November ballot the New York Times I just want to read just a paragraph from them for years the soda industry has had an ironclad strategy when a city wanted to enact the soda tax spend a lot spend a lot of money rally local businesses and shoot it down that strategy worked again and again until it didn't in 2014 Berkeley California passed the nation's first tax on sugary drinks which had been linked to heart disease obesity and tooth decay since then eight communities including three more cities in California enacted its similar bills um I really appreciate uh our state senator Bill Monning for voting no on on this on this shakedown um I appreciate also there was a few other legislators I think Scott Wiener voted no from San Francisco as well um but I think it's going to take more I really think that the um the folks in Sacramento let us down um they could have rallied together and defeated the initial thing that they were afraid of the two-thirds tax and we're all um not in favor of that as well because it would limit the ability to raise revenue in the city my hope is that senator Monning and others will lead the way and have a state tax on on sugar beverage and targeted um and that all that money comes directly back to the cities for the kind of programs that we talked about in our subcommittee that relate to health um and I fully want to support uh sponsoring you know not only bill Monning's current two bills but also something that it has some teeth and we'll we'll put on the ballot in 2020 a sugar beverage tax that will be statewide and and have people rally around that but um thank you for that and again I appreciate all of this but I I personally am not going to support this motion because I just don't don't feel that way but I think you have the vote so I council member Naroyan I think this reflects the bigger issues of taxation and the super majorities that are needed to pass measures whether it's on a local level or a state level and I hope as more of this happens it sparks a larger conversation in a larger arena because cities are just struggling to have the funds that they need to to provide basic operations and as the you know in the state and these really strange propositions that get passed um you know go along it makes it so much harder for city leaders to be able to govern their cities and and get the revenue they need to properly run them so uh you know it's part of a much bigger bigger problem that we have with governance in the state of california council member brown I'll uh I just echo the comments of my colleagues uh about how unfortunate is that we've been put in this position um facing the potential for a lot of costs for running a ballot initiative that we may not be able to operationalize and facing costly litigation from uh people in this state in the state and nationwide I mean deep pockets corporations that would be able to send us into litigation over the matter and on that and then following on council member Naroyan's point I think we all need to remain vigilant about the moves that are being made by corporate interests to and others to try to restrict our ability to levy taxes at the local level so I don't think we've seen the end of efforts to uh move from a two third uh 50 plus one majority for general local taxes to two thirds so uh who's to say that someone some other group won't come back and sponsor this and we'll see it again in future years so I think we really need to remain engaged on that issue and and work with our colleagues in the league of california cities and c-sac um california state association of counties and others absolutely okay thank you all right um see no further discussion put this to vote we have a motion by vice mayor walk-in second by council member matthews all those in favor please say aye aye can can we get a statement a erase statement sure um so I I move that we uh uh accept the recommendation as presented on the agenda report as well as ask staff to research and prepare a healthy beverage um option for kids meals and return to council at a future time for consideration did you want to add endorsement of the two pieces of legislation and endorsement of the two pieces of legislation being considered at the state right now those will come back to us at a future time yeah okay thank you for the restatement um motion by vice mayor walk-in second by council member matthews all those in favor please say aye aye those opposed no okay passes with council member crone voting no all of the council members voting um in favor of the motion okay next item on the agenda is item number two consideration of amending the arguments and rebuttals deadlines for the Santa Cruz rent control and tenant protection act charter amendment and I assume there's copies of the agenda uh in the back um in the report but at this point um we we should probably take a quick pause and step away okay we'll turn it over to you okay you want to move or you're in charge we'll go I'm moving over should we consolidate I'll tell you something really quick really loud that's we're all consolidating okay just so you know it's a different I was doing this I had the same issue come to you oh yeah are we ready well we convene at this time and it's um my pleasure to serve in this capacity for this moment we have lost three um council members at this time and so you have now a council of four women and here we go so I just want to start by saying um I feel I know this is a very uh heated item and it's a lot of passion in the room and I have um the distinct honor to serve at the local level knowing that we can behave and act civilly in discourse that we don't necessarily see being um uh being displayed at the federal level so I look forward to having Santa Cruz uh have a nice thoughtful conversation tonight and to hear from the community members in a respectful and civil way I um want to start by um asking that we hear the item in the presentation by staff and then recognize that the mayor had previously acknowledged four groups who will have extended time of four minutes to speak first and then we'll open it up to public comment so at this time I'd like to ask our city staff to present the item thank you mayor so what I'll do is do a brief introduction then I'll turn it over to our city attorney who will go over the legal issues and then after that to our city clerk administrator who will talk about process uh portion of this item so I'll begin the item before you of course is to consider resolution amending the deadlines for the arguments and rebuttals for the Santa Cruz rent control and tenant protection act uh also on June 26 the the city council adopted a resolution placing the measure on the November 6 ballot within the resolution the council uh it was included the deadlines for the arguments and and the rebuttals and those were July 10th and July 20th notice of those deadlines was posted on the city's election web page on June 27th and the proponents of the measure timely filed arguments in favor of the measure and no arguments against the measure were received by July 10th however within several days after July 10th city staff learned that there was confusion regarding these deadlines stemming from the fact that there was a discrepancy between the deadlines that were in our resolution versus those dates that are posted on the county's official elections website and so as a result of that which and those deadlines were August 17 and August 24th so as a result of that we went and looked at what had happened and what was the cause of that discrepancy because by way of background the city has historically consolidated elections and deadlines have typically matched for our election that's a big part of why we consolidated elections and so it was something that we just really hadn't really come up before so as we looked into that what we've learned is that essentially as a result of you know some bad advice from a consultant that we've been working with as well as just a misread of the code there was an honest error made in setting those dates there's sections of the code and Tony will go over this that relate to how you can place measures but the intent was always to consolidate the election and have those dates a match and there wasn't really a deliberate attempt to try to deviate from that so that's what ended up causing the confusion so with that I will turn it over to Tony that talk about the legal issues before you do Brontine sir could you please come down in the front because we are you're blocking the view of those behind you thank you go ahead Tony yes first of all the issue that we're confronting has to do with the interpretation of a section of the elections code section 92 86 there are two parts to that section the first part a states that when the council calls for an election on a ballot measure that the that the city elections officials shall set the deadline 14 days from the date that the election is called as the deadline for submitting arguments in favor of and opposed to the measure subsection b of that section however says that the requirement that the argument deadline be set 14 days from the calling of the election does not apply if the election is consolidated and just to give you a little bit more background information when the resolution was prepared by my office in early June we left the deadline blank just thinking that the deadline that the county elections official provided would be inserted unfortunately that didn't happen and I did not review the resolution that went into the packet again and so I didn't catch the deadline that was that was put in the resolution initially when I when the issue came to my attention which happened on July 11th I looked into the elections code provisions and I interpreted section 92 86 as stating that while the 14 day deadline specified in subsection a isn't required there's nothing in the statute that prohibits the city from setting the deadline 14 days after the election is called and therefore it was my initial opinion that the 14 day deadline was was a valid deadline and had to be adhered to as as you are aware we received a letter on June 30th from an attorney for Santa Cruz together Mr. Brayerton and in that letter he takes the position that in fact when a ballot measure is consolidated the argument deadline must coincide with the deadlines established by the county elections official for county measures and that therefore the city's attempt to set a different deadline was legally invalid in particular he cites a different section of the elections code section 10418 which states that if an election is consolidated the consolidated election shall be held and conducted election boards appointed voting precincts designated candidates nominated ballots printed polls opened and closed voter challenges determined ballots counted and returned returns canvases returns canvassed results declared certificates of election issued recounts conducted I could go on and on but to finish and all other proceedings incidental to and connected with the election shall be regulated and done in accordance with the provisions of law regulating statewide or special election in my research initially I read that section narrowly as not specifically addressing the question of arguments in favor of and opposed and so I concluded that that didn't affect the deadlines that were set forth in the city's resolution having looked at it more carefully and considered the authorities cited by the barrett and letter I do think there's a reasonable likelihood that a court would agree that the that when you have a consolidated election that has a city ballot measure that the that that all aspects of the election are required to be consolidated including the argument deadline and if you accept that are as a as a position then the July 14th and July 28th deadlines were were legally invalid so so there are two issues that are presented for the council here the first is again when I was initially thinking this through it was my thought that if the council were to decide to extend the argument deadline given that the way it was established by resolution then the typical way to modify something that's established by resolution is by adopting a subsequent resolution modifying or sending the earlier resolution if you accept however that the first resolution was invalid in so far as it attempted to deviate from the requirements of the elections code for consolidated elections then the council could simply direct staff to accept arguments in accordance with the deadlines established by the county elections official and that could be done by motion you wouldn't have to amend the resolution if you adopted a legally invalid resolution then it has no effect and so the council could simply direct staff to accept arguments in accordance with the county's deadline so it's a confusing topic I hope that provides some perspective on it and I'm happy to answer any questions or comments from council members council member brown I actually do have a question related to recusal and I'm sorry I didn't ask it earlier but given the amount of communication I've received from members of the community about my standing in voting on this matter I'd like for you to provide a additional information and explanation about my position and and if I ought not to recuse myself given the parameters that you've stated about appearance of impropriety I just I just want to clarify this I hear about it a lot when I'm out in the world I get emails about it and I'd like to be responsive you know I think there's a fine line between concluding that an appearance of impropriety justifies someone stepping away from a decision and that that the law strongly requires suggests or requires recusal in your case I think it's a simpler analysis because you have a letter from the fppc basically stating that that claims that were made about a conflict of interest were not valid and so I was hoping to get that kind of feedback to educate the decision with regard to mayor chorazas did not do so so in his case I think there's more of a basis for airing on the side of caution and you in your case you have a clear statement from the fpc that you don't have a conflict of interest and so so I don't think that the same potential for taint is there and one other simple question hopefully simple uh um I wasn't able to get this question answered before the meeting so I apologize um how many votes are needed of the members present to move a particular action for uh under your uh council member guidelines a vote of the majority of the entire council is required to pass a resolution a simple majority vote in other words a majority of the quorum is required for motions since there are four council members seated you need three votes do other council members have questions at this time okay thank you I um thank you for this opportunity city manager Bernal and the city attorney gave very specific reasons as to what happened I will say that it was um an error on my part in reading the elections code and at the guidance of the consultant the the election consultant that I was working with um I misread the elections code and did not read further I did not take the extra step in reading further um so that is what happened in terms of why we're here right now going forward I can talk to you about the process in which I will take so that this doesn't happen again it will be um more transparent I will be more in communication with both sides we are not required to publish deadlines in the newspaper but we will from now on so this will be going into our process for elections so going forward I will be more mindful there will be more communication there will be more discussion amongst um with the city attorney or city manager to make sure that doesn't happen again and I apologize appreciate that thank you very much and I think we all recognize that we're human and we make mistakes and I appreciate your um willingness to set forth ideas to um learn from this experience and avoid this type of situation occurring again and I think I appreciate that so thank you um unless there are any other future comments by the council we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment approximately how many folks plan to speak to this item this evening all the organizations first I will call the organizations if you wouldn't mind just leaving your hands up I get like around 30 years we should come on at least 40 here one and a half minutes okay we'll okay we'll start uh so we'll have public comment at two minutes with the additional time granted to the organizations that contacted the mayor in advance um and I strongly believe in equity of voice and I will do my best to move you along if you are going past the four minute time frame um in a loving and compassionate way but knowing that I don't want uh there to be the perception of folks thinking that they're getting special treatment so I ask that you adhere to the time frame that you're allotted and at this time ask that we have um the first person to speak and that was who Bonnie and Pat Colby could come can come up here and and speak for two minutes Pat Colby okay is this the speaker I use good can hear it um thank you for accommodating my disabilities um there's a lot of questions going around as I listened Anthony Qadadi do you think you could have been rescues because it's a conflict of interest do you own property are you going to make money off of the deadline and this ballot possibly getting off on the measure same thing with Rochelle and I saw some of the nasty things that were sent to Sandy Brown and said about her on next door maybe in all conscience you should just go ahead and rescues yourself and then there wouldn't be enough people to vote on it I mean the whole thing about the rent control issue comes up because we shouldn't have to have this we shouldn't have to have government get in the middle of rent but unfortunately there's been too many landlords that don't respect tenant rights or civil rights and that's why it's here and I on next door what excuse me again I want to remind folks to maintain respect and to listen while they have the folks that are speaking have the mic and they'll hopefully do the same for you so if you wouldn't mind keeping your comments um to yourself as the person who is speaking before us has their time before us okay you can go ahead and start it okay thank you because I initially am very against rent control because um I'm a victim of fraud being done on me and I had just caused eviction so these people are worried about just cause eviction well unfortunately in this city and many cities but this city especially the year size of justice amounts to your pocketbook my pocketbook is empty so I've had no justice I'm holding out for due process because fraud was done on me so just cause evictions aren't going to protect anyone um only three percent of people that fight evictions win and if you can't afford an attorney the amount of people that win in these eviction courts is about one percent so there is really nothing that the landlord should have to worry about but I was hoping that this could be done this is a classist issue and I was hoping that tenants and landlords together could come together and you know talk about it instead of arguing and siding class and I'm against the deadline being thank you thank you for your comments okay at this time we would have the four groups that's contacted the mayor to come up and speak you have four minutes okay you got a call with your organization I will I will call thank you very much I again want to remind folks to maintain respect in civil discourse if we have to interrupt the meeting I will have to follow our council policy and rule book around asking that you be mourned and if it continues then we will ask that you leave in disruption of the meeting so I again want to remind folks that we have an opportunity to hear from everybody regardless of your agreement with their position and a respectful way and we will all hear everybody's comments whether we agree or not and and try our best to be respectful and I want to hopefully acknowledge that again and I have to do that multiple times because I know a lot of folks want to speak tonight so at this point I would like to ask Lynn Renshaw to come forward and you will have four minutes to speak on behalf of your organization Santa Cruz together okay we have Robert Singleton on behalf okay yeah she's back there if you want to check with her it's okay okay so Robert you'll have four minutes thank you very much good evening mayor council members my name is Robert Singleton and I'm the campaign manager for Santa Cruz together the 100% locally funded locally managed campaign against rent control and just cause eviction measure on the November ballot okay together we represent thousands of property owners housing providers and yes even tenants like myself who believe that this measure has qualified for the ballot is both too extreme and costly and will ultimately harm more renters than it would help however that is not why I'm here today instead I'm here on behalf of Santa Cruz together to urge you to support the staff recommendation to extend the deadline for receiving arguments both in favor and against this measure in the interest of fairness and transparency to voters according to the city staff report before you a simple clerical error was made in interpreting the proper timeline listed in the state's election code as it pertains to a consolidated versus a special election this mistake was further compounded in the public sphere due to the differences listed in the county elections guidelines versus those in the city resolution combined with different interpretations and various local media outlets with all that being said it seems clear that when looking at the staff report that an honest mistake was made and that needs to be fixed it's it's that simple there's no use overly dwelling on it or blowing it out of proportion these things happen we are all human had this been any of the item one that didn't have two very organized and focused interest groups on different sides this sort of mistake might have been met with a shoulder shrug and a cleanup item in a later agenda unfortunately that's not the case and here we are if you follow staff recommendations and extend the deadline then both groups will have equal space in the voter pamphlet and both both sides will still be able to respond to each of those primary arguments with the rebuttal to interpret this as anything other than fair is reaching and to constitute as favoritism is an exercise in extraordinary cynicism Santa Cruz together wants equal space in the voter guide because of how complex this issue is and how dire the situation is while rent control may sound favorable on the surface and while some forms of rent control may actually be effective in addressing outlier rent increases this measure is poorly written and fraught with unintended consequences that will make the affordable housing shorter to worse rent increases can be regulated and creating without creating an entirely separate independently elected board one that is funded through additional fees and rental property to the tune of millions of dollars that can be drawn from the city's general fund furthermore the just cause eviction protections again while well intentioned would open up the door for greater discrimination of those with disabilities the elderly and working families and are already proven to be too risky for many housing providers to want to stay in the rental market for many property owners their rental unit may be the single most significant investment of their lives the threat of having a problem tenant or simply a tenant who needs to be bought out via hefty relocation fees is simply too great a risk to take this will and already has led to losses of rental units in the face of our already critical affordable housing shortage but again regardless of what you think of this measure it doesn't change the fact that a mistake was made and then it needs to be corrected both sides deserve to have an equal opportunity to make their case to voters so please support the staff recommendation thank you okay thank you thank you okay at this point i'd like to ask norah hawkman from the campaign for rent control movement for housing justice to come up and you'll have four minutes as well thank you i'll probably be sharing this with someone else so i'll race through my section then we'll see what happens and there we go so uh it was interesting to listen about the effect of corporate dollars in this community when it came to the sugary beverage tax because it is the effect of those corporate dollars that's having an effect when it comes to rent control right now because Santa Cruz together might be a bunch of local landlords but the california apartment association is not local and neither is the state board of realtors and that's who's bringing in 300 000 to this community so let me say this about conflicts it is our understanding that only the mayor can place items on the agenda the mayor was conflicted out the mayor put this item on the agenda it is an item of conflict we are asking for an immediate response as to whether or not this item itself is a conflict and once we get that response we'll continue with our presentation but if we could have the clock go off while those minds think about it that'd be great we if you could pass the thing this is the time we hear from you and don't have questions or a dialogue but we will write down that question and revisit it later when we have an opportunity to hear back from the council so at this point the attorney won't be responding to the question at the time and you can continue with your four minutes so we're just going to say it is improper that there's a discussion taking place right now about this item because it was improperly placed on this agenda before i turn it over to my colleague let me just say that i went to testify about housing this morning in front of an all-male all-white board of supervisors this is at least a great respite from that so we ask you to think very wisely on june 26th your council set a date for a ballot statement to be entered that date was july 10th the campaign for rent control submitted its statement the other side didn't for whatever reason that we were not confused the clerk was very clear about the date it troubles us that she is now somehow taking a fall for this didn't bother us we just had to write a statement very quickly and get it turned in we don't really understand why the other side couldn't do that given their 400 000 and endless attorneys and consultants but they didn't get it in if you issue another date we will meet this one they are encouraged to do so because you only get one bite of this apple greetings council everyone here thanks for having for taking the time today my name is av hershfield i'm work at the movement for housing justice i'm a volunteer tenant advocate in the community so i'm going to rush through this but i have a question about fairness here i mean something that is being raised by the opposition to rent control is that it's not fair for them not to receive their ballot argument as my colleague said we met our deadline they did not they have plenty of money available to them to reach voters in the city i'm not sure who's seen the how do you pronounce it scacky sketchy i don't know sketchy oh thank you the sketchy mailer that arrived at thousands of voter doors some weeks ago sent by a c a funded front group i have very little doubt that they're going to be able to reach voters but i don't want to talk about that for the moment i want to talk about harm i want to talk about what it means for the council to offer special benefits to one side in a democratic contest i spoke with a tenant today who lives in boulder creek who's facing a rent increase uh that his voucher will not pay for without rent control people in similar situations to him will face houselessness all over the city i uh encourage you to consider them and the actual harm it will do to their lives thank you for your comments okay at this point i'd like to invite up synthia berger for her four minutes and she and synthia you're with the santa christin its association i have yes okay thank you um put my quote here so i can see it keeps disappearing thank you and synthia berger with santa chris tenants association um as a tenant i live with deadlines tenants live with deadlines that have real consequences um perhaps uh you know if i don't pay my rent that's immediate grounds for a three-day pay or quit notice the vast majority of tenants hue to this law and that's why tenants paying rent on time makes the rental market work that's why we have a rental market because tenants pay their rent if that was a big problem well we'd have we wouldn't have a rental market so perhaps that's why our group paid really close attention to the publicly posted deadline deadline to submit our ballot argument um nor did we complain that the deadline was too early for us to comply with this rich opposition closing in on half a million dollars apparently all this money leads to carelessness in following the rules i would like to leave you with a quote the law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges to beg in the streets and to steal bread thank you are you speaking also on behalf of the santa chris tenants association oh okay did you pause the time uh good evening can you hear me no okay can you hear me now we can hear you now you are not going to be able to see me but you can hear me now okay good evening um it's very little i can add to what norah and syntia say so far the only comment i want to make to you is that and i'm making this comment because i know that you martin and you syntia really care for families and that's why i'm gonna make this comment one of the landlords who signed the petition when i was asking for signatures um he started arguing with me about that was how unfair was what we were asking for and my response was that if they had policing themselves we won't be in the situation we were we won't be having to talk to any favor of people who are living in a very horrible housing situations or paying 90 of their income into rent and this is again one of those issues where if they had been policing themselves we won't be here tenants actually is working right now with six different tenants and in six different apartment complexes where the rent has been increased 200 and one of them for 400 dollars with the ordinance in place this is keep happening because the landlords are failing to be checking themselves and being more human about what what is happening right now okay just as syntia say if i don't pay my rent on time i don't have a second deadline i will be receiving an notice that i'm not paying and from then on so why they could not comply with what we were able to comply are we better are we smarter or what is the issue i believe we are talking about people who are very you know intelligent and human and so why they have to get a special treatment when we did not thank you thank you okay so our our next speaker will be from the students uniting with renters as a representative from that organization prepared to speak on their behalf you'll have four minutes good evening mayor and council members my name is brennan and i am a member of students united with renters a community group that aims to build renter power and raise public awareness about housing inequality and tenants rights we are students and non-students all experiencing in some capacity the injustice of the Santa Cruz rental housing market and yes we support rent control today we are demanding that the city council act to protect democracy and the fairness of the election process by not granting a special extended deadline for rent control opponents and by ensuring that fair political practices commission standards are met before making this decision there have been some astounding examples of inequality in this initiative battle and they are visible in this sudden proposal to grant a deadline extension first it is an unfair advantage for rent control opponents to be able to read our argument and then have weeks to create a supposedly original argument that is in fact a rebuttal and the effect of this would be to give our opposition two rebuttals to our one instead of following the procedure that was contained in the ordinance that this council approved publicly posted on the city clerk's website and posted on the city hall bulletin board opponents are seeking to use their connections with the council to change the rules after the process has already concluded the mayor's sentinel editorial against rent control his membership in Santa Cruz together and his law firms hastily written letter in support of the deadline extension show that even when one is supposed to accuse themselves from such matters they can still find ways to have what may be an unethical influence on this process this is why we are demanding an fppc ruling on whether the mayor acted legally in placing this item on tonight's agenda as well as a ruling on the fairness of the proposed process we believe that the best way for the city council to remain neutral as a government body is not to interfere with the process on anyone's behalf Santa Cruz voters this November will remember your decision as an indication of which council members support truly unbiased elections further campaign finance reports show that rent control opponents will not struggle to get out their message the sacramental based california apartment association the sacramental based california association of realtors and the chicago based national association of realtors statewide and nationwide organizations have already raised more than three hundred thousand dollars to fight this local measure they have hired multiple consultants seasoned campaign managers and advertisers of all kinds and they will clearly have the resources to bombard santa cruz voters with their arguments this fall you think that the least they could do with this kind of financial support is to meet their deadlines we know we want this election to be conducted under a transparent fair and democratic process that's only possible when you establish a set of rules to govern everyone on every side of the campaign and then stick to them democracy means that everyone abides by the same process there are two sets of rules one for people who have the ear of the mayor and council and one for everyone else in conclusion we hope that you consider these power imbalances when carrying out your decision rent control opponents will have you believing that it is the city's fault for their mistake we are demanding that you keep the rules the same for everyone and preserve the original deadline thank you that is the last of the organizations that reached out to us to um ask for extra time so at this time we'll move to um just general public comment you'll have two minutes to speak um um to the council and um if you are interested in speaking please line up on my left and um as we transition at this time we're going to take a two-minute break because we can't at uh have one person leave during any of it so no problem i might as well go to the like to reconvene the meeting the gavel all right we're going to be reconvening the meeting at this time if i could ask the chambers to please settle down thank you thank you very much so um we have a lot of folks who are prepared to speak to us uh you'll have two minutes just to address the council um every time you clap or interrupt it just extends that time so um i know there's a lot of folks who have a lot of feelings about the topics and a lot of the points that will be raised but i ask that you maintain um civility and uh allow the speakers to have their two minutes and we can move through and hear from everybody at this point so um i appreciate you lining up for a public comment and at this time i'd like to ask our first speaker to come up and you'll be given two minutes thank you thank you i'd like to address two points the upcoming valid measure you could go ahead and sorry to interrupt you can go ahead and move yes thank you the upcoming ballot measure for rent control is extremely important and will affect the lives of all Santa Cruz residents too often the electorate is making decisions without having full knowledge of what they're voting for i know for myself there have been many times going through the voter handbook when i was depending on reading the analysis and the pros and cons to make an educated decision in view of this we respectfully and strongly request that the city council either accept the written ballot arguments in opposition to the measure that was submitted on july 17th 2018 or set new deadlines for submission of arguments the extraordinarily short timetable given as well as the fact that the state was not discussed in any city council meetings or posted on the city clerk's website did not provide the opposition proper notice i can't believe that the people i voted for to become members of the city council would do otherwise my understanding is that the planning department no longer allows developers to buy their way out of including below market rate units if this is the case it's a good first step i've been doing a lot of reading to get the full picture of the housing crisis in santa Cruz it's my understanding that it isn't the mom and pop landlords that have pushed up the rental costs but mostly out of the area companies looking to maximize their returns if the cost of rent is driven in large part as the cost of rent is driven in large part by the need for student housing these companies are just taking advantage of the insufficient campus housing rather than out of the area companies profiting from this housing crisis can the city take over the development of affordable housing i thank you for your consideration thank you very much my name is tom and uh i came here in 1971 i was working in san francisco in 1969 i had a wife and two children i couldn't afford to rent anything there uh so i lived in a one room with no plumbing or anything like that and i commuted back and forth between merced and san francisco for about two and a half years in 1971 i moved to santa Cruz and found a cheap enough place to rent here and uh after a couple years i bought a duplex and we moved into a one bedroom apartment in that duplex rented the other one out and we stayed there for about two years so then i rented both sides out and um this uh i i rented uh i rented them uh two eventually my last two tenants one has been there 31 years and the other one has been there more than 20 years and uh they both moved in as a couple with one daughter and now they're both still couples naturally and now they have two daughters the ones in front living uh in my apartment put their two daughters through college and i'm very proud of that and the ones in back their daughters have been raised and they're doing well too the last time i raised their rent was on the one in front august 1st um 2000 no 2003 and and the one in back was september 1st 2003 i have not raised the rent and that time so i'm speaking to the people that are saying that us local landlords are not human and i'm saying that let's proceed straightforward thank you very much to do just thank you thank you for your comments greetings honorable members of the city council and kind and gentle people of the audience my name is michael cox and i've been reading about this dilemma it seems to me that the question before the board is a matter of two ethical questions how to inform the voters which is first and foremost our job and then how to make this fair for the organization that is sponsoring the charter amendment and not give unfair advantage to the organization that is opposing the amendment so we're kind of caught between two mighty opposites my hope was that this council could see to accept the arguments that were received accept the fact that the arguments from the opposition may have been informed by the premature publication of the proponents and somehow give some kind of compensation therefore to the proponents maybe in the form of an extra rib bottle but i think it's extremely important in public debate for the voters' sake that both sides make their points rebut their points and that information is available for voters to make an informed decision on this very important charter amendment thank you very much good evening council members my name is ashley scontriano and i happen to be a candidate for the council coming up november i definitely want to support a housing measure that will address everybody's needs it seems as though we have a measure in front of us that is looking to take from one to help another and it's the same group that feels as though they've been taken from and i don't agree that there should be any one side finding themselves at war with one another the housing solution is complicated it's complex and if we look to just absorb a ballot measure that only encompasses helping one entity of our community we all lose therefore the confusion over the deadline is just that a clerical error the rebuttal is implemented into our ballots and we move forward with our community making a vote that's fair and hopefully moving forward with looking at solutions that will help the majority as opposed to the minority thank you hello council members and and an attorney and manager my name is fjohn labarba my wife betha and i have been residents of santa cruz for 45 years we have a small business we started about 40 years ago and we've contributed to the community when we first came to santa cruz we were truly homeless in 73 we're living out of two pickup trucks one that had a a home-built camper shell on we parked all summer and felt in a in a in a lot next to where the quick stop market is until we finally found an abandoned cab cabin up in the mountains through a friend that the hell's angels had lived in and was abandoned and we uh we we parked there and we ultimately found the owners that lived in new mexico and we started renting and it took us several months to um to get the place to where we could live in it this is 1973 so let's fast forward here we are all these years later uh or i should say at 75 i graduated ucsc and um and um got off a food stamps and got up was able to land a job and i've been working full time ever since i'm going to be 65 um this this section in the housing code there's a lot of things that really need to see the light of day and i think that the voters are entitled to that knowledge to make an educated guess during this upcoming election there's something in there in the just cause eviction area that talks about uh you can't um uh evict a tenant under if that if they they meet the uniform housing code of california and and yet that provision allows for three people per bedroom so essentially they could sublant you could have a they could be having a small business renting your place and you'd have no provision for for compensation for the wear and tear the extra um parking issues or anything else that would come up so i beg you please extend this deadline so we can have a fair and equitable thank you for your comments thank you very much sir next speaker please hello council members my name is jone timpani and i am neither a landlord nor a renter i'm one of those in between people who live in my own house but i have been on both sides of the equation throughout college through different times in my career before i bought a house i was a renter and i do understand a lot of the problems there can be with landlords that are in not very scrupulous i've also in my tenancy as a landlord had tenants who behaved in a very unfair way so i think it depends on who the landlord is or who the tenant is whether or not it's a good thing i did speak with someone who has been a council member and a mayor in the past and it was her hope that the council would vote to extend the deadline to conform with the county's published schedule this has been standard procedure apparently in the past and i believe or she said she believed that it would be in the public's best interest to allow it thank you thank you next speaker good evening honorable council members my name is orlando vaños i am neither a renter nor a landlord i appreciate the opportunity to address you this is not something that is common in the geographical area that i was born and raised i um have a strong opposition to this ballot measure because i have read it through it and um and understood it i um i am here to urge you to limit the discussion not to whether uh to oppose or um support this measure this is not the point of the conversation we're having right now the point of this conversation is whether or not the the process that was followed was appropriate and whether or not the um uh the opponents of the measure deserve an opportunity to present the rebuttal side by side with the supporters of this measure when i read the wording of the measure it was extremely difficult for me to understand all of the implications of passing this and i think it is um fair to have both sides present their sides so that people can make an informed decision so uh i urge you to please limit the um discussion to the uh issue at hand which is whether or not the deadline should be extended so that um everybody has a fair chance to present in their argument thank you very much for your attention thank you next speaker please my wife and i are long time owners of two single family rentals on the lower west side of the city we care a lot about these properties and have invested significantly in maintaining and improving them over the years we've rented to a variety of students families and working adults we always use simple month-to-month leases which typically stay in effect until a tenant leaves mostly we've had good tenants in few issues but a couple of times we've had to ask tenants to leave for the good of the property and the neighborhood we typically rent a bit below the average local rate for comparables and are often told by applicants that our properties are the cream of a crop if the rent control measure passes and applies to our properties it will strongly affect us and the two rentals we will most likely quickly evict our good tenants and sell the houses to new owners who will buy them as primary or secondary residences we have no desire to sell these valuable properties and evict great tenants so why would we do that we've lived in rent controlled cities where property upkeep doesn't make financial sense problem tenants create giant headaches and the rent control bureaucracy controls your rental why would we subject ourselves to that when we could either buy rentals outside the city or just invest the proceeds of the sale it's not the price caps that are the issues excuse me you can pause the time go ahead yes that's right it's the eviction process sub leasing relocation fees and board rules in this specific measure that aren't worth the aggravation what is the council's role as regards this measure since we are clearly not the exceptional case my wife and I the passage of this extreme and onerous measure will cause significant loss of rental properties in the city and hardship for many current renters the council should be concerned with the protection of current renters and landlords thank you thank you very much have okay next speaker please hello council my name is william robb i represent the wall teller company in town here and i think i feel or may be able to speak for most people here that whether or not you agree with the initiative or don't people have a right to know both sides and they should get both sides when they are trying to figure out a very very important idea and prospect for the city of santa cruz and so if for whatever reason if they are not allowed one side's information and the other side information to make an honest decision i just don't see how they can make an honest decision and also if the tide were turned in any way i think most people would agree let's let's the other side have their say and let's let them have their say regardless if there was a fault to make a good honest decision we need both sides thank you thank you okay next speaker please hello council my name is julian brino stole i am the co-chair of the democratic socialist of america santa cruz and i'm here to support democracy in our city government i'm here to support fairness and transparency and accountability in this city government and that means today i am speaking in opposition to extending the deadline it has been said that fighting for housing justice in this city is like david and goliath goliath because our opponents have nearly 400 000 to defeat us a great deal of which is coming from outside sources like the california apartment association not based in santa cruz goliath because several council members have already declared themselves supporters of our opposition including mayor terrazas goliath because an attorney at the same law office where where the mayor works submitted a letter in the city uh to the city attorney requesting an extension goliath because the mayor placed this item on the agenda goliath because many of the same supporters of our opposition are supporters of the same council members who are taking this vote it is clear that despite the immense resources at their disposal our opposition did not submit their argument on time now they are requesting not only to have their late argument on the ballot but to do so having already seen our argument they are not asking for fairness in this election they're asking for an advantage extending this deadline is not democracy it reeks of partiality it reeks of conflict of interest it reeks of united affluent interests pulling out all the stops to beat a local grassroots campaign don't do it next speaker please hello my name is david steinberg and i'm a bioinformatics programmer at the university and although i make tools to help scientists understand the origins of life and the mechanisms of cancer as a father of two i can barely afford to continue my work here due to rising housing costs though rent control seems like a way of helping us continue building a community here tonight i want to tell you a story about ballots case precedent and impartiality in 2012 a tax measure was proposed in sacramento arguments for the measure were written by city council members while the counter arguments were to be provided by the mayor kevin johnson at his own request the arguments in favor of measure u were turned in by the deadline however according to steve mcveigh leo johnson's 2012 campaign manager an opposing ballot argument was submitted by the mayor's office but it was late because of confusion over deadlines a clerical error due to state law this would require measure u to be entered without counter arguments a group called ion sacramento filed suit in order to force the city to include its counter arguments by filing a rate of mandate they argued if this city's official decision blocking access to the ballot is allowed to stand sacramento voters will be unjustly cheated out of their basic democratic right to weigh both the pro and con arguments on the city's own proposal to raise sales taxes the city official in question was city clerk surely concalino ion sacramento wanted to compel her to extend the deadline through their filings upon reviewing the case sacramento county superior court judge michael kenney said it is a prerequisite of a rate of mandate that is a violation of duty by the city clerk i see none of that here concalino was not compelled to extend the deadline in an emailed statement she said is my duty to ensure fair impartial and neutral election process the neutral process includes the deadlines if i were to arbitrarily change or modify a deadline i would be negating this neutral process and would in fact be giving preference to one side or the other unless there's reason to believe the city clerk has violated their duty in some way the matter before the city council will thank you for arrest following case precedent thank you next speaker please hi i'm david plumley and to me this seems fairly straightforward you've your attorney and your city uh city manager have both said this needs to be done you need to extend i think it's imperative that the electric have the electorate has both sides of the story when they go to the voting booth as a gentleman said earlier oftentimes i will read those before i vote to make sure that what i am thinking is in line with what the arguments are and i will decide based sometimes on those arguments i'm urging you to please extend this and make sure that the electorate has everything they need to make a vote thank you thank you next speaker please my name is david willis i'm hungry it's like if i have an interest in something then i'm going to research it i'm gonna look it up you know i'm not all that computer literate but i get on the computer and i you know i want to plan a trip and i and then the computer frustrates me out but i don't give up i keep going so i figured these people they should be smart they got business they don't have the time to look it up that's not on us we ain't got nothing to do they saying this will benefit them and then we're not standing in their way they've had money this whole time what have they illustrated we poor look we got nothing to do with that the issue is there was time to do something we our side did it they side didn't i guess they was overlooking us they all they ain't going to do it well that's on them what was done was done there was a there was a the information was out there you have this much time to do something the time was there they didn't do it it's done be spoken you've heard a perfect example tonight dudes say well we're just going to evict the people and sell the property that's what be going on that's why we need these protections it's real oh well they saying this and that well we're already suffering what was done was done they had a time limit we had a time limit we did what we did and we didn't stand in front of them blocking the way what was done it's law it's legal should be over that's it you get them a chance oh you know your preferential we're all the same only some suffer and some is wealthy they've been rich it's our turn it's just time to be protected it's reasonable what's done is done they had a time limit we met our burden we had a time limit the same limit it was done it's done it's over and thanks for your service and everything thank you good evening city council city attorney city manager my name is tom donahue i am a resident and renter of santa cruz and business owner and i urge the city council to vote against this measure because moving the deadline number one is unethical to extended deadline after it has already passed number two because it would give an extremely unfair disproportionate and undemocratic advantage to the opponents of rent control by allowing them to write their argument after having viewed ours which is essentially the toothpaste that cannot be put back into the tube and number three because santa cruz together is attempting to use undue financial and political influence over our city's institutions to sway the council into giving them this undue advantage to the injury of the established democratic process as noted by attorney kandadi the city has the power to set the necessary deadlines and requirements for a city-wide ballot initiative and uh as long as these uh requirements and deadlines are within compliance with the law and california election law only requires that ballot arguments be submitted in time to meet the state deadlines and it does not prohibit local jurisdictions from setting earlier deadlines for local measures or candidates the city clerk may have misread the law in regard to setting the deadline but no laws were violated in the process and it was within the power of the city to set the deadline that they did which this city council approved this deadline was fully in compliance with california election law and the claims made by santa cruz together that the city clerk or the city council somehow violated the law by setting this deadline ring as hollow as their claims about rent control itself we would not have any issue with the opposition having their argument on the ballot if they had followed the established legal process but not by allowing them to skirt that process the 63 percent of residents of the city of santa cruz who rent their homes who will be voting this november are counting on the city council to stand up for them and not give special anti-democratic favors to wealthy and powerful interests bolster by massive infusions of cash from outside of our city in our state which would continue to drive our rent prices higher and higher next speaker please thank you good evening city councilwoman my name is kieran colby and i live in lower ocean you know we've been hearing a lot tonight about how santa cruz together and the opponents of rent control believe that this is just what's fair an extension the special accommodation is what's fair but i don't see what's fair about four hundred thousand dollars in special interest money from sacramento-based lobbying groups coming into our community and tipping the scales against the ordinary working people who live in this city i have in my hand a copy of the notice which i've highlighted conveniently that shows when the original deadline was stated and was placed online i mean i have four hundred thousand dollars but i do have google and i was able to look up the deadline and if i can do it i would surely hope that our opponents can do it as well i work for the service employees international union who represent many different nurses health care workers and city civil servants who every day work as hard as they can to make this the best city possible and more than 90 percent of them cannot afford to live in this city and that to me is outrageous and something has to be done about that and that is what the proponents of rent control are trying to do and that is what frankly i see the opponents of rent control ignoring each and every single day but the problem is that the working people who make the city run don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying money from sacramento so i urge you to not tip the scales further in their favor so i urge you to vote no on special accommodations for the opponents of rent control tonight thank you good evening my name is debora wallace and i thank the city staff for acknowledging an inadvertent inadvertent error in setting the voter handbook material deadlines mistakes are understandable and they're normal since the rent control measure is part of the consolidated november election there is no reason to deviate from the normal election calendar clearly 9286 b of california law was applicable and it is sensible to adhere to it full transparency and a fair democratic process should be followed thank you thank you my name is susan ebarine i'm a generational senate long generations here in san occurs um i'm here to hope that you allow the other side to have their argument on the ballot it would be very unfair not to i think it would you've had three people up here admit mistakes three three of your officers admit that they made errors why should our side take the fall for that i have very little faith that you will do the right thing i think that the other side has had tremendous help and i will sell my rentals and evict my tenants i will have nothing to do with san occurs if this goes through i've seen nothing but corruption from the city council and i hope you'll do the right thing tonight thank you okay good evening council members my name is josey bucanon i'm a recent graduate of uc san occurs and i have against many odds continued to live in and rent in san occurs in the year since i've graduated i've seen many close friends for sleep this community often taking valuable skills and ambition with them because they can no longer afford to live here i have for the past 10 months worked tirelessly to better this community that i love working above all to create more housing i love san occurs because it has always been a place that i bleed was inclusive transparent and always open to meaningful change these are values that i believe are not reflected in this measure i'm against the rent control and just cause eviction measure because i believe is it to be an extreme measure that will intentionally or not freeze san occurs and cut it off from young people families and workers though i believe in the good intentions of the people supporting this measure i do not believe it is the way to achieve these aims the san occurs housing crisis is too complex and deeply rooted an issue to be brushed aside with blame on greedy landlords the individuals i've spoken to in the past month are real people who worry for their futures their families futures and the future of this community at large they are not many hungry developers i believe this measure will detrimentally harm the future of san occurs and undo the work of many amazing individuals that work tirelessly every day to make san occurs better democracy is not found in the following of a timeline true democracy is letting the people know both sides of an issue and letting them decide for themselves it is for these reasons that i urge you to allow the voters to fully educate themselves on this bill by granting san occurs together's appeal to place their argument on the voter handbook for the November election thank you all right next go ahead sir hello my name is jeff vc and i've been a san occurs resident for 30 years and a landlord for 30 years and i believe that this rent control measure because it's so important to the city and uh i really believe that the city council has a responsibility to the citizens of san occurs to uh to be unbiased and to actually let the voters see both sides of the issue and specifically i'm talking about the voters pamphlet that is critical that that have both sides of the issue so that the voters i think people are missing this they're missing that the voters are the ones that have to decide let the voters see the issues and i just think that's very very important and uh and i believe also that this measure should follow the consolidated election calendar and i'd like to say one more thing if i have a little time uh we've heard a lot of comments or some comments about very greedy landlords i the moment the mom and pop landlords that i know and i've been here for 30 years are not greedy and they have very reasonable rents i can give you an example of my for myself is i had one of my rental properties uh appraised and because of the levels of the rents i'm charging it's a triplex the property value was worth 30 less than if i would have been charged in market rents and that's part that's part of the impact when when only when you hear owners talk about they're going to uh sell and we hear booze and stuff it's if this if this uh measure passes it puts owners in a very tough spot especially like me right i lose 30 percent of my equity in an apartment which is basically all the almost all the equity i have what options do i have the options i have is i could sell it i can convert it to something that like condos or something which i may do but i don't want to do that for 30 years i've had these properties i love Santa Cruz and i love renters uh but it's forcing our hand thank you next speaker please hello council members my name is faz um i think i may not know you all that well but i know you all enough to know that you're none of you are in favor of the 45th administration we see day in and day out the 45th administration continuously rigging our elections our government in favor of the wealthy we witness that every day on a national level and to allow an extension of a deadline is very reminiscent of allowing wealthy interests to get away with continuing to rig our election in favor of the one percent um i wanted to just also say um in terms of reaching out to voters the opposition has made a very good point about reaching out to voters and that's why they will have no problem reaching out to all 30 40 000 voters with the 300 000 that they have raised from big wealthy interests outside of our county i have no concern that they will have a problem doing that um and uh vice mayor walkins i appreciate you mentioning the issue of equity in today's discussion um i think that extending this deadline is not equity i believe it is favoring one side over the other and that's why we need to stick with the deadlines that were established and to change them is undemocratic and it is unfair so please keep the rules please keep the election integrity the way it is and do not vote to extend the deadline thank you thank you city council um my name is ackfasari uh i um my my wife and i have a house that we bought recently on the upper west side of sanikers um and she it was it was not it wasn't cheap um in this market really nothing is very cheap um but she works around the clock pretty much around the clock i'm more or less a stay at home dad but so we did we're deciding we decided to rent it and it was gonna just maybe one or two year lease um and uh so we're renting it now to some ucse students they've been amazing tenants um and we plan to move into the house eventually uh when my daughter starts kindergarten at west lake because it's in the west lake school district um it's kind of important to us to uh end up in that neighborhood because i went to school there when i was when i was a kid um so anyway we uh we're just concerned um that we're we're going to be we won't be able to actually move into our rental because um we're possibly going to have to pay relocation fees to the students um for six months um and the thing that's crazy is that they actually their parents are co co-signers on their lease so they actually their combined income annually like exceeds ours by about five times so it just seemed would seem a little ridiculous for us a small family to be having to pay for the students to relocate when their parents are making far more money than we do um so i'm pretty much up here just asking for you to accept uh yeah Santa Cruz together as a voter handbook our arguments or change or change thank you thank you very much okay and our next speaker will be okay our next speaker will be given four minutes for translation time interpretation thank you thank you Buenas tardes mi nombre Ramon Santos y tengo 28 años trabaj este viviendo en en unos apartamentos 20 años que good afternoon my name is Ramon Santos and i've been uh working in some apartments for 28 years en el primer dueño durante 20 años nos no nos aumentó más de que 350 dólares the first owner didn't raise our rents uh more than 350 dollars in the first 20 years the current owner in the last eight years has raised the rent 150 a hundred and a hundred and fifty dollars each month every year every year but we have the same carpet it hasn't changed at all um they also want us to pay everything they want us to change the carpet they want us to pay for the stove i have video documentation one time we were on vacation and it rained and the water came in um and it uh it was on our bed they just patched up above um uh just the the very part that was um on the outside um but uh not on the inside um they send us threatening letters um about um uh the stuff that we have outside um they made me um throw out three truckloads of stuff de mis dos hijas tuve que sacar una para que me ayudara con los gastos de la casa i have three daughters and i had to take one out of school so that she could help me with the costs of rent no nos deja tener por fuera nos deja tener ni un galón de agua el otro día se enojó porque me ayó que tenía una silla y estaba lavando yo algo para hacer de comer y nos amenaza siempre nos amenaza a concorrer nos del apartamento um they don't even let us have a gallon of water outside um they are always threatening to kick us out um no capte que otra cosa es aparte si dije um other people have already left um uh the rent which is uh um a thousand five hundred dollars two thousand five hundred two thousand five hundred dollars um uh even though that they had to pay everything themselves gracias gracias thank you good evening council members thank you for allowing me to speak the discussion right now is only about one thing and that is the rule of law i believe in the rule of law i think that's what governs us and what keeps this away from anarchy i'm going to use a simple example a stop sign i don't like the stop sign i don't want to stop i hate that i have to stop it really aggravates me i'm going to run the stop sign period even though there is a law that's written down a citation if you will that says you're going to get a ticket and if you do it very often you're going to go to jail well i don't know how strong it is when the elections code says something the state of california's elections code and that statement is 92 86 a and b the only difference with b is that it says that a certain different amount of time has to be given because it's a consolidated election and we have to follow those rules or we will have anarchy it is not because of fairness it is not because somebody is getting a better treatment it's because that law was written for a reason and every section of this thing i'm thinking about the guy or gal who wrote it they must have really spent a lot of time figuring this out to understand all the possibilities because there were a lot of possibilities and of course we encountered one we have to be careful and watchful and it's easy to make a few mistakes because these these codes are voluminous and they're all around us they're everywhere everything that we do is governed by the rule of law sometimes there's so many laws that it's hard to follow them all but the point of it is is that in this case we have to follow the rule of law the other thing i wanted to mention for sure is that yes we've gotten some help from california association of realtors and from national association of realtors but thank you that's your two minutes thank you i have to say one thing now i'm sorry two minutes i'm going to say it anyway the rent stabilization board is going to cost five million dollars and that okay is thank you we have our next speaker my name is robert kivores okay okay we have another speaker my name is robert kivores and i am a supporter of rent control because i think santa cruz needs to rein in rents keep people in their homes and create a fairer more equitable and also more stable community i think this measure will do that i as a tenant take the crisis of housing in this community very seriously and i take the prospect of rent control very seriously i also take the democratic process very seriously for that reason i was inclined to go try to find out what the requirements for having this election were what the requirements were for getting a statement in on time and i think when i hear other people who were unable to get a statement on time say that they think it's very important that people have the information to make an informed decision you would think that importance would be reflected in their conduct of actually trying to find out what they needed to do but to my mind the actions of the opposition even in this chamber tonight speak to not a preference for equity or equality but a preference for essentially bullying and trying to do whatever it takes to get their way i hear landlords up here essentially trying to blackmail the city by saying they'll evict their tenants if rent control passes i hear an implicit threat of a lawsuit from a law firm where the mayor is an attorney i hear four hundred thousand dollars in outside money from state and national organizations coming to influence this election um and to me this uh just shows that democracy is really not what the other side's about democracy means doing what it takes to make sure that everyone has a level playing field and i think everyone did have a level playing field the other side dropped the ball but i think they have to face the consequences now um thank you for putting this on the agenda tonight i um i had a prepared speech but honestly i felt that it was a little too off topic and um what i'd really like to say to you is that this seems like an issue of legalities to me and um i don't know whether or not you'll be constrained by those legalities but if you do have some kind of discretion in your decision what i'm hoping for is that there can truly be that community dialogue about this measure so that people understand the things that are good about it and the things that are challenges we are adu owners that means that in order to afford to live on our property we share it with someone we're certainly not a wealthy landlord uh rather we have a fantastic tenant who we really enjoy living next to but we are struggling like so many people are struggling it's not it's too simplistic to call a landlord the villains and to uh to characterize them as greedy that's that's really unfair to a wide swath of people i think that um when you look at the big money that can come in with an issue like this that can still happen and it can still mean that this is wrong for Santa Cruz that's not that's a separate issue you can have compassion for people and still be opposed to this you can look at it and say i'm for some kind of a measure that bases assistance on need not based on whether or not somebody's lucky enough to be in an apartment when rent control is passed i mean the reality is that i'd like to help the very most needy members of our society and if that is mainly tenants great i'd like to help them but i don't think that this is the best way that we can go about it and so i think it's important to let people know the pros and the cons and if rent control is right for Santa Cruz it should stand on its own merits you should be able to talk about the cons you should be able to talk about the fact that it's hard to evict people who are difficult uh that shouldn't be a problem thank you next week hi elise casby here i've spent the last 22 years trying to understand our system especially one of the things that i've been working to do is understand how the system works for poor people in the process i became very poor and then i had to witness a whole lot of unfairness there was the day that the people at the ebt building over there in emeline tried to rip me off of my fair hearing unfortunately i knew the rules and i protested and i let them know that i was going to make a big stink about it so they made sure to get me my fair hearing after a month my whole summer was ruined and i went through a lot of personal hardship but that hardship is nothing like what a lot of homeless people are going through they have to crouch behind bushes to go to the bathroom a lot of these people have serious mental illnesses where were the caring landlords how many times did they come out and talk about our lack of housing and talk about the the the supply that needs to be built in this city how much did they care to address the escalating rents so i just want to say is that politics is a game okay and my comments are mainly for the honest hardworking activists that i really admire that are in this room i admire them so much because i'm getting old but they're young and i want to have instead of these narrow conversations where all the wealthy people behind y'all except for a few that we can get into office by hard work okay i want them to prevail i want our conversations to become broader i want our understanding of how money is taken over free speech in this country how fascists have infiltrated our bus company and we have a guy who has absolutely disdain for people with hardships who can barely walk let alone catch the bus so i tell you what i want to see i want to see them rise up when the vote i so expect out of y'all except for sandy to be the usual one where you couch out of the rich okay next speaker please hi i'm michael i'm people have talked a lot about fairness and i used to think that federal and statewide elections and states like california could never be fair because big money would come in and i somehow had the naive idea that small cities like sanikers were different and i i know that's not true especially when a measure like this which aligns so much with class is is involved you've heard about the big money another thing that always comes up with public comment is it's a little like voting people come up here and the number of people that support one thing somehow sways maybe sways the council or ends up in the sentinel the next day why aren't there more people here supporting the measure arguing that you should follow the the original guidelines because they're renters they're working extra jobs and they're afraid of retaliation i know people in the campaign for rent control who do not want to show their face or give their name because they're afraid of retaliation if the measure doesn't pass others had one other thing besides that and and the big money and that is that uh there is a whole community of people in santa cruz that won't that are going to benefit from rent control but that can't vote on this at all the thousands of uh immigrants and non-citizens that are being organized by anasthena sardania and so there's no way this is going to be fair this is inherently and overwhelmingly unfair in so many ways the best you can do is is help slightly that process by by going along with the original rule the original date just a little gesture in the direction of fairness thank you hi my name is neil langholz everyone makes mistakes mistakes are normal and understandable in this case mistake deviating from the normal election schedules should be fixed this is a consolidated election there is plenty of time to submit information before the voter handbook printing deadline uh required by the state election law the city should not deviate from the normal election schedules and give everyone adequate time and a fair and transparent election thank you thank you next speaker go ahead hello city council oh thank you all thank you okay okay sorry we have a speaker who's going to speak to us you all had your time so it's important for us to have let her have her time so i appreciate your respect and attention while she speaks go ahead thank you council members for your patience and your respect of all of our community voices i totally appreciate that i love democracy i love to see it in action i would love to have an hour to talk about what a good and necessary ordinance this is and i hope it will be turned into law because i think our city will be so much better with rent control but that's not really what we're talking about tonight if you look at the website we're talking about whether this should be on the agenda tonight at all because it was put there by a mayor who has been recommended to recuse himself because of a conflict of interest if you look at the website of the law firm for which david terrasis works you'll see the words real estate and business over and over again i have no idea what percent of their clients are landlords wealthy homeowners and real estate agents but i would guess that it is a very large percent the website itself proudly claims that this is a quote from the website the firm provides aggressive representation in pursuing and protecting the client's financial and property interests unquote this is not a firm that fights for democracy of equal rights or for tenants rights or for the little guy it's a firm that primarily protects the property rights of the wealthy the senior partner at the law firm where mayor terrasis works is mr brayerton he is david terrasis's boss he is also the one that submitted the petition to extend the deadline he is also the lawyer representing santa cruz together the major opponent to the to the campaign is it not possible that mayor terrasis might be swayed in his consideration of issues related to rent control by his own bread and butter considerations it's a financial conflict and that's what makes the conflict of interest according to our lawyers his job and income depend on his boss and also the okay thank you very much and i have one one second no i i i mean she was like i thought i know the there's equity of voice that i really want to adhere to that i appreciate that thank you so you'll be given two minutes everybody will be given two minutes go ahead thank you good evening my name is glenn shaller i work at the monorail base center labor council afl cio um we're the afl cio for monorail and santa cruz counties 80 unions about 38 000 working families now we strongly support the rent control ordinance that is going to be brought to the voters this fall um we have been dismayed at um the opposition that could not figure out how to follow deadlines and um disappointed that when they came up with an argument and then submitted it and found out it was too late that they then tried to change the process um i would argue that um they had their chance and they had something to submit if you do decide tonight um that it would be fair for them to be able to submit an argument i would hope that they would submit the original argument that they wrote before they saw our argument if we're going to be doing this in a fair and equitable manner then it should be done that way if the point has been made that people should see both sides and let's see both sides not one side and then the other side that saw that side that's all i have to say tonight thank you for all the work you do thank you good evening council members my name is steven caron and we own caron properties we've been on mission street for three decades we follow with great interest the situation before us it has taken the time and energy of so many people in this room we have scores of properties that are managed responsibly and we are gravely concerned with the rental situation in our community the voter information guide that's sent to all registered voters in advance of the election is a particularly important document as stated in your staff's report the deadlines for ballot arguments and rebuttals deviated from the city's practice of aligning its deadlines with the county city staff acknowledges this action has created some confusion and potentially deprived the community of full and fair disclosure of the information so we're encouraging you to do the responsible thing by reinstating the normal consolidated election timeline whereby campaigns are typically constrained we also encourage you to allow both sides to present their positions so that the voters can make an informed decision it is critical that the voters be well informed on such an important initiative as always thank you for the work that you do on behalf of our city one second funny and if anybody is it's interested in speaking and hasn't spoke already please line up to my left and we will make sure we are anticipating your public comment okay okay go ahead thank you i'm abby samuels we want a fair transparent and democratic election process for both sides changing the deadline at this point is an advantage allowing them to write their ballot argument having already seen the pro argument to razis has a conflict of interest and cannot vote on it neutrality the opposition to rent control miss a deadline to turn in their ballot argument against the measure they and the city are blaming the city clerk for choosing a separate and earlier deadline for the city to turn in ballot arguments then the county saying it was confusing but is perfectly valid under california elections code for the clerk to choose an earlier date the county clerk's website says august 17th is a deadline for filing arguments against county ballot measures and says for city measures contact the city clerk the city attorney will submit an analysis of city measures on the deadline set by the city clerk the city council including the mayor approved this earlier deadline at a public meeting on june 26 the city council is throwing its worker under the bus the mayor the mayor a week after writing an op-ed against rent control in the sentinel place the issue of extending the deadline on the agenda for the special meeting the mayor's law firm represents santa cruz together and their treasurer also a lawyer at the law firm sent an argument for extending the deadline from which david traz's name was removed from the letterhead this represents a clear conflict of interest or an apparent conflict of interest to the mayor's ability to vote on this matter neutrally i have a suggestion if you really want democracy i would ask the city council vote tonight to make it illegal for santa cruz together to receive any funds from outside our city i hope someone will make that motion that would be a real triumph for democracy voting to bend the rules for big money is not democracy it is a vote for big money pure and simple thank you very much no remind i'll remind you just to keep your your comments in two minutes thank you um hi my name is jab um i'm with the campaign for rent control and i just very quick comment and i want to draw attention to something that the city attorney uh said in his presentation that i think has been kind of like lost in all of this talk about uh democracy and these high ideals that our opponents seem to have just discovered which is which is that the initial understanding of the law as the city attorney understood it as gail pellerin under understood it was that there was no violation of the law here that things may have deviated a little bit from the norm but that no law was violated what happened in the interim a group that has raised you know hundreds of thousands of dollars threaten the city with a lawsuit this whole conversation is taking place under the threat of a lawsuit against the city uh i don't know what democracy means in in in this context similarly as robert pointed out uh there are have been numerous threats to the voters of santa cruz to renters in santa cruz uh if if this should pass that people are going to to massively sell off their homes and abandon santa cruz i don't know what democracy means in this context either so i just want us to kind of keep this in mind as as you all are going to be voting on this that this whole thing is not a democratic process this whole thing is happening under underneath a many layers of threat and that is that is an important thing to keep in mind as we go into the rest of this campaign so and we'll be telling the voters about that as we're knocking on thousands of doors yeah my name is vivay kajaga deason i am a tenant a member of the movement for housing justice and i also ran common cause of uc berkeley which advocates for campaign finance reform um and uh yeah i just want to submit to evidence three pieces of things that are in the public record but clearly state that uh this elections deadline was in fact the initially decided upon july 10th date and i just i keep hearing that there was confusion about this issue but it was very clearly on the city clerks website and i'm also hearing that the county website was confusing the county website says clearly like abby pointed out that the august 17th deadline refers to county ballot measures and it says quote for city measures contact the city clerk really clearly suggesting that that could be a different deadline second uh the resolution that y'all approved uh which i was at and a number of these fine people were at uh and on july 26 also says primary arguments to be submitted to the city clerk july 10th third um what the city clerk put up on the website so this date july 10th was clearly publicly stated in several places available to the public announced at a public meeting that many of these folks that are in santa cruz together were literally at um i don't know how y'all missed it but um the relevant portion of the elections code that everyone is citing says nothing about requiring that this deadline is after 14 days like jeb is saying there was nothing wrong with the initial date that was chosen it was unusual it may have been a deviation from the norm but in no way was it actually illegal um so i just it's it's odd to me that okay okay thank you very much i think i made my point okay next speaker please hi my name is harry dong today i'm hearing pros and cons regarding the extension of a deadline the city attorney recommends extending the deadline and the city clerk has admitted an error in setting the deadline the council is here to decide whether or not voters will be able to read pros and cons on the ballot measure regarding rent control and just cause eviction let's let the voters hear pros and cons of rent control and just cause thank you thank you hi my name is bonnie thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight um i have lived in santa cruz since 1972 when i bought a small rundown house with two small cottages on it for the entire lifetime my entire adult lifetime i have spent working on these houses repairing them maintaining them and renting them i am not a wealthy landlord i also worked several part-time jobs all along the way and raised my daughter in santa cruz i have taught at cabril college mpc and i have considered myself an integral part of this community contributing to it for many many years and now i find myself feeling in jeopardy because of the rent control i depend on the rents in my little cottages i did not receive a big retirement i'm not a wealthy person and i really depend on that and i think that it's very unfortunate that the people who are so pro the rent control don't realize that there are landlords who are not wealthy who are not gougers i had one tenant who rented her who raised her own rent by a few hundred dollars because i was so under the market and i think that there are a lot of people like myself who who are we're not with the california association i are the renters association i read that and i think those are not my people my people are in santa cruz but there i am i cannot survive without my rental properties so i will indeed sell them if you know this goes through i do know some people who have already sold because they just can't deal with this they can't face it it's just over the top thank you thank you evening thanks for having us all the extension of the deadline disadvantage is no one everyone could submit arguments which are not really secrets at this point there's a 33 page ballot measure that lays it all out for the people that support it there many arguments that are published elsewhere for people that don't uh this is about having information for the eyeballs of people that step into that voting booth uh who may have by some miracle not seen or heard what this is about and i'd like to ask again as i did in the case of the impact assessment discussion that the council vote in favor of more information rather than less uh i think the deadline should be extended to conform with the rules for a consolidated election thank you before we get started how many more folks are interested in speaking to the council at this time okay okay you can come on up and line up oh since you already spoke so that doesn't count right my understanding is if you speak once you speak okay sorry you you already had your time with your group so we won't hear from you again okay so we'll you'll be the last speaker then um Brent is that right oh you're not speaking she didn't speak with the group okay sorry okay so you'll be our last speaker then go ahead thank you hi my name is pat i was not going to speak but i actually had to ask somebody just now is this a charter amendment or is this an ordinance tonight i have heard both phrases being spoken in front of this uh council and to my way of thinking there is a lot of confusion about this ballot measure so i would urge you to get as much information out to the community and to the voters as possible because clearly we're just in this room of informed people we're calling it two different things thank you thank you okay next i'd just like to say one thing and that is to quote thomas jefferson an informed citizenry is the bulk work of a democracy thank you thank you okay and you uh we'll be our last speaker okay so lin renshaw sanders together i want to set the record straight that we have not received any funds sanders together is not funded by the california apartments or california association of realtors you could notice that from our fppc filings this measure is about the future character of our city and this measure is about everyone living in the city of santa cruz it's not just about renters santa cruz is environmentally beautiful liberal diverse and attracts many fantastic people making it hard to afford and find a place to live the result is a painful of affordable housing shortage this measure will make the rental housing shortage worse voters deserve to understand both sides of the issue in a fair democratic process city staff should be supported in finding a way to fix their inadvertent error on the voter handbook deadlines november is a consolidated election and there should not be a deviation from the normal voter handbook deadlines voters deserve full transparency on such a significant public policy decision all should understand this is a citizen initiative that will likely permanently change the city charter not a word can be changed it's all or nothing this is very different from a normal city ordinance that can be modified as times change everyone in santa cruz should learn about this proposed measure and its impacts a likely permanent change to the city charter is very risky please learn more at santa cruise together dot com thank you thank you okay i i want to say oh excuse me at this no more disruptions please at this time we have heard from the public i thank you for coming and sharing your perspective uh i will now return to council for deliberation um and any further questions for staff um before i do i wanted to see if you uh mr kandadi wanted to answer the legal question that was brought up by some of the folks who spoke to us i heard two so um the easy one is that it's a charter amendment that's being proposed um with respect to the conflict of interest question i have two thoughts about it the first is um i doubt that the existence of a conflict of interest would preclude the mayor from calling a special meeting on this item but that's not what occurred here it was a staff initiated a process that was done by polling council members as to their availability and as to whether or not they uh were amenable to having a discussion on the matter and so the mayor did not call the meeting tonight so there's not a conflict of interest question to resolve there thank you are there any comments from the council let me do questions questions comments okay so i just wanted to ask for clarification so initially in your first uh remarks you said that well i just want to make sure i understand clearly that the deadline that was set was improper it was incorrect it was incorrect yes okay may i ask a follow-up question because i'm i'm not understanding um what what do we mean by incorrect because i'm i'm hearing so incorrect it was not in accordance with the county timeline is different than incorrect that's right so i i explained it a little bit more detail beforehand i'll just sort of i'll just sort of revisit that discussion at this point uh my initial read was that while the the elections code section 92 86 a didn't require that the deadline be set at 14 days that it also didn't prohibit the city from setting it uh at 14 days and so therefore were the council to decide to extend the deadline it would have to do so by amending the resolution i've more carefully analyzed that and revisited that um at at um fairly significant length and of the opinion at this point that uh the more persuasive argument is that when an election is consolidated the deadlines are required to be set to coincide with the county elections officials guidelines and and accordingly if a legal challenge were filed uh to for a writ of mandate to compel the city to accept um arguments until those deadlines it would likely in my estimation prevail um so uh does that okay does that make sense so what if i can if i may what i'm hearing is that there was confusion generated on behalf of the city and setting an alternate date that's right and as a result um we were out of compliance with the legal standard that we would need to adhere to arguably if the if the elections code provision requires that all aspects of the election coincide with the statewide general election then that would include ballot arguments i see okay do you have any further questions uh council that was my one question for clarification i have one um just sort of more process question yeah how do we feel um and maybe this could be for you tony or for you martin how do we feel to um learn from this experience and not have something like this happen again what do you think we can put in place to avoid any future conflicts like this before us again as a result of this experience um well i i mean i think that uh first of all institutional memory is a very valuable thing and uh this chapter in the history of the city will will no doubt um go down with as a as a significant moment in the city's history uh so so this particular issue i think we will be crystal clear about in the future great um but i can also say fairly confidently that we will make other mistakes and be before you again at some point in the future because this is a complicated business we're dealing with very complex regulations in a very complicated legal landscape and so um as unfortunate as this situation is uh you know mistakes happen right okay if i can add to that too um and uh one of the things that we definitely we're not required to but we can definitely do a better job at is to do additional above and beyond uh notifications uh i think is the the city clerk administrator uh noted as well as uh coordination and in contact with the various groups that are involved in the elections process so just be having a more uh sort of progressive elections approach and and working with the various sectors of the community that are involved in that would we would hope would also help in the process moving forward okay i appreciate that any other questions or comment from okay thank you are there any other questions or comments from the council members at this time council member brown i'm going to start with a disclaimer because uh enough people have been asking me to do this and i imagine we'll continue to um i'm a renter i'm a rent control supporter i live and write rent checks to rent control supporters for anybody who's confused about that for anybody who is concerned that i don't announce that there it is i want to ask a couple of rhetorical questions so i'm leaving i've left it for the comment portion we've heard a lot about fairness and equity and transparency and democracy and all of these as with most decision-making processes are subjective in the eye of the beholder so i've been thinking a lot about as as people have spoken the comments that we received many of which i'm a very articulate very well thought out um in particular comments from uh people asking us to not approve the extension were coming from i mean they were they were not uh auto generated they were um you know very deliberate in the kinds of arguments they made and i you know i want to just say i appreciate that there are a lot of activists who put a lot of time and energy into a grassroots campaign so my first question is is it what is fair about an or democratic about a grassroots campaign being forced to meet a very constricted deadline with very few resources to gather signatures in order that we could take a month long recess what's fair about that what's fair about tenants in this town being made to be afraid of being evicted i mean this is happening with or without rent control as somebody in the audience speaker suggested what's fair about tenants being afraid to speak up for fear of eviction what's fair about their landlords telling them if rent control passes i'm going to sell this house and evict you and while this is not an issue that we have control over at the local level although i sure wish we did what is fair about dollars counting as speech actually going to ask you all to not uh to save your clapping because you because i'm going to say a few other things uh right now um i have no doubt that opponents of rent control of this ballot initiative will get the word out and and have a very clear voice and and a widespread voice in this community we all understand a lot of that is coming from outside money whether it's being funneled directly through santa cruz together or just through the private consulting firms that make a lot of money off of those mailers and they're going to be very good at messaging and they're going to reach voters so that message will get out with or without a ballot argument nevertheless and despite the fact that my integrity has been impugned on multiple occasions for my uh taking a position on this issue as a public official um you know i do have respect for uh our responsibility as public servants in ensuring that the public process the part of the process that we control is equitable legal above board etc so you know i'm having a real hard time with this one i'm just going to confess um but what i do know is that i under no circumstances could i support an extension without uh the either some kind of remedy for the proponents those who did their due diligence i don't believe that it was uh a deadline that was really hard to miss that is not why i would vote in favor of the extension uh that is really just about the process overall and the public process the private process all that money is going to move no matter what we do here so i won't i'd only be able to support that if we can provide some remedy for the proponents of this campaign the activists the grassroots you know people in this community uh who worked really hard and and they did meet the deadlines they followed all the rules um it's whatever that may be i've heard suggestions about uh the possibility of having a you know some additional rebuttal potentially being able to rewrite the initial statement and or uh if the the opponents statement was written without seeing the proponents original statement using that and not giving them the opportunity to rewrite i don't know if that's even possible to verify so you know we need to i mean i'd like to have that conversation with my colleagues before i'm i'm willing to cast my vote thank you council member brown i appreciate your perspective and and the words you shared and i'm inclined to support what you've put out there on the floor i'm not sure what that remedy would look like so i think we need to definitely talk about that um you know there were incredibly articulate arguments made tonight sound reasoned um and really you know it was it was certainly it's a political issue people have definitely argued that it's an ethical issue and and the way that i'm hearing it it's a procedural decision that we have to make based on mistakes we made um so for me that's really kind of where i'm going it sounds like that's where you are too so i think it would be a i mean i want to hear from our colleagues as well to figure out what a remedy would look like in order to support the extension based on the procedural error we made i appreciate that i see you tony go ahead yeah i was just going to say that if the council were to direct the city clerk to accept uh ballot arguments until the august 17th deadline then um then that would apply to both pro and con arguments and so the arguments in favor would uh or those who crafted the arguments in favor would have an opportunity to uh polish theirs up should they choose to do so um and at this point since arguments in favor of and opposed have been submitted by both sides um you know i think there's some measure of a level playing field there although i have to say that the arguments opposed were were made um with with uh the availability of arguments in favor already having been submitted i'm not sure how you go beyond that because we're really just interpreting the elections code here but at least both sides would have an opportunity to um to look at what has already been made public and and to revise or refine their arguments should they choose to do so comments i'll just briefly say um i appreciate that comments mentioned um by council member brown and council member chase when i originally knew we were having a special election i was furious because i was so disappointed that we were going to have to remove the sugar sweeten beverage tax from the ballot for november and i knew that was coming um when it was brought to my attention that this was also an item that had come up um and that we had made a mistake at the city i had originally thought it was on behalf of the other side of the campaign so this to me wasn't necessarily about choosing a side if we made a mistake we should fix it and so that's uh essentially what i heard from uh council member chase as well as a council member brown and in terms of remedies considering what we have available i'm absolutely in favor of that um you know and and um happy to hear what other council members have to say or if there's interest in making a motion at this time the council after the conversation um you know tonight was we're really deciding a narrow issue and we're not deciding the validity or the virtuosity of anyone involved um in this discussion and so i think it's really important that folks know that what's before the council truly is limited to do we support this extension and uh you know i just really hope that we can have this conversation without ripping each other to shreds i i really really do like i i do not like how your integrity was questioned and the fppc contacted when our own attorney city attorney had already determined that you did not have a conflict and i didn't like the um uh just i guess the meanness of the comments that were directed towards you i didn't appreciate that either and i haven't appreciated some of the mean comments also directed to our other other you know fellow council member who's not here tonight who chose to recuse himself so i really hope that we can stick with the issue in front of us without going for the jugular and and doing the ad hominin attacks i know sometimes that's really hard i know that but um if this were if there were no questions involved about or conflicts about the date and the deadline i would have no issue with just saying you know what the deadline happened one group missed it one didn't then you know let's let's move on but i do think there one i do think it was a very honest mistake i do think there is confusion um i do think that the process wasn't 100 clear on the right date and so um i do want to move forward and and i think i you know i'm on the side of of extending it um because i i think i don't see a disadvantage really to anyone by doing that and that actually that's not even what we're deciding whether one person gets or once i gets a disadvantage or the other we're just deciding should the state move was at least for me was there confusion involved and i i think there was so um i would like to also think of maybe some ways that uh you know i like what the city attorney suggested that perhaps um you know everyone involved gets to resubmit a new um argument and that i think that absolutely needs to be part of this if we do go forward and extend that deadline thank you any other comments from the council do you have any ideas on a on a motion you want to i'd prefer not to make the motion but i i do think that um certainly let me just but this is the time for our council to deliberate we had an opportunity to hear from the public and we thank you for that it's a very critical component of our process but at this point i appreciate it if you could not comment and let the council discuss and deliberate and make a decision at this point thank you go ahead so i think that the recommendation of the city attorney to reopen the process and allow both uh proponents and opponents of the measure submit their arguments and then have the opportunity to rebut based upon uh you know that at least level playing field at least here yeah well i'll um i'll make a motion then so um motion can i make a suggestion yeah please uh the motion would um direct city clerk to accept arguments in accordance with the deadlines established for county ballot measures by the county elections official i'll try to repeat that uh a motion to direct the city clerk to accept arguments in favor of uh in favor or in opposition in accordance with the county deadlines yeah i think should i add anything else to that uh dates would be good to have in accordance with the county deadlines which are already established yeah which would allow for either the opponents or proponents to submit modifications up until the county deadlines that are posted yeah and just for clarification that that would apply to both arguments and rebuttals so arguments and both supporters and opponents could submit arguments um i think it's important to have that language in there at the august 17th and august 24th deadlines okay i will i made that motion i will second that motion did you get that bonnie are we prepared to vote are there any further comments no okay all those in favor please say aye aye aye all those opposed no okay that passes unanimously with council member brown councilor chaser myself okay at this time we will adjourn the meeting and um see you next week