mind and sort of orient the council and the community, we get millions of dollars in requests with very limited money. And it's very difficult every year having been on community programs committee to sort of whittle it down because there's so many worthy causes that deserve funding. So with that, and given the tough choices that we have to make, but to move us along, I'll just kind of express my kind of opinion on that. Is that, you know, one of the things that I didn't feel comfortable with last time is to remove the code enforcement component, especially since it's a preventative approach to ensuring that people are living in habitable conditions. But felt comfortable with the funding coming back if we had additional funding to restore some of that. Kind of honoring that between option one and option two. You know, I would be comfortable with either and supportive of option two. But given option three and some of the moving around of the funding there, I too wouldn't be able to support it even though there's a lot of really wonderful programs that are deserving. So I'll go ahead and have Vice Mayor Cummings and then Council Member Matthews back to Council Member Crum. Can I ask Lee another question? Planning director. So I was just kind of curious because there are shortfalls with the option number two. And there's shortfalls with option number three as well. And just trying to understand how that might affect scope of work. Additionally, I think that one of the concerns that many of the other council members have is just that code enforcement has been one of the factors that's led to some people being kicked out of their homes. And I'm wondering if there might be a potential for a refinement of a deeper look at what the scope of work is and refinement around that. Just to ensure that their objective is not to close, to remove housing and kick people out of their homes. But to actually, you know, try to overcome some of the obstacles they're having with safety. And that is absolutely the objective. And just to speak to that directly, I think I've got some stats here that address how many of the units in the legalization program. Most of those have come through the rental inspection and not through the proactive code enforcement. I imagine some of them have been through the proactive. And I saw those stats here a second ago, but they're not coming. I think it was 300 of the 460 or so units have been identified as part of that rental inspection service. And the other 160 have come through people filing complaints on things. I don't have the specific numbers in terms of how many unpermitted dwelling units are identified through our proactive work. When we identify those, we do add them to the queue. And at some point we seek to work with that property owner to legalize the unit. But certainly it is, as I mentioned before, always our primary objective is keeping people in the homes and then making sure that they're up to health and safety standards. Do you have additional questions? Yeah, well, I just had a comment that I was going to make, which is that I've had some students who've worked for me in the past who have lived in homes that have had lots of mold issues. And I actually directed them to code enforcement. And so I feel like if we reduce the funding too much that when we have people who are in these situations, they might not actually be able to get the safety and services that they need. So I'd be more comfortable with making a substitute motion that we adopt option number two, which I feel that from the initial recommendations, we've provided a lot more funding towards other programs. And we've seen some reductions, but I feel that if we think about equity across these programs, we've done a good job of bringing up some funding. And I think that we can also have further conversations around code enforcement. Okay, so we have a substitute motion by Vice Mayor Cummings to adopt option two. I'll go ahead and second that motion. We'll go ahead at this time and vote on the substitute motion and whether or not to accept the substitute motion, correct? Substitute motion is by Vice Mayor Cummings to adopt option number two, which is now being titled substitute motion. And seconded by myself. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That passes unanimously. So then that's the motion that passes. Now you may vote on the motion. Okay, so now we'll go ahead and vote to adopt option number two, substitute motion on the floor. Councillor McCrown. Yeah, I just want to say I think doing outreach to the students is a good thing. I appreciate that. And the cleanup efforts are also good. There was another colleague used to sit up here with me back in 2000, 2001 who always said, unpermitted does not necessarily mean unsafe. And I agreed with them and I lived in a lower ocean neighborhood for over 12 years. And that's the folks I came in contact with when I lived there and since then as well, we're not being helped in the way that we heard the planning director say that we go out and help people. I think we have to figure this out and I think we have to have more public meetings and, you know, let people know what options are available to them through code enforcement because I don't think that's happening right now. So I just look forward to a process where we plug in with the neighborhood and almost get some direction from them and say, you know, how can code enforcement help the neighborhood and not put people out of their places and in fear? With respect to what Vice Mayor Cummings said, I think how much are we leaving the code enforcement if my motion prevailed? It was a 36,000. So, I mean, 36,000 to do cleanups and, you know, mold and have people, I think that's, you know, enough until we see a kind of change where people are saying, you know, hip hip array for code enforcement because I don't find renders doing that very often. Well, I've never heard it. So anyway, thank you. Okay. So we'll go ahead now and vote on our substitute motion and that was made by Vice Mayor Cummings. So I can invite myself all those in favor of the substitute motion. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes unanimously. And do you need an additional motion to adopt resolution three? Yes. Sort of directing us to move forward on the contracts. Okay. Okay, so can we get a motion to adopt resolution? I'll go ahead and move the item, the resolution three. Okay. Motion by Council Member Myers, seconded by Vice Mayor Cummings. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That too passes unanimously. Thank you very much. So we'll go ahead and return back to our consent agenda item number eight. I believe we left it with a motion, if I can recall, by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member, I mean a motion by Council Member Brown, seconded by Vice Mayor Cummings. And we had heard public testimony and at this time there was a series of requests to have friendly amendments by Council Member Matthews. Did you capture those requests or would you like those to be repeated? I could, and I can either read them for clarification or you can repeat them, however you want to. Let me go back to the page to go ahead and have Council Member Matthews read. Do you want to go ahead? I have one as well. Okay. So why don't we have our city clerk go ahead and make sure they capture what you. Yeah, that's because I think that's going to come. That's been suggested. So it's slightly abbreviated to type quick stats indicating both numbers of people service that are residents and not. All right. Total budget from city and other sources. The cleanup of the budget. Services and meetings advertised would be open without exclusion. Advisory Council includes representatives from property management and mediation. Partner agencies also include an acknowledged mediation service. A report back in six months, including the outcome. And one for Council Member Meyer is what the final report back at the end of the contract period. Did that capture the additions? Were those accepted by. So there's just a little bit. My recollection is that the. Council Member Matthews, if you have them, I'll let you go ahead, but my understanding was the. So the request for reporting was in two areas. One that reporting differentiate between city and other residents who are served. City and other people served. City residents and other people served. And that the statistics. The reporting provide information on outcomes. No outcomes results outcomes results and that a full budget be provided with other funding sources. So there were kind of three areas there. So it was two related to reporting and then one budget with other funding sources. Okay. Okay. So just wanted to clarify that and that the media though. So and the advisory group should include someone in nonprofit property management mediation was to be provided as a. Resource for referral not on the board. Well, I said on the advisory council. You did what you wanted mediation service on the. Someone with experience in. Mediation. That's fine. Okay. So that was accepted by the. Okay. Maker of the wishes accepted by the seconder of the motion. I just had a question with regards to that just given the fact that they have a limited funding. The costs of a mediator, I don't think have been included in this. So would requiring them to have a mediator. So that's on the advisory board. That's just their advisory council. Okay. I mean, I understood the advisory council to be advisory, not the people doing the work. So you're right. So it wasn't mediation services to be included in the contract. It's just to have. That area of expertise is represented on the advisory council and also on the community resources to which they refer. The one other point was also that everyone is welcome from the public. However, if someone is disruptive that they can be removed. I said services and meetings advertised to the public are open. Yeah. Okay. I just want to make one more comment and probably the people in the room who were previously who made comments are no longer in the room. But I just want to say for the record, in case any of you all are wondering this. We did actually issue our cross-trip proposals and extensively did extensive outreach to potential providers of these services. And this was the only application we received. So this was not like some special soul source contract patronage for our friends. This was actually a response to an RFP. Thank you for the clarification. Okay. And just for before we move on to additional comments in action. I'm just specifying who is the lead contact for the program. Okay. Excuse me. The other item that I mentioned was to specify who is the lead contact for the program. Yeah, and I think that was forthcoming. So were those friendly amendments were adopted by the making of the motion in the second day of the motion. They capture council member Myers's addition. Is that correct? Okay. So further deliberation before we go to a vote. Council member Brown. Yeah, thank you. Council member Brown. I don't know if I heard anything with regards to acknowledging the sensitivity of the data, the confidentiality of the data, the protection of those that may be undocumented, and then also the reporting and how that's associated. So just because the language is everyone's reporting and we're collecting all the data, but there's no specifications on sensitivity of data or confidentiality. Sure. If we could just, and that's actually in, so apologies for not addressing that. They have given me information and I believe it's covered in their scope of work about maintenance of confidentiality, but yeah. So it's already there, but it just, if we could just kind of affirm that reporting will maintain confidentiality, client confidentiality under all circumstances. Thank you. This is where things get tricky and I guess they would advertise it to specific portions of the community because of the statement. It's open to all members of the community. But I know from my conversations with people that are from vulnerable communities, having people that would openly be aggravators towards them, even if it's verbally makes the space uncomfortable to be able to share openly and honestly. So I'm not sure how that can be remedied within these motions or whether that's something that the group needs to work in their own policies. But just want to make sure that we are creating a safe and welcoming space for people to come and share their experiences of tenant issues instead of it being a free for all where anyone can come and listen in. Council Member Brown and then Council Member Matthews. Just responding to that, I think those are kind of operating ground rules that the program can establish just as the Mayor says at the beginning of our meeting. These are our operating principles and those are established and that's the expectation for the meeting. But even the volunteer organizer who spoke to us, I don't know her name, said, yeah, if we just do a general workshop on tenant rights, we expect that's open to the public. So that's all I meant by that statement. If you're doing a general program open to the public, it's open to the public. Okay, all right, we have a motion in a second. Any for the discussion? Yeah, I would just add, I am comfortable leaving it to the organization to determine their process for allowing members of the public to engage in trainings. That would assume that they are there to be trained rather than to interfere with it. And I'll assume that they will have a system for dealing with that that's appropriate. If we get any reports that something is happening otherwise, then we can address it at that time. All right, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. So we'll go ahead and move on to item number 18 of our consent agenda. Final item on consent. I don't recall who polled item number 18. Okay, vice mayor Cummings. I just had a question with regards to the fact that the facility was re-roofed and the solar panels were removed for the processes of fixing the roof. And then subsequently it turns out that we can't put the solar panels back on. We have to purchase completely new solar panels because they don't meet fire code. And I was just really curious as to why that is the case. My copper public works operations manager. It has to do mostly with changes in the building code and the fire code. The panels that go on the roof cannot have a lower fire rating than the roofing material. And the new roofing material is class A and the panels are class C. Another weakness or failure of the existing system was an inverter. It's several thousand dollars to replace it, but it also got caught in a code situation where a quick disconnect had to be put in a certain number of feet of the panels, which increased the cost dramatically. So it just got to be uneconomic and illegal to replace the existing panels. A follow-up question. Are there any facilities where we can actually take these older panels and maybe install them currently because of the fact that the building materials that were previously used maybe are in similar areas of code? Yes. We actually got some interest from UCSC and from Cabrera College and the panels are currently being used in their technology programs and are being used to educate students. That was all the questions I had. Okay, great. Any additional questions? Council Member Cron? Just a really happy thing it seems to me that on page 18, the second page of the staff report, it says the installed system reduced the PG&E electric bill from 10,000 per month to approximately $20 per month. That's not a typo, right? That is not a typo. And that's relating to the Bay Street reservoir system. Right. Just seeing that kind of activity, because is there any reason why we don't just go put solar panels on every city-owned roof as a model for the rest of Santa Cruz and then tell them what you can save in your PG&E bill? Yeah, I mean, we have another project ready to put in front of you, depending on your reception of this project, to put solar panels out at the DeMail Lane landfill. And that hopefully will be on your agenda the 11th of June. Other projects kind of depend on some more advanced engineering to support the panels than these two projects would. And so they're a little more complicated and it take a while to get it going. For the record, I would just say global warming is happening and the faster we can go in directions such as solar and other ways of mitigating our carbon footprint is a wonderful thing. I think Council shares that, but they can speak for themselves. Great. Thank you for being here. Any member of the community who would like to address us on item number 18 of our consent agenda? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and return back for action and deliberation. Motion to move the item. I'm happy to move this and just in reference to the comments just made. I believe it's sometimes we get grants or some funding for us to own the solar installation ourselves and that's great because then we get 100% of the benefits. This is a partnership in which the solar is being a very expensive systems being installed on someone else's dime. So we get cheaper. It's still a savings to us and it's an immediate savings. So there's two ways to achieve this. Either we own it or we benefit from someone else's. That's correct. In any case, full steam ahead. So. Okay. Move the motion. Motion by Council Member Matthews. I'll go ahead and maybe say it was a second by Council Member Crohn since it was almost a tie for motion making. Okay. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That passes unanimously. So we are kind of jumping around today. I'm going to go ahead and reorient us. We're on to our consent public hearing items number 19 and 20 of our agenda. Are there any council members who wish to pull either 19 or 20 in our consent public hearing packet? Any comments at this time? Is there any member of the community who would like to either have one of those items removed or to speak to any of those items? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and come back for action and deliberation. Motion on the floor. Move. Okay. Motion by Vice Mayor Cummings, seconded by Council Member Matthews. Any further discussion? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Okay. We'll go ahead and then skip item number 21 since we already heard that item. I know we've had some of our downtown partners patiently waiting in the back here on item number 22. This is our general business item of the Downtown Association, Parking and Business Improvement Area Assessments for fiscal year 2020. And we'll go ahead and welcome up our AD department here to introduce the item. Good afternoon. Rebecca Unite Business Liaison for the Economic Development Department. So every year we bring the business improvement assessment back for renewal. I submit an annual plan to the City Council and the DTA Board approved this plan last week at their meeting. And City's just the fiscal agent for this assessment. So I'll hand it off to Chip, Executive Director for the DTA and he'll take it. Thank you, Rebecca. Good afternoon, Council Member Watkins. Sorry, excuse me, Mayor Watkins, Council Members. I am Chip. I'm the Executive Director of the Downtown Association. Happy to be here today to present our work plan for fiscal year 2020. We have always many exciting projects we do. We do quite a bit of marketing of the downtown of the district. In general, we organize many events throughout the year. And in the interest of time, I'm going to jump ahead. One of the projects we launched this year was a really great collaboration with the Downtown Management Corporation whose work plan is the next item on your agenda. But sort of as a segue to that, I'll introduce, I believe we have a video presentation that was prepared for us by TM Communications that we had to kind of let the community know about this project. This is a project we launched this year in October. It's funded by an assessment of property owners managed from the Downtown Management Corporation and the Downtown Association administers the program. So with that, do we have the video? Is that okay? I would have brought popcorn because, you know, I love movies and popcorn. So it's a very short video and it'll explain a little bit about the Ambassador Program that we launched Downtown this year. And then I'm completely available to answer any questions about our work plan or any questions about Downtown. Besides enough, I love Santa Cruz. I love Pacific Avenue. How are you guys? I wanted to stay engaged with the citizens, be really a part of the Santa Cruz community. So that's why I'm an ambassador. The creation of the Ambassador Program stemmed from a variety of reasons and sources, mainly from the businesses and our board, our Downtown Management Corporation. And it was integrated into our work plan for the Downtown Association to add hospitality and friendly faces. Public space. It's different. I start mine just as some businesses are opening, which is perfect. I get to go through and kind of feel like I'm getting the stage set. I absolutely love engaging with everyone on the street, whether or not it's people experiencing homelessness, business owners, visitors are wonderful because they come here to experience Santa Cruz and I feel like as an ambassador, we get to just up that experience. Right over here, a big farmers market. Downtown ambassadors bring a level of energy that is comforting and strengthens the community around here. Who do I talk to about this? And they really are someone who connects the dots. I talk to them about issues on the street, if there's trash or if there's someone who's causing any trouble. They're just a phone call away and I have called them about resources that I wasn't quite sure of and they helped direct me to the appropriate people to talk to for whatever situation. There's a very positive body language implied as far as how the ambassadors go about their business. There's an awesome group of people walking down the street. Thursday are more than happy to connect anybody to a downtown Ranger or a downtown police officer for any enforcement issues. Anything that we should have on our radar yet? Launched a community app called C-Click-Fix. It's a new line of communication that we needed because a lot of times you have issues and you don't know how to address them. I love the app. You see it, you open the app, you click it and then bada bing bada boom. And then within a couple days it's usually fixed. A downtown ambassador along your way to people. And I also like to like hand out flowers and just make sure that like people who are not from Santa Cruz are having a really wonderful experience just coming here and visiting. They're out there solving problems for us and for everybody in downtown. Having them here is really good for the future of Santa Cruz. So again we launched that program in October of last year with the Downtown Management Corporation. And we've already learned quite a bit and we continue to kind of make adjustments and tweak the program. One of the great benefits of the program we've found is we're really having the continent presence of the ambassadors downtown has really helped us identify gaps in service with things like sidewalk cleaning, homeless outreach and other services. So working with the city on those programs and looking at we've got a number of resources and how do we use the resources that we have more efficiently. So we're already really learning a lot about downtown management and just having that presence every day has been really helpful. So that's one of our new programs on top of all the marketing and events that we do. So I'm completely available to answer any questions you might have about any of it. And I know again that program is funded by the Downtown Management Corporation which is the next item on your agenda. But I'm happy to answer questions about the Downtown Association Work Plan or anything else. Thank you Chip. Thank you for the presentation and the wonderful video. I was just somewhere the other day and hearing the compliments of the downtown ambassadors. So it's really wonderful to hear that they're thriving in our downtown. I think we had a question here from Council Member Myers. If I saw correctly, another from Vice Mayor Cummings. I just said a quick question on the improvement area in the resolution. It's described Chip. And so I guess my question came from a constituent in terms of the services extending across the entire area. So including Cedar, for example, and North and just maybe you could just comment a little bit about that, about whether this is really just Pacific Avenue or if that if the entire area gets serviced. Sure. The Downtown Association is funded by a business assessment which covers a larger footprint which does go from Front Street to Cedar to North Pacific up by Lens Art and to Laurel Street at Saturn Cafe essentially. That's the footprint. That district is the business improvement district. Most of those funds are for the Downtown Association, the marketing, the events, the directory, the many things that do serve the general business community, our business directory, all the businesses in that footprint are included. The Downtown Management Corporation is funded through a smaller footprint and it's funded by property owners, which is just Pacific Avenue and side streets one block off between water and Laurel. So it's a smaller footprint. That's what funds the Ambassador Program. It also funds Uncle Poop, which is a great and much needed contractor downtown. So that's a smaller footprint. So unfortunately, at this time, those services, we can't extend outside of that district. Thank you for the clarification. With a question, if I would help Vice Mayor Cummings. Do you have a question? I just had a quick question about the app. It seemed pretty cool. And I was just kind of wondering how that got developed timeline. If you could just speak to that and how it came about. Sure. Yeah. Well, when we launched, when we were looking at launching the Ambassador Program, we understood we would need a communication system. So we did a bit of research. I was familiar with the C-Click FIC app. It's a third party proprietary app that a number of other districts and some of my colleagues I've seen have used it effectively. The challenge for us. Well, one of the things that we're trying to be very sensitive to is a lot of the things that people are reporting on the app. We don't control. So we were very cautious initially not to overwhelm the city's parking department who does the sidewalk cleaning with hundreds of requests. So we've launched it kind of slowly. They've been extraordinarily responsive working with Kathy and the city parking district who manages and that whole department has been great. So we launched the app kind of as a way for businesses how we print out a list every year of here's who you call for everything. And some of them posted by the register, many lose it. So we really wanted to have a one stop whatever you need we'll call. If you have an issue and you need a homeless service provider, a homeless outreach worker to come visit. Or if you need, you have a spill, we can help connect you with the right people. So the app was one of many ways of communication. We're trying to make it simpler for everybody, businesses, residents, visitors in the district to be able to help us with the downtown management. Make sure it's well maintained. Does that answer you? So yeah, we launched this in concurrent with launching the ambassador program. And it's grown in terms of number of users. It's available for anyone to download. You can click fix. There's also a link on our website at downtownsantacruz.com. If you don't have a smartphone, you can also fill out a request on the website as well. And you can always just call the ambassadors. Thanks. Yeah, it's great. Thanks. Any additional questions? Okay. Just kudos. I really liked the film and it was really well done. I would love to see other places, other people react to it who don't live in Santa Cruz and just like wonder what they think. What is this place? You know, because I thought that it was, of course, it was a good quality of film too. It was done, but just the way it moved around and stuff was great. Thank you. I have to give a shout out to TM Communications who put that together. And the project manager was our former marketing director, Kim Luke, on that. So she kind of knew our messaging a little bit. So it was a great collaboration. I appreciate that council member. Thank you. Mr. Aren't any additional questions? Okay, questions? Softball. So downtown association is funded by an assessment district on businesses, DMC, next item funded by an assessment on property owners. Both of those are subject to protests. How many have you received? None. Yay. And I will just inform council members, there was a time back in the day when there was a whole lot of controversy and people, you remember this, I'm sure. Before my times. Anyway, I think that's really proof of the value that both the businesses and the property owners see in these two programs. They are funded by assessments, zero protests. Good for you. Thank you. I appreciate that. The number of our programs, they're very, though it's funded by business and the property community, they're really public facing community benefit programs. Our information kiosk is a fantastic resource that the business community provides, but it's a great resource in the community. The holiday parade, you know, all of the events and promotions we do are very public benefits. And I feel like the business community understands that the value of that to them as businesses of having a vibrant and healthy downtown that people love. Just going to add to council member Matthews comment. I remember it because I had the litigation. We have somebody who remembers that. And those aren't any questions, we'll go ahead and maybe see if there are any members of the community who wants to address us on this item. Certain additional questions before we do that. One last question, Vice Mayor Cummings. I had one last question for you Chip. I know in the past that there's been like Santa Cruz Music Week, and I was just wondering if that's included in one of the downtown associations events or if that's something completely separate. You know, the Santa Cruz Music Festival is produced by a private group that we work very closely with promotion. You know, we do a number of events through the year, kind of smaller events. And there are several events like the Santa Cruz Music Festival, the Cabrillo Festival, Dance Week, Santa Cruz, and a number of other programs that we work with to help promote and advertise. And that's not one of our events, but we work with them on promotion. I know they've changed the dates a couple of times. Scheduling festivals are very tricky in terms of all the other festivals that happen. I think they're doing it this October, but I'm not positive. Thanks. Another question, a quick observation. There's a ton of stuff that happens downtown that's not produced by DTA, but is promoted basically by DTA. So I encourage everyone who's not already on their email list to get on it. And then you get all these events that are coming up, maybe prides on there for this coming weekend. And the circus that's happening across downtownsantacruz.com, and you can sign up there and we will tell you everything fun happening in our downtown. Stuff to do every day. Okay, any member of the community that wants to address the council, please come forward and you'll have up to two minutes. Well, I notice out here it says parking and business improvement area assessments. And most of the parking downtown is no longer free. There's no two-hour lots. There's a few of them, I guess, south of Cathcart. But the rest of them are not. They're all pay lots. And so I don't understand this parking assessment. Why is there this assessment if the city's already collecting money for these parking lots? How can the Downtown Association also charge businesses for parking that is not free? It seems like double dipping to me. And like I said, I think it's only south of Cathcart where there are two-hour parking lots. And some of those are taken up whenever there's a Santa Cruz Warriors game. Those are taken off the market because the Santa Cruz Warriors have first dibs on those parking lots. Thank you. Thank you. Any additional members of the community who would like to address the council on this item? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and return back for action deliberation. Council Member Myers. I'd like to go ahead and move the motion. Okay, I'll go ahead and second that. So we have a motion by Council Member Myers seconded by myself. Any further discussion? Yeah, I just wanted to ask because I saw Chip stepping forward if you could clarify or try to answer the question. Certainly. The parking and business improvement is the California State Code is called the parking improvement districts. The association does not assess businesses for parking. Many downtown districts business improvement districts do get revenue from the parking district. We do not. The city public works, the parking district does assess the district, but the downtown association doesn't. We're funded by the businesses and then by our revenue from events and sponsorship. But we don't generate or derive any income from parking. Thank you for making that clarification. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those that pass unanimously. So item number 23 is next on our agenda. Very similar in topic. We'll go ahead and have Rebecca introduce the item. Hello again. So the cooperative retail management assessment as it's already been mentioned is our property based assessment in the downtown. Similar process to the DTA assessment are the assessments overseen by the downtown management corporation, which has represent three business representatives, three property owner representatives to council members. Donna Myers and Cynthia Matthews and our economic development director as the chief financial officer. The work plan this year is largely the same. But this year we will be transitioning to funding the ambassadors for the entire year. We launched that program last year and DMC contributed for the last six months of the fiscal year. So it'll be the full funding this next year. But the downtown Rangers will still be in the downtown area as they're under the police department. And then another addition to the work plan is installing five pet waste bag dispensers in the district to try to target some of our hotspots downtown. See if that has an effect. So those are sort of the biggest changes. I'll be happy to answer any questions. From council members at this time. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and see if there's any members of the community who would like to address us on this item. Okay. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and return back for action and deliberation. Councillor Mathews and then- I'm happy to move the item before us. So we have a motion by Councillor Mathews, seconded by Vice Mayor Cummings. Any further conversation, deliberation, comment? I just want to comment. Others have heard me say this before maybe, but I've sat on the DMC board for a long time. And it's a really high functioning board and they evolve and that's part of the pleasure. The nature of the host program has morphed over the years and the administration of it has morphed over the years. But overall, the business community has been very appreciative of the effort to have eyes and ears and a welcoming face. And people seem very pleased with the current iteration of it. So it's good to see a government assisted program that actually is capable of change and evolution and deliver a good product. Definitely. Okay. I just have a quick comment. I just want to say agreed. And thank you for the extensive work plan that you provided, which has some additional information. I just recommend for anybody who's watching, who's interested in seeing what this assessment, what's funded through this program, you can go and look in the attachments to this item. Actually it was item 22, but we're on 23 now. I'm happy to support both. Just to see kind of the breadth of what is, and Chip talked about some of those, but other things that the Downtown Association does. And thank you. Absolutely. Thank you, Chip. Thank you for being here and thank you for your work for our downtown. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That too passes unanimously. So we have one more item before we go ahead and break for our evening session. And that's our item number 24, Council, Cannabis Ordnance Amendment. Excuse me, the tax rates. So we have Marcus here to introduce the item. The City Council asked us to bring back the ordinance amendment to reduce and align some of our cannabis rates to the County of Santa Cruz. So that's what we have before you today. We have a red line version of the ordinance that's in the packet and a very brief staff report. We have two slides just as a recap. Our revenues for next year were forecasted at $1.90 million in cannabis and includes expansion of the market and some additional, in fact, retail-based expanding. With this action, we're projecting about a $200,000 annualized loss from aligning our rates to the County. Essentially, our retail rate goes from eight to seven. Cultivation and manufacturing from eight to five. Testing and distribution, we would remain the same at one and two. And those would not follow the County rates. That's my presentation. We've talked a lot about this, but we received very clear direction on what to return back with. Okay. So I know we have to discuss this. Okay. And thank you for returning with the item. Is there questions from the Council at this time for Marcus? Council, we're current. What would you say Marcus, 1% tax equals? For retail? Yeah. Well, what are we missing out on? If we tax 5%, 6%, you said 200,000. I noticed in a couple of things I've received. Yes. Does that mean each percentage point is worth $100,000? It's the combination of retail going from eight to seven. Manufacturing cultivation from eight to five. So that's where your impact is. The bulk of it is in the retail right now. And if we went to something like three on retail, how much would that represent? Probably expect that to triple. It would close to triple. We're looking at $600,000, maybe $700,000 loss. Thank you. Any additional questions from Marcus at this time? Okay. Is there any member of the community who would like to address us on this item? This is item number 24 on our agenda. Step forward and you'll have up to two minutes. Good afternoon. I'm Jim Coffes. Thank you all for your service. Every time I come to one of these meetings, I appreciate more of the spirit that it takes to have to study and deal with all the various issues that you do. And I appreciate it. So thanks. Just a couple of questions. We appreciate the fact that you are aligning your rates with the county at this time. We would ask you to consider making that an effective date of July 1 rather than August 1. It seems like it would be a greater benefit to those who you're trying to help with this move. And it would also align with your fiscal year so that the reporting we would have, we'd be able to see real numbers compared to the previous reporting periods. The other thing I would ask you is that you are agreeing to join with the other jurisdictions in the county to create a study group to try to align the rates throughout all the jurisdictions. And as I understand, that's happening now. So you may get a report back in sometime in September or early October. So having that effective date August 1, the chances are that you will be looking at another rate revision of some sort come September or October. All the more reason we think to make that rate effective as soon as possible. And then finally, we would hope that you would appreciate your position as the premier jurisdiction in the county in terms of number of licensed cannabis businesses. And that you would do your best to include those businesses in the discussion moving forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any additional members? Okay. You'll have up to two minutes. Good evening, Scott Graham. I thought they were going to reduce it to 7% here in the city for retail. And then the cultivation and manufacturing, that gets passed on to the retailers and to the buying public. So if you reduce that to 5% like the county, it would reduce the amount that would be then passed along, which would hopefully lower the prices and reduce the people going to the gray market to buy their weed instead of going to the retail shops. Because there is a big problem with people going to gray market to buy their weed because it's cheaper than going to the distributors. I understand through the testing, it has to be organic. It has to have no pesticide residue, which you don't know that if you go to the gray market. But making these things, lowering this 1% on retail and 3% on cultivation and manufacturing, I think would help a little bit with the retail side of things. And I'm not sure if there is any testing facilities here in town or not. But if there are, I think keeping those testing and distribution at 1% and 2% is a good idea. Thank you. All right. Any additional members of the community? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and return back for action and deliberation. I'll go ahead and move the recommendation before us. Okay. I'll go ahead and second that. So we have a motion by Council Member Matthews, seconded by myself for the discussion. Council Member Brown and then Vice Mayor Cummings. Just a quick follow-up question for clarification related to the effective date. Yes. If you could explain why August, not July 1st, which is the beginning of the fiscal year. Because the ordinance, the voters adopted and set up as an ordinance, the rates are spelled out in the ordinance, not a resolution. Therefore, it's first reading, second reading, and 30 days after the second reading, which puts us at mid-July before the new rates as soon as they could be effective. The next natural billing period is August 1st. Thank you for the clarification. Is that your question as well? No. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. Seeing none, all those in favour, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes with Council Member Brown, Matthews, Vice Mayor Cummings, Glover, Meyers and myself in support, and Council Member Crumb voting against. Okay. So item number 25 is the last item on our agenda. And we'll go ahead and see if our city clerk has any additions or announcements. I don't have anything new. Then what's on the calendar now? Just one quick thing. We will have to reschedule the strategic planning session. So I think we're going to be doing some polling. Okay. I sent you guys an email. Okay. We'll do that. Okay. Great. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We'll go ahead and adjourn the meeting then until 7 p.m. when we convene. I'm sorry. 4, 6 o'clock. I know. Wow. Give an announcement. I ordered two. Okay. Thank you. I'm not here again. Okay. So we're going to go ahead and adjourn until 7 p.m. Meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. I would like to ask our clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Cron. Present. Glover. Here. Myers. Here. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice Mayor Cummings. Here. And Mayor Watkins. Here. So we're about to begin our oral communications. I would like to ask if you're interested in speaking briefly before the council. If you could self-select and we'll have those who want to speak for just one minute. Feel free to come forward first so that we can get as many people within the 30 minutes of oral communication. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Best. Thanks of walking to me today and welcome to Blue Man focal within the 30 minutes of oral communications at which time we are able to conclude the one minute speakers. We'll go ahead and open it up. Two minutes. So anybody who is interested in self-selecting to just briefly make a point during oral communications, please feel free to do so you will be able to go first. And then we'll open it up for the two minutes. I also want to remind those that are here in the audience show respect to each other, to our fellow citizens who are interested in speaking before us to maintain decorum. If I observe a disruption or an inability for us to govern or an inability for anybody to come and speak before the council with fear of threat, then I will give you a warning. If it continues, I will ask you to leave the council chambers. So we'll go ahead and start with the one minute self-selected oral communication speakers first, and we have somebody here first. Go ahead. It's Keith McHenry, and it's completely hypocritical to be talking about decorum and all that when you and the staff and the city attorney knew full well that by shutting down Ross, you'd be forcing everyone into the streets. And here's a documentation of that. And it's your dishonesty and cruelty and lack of support for the right to free speech and the manipulation of the city council to make sure that a pro developer agenda that for your handlers or whoever you're working for would be the only option available. And so that's what we are seeing here sadly today. So I support the ability to have solutions in this community for things like tenants rights and for the homeless instead of the obstruction and this corruption and this dishonesty which is being led by Martine Watkins, but aided of course by our city attorney and our city manager. So it's a shameful person. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Your next speaker please. Good evening, Mayor and council members. Just like the state that today served to Bonnie Litscomb was the petition for recall for council members Glover and council members Crone. And we have the papers here. They are in registered mail. We are going through due process. So the recall has begun. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and remind you all that now is a chance for every person to come and express themselves without disruption or intimidation. If there is continue intervention, then I will go ahead and give you a warning and then I will ask you to leave. And if that continues, I will ask you to leave. I also want to remind you to lower your sign so you're not obstructing the vision of the person behind you. Mr. McHenry, if you could please lower your sign. If there's one more deception, I will go ahead and ask you to leave. Okay, please feel free, you'll have up to one minute. Hi, I'm Carol and Irish. My family and I are over 40 year residents of Santa Cruz. Our 32 year old daughter was assaulted downtown in broad daylight. The assailant was sentenced today and will be free in a few months. And I am very concerned as a person who wants to remodel my home and live in Santa Cruz that this community has gone downhill and we need to change, make some changes to make it a safer community for everyone. And to respect these citizens' rights more than people who are breaking the law. Because they are allowing him to continue to go downtown where this happened. And it just feels very unfair and I need to have this community be more safe. Thank you, thank you. Next speaker, and these are the folks who are willing to speak for just one minute and want to self-select in that regard. Is there any additional members here who are here for oral communications that would like to have one minute? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and move forward with the line to my left and we'll increase the time to two minutes. Go ahead. Hello, council. My name is Elise Kasby.  I was outside and that is a gesture to try to warn people about fascism. In my belief and opinion, which is researched and studied, this country has been trending towards serious fascism since the year 2000 when the media, such as Fox News and CNN and others, decided who would be president for the rest of us. And that opinion is held by excellent media analysts. Four years after that, I led a voting rights movement in San Diego. And I just want to say that researching and studying this has been extremely important to me and I would never use that symbol lightly. I do want to say that the context I was using that in was about the 30-minute timeline. A little history on that. A couple months ago, just after the new year, some of our council members changed the public speaking time, what we're doing right now, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. They did this because they wanted to make sure that working people could come here at 7 o'clock. It went to vote and very quickly at the end, Mayor Watkins tacked on to it that we'll only have 30 minutes. We're going to limit that to 30 minutes. For a long time before this, and I have been observing council for six years, it was not limited. And my goal today is to ask you all to reconsider that idea. Public comment is the only time when people from the public can come in and address the council in public, that is, with full transparency about any issue that they might care about. Shutting down free speech is one of the most prevalent indicators of fascism. It's happening all over the state right now. This issue is before many city councils, and I would ask you to think about it. One more thing, it's extremely important to address climate change that we have democracy and free speech. Thank you very much. All right, our next speaker, if you have a sign, please do lower it so that the people behind you aren't. Mr. McHenry, I'm going to go ahead and ask you one more time to lower your sign so that people behind you aren't. Everybody see? No, they can't. So if you don't want to lower it, I'll go ahead and ask you to leave. Next time I see it above that level, I will ask you to leave, okay? So we'll go ahead and have our next speaker. If the signs are raised, Mr. McHenry, any further than that, I will ask you to leave. Just wanted to make sure we're clear on that. Okay, go ahead, you'll have up to two minutes. Okay, I have some signs that I'd like everyone to see. My name's Alicia Kool, I'm the president of the Santa Cruz Homeless Union. We become aware of postings on Facebook page titled Santa Cruz Looks Like Shit, encouraging acts of violence against homeless persons and those living in RVs. A person named Cynthia Rittnor reported on a note placed on a parked RV that warned the occupants, they better move along, signed Harry the Flame. In response to a photograph of a parked RV posted by a Mr. Ryan Harris, a person named J.M. Gaston wrote, three plus dudes and a Louisville sluggers wanted. A Mr. Mike Rogers posted gasoline and a match work well together. Jennifer Garcia urges people to falsely report that homeless persons are armed. Writing, didn't you see them with a weapon? Hint, hint, tell the police. However, amazingly, instead of investigating these acts of criminal solicitation of violence, Chief of Police Andy Mills has actually joined this hate website, where his name and photograph appear right alongside of those posting advice to commit murder, arson, vandalism, and criminal assault. Chief Mills should be immediately terminated. He should be protecting all residents, not leading a lynch mob. In the meantime, our union will be taking the matter up with the Santa Cruz District Attorney and the State Police. And I would like for you to view that he's also friends with Mr. John Green. And I'm advising everybody please do not involve yourself in any acts of vigilanteism. The homeless are very much on the defensive right now. They are also armed and ready to protect themselves. So I advise against any acts of violence or vigilanteism. Have you gotten to see all of them? Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, please. Hello, I'm Nate Alex, Kennedy at gmail.com, 346-9888. The first thing I got to address here is the new 5G technology. It is really scary. To start out, it is supposed to be really, really fast, so fast that it comes close to computer hard drive access speeds. And not only that, it is extremely deadly. There was a 5G tower that was turned on as a flock of birds were flying overhead and the whole flock died and came raining down. And what we need to do, we need to do as a city is to ban 5G in Santa Cruz, hopefully Santa Cruz County, and try to get as many other cities and counties as we can in the state to follow us and maybe get more around in other states to do the same. This is really important. 5G is deadly. No, 5G. All right, on the next subject, now marijuana is legal and the catch is it is not legal to use in public. So everybody's supposed to be using it on private property in their own home, but a lot of people, myself included, are in housing situations where smoking is banned, which includes everything. You can't do it at your own home.  Yeah, it happened to me so far, but I think the best solution to this, what I want to do is I would love to start a pot bar, a pot pub where people can go in and smoke and it would be the main part of the business. And one of the things is we'd need cannabis licenses to allow it to be used. Now, I would love to see you guys help in actually being able to get at least one pop pub started in the city. Thank you. Okay, our next speaker here. Nicholas Whitehead. Whereas the city council has seriously failed to achieve cohesion, but has instead allowed itself to form into inflexible political factions. Whereas these factions at best form temporary allegiances between individual council persons for matters of experience, status, or personal advancement. Whereas this pattern of responding to pressure groups of electoral supporters does not serve the broader interests of our community. And finally, whereas the citizens of Santa Cruz would prefer a more holistic social political atmosphere, I, Nicholas Whitehead, 50-year resident of Santa Cruz County, call upon all previously elected officials of this city to all the county to form a council of elders who can instruct our current city council on diplomacy, best practices, and goodwill to the restoration of harmony in our beloved city. All right, our next speaker. My name is Frances Payne. I have a speech impediment. I cannot talk fast. The last time I was here, I was not able to say everything I wanted to say, because the alarm clock or whatever you have went off. So I need to speak and say what I need to say this time. And I hope that you all would be patient enough to let me finish.  It was a crack in the sidewalk, and I fell. I landed on my knees, and I was bleeding, and all my groceries fell all over the sidewalk. About eight people walked by, and I assumed they were residents. There were a couple of men in suits. There were some couples that walked by, and not one person said to me, do you need any help? Can we help you with your groceries? They all walked by. As I got up and I was trying to brush the dirt off, there was a person across the street that had a sign, could you help me please? He got up and came across the street, and he helped me with my groceries. He did not have a home. So I want to say that since I've been here in Santa Cruz, I am so shocked at the insensitivity of some of its people who reside here. I find the meeting here is very cold, demeaning, and it doesn't do this. It doesn't give me my right of speech to talk as long as I need to talk. I feel humiliated facing you and talking to you. I'd rather turn here and talk to these people because I have more in common with them. And I know that they are compassionate, some of them are, because they're here to speak about the people who do not have homes. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi, good evening, city council members. My name is Lisa Berkowitz, and I'm the program director for Wheels on Wheels, a program of community bridges. I'd like to thank city council member Sandy Brown for her outstanding support of seniors in our community. Her request to include $12,000 in the city's budget to support the rent for the senior dining program at Loud Nelson is critically important. Meals on Wheels is desperately trying to close a funding gap of over $60,000 for this fiscal year. And we know we'll be facing similar challenges next year. We're asking the council to support council member Brown's request. Having services available with no caps on attendance or without a waiting list for seniors when they are most in need is essential. Several of the city council members, Mayor Watkins and Cynthia Matthews and Chris Crone and Sandy Brown have all been visited the dining center at Loud Nelson. And they've talked with and listened to the seniors and they know how important the program is to the lives of the seniors attending Loud Nelson. Our recent demographics review showed that 47% of the seniors were serving at Loud Nelson or homeless, and 64% are living at or below the poverty level.   So I brought along some cards, thank you, cards and plates. Everybody's got them, okay, wonderful, you guys are ahead of me, that's good. And your time is up, thank you, thank you. Okay, our next speaker. Hi, my name is Freda Orrell and I work with Meals on Wheels and specifically at the Loud Nelson site. And I often greet the clients as they come in or as they're leaving the center. And what I normally like to say is, how are you doing today? Which of course, as you can well imagine, can open up a can of worms. So I'm kind of learning to have some other opening greeting. But in support of Lisa and Sandy Brown's suggestion to add this $12,000, I would like to say that I personally get an enormous amount of satisfaction doing this work. And I get a lot of positive feedback from the clients. Coming in, happy to see us, the doors are open, and really tickled when they leave to have had a really good meal. So anything we can do to help support the continuation and kind of fill that gap that our budget has right now, I'd like to say I encourage that tremendously. And I've worked in the community for numbers of years doing community work. And I feel really fortunate to work in an organization like this, and I thank you for supporting us. Thank you very much. I'll just remind those that are in the audience here today, this is an item. This is oral communications, a time for items that are not on today's agenda. We actually have a budget item coming this evening, and so any input regarding that item will go ahead and allow public comment to take place then. So any items that were not on today's agenda, you're welcome to come forward and speak to, and you'll have up to two minutes. My name's Curtis Relaford. I'm an ordinary man trying to do the right thing out here in Santa Cruz and make a different. I've been full driving that truck and making music around here and getting ten tickets on top of promoting peace, love and compassion around the city. I've been getting a lot of complaints.  I wasn't even thinking about coming down here today, but that police start telling me about, reminding me about what I had just got through doing. I just finished three years of community service working that off. All I'm doing is trying to make a different. Like the ladies say, daughters walking down the street and getting hit on and all of this. I'm making a different, giving them food, clothes, building material and talking to them and taking them to NA at AA.  Black people, this black person is having a hard time in a liberal city. What I'm seeing and what's going on with Drew, this guy who just got up here owed me money on a motorcycle and called me, nigga this because he ain't even finished paying me. You guys, take a look at it, step out of yourself, your control, your power. You got to have love behind your power and your love is taking time to talk to people like me. The poise of the poor is the ones who getting spit on, dogged on. Nigga go back to Africa. In this United States, it's all over the United States. Nigga, you can't be here. You can't drive no truck like that around here. Did you hear me? Thank you. My name is Susan Cavallieri. I want to let you know that the New York Times reported this afternoon that there have been 11 stray days of tornadoes in the United States and that we are approaching uncharted territory. We are experiencing a climate emergency. The city council approved a climate emergency resolution in September of 2018. Buildings which burn natural gas contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions in Santa Cruz. So it is important to change building codes to electrify all new buildings. The mayor of San Jose has joined with three other California mayors to work on zero emissions buildings by installing electric heat pumps, electric hot water heaters, and induction stoves. In Berkeley, an ordinance has been proposed to phase out gas infrastructure when issuing permits for new buildings. Electrification of buildings decreases greenhouse gas emissions. It costs less to build because gas lines and hookups are not needed and protects health by decreasing indoor pollution. An EPA study indicated that, and I quote, most homes with gas stoves exceed the standard of safe air, and that's quote. Please follow the lead of other cities, protect health, decrease greenhouse gas emissions by electrifying buildings. We need to reach zero net emissions by 2025. Thank you. If I could ask you to please lower your sign, no higher than your shoulders in the front. Thank you very much. Members of the community and city council, it would be nice if Chief Mills actually restored race to the police department's record. So we could tell if there is the kind of concerns that what we heard Curtis Rutherford talk about. Also, of course, Loudon Nelson bathrooms are still closed. So those who are friends of the Loudon Nelson should be aware that it's no friend to homeless people in the broader community who need to use a bathroom. Last meeting, Mayor Watkins twice used police force to clear the chambers and then exclude the public from the subsequent meeting. For the last two meetings, Mayor Watkins has eliminated group representation times at oral communications here. At recent meetings, she fought expanded public comment. This left many without the chance to participate. They took the time to come here, they waited in line, they protested, she threatened arrest, dispersed the meeting twice, locks out the public. Instead of all this tumult and locking, we need an extension of public comment time that would have been shorter, more civil and more sensible. If there's still or has ever been a progressive majority here, will they announce their commitment, please, openly? It's not just a matter of Mayor Watkins' rude robotic interruptions cutting people off in mid-sentence. The public can't get items on the council agenda. Even elected council members have this problem. They're not in her good graces. Glover, in spite of having a council majority eager to discuss his items, found proposed items repeatedly absent from the agenda. And what are these items, why am I concerned about them? Well, they concern their vital missing policies. Survival shelter campgrounds, police targeting of homeless people for survival behavior, public unfriendly council practices. The results, the destruction of the Ross camp with no alternatives. A lawsuit against the city, homeless refugees city wide, a promised rent freeze and just eviction ordinance dumped, and landlords merrily raising their rents. My name is Shane Blanco, and I don't have two minutes worth of things to say, so I'll be fairly quick for you guys. Not long ago, the council decided to wisely start fighting climate change by raising some pricing for parking downtown and in other city areas, like incentivizing people to bike to spike, walk, go to work different ways, which is really awesome action. However, as a youth in Santa Cruz, I think that that action speaks more to us as we are going to be continuing that process forward, trying to keep our climate intact. And so when you apply for a job, in my experience, I've found that one of the first questions they ask you is do you have a car? Because cars equal reliability for employers. If we are to have a position on the city council to move forward with this climate change action, then we need to make sure that the youth, especially in the residents, have a way of being reliable and being good employees, moving forward, having a stronger metro system, having better mass transit, really competing with what we have so that we can be more reliable and continue this action forward. That's it, thank you. Good evening. My name is Javier Rodriguez and I'm here in behalf of the Day Workers Center. To be honest with you, I don't know if it's the right time for me to speak, but I'm going to do it anyway. And so I'm here to tell you and remind you of the importance that Day Workers Center has. Because we provide the last hope for people who doesn't have something to provide for their families and for their own. And we also serve the homeless community as well. And we know that we are that hope that people really, really need to have in the community. So in behalf of the Day Workers Center, I'm just asking you to keep supporting the Day Workers Center because otherwise there's my impact really, really in the people that really, really need that first step to our success. Because we're offering training, we're offering jobs, they can get a cash the same day if they're lacking enough to get a job. So in behalf of the Day Workers Center, I'm here to keep asking you to keep supporting the Day Workers Center. And please hire a worker, thank you. And before you get started, we're going to go ahead and close oral communications after the person in the maroon shirt. So you'll be our last speaker, go right ahead. Yes, good evening. My name is Sergio and I'm on the same boat as Javier and I'm just asking you to support the Day Workers Center. Because it really helps the people that it goes over 50 that sometimes it's hard to get a job. And that's why we're here for it too. Help our community. Thank you. Okay, so you and the person who's walking forward, you will be our last speaker. Come right ahead and you'll have up to two minutes.  Okay, you will be the last speaker then, go right ahead then. Cool, okay. So I feel a lot of tension in this room right now. Anybody else? Can I go ahead and pause your comments right quick? If I could ask the conversation on my left to please, if you could either take it outside or wait until after, so this person can have their time. Okay, go right ahead. This is a comment not necessarily for the city council. I just wanted to do a general PSA because I feel that looking down the road, there's not a lot of forward thinking. And unfortunately, it probably is because y'all are just dodging bullets every time you come in here. However, this is a world problem that happens at communities that refugees take up a lot of help. And I guess what I'm trying to say is the way we treat people now, as far as what could be established going forward for the refugees that we all may be becoming one day because of the inability to secure fresh water, to guarantee ourselves enough food, especially, I mean, levels of crime that are no doubt coming because of other people's ability to guarantee themselves food. I would just like for everyone to recognize and notice that leadership is something that can be given and that can be assented to. But in times of crisis, it's something that you just kind of do and you follow your gut with. So empowering those folks, I just want to say that, who both know how to live outside for long periods of time, which is one thing. And also are willing to help people who they won't get anything back from. This is not a profitable enterprise. Just think about who you can count on in the times of the most crisis. Because I think, I'm not scolding anyone, but I really think that those people who today are facing a lot of the stress of a falling society. Tomorrow will be the ones that you look to, to tell you what to do when you've lost your house. I'm Cynthia Berger with Santa Cruz Tenants Association. After the election of 2018 and the first or second meeting after that, Mayor Watkins, you said that the people had spoken because Measure M hadn't passed. And that was the context of your comment. And I felt at that time that was harsh because as far as my understanding of being very involved in the election and campaigns, the two people Drew and Justin who were elected, were elected largely because they support rent control. And I know that seems like an anomaly, but that's the fact. And I don't see any interest whatsoever in tenants. On the council as far as your law making. So I brought some ordinances and I'm going to try and speak with each one of you and explain how they will help and how uncontroversial they will be, but they will still help some people. And I hope you will consider passing them. They are a source of income for, you can't discriminate on the basis of section eight. There's a law for that. There's a law for the first in time who is eligible, who's chosen, and there's a law that says you can reuse your background or credit report. You don't have to pay $50 every time because people who have section eight, they have to apply 40 or 50 times so they really can't afford to provide a new report. So other cities do have these laws. There's a fourth law that I think you really should consider because I've heard people say they don't have enough data. And you can make a law that requires landlords to provide the city with three-day notices, notices to vacate, and rent raises. And that when you have all the data provided by the landlords. Okay, then I'll go ahead and close, we'll go ahead and close oral communications at this time. I want to also remind, if the person who's whistling could please stop, thank you very much. I also want to remind members of the community who are here, members of the community that may be watching at home. Oral communications is a time for a 30 minute allotment. This is not a rule that I made up. This is not a rule that is made up by the mayor. It's actually within our city council chamber, council handbook in our charter. And it allows for members of the community to address us during this time with items that are not on today's agenda. But this does not preclude any individual who is interested in reaching out to our council with ideas, information concerns at any other time, whether it by email, by voicemail, or otherwise. So I just want to remind the members of the community we are all open and eager to hear from you and welcome your input beyond just this allotted time during our council meeting agendas. We have a big item before us this evening. It's our budget items, so we're going to go ahead and move on to that evening item before us. And we'll go ahead and ask that we have our staff come forward and move forward with our proposed budget, and here we go. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council members. Marcus Pimentel, your finance director. I'm here with Tracy Cole, our principal management analyst who's leading our budget with us. There's a whole crew behind us who's not here today. Marcus, before you maybe jump right in, we'll go ahead and let those who are not interested in staying for the 730 item or have any conversations that they want to have outside. They're welcome to exit the chambers at this time. If not, I'll ask you to keep your voices down as we move forward with the presentation for our 730 item. We'll go ahead and say, if you are interested in staying for the 730 item, welcome. And if you could, please keep your voices down while we have our presentation. If you're interested in having a conversation, you're welcome to step outside for that purpose. We'll go ahead and ask that our city staff return now for their presentation. Thank you. So Marcus Pimentel, your finance director, and I'm with Tracy Cole, our principal management analyst overseeing our budget. This is our second budget hearing. We had a very lengthy full day budget hearing on May 8th. During that hearing, you received a preview of potential solutions to balance our general fund. We got a feeling from you of which items you seem reasonably okay with, which items you had questions with, and which items you had very big concerns with. Out of that, we built today's session. We are focusing today on the solutions to balance our general fund. We currently have upwards of a 3.90 million dollar deficit in our general fund for next year. So tonight, we're going to focus on how we might solve that and bridge that gap so we're able to come back on June 11th with final solutions to fully fund next fiscal year for the general fund. That's our goal for tonight, is getting through the solutions. Included in the staff report are various documents. One is a 25 page report called the Finance Director's Overview. We'll be referring to a lot of those schedules in that document tonight. Containing that document are four groups of tables that have different bundles of solutions that we'll be discussing. Our job here is to provide an overview of that and then get right to discussion. So we have about 14 slides. We'll finish with looking for parks and rec director who might come in and help close out our presentation at the end. So our agenda tonight, as I mentioned, we've got essentially four groups of information of budget solutions for next year. Three with solutions. One to firm up the types of additions we're looking at to add to next year. Together, they'll point to a $3.9 million gap that we might have close to $3.2 million in aggregate solutions to review tonight. The first bucket we're going to start with is a $428,000 that represents items from our May 8th budget hearing. But generally speaking, council members had a lot of questions about and some concerns about. We recognize this is probably contentious. I'm not sure if that's the right word I want to use right now. It's the package that has the most potential for questions, comments, and considerations. So that one might take a little while to get through and that's a small size, but it's grouped with the risk factors of some bigger things. We then move into $1.1 million of new solutions that are similar to types of ideas you heard on May 8th. But some of them are a part two continuation or somewhere in that same vicinity. So on May 8th, again, we heard one camp of solutions at $428,000 that had some question marks and the rest seemed relatively okay. Again, I'll pause here for just context. I don't think anybody wants to do any of this. But we're trying to figure out the best of the worst that we can implement and move forward with and have the least impact on our community. Our third bucket, we wanted to affirm what is totaling about $2.27 million of various additions that would increase next year's budget. We want to go through that list and make sure we're all on the same page as far as what those max number is. And then we'll finish off with what we consider to be $1.76 million of what we're calling baseline, solutions that should be on the whole reasonable and ready to move forward with. Within the staff report, we did some rankings and assessments based on what we believe to be the impact to the community and what we gave that the heaviest weight, the impact to current operations, and then the impact to long-term operations and long-term sustainability. So we weighted all of our options based on community impact, current impact, and then long-term impact. Within the staff report, you'll see a green check mark meeting. Low impact, doesn't mean it's great, mind you. There might be green check marks that council members of the community has a concern with, but we just believe the impact to be modest. There are yellow question mark flags that indicate moderate. There might be some concerns, but on the whole might be okay. And there's a few Xs, red Xs that we recognize. There's one we're recommending that has a yellow and a red X that one we're not great about. And then there are some other red Xs in the staff report we are not reviewing tonight. Those are things we're not recommending. So if you want to detail about what we're not recommending, it's in the staff report. Did that make sense? Maybe? All right. So we're moving on to this graph we've seen before. We're looking at the entire city as a whole. We have $155.5 million in budgeted funds that are doing well. These are enterprise funds. And this part of the budget is doing fine. What we're focusing on tonight is our general fund budget. And that general fund budget, it's $107 million. 103.2 is fully funded. So we're looking at just the 3.9 deficit tonight to try to bridge most of that gap that we're missing. And as a recap of what our general fund is looking at for next year, when we forecast out, our current forecast for our publishing is out to 23, but when we go out to 25 and 26, we see a similar pattern. And the phrase came to us, and it's not a phrase we're proud of, and it's a phrase we want to turn around to be something else. But we have a decade of deficits. Starting a couple of years ago, eight of our ten years are going to be deficit position, looking forward. So we want to correct that. We want to turn that around because now's the time when we should be building up surpluses to build up for what's coming. Economic slowdown, higher climate action, climate instigated issues in our community. We need to be prepared for what we can predict is probable in the future. So now is the time to turn this around and now is the time to start making action, bridge those small gaps and start funding our capital improvement program and start building up capacity so we can be more responsive to community needs. So our general fund reserves will be gone by fiscal year 2022. Again, we've seen this before and if we do nothing, this is what is going to happen. The graph clearly illustrates this, what happens to our reserves. We have no funds for environmental emergencies. We have no funds for one-time urgent or opportunity uses. And this is, if we do nothing for the next couple of years, this is what our reserve is going to look like. Red is bad. So just recap, it's really that bottom bolt that we're talking about. We're going to another area where we have no general fund funding in our CFP program. Our CFP program is facilities, it's parks, it's maintaining and building new things. It's dealing with West Cliff Drive, it's dealing with storm drains, it's funding our fleet, fire fleet. A lot of this is just not able to move forward. We have our unfunded list grows every year. So that's one of our bigger concerns right now is we need to find a dependable funding source for the CFP in addition to balancing our operations going forward. Okay, so we all got our budget documents and proposed budget. It's been available online since the end of April. It includes the city manager's strategic message. We've got an improved budget in brief that is in there as well. We added a visual community profile that has been well received. And then we've also added new workload indicators for every single one of the departments that are in there. We've really improved the visual component of the book and try to make it more engaging for the reader. Shameless pug, speaking of more engaging, your finance director's overview. I don't like that it's got my job title on it, but that's what we started with and we're sticking to it for now. So this is the new supplement to the budget documents, the 25 pages provide some overall trend analysis. But more importantly, it lists out in detail all the different reductions and solutions, some revenue enhancements that we'll be reviewing in bundles here in a few minutes. So speaking of that, graphically, where we're at right now is we have three quadrants of solutions. And then that red quadrant of stuff we still have work to do on. On May 8th, we came together about $1.76 million. Again, what we believe to be baseline solutions based on council's general feedback. Again, we weren't taking motions, but generally speaking, there were a lot of items that didn't seem to have a lot of concern. Again, there is concern on everything. There's concern that we're doing this. But generally speaking, there is $1.76 million that we believe, stuff that we can move forward with and stuff eight months ago, we would have just built into the budget anyways. That yellow quadrant at $428,000, that's the items that we'll start jumping into in a few minutes. That's the area we recognize has the most concern. $1.1 million of new things, that green sliver that's again built based on the May 8 baseline. So based on council's feedback, we prioritize $1.1 million. We won't see any new police or fire considerations in there. You'll see a much reduced parks and rec solutions in there. In fact, a very modest amount of new parks and rec in there, compared to what the other departments put in. That still leaves us a little over half a million dollars of unresolved gap that we would have work to do on. And that's okay right now. It's a second budget hearing, not the last. So if we finish tonight that type of order of magnitude, it just means staff will come back on June 11th with some additional solutions to bridge that smaller gap. Our goal is to try to get to that red, really be so, and not have it grow too big. Keep it in that type of space. So with direction from the budget ad hoc committee that we met with earlier, they recommended treating each one of these bundles as solutions. The bundles of solutions as consent items. So we're looking at items one, two, three and four here. And then we'll be hoping to approving them in total except for the removed solutions. So as you find items that you want to remove, then we'll talk about them and link the discussions. So jumping into the big yellow, the $428,000, again, more itemized, more detail on this draft report. This is just a summary of it. This is an example of where we like to see these all treated as one motion and then have council members decide which items they want to pull out and other discuss and if there's some that we're relatively comfortable moving forward with, that batch can go forward and then we finalize what's left. So we can pause here and this is our first exercise, our first budget hearing exercise of the night. We could stop and make sure that there's questions, any comments? For example, after we get done with bundle one, we've got bundle two. This is the new stuff. Bundle three, these are the ads. Bundle four, baseline solutions. And then Parks and Rec has produced alternatives if some of their things don't go forward. These are the types of things they'd rather not do, but this is the next tier of stuff that we didn't include in the reductions. Marcus, if I can, I think what might be a nice path moving forward is if you want to go ahead and finish up your presentation, we go ahead and ask any questions of the council, then open it up to public comment, and then most likely return and get to work on some of these different bundles. We'll do. So examples in our bundle one, and these were reviewed and discussed generally speaking on May 8th. Our biggest one, and they're listed in order from top to bottom, our biggest one is first alarm. These are reductions, private security patrols around the city. By and large, there's a supplemental staff report and a supplemental attachment in the staff report. It talks about the effectiveness of first alarm with regards to its crime rate. And two of the three areas the police department have looked at, crime has gone up since the first alarm has been here, not down. The one area that police department feels very strongly that first alarm has the most bang for the buck is in prisoner watch and special events. They do a lot of good work there, and they really help with balancing law enforcement's time. So this would be reducing only some of those external patrols, and the prisoner watch would stay in place, and the special event coverage would stay in place. That's an example of one of the big items in this list. Other things, 4% community programs. Most of the departments are now at 8% or higher in reductions. The only recommended at level right now in the community programs is this 4%. We have not proposed or recommended anything higher. Other things in here includes $30,000 for public art, reduction to the street smarts campaign of $15,000. And some reductions across the board on various other areas, including council travel and training, and a few parks and recreation classes. These are examples of this bundle, and we recognize all things that might have a lot of different pain points or question marks that come up. Until number two, the new solutions. These come across as more programmatic, more operations-based, differing maintenance, modest reductions around the ends. I use an analogy, the fruit's gone, we picked that fruit, we're breaking the small branches. These are the small branches with a few of the bigger ones. But these are things that we could live with, generally speaking. Going from on the bottom, for example, there's raising fuel, internal charges, and raising fleet costs. Those are things we should do anyways, to let the cost of our fleet be reflected elsewhere. Going to the top, Parks and War facility revenue. The Parks and Recreation Department is looking at their war for some other facility rentals and believes there's some opportunities to increase revenue to generate about $150,000. RIT department has one of the few positions that we're recommending to fund for the full fiscal year. It's one of their IT network and system administrative positions. They still have other positions, but these are critical positions that support the city wide. When we looked at IT, they really don't have anywhere else to go. They're, anything else, they stop doing, it's really, really problematic. Including things like their help desk that we're still looking for alternatives other than closing down their help desk. Other examples in here include vegetation management. I'll call that one out, because it isn't reducing our ability to prepare for fires or create those buffers. It's really a way that we've got other funding sources to supplement that, so the general fund won't be paying that cost. HR would be reducing some, some recruitments and some investigative services. That's an example of something we might have to come back to council on. There are some times when we have to recruit and sometimes when we have to investigate. So that might be a place, instead of having authority beforehand, we come back to council, say, February 2020, and have that conversation about we need a budget adjustment. Those are the types of things that represent this new bundle, more operations impacts, modest on the community side. Under number three, these are the additions. So these can be grouped between things we would have built into the budget anyways, and things that have been requested for changes recently. For example, just a few hours ago, we resett the cannabis tax rates to a line to the county. We're projecting that to be about a 200,000 dollar loss. That one is no longer optional, we're moving forward with that. Labor costs and negotiations, as the city right now is currently in bargaining with any of its bargaining groups. We recognize the cost we had in the budget in our forecast was a little bit less than the actual cost where we're trending now. So it's about $600,000 that we should build in the budget anyways. There's no real decision point of should we reduce that number? That's built, that's baked in, we need to move forward with that. Those are examples of things we must move forward on. Other things, rental housing tax for us, $250,000, that's staff's best guess as to what we might need to support that committee, depending on what direction that goes. We recognize that number to go down and change quite a bit, but right now we have a placeholder for $250,000. That's one that could be discussed down the road and maybe that one comes down or stays in that same place. $40,000 for the census, the census is a big deal, it happens once every ten years. We need to be there and participate in that. CDBG, you guys already took action on that a few hours ago, so that one's already relatively in place. These are examples of this ad list that we really want to spend some time on. Certainly get the community's feedback and then ultimately counsel to affirm are these additions that we're looking at for next year? Well, it might come off this list. Anything that comes off this list are gap shrinks. Our baseline solutions, again, this is going back to May 4th. Generally speaking, the stuff that looked reasonable go forward with some of the things that we'd rather not do. But again, programmatically, these are the things that we feel we can live with. The planning department has two different tiers of consultant reductions. These are staff that help support operations. Because workload demand comes up, whether it's housing, building, or plan permits, reviews. They require supplemental assistance from time to time because their work demand peaks and their staffing level is static. So they rely on external support to help them move things along. This will be another example of something we might have to come back to counsel for budget adjustment later on if we realize we cut too deep. And we know we've had those conversations with our staff internally. They're already cautious and concerned about cutting this deep. But that's the place we're in right now. One that feels like a no-brainer, passing along a credit card convenience fee. We're not on the last city to be doing this, but most government agencies, most counties, most DMVs, if you're paying with your credit card online, there's going to be a convenience fee. We've been holding out on that because we want to encourage people to pay online. But we're at that point in time where that's over $200,000 in general fund revenue that we can stop losing. So that feels like one that we want to do and move forward on. And we've already started that with some things. For example, our transit occupancy tax payments, it's already got a fee that council approved a law that would include on that. First responder fee, that's something that our fire department wants to look at. This would be an example of something we'd come back to you on. We're not setting the fee tonight. We're not starting the fee tonight. It's just indicating yes, move forward, and then we'd schedule a presentation. Fire would present that back to you. So that's an example of something that, generally if there's a fee, we wouldn't take action on it tomorrow. Or June 12th, the day after adoption. It's just signaling to staff that we need to come back and discuss that. I think I'm missing here that we should facade improvements. That's an example of one where it's a great program. We've had a lot of interest in it and it's done some nice improvements. But we have some legal issues right now. A couple years ago, the state changed rules and regulations regarding how the cities can cooperate and support businesses, the grants. There's additional requirements that make that a lot more challenging. So we've seen the demand effectively go down on that. So while we like the program, and it's very beneficial, right now that's one that feels pretty safe. Because we just can't get through the barrier right now of some of the legal additional costs that are being triggered by that. These are examples of things that by and large might bore a lot of people. And by and large, we would have built into the budget anyways. But there are examples of things that are part of our baseline that all total about 1.76 million. What you're seeing on here are the top 15 or 16 or so, and there's more details in the staff report for the rest of the items. So our Parks and Rec Director has been working on, we've been having conversations about what types of alternatives might they do. And what types of things would have come to this list. Again, based on how council reacted to Parks and Rec during on May 8th, we did not really go back to them for more deeper reductions. These are the examples of things that would have come forward without your guidance or that we might still have to do if some of their recommended changes leave. We might have to substitute one parks item for one of these items. All right, for the record, Tony Elliott Parks and Recreation. Yeah, as Marcus mentioned, really this is kind of an additional source of funds tonight for the city council to look at in comparison to some of the items that council reviewed at the May 8th meeting. The May 8th meeting, we presented a number of items. Some were not so palatable based on feedback from the city council. So again, this is just kind of an extra set, if you will. For the council to sort of choose from Parks and Rec, if need be tonight. Again, as Marcus said at the top of the presentation, really all of this hurts, none of these are great. It's hard for us to recommend any of these specifically, but just some backups here for you tonight. What Marcus articulated in the different packages, a package I think one through three. Those items as it stands represents about 5% of the Parks and Recreation budget proposal for 2020. If council adopted all of these in addition to what is included in those other packages, that would represent about 8% total. So just for some context on the overall impact of the Parks and Rec budget. Wanted to take a quick opportunity if I could while I'm up here to just address golf. Golf was a big topic at the last meeting, so just wanted to touch on that really briefly. We had a chance to do some work with our operator at the golf course from the last meeting. And so just wanted to provide a couple of quick updates on that. Generally speaking, our operator and the department staff, we are all in support of raising rates, raising our fees at the golf course. So a couple of things very specifically on that. From that discussion, we are going to put into place variable rate pricing. What that means is on high demand weekends. For example, the US Open at Pebble Beach is coming up in a month or so. Memorial Day weekend, this past weekend. During those weekends where there's very high demand at the golf course, and a lot of people coming in from out of town, the variable rate pricing will allow us to increase our fees on those dates to charge more, especially to out of town folks coming in using the golf course. So in terms of a fee increase, that will allow us to sort of peak pricing, if you will, to capture some revenue on those high demand weekends. So we'll be putting that in place really within the next couple of weeks, as soon as we get that software in place to be able to implement that variable rate pricing. As we talked about at the last meeting, we have committed to bringing a business plan to the city council for the August meeting. So we are working on that really that I think our goal is shared for Parks and Recreation to operate the golf course with 100% cost recovery, sort of operate in the black, if you will, rather than having a subsidy. So that's our goal going into that, developing that business plan. So we'll bring that back to the council in August. The restaurant, a quick update on that, that will open this fall. We are targeting early April, or I'm sorry, early October rather, to open up the restaurant up at the golf course. So good news there. And then in terms of an overall rate increase at the golf course, we talked with our operator about that and intend to raise the overall rates at the golf course effective spring of 2020. So we would still be in a variable rate situation, but we'd sort of raise all boats, if you will, in those rates probably next April. And then have variable rate pricing on top of that. So just wanted to provide a little bit of update and context since that was a major talking point at the last meeting. That's it, I'll kick it back over to Marcus. Thank you. So that effectively in staff's presentation, we can stop for questions right now. See if there's anything that was unclear. If there's anything in the finance director's overview, we can clarify. Otherwise, we can then turn it over to public comment. Great. Thank you so much for your presentation and for your work in between the time we met before and now. Really great. I'll go ahead and see if there's any members of our council who want to ask questions. Council Member Matthews. Do we have these in that form somewhere or? Not this summer arrangement. Or is it, is it, it's not, this is a newer. You're talking about these, this current slide. This is a newer slide we just created today, so he's got a handout that's, this one's arranged in order by number, by value. That one's slightly in different order, but it's the same content. Okay. Did have a question. Do you have any vice mayor coming? There's a number of items in here and the budget related to homelessness. And I was wondering if, if we reduced what comes out of our general fund for these programs, if they could be supplemented by some of the heap and cash funds that are available. Tina could provide a bit more information on that. I think, I think that's to be determined to some extent because we are still working on some of the expenses related to the Ross camp. That's one, one determinant. And then also, there are some funds that are unallocated as well. And we have to go through the half process. And then there's the funding for next year. So that's, it certainly may be possible, but it's, it's, it's undetermined at this time. I don't know if you want to add more, Tina. Good afternoon, council members. And, and as Martin Bernal said, that's absolutely right. So the allocation for fiscal year 19 has pretty much been spent. There's an RFP process for that. There is a little bit of an allocated money. So we're in conversations now about how that might help increase sheltering. But most of the numbers you're seeing in here have to deal with the effects of homelessness, you know, dealing with cleanups and whatnot. And so it's unclear. Also, there were specific rules around how these funds can be spent. And one of the rules was that they had to be directly supporting individuals who are in homelessness currently. In addition, the funds had to support trying to get to a housing first model as well. So cleanups are an area where we will certainly talk with our partners at the homeless action partnership around getting reimbursement in support of this. But it's unclear at this time. So we wouldn't be able to say conclusively, yes, we have an alternative there with Keshen Heap, I think it's a very low likelihood. I was specifically asking because I saw that home and bound was being reduced by $25,000. And so it's just, that's most mainly why I was asking that. Sure, and for that one too, I can talk about, it looks like a larger reduction than it is in fact, because when we originally built this budget back in January, I had increased the allocation for homeward bounds. So we'd had $40,000, I had proposed $50,000. Because we far exceed our budgetary authority on that line item every year. There's more demand than our funds can meet. However, what is encouraging is that for a long time it was just the City of Santa Cruz funding this program. But the County of Santa Cruz under Supervisor Ryan Coonerty's leadership put $35,000 in their budget for this current fiscal year. And last I heard they had an RFP process out to find an administrator of those funds. So overall, there are more funds flowing into the system. So we're hoping that with the shared capacity and shared support will be better off, hope that helps. Other questions for staff at this time? Councilmember Cron. A quick one on the golf course, the utility fee. When we put that up where it recovers the water that we're at the $750,000, what would it have to be, the utility fee to really recover that money that we're using for water? On some quick math here. So far we've raised it $4, right, per round? Correct, with the exception of junior rounds. And I think there's one other, I believe it's junior rounds mainly. I think there's one other category, it's a $2 utility fee instead of the $4. It's about $15 per person per round to cover our $750,000 water fee. And if you did have variable rates, could you have variable rates for non-residents on the water fee? On the water fee. The utility fee. On the utility fee. That's a good question to add. I believe we could, I don't know why we couldn't. I don't see any reason why we could not. Thank you. Any additional questions for our staff at this time? Customers, may I just have one quick question? On the process, are we going to go through each bucket and kind of pull them out under consent? So these are just clarifying questions. Yeah, these are clarifying questions. Thank you. Okay, all right, seeing no additional questions at this time, I'll go ahead and open it up for members of the community who would like to address us on this item. If you're interested in speaking to the council on our budget item, please line up to my left. And I'll go ahead and see if, I get an idea of how many folks are interested in addressing us. Yeah, if you want to go ahead and line up to my left if you're able. And if anyone is interested in briefly addressing us, you're welcome to have one minute. If not, I don't see a huge line, so we can go ahead and jump right into two minutes. But I'll go ahead and open the option. Anybody interested in just quickly addressing us in one minute? Please, free. Well, Bob Campbell here. Just a question really about the community programs cut. Will you decide on a community programs budget? We'll have funds and then decide what you're doing with each of the community programs at a later session. Go ahead and pause the time. We're going to go ahead and we'll make note of your question. This is a time for us to just listen to hear from you and not respond at this time. But we will make note and go ahead and try to get that addressed. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Bob. Any other members of the community want to briefly address us in one minute? If not, we'll go ahead and start with the two minutes and we'll ask that you line up to my left and we'll go ahead and start with you. Thanks very much to you, Mayor Watkins, and to the council for the opportunity to speak. My name is John Hall, I'm a citizen of Santa Cruz. I know that the fiscal issues in the budget are terrifically important. But there's also other issues that are not in the general fund, but in the other funds that go into the budget. And I want to speak briefly about one of them. I want to commend you for unanimously, wonderful to see consensus on the City Council, supporting the idea of a subcommittee to look at the issue of whether the library would be included in a mixed use project on the present side of the farmer's market. And what I want to suggest to you is that you need to, having made that vote and having decided to hold in abeyance the decision about how you will proceed with the library and where, you need to have the budget document aligned with the city council's decisions that have already been made. Specifically, in the budget, in the capital improvement portion of it, CIP 154 and 150 are two items that are at odds with that decision. They're at odds because one of them places the location of the building a structure for the farmer's market at a location, one that doesn't exist and two that is different from the present location. And that means that you can't really have that in the budget and have it as keeping an equal playing field for the alternatives that you're considering about where to locate the library. The second one is even more important, CIP 150, where you're actually slated to allocate funds from Measure S and from affordable housing which are not necessarily slated for the library project. These things need to be corrected in the budget document. Thank you very much. Okay, our next speaker please. So hello, I'm Dana Bagshaw and I'm going to say pretty much the same things I said the last time I stood before you. But this time I'm back by the Santa Cruz Climate Action Network. We feel that you need to take a really hard look at the budget and cut those budget items that actually will, that will contribute to growing climate crisis. In other words, let's get rid of things that help support cars and traffic and carbon emissions. We have three suggestions that I saw in line items that I haven't seen in these displays today. One was the expansion of the Highway One and Highway Nine intersection. So by increasing that, you are inviting more cars in and you certainly will not improve the safety when cars are speeding in that area. The other one was to expand the bridge on Highway One from four lanes, I think, to seven lanes, which will only result in having seven lanes of backed up traffic and time. So it's just, it's a waste of money really because plus it's just encouraging more cars to be out there. We feel that cyclists are happy to go under the highway and not over it like at the other intersection. Another thing is parking garages. We think those need to be eliminated from the budget, not even considered, because that encourages more cars to come into town. And finally, something we've mentioned before, I think, is to electrify the vehicles that you are using in the city. Thank you very much. Okay, my name is Tonya Brito-Bersi. I'm a third year at UC Santa Cruz and I study environmental studies and community studies. I'm here today to implore the city council to take urgent action on climate change. The climate crisis is here and the people of Santa Cruz want logical and hasty climate action at the scale and urgency that the crisis demands. During the youth climate strike in March, students of UCSC, Santa Cruz High School and Mission Hill Middle School walked out of their classes to show their outrage towards the lack of political action towards climate change. All we want is a livable future. We need a budget that reflects our right to a livable future. And I know that the 2030 climate plan is sitting there with everything else on the budget, but this needs to be an urgent and ongoing conversation. We need a step-by-step plan that prioritizes the city's most vulnerable areas and populations, not just a random chart of potential implementation actions. With no continuity or prioritization, this is not enough, we need urgent action right now. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Watkins and council members, nice to see you all again. My name is Yonika Strauss and I'm the director of Bike Santa Cruz County. And I'm here tonight to urge you along with more than half of the public correspondence for tonight's meeting to please support $15,000 for the Open Streets event. Open Streets is a beloved community event that seeks to transform the way we think about public space. For one day a year, the community gets to experience West Cliff Drive with no cars. Parents can feel confident letting their two-year-old scoot around without fear. And folks in wheelchairs can also freely wheel around without fear being hit by a motorist. Open Streets is a venue for our community to express themselves through dance, music, art and exercise. By creating a safe place for people to bike and walk without cars, our intention is to encourage folks to bike and walk for daily trips. In fact, more than a third of our survey respondents say Open Streets has led to long-term changes in their biking and walking habits. I would encourage you to consider that Open Streets is one tool in the climate change solution toolbox. And to effectively get people out of cars, we must provide venues that encourage them to do so. The impact of the funding reduction would be significant.  While the reduction doesn't seem like a lot, it would be a big impact and we would have to consider whether we could do the event. Please support the full $15,000 for the Open Streets. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening again. Thank you very much for the opportunity to address the City Council. My name is Lisa Berkowitz. I'm the program director of Meals on Wheels, a program of community bridges. I just wanted to finish up my message that I was trying to deliver previously. There is a wonderful card that was sent to actually Vice Mayor Justin Cummings. And I wanted to share with all of you the message from that senior. So what she said is I have attended many city councils and have decided to appeal to you. I've worked in Santa Cruz for over 40 years. Now I am 100% dependent on Meals on Wheels program for my one meal a day. I cannot cook for myself due to disability. Also the friendly staff and attendees are my only conversation and human contact for the whole day. I have no children or relatives left, so these people are my family. I think it's in the spirit of Mr. Loudon Nelson to keep this program alive. We support Sandy Brown's recommendation to include $12,000 in the budget to supplement the rent that Meals on Wheels Dining Center program pays at Loudon Nelson. Thank you so much for your past support and please urge the council to consider the recommendation. Thank you. Mayor and City Council, thank you for this opportunity to speak. I will briefly read a little from this letter which has been updated. It was originally sent about ten days ago. It's from our group which has 1,075 members. When the city of Santa Cruz passed a climate emergency resolution in November 2018, we hoped that city staff would respond with multiple measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, the proposed budget reflects largely business as usual. The council needs to direct policy on this matter. We need to move towards zero carbon as soon as possible. Many scientists say we have to do it by 2025, which is incredibly close. What is in the attachment to this is references to six cities, U.S. cities that are doing huge amounts already that have programs in place that should be analyzed and inspected. Certainly no new gasoline vehicles should be included in this budget, which were in the original budget. That's just plain crazy. We have to move towards a totally clean fleet, and we can only do that a step at a time. Also, the new climate action plan which is desperately needed was axed. So that's not acceptable. Here is the letter. Hello city councillors and mayor. My name is Indy Reed Shaw, and I'm a member of the Sunrise movement in the Santa Cruz chapter. So I'm representing young people who are worried about our future, and we see local government as well as national government as our hope for leading these efforts. We think that the 2020 budget should reflect with this as a climate emergency, and we don't want it to be aspirational, but we want it to be step by step, and climate change is going to affect all sectors that the budget is talking about. So we see climate changes. We need action at every part of the budget in addition to the climate section that was established. Climate change affects all of us, and I'm especially worried about the coastal communities, especially in beach flats that are at such low lying areas. And we hope that this budget really shows that what a coastal community in California can do for our future, so thank you. And thank you very much to what Tiffany Wise-West and you all are already doing. We just think we can step it up even more. Good evening council members, my name is Grant Black. I go to UCSC as well as member of the Sunrise movement. I appreciate the attention the budget to the long term risks that our coastal city faces. The challenges lie in our future are drastic and devastating. The risk of wildfires here in Santa Cruz are present, the coastal flooding is impending, and the health costs associated with the warming planet are, well, they're here. Just a few days ago, a report was released by the Uniconcerned Scientist stating that the Antarctic shelf is warming at a rate 25% faster than before. This means that sea levels will rise faster than we expected. Dr. King spoke of the fierce urgency of now. Well, here we are. I saw a proposed line item in the budget that was cut up here for the climate action plan. I urge you not to cut this line item, in fact, I urge you to embolden this. In doing so, your reputation as a progressive city will be salvaged, to some regard, as well as just take a stance that in the 21st century, climate change is an issue that needs direct action. There we go. So, I understand that you guys are convening not to solve the climate crisis, but you have convened to think about our futures. I'd like you to think about the youth and the future.  So, once again, I thank you for your attention to the long-term sustainability in the budget, as well as the opportunity to speak. Thank you very much. Hi, Susan Cavalieri again. I just want to mention two items which should not be cut.  We don't have time not to consider everything that can be done to save us. Also, the Janice Health Services, they should not be cut either. Thank you. Hi, my name is Elise Kasby, and I'm sorry to be hard-hitting, but there is no time anymore. We have been living in a progressively fascist society, and what I mean by that is, first of all, we live in a theocracy of money. Money is our religion in the society. But unfortunately, if you are a Native American person who has made their living through subsistence, fishing on the ice, up in the northern regions of this continent, you no longer have a way to earn your living. That ice is totally gone, and those people have been speaking up at UCSC. And I just want to say that I have been working on climate change issues since 1996. 2006, 2016, we're 22 years down the line. If anybody wants to talk to me of the fossil fuel companies and the deep fascism that we're living under, please do. But what I want to say is how this happens on the lower echelons of society, such as local jurisdictions as our own. One of the obfuscations that goes on is reports and presentations and analysis that absolutely obfuscate the issues. But I will talk to something very clearly. Ms. Tina Schull was quoted in the Sentinel as making over $200,000 for her main salary, and another $200,000 in other things that they weren't able to delineate. This is probably a typical salary in a city that's as expensive as this one to live in. But that is more than one of the budgets that you were just quoting up there. For all these services, okay, P&R, this is a part of the fascism that we're living under. If we do not start having, in other words, don't go through this, say, we need to be here in two years. That Arctic shelf that's melting is going to flood LA, flood the entire city of Santa Cruz, all of our food, the valleys where we produce our food, it's time to act now. Do it. Okay, next speaker. Good evening, council members. I am a Santa Cruz community member, and I am an urban designer by education. And I'm here to talk about Open Streets. Open Streets reframes urban space in a really beautiful setting here, and not many communities are doing this around the world, even. Santa Cruz has an opportunity to continue to be an example to other communities of how we can rethink our urban spaces to level the playing field. By Santa Cruz County does really great work for this event on a shoestring budget, and I want to echo what Yonah Castro said, that we need this event to keep going. It brings community members out and meets their neighbors, perhaps in a way that they've never done before. And it really transforms Santa Cruz into the livable, walkable, bikeable community that we want them, that we want it to be. Please help them with this budget item. Thank you. Good evening, Scott Graham. I noticed on one of the slides for the Parks and Rec, there was a reduction in the Arana Gulch restoration. And that's part of the mitigation for putting the Arana Gulch path in. So I'm not sure if you can really reduce that to a level where you're still keeping up with the mitigation for the path. The other thing is purchases of new vehicles for the city is probably unnecessary considering that if you've seen any of these programs on TV where the people take junk cars and turn them into perfectly brand new cars. Like the police cars, the Crown Victoria's, every major component of that car, the front end, the rear end, the motor, they can all be redone. And you can replace the motors with electric motors. You could turn those into electric vehicles instead of having them be gas indulging eight miles to the gallon vehicles. And as an electric vehicle, they would actually be faster. So I would have you consider not making purchases of new vehicles unless they were either alternative, fueled, or electric. And converting the existing fleet by restoring them to new conditions and then converting their motors to electric. Thank you. I just wanted to come back up here and acknowledge your work, City Council. I think your work is excellent, but what's going on with me is God is in my life. God is bringing me here. Before I was doing my thing with this non-profit, by the way, I got a non-profit 501C3. If you want to help me and throw some of that money I see up there, throw it my way. And you will see some changes in the city.  We could put a fence around Santa Cruz and allow everybody to come in and take a horse. And we don't need all of this. And I go to the Native Americans and I see how those folks live, y'all. We need to regroup, back up, and go take a look at them. Take a trip with me. God knows them folks know how to live together. They pick up here, chikers. They defend women. They defend men. They are one. And what I'm bringing up in here is just spirit from Louisiana. Holy spirit, they call it. And I'm praying for each and every one of you. And you know, I was looking at you when I came up here just to see how many people was present with me when I was talking. When the judge told me to come here, the judge sent me over here, number one, to get help because you are counselor. And counsel, I mean counsel. I haven't heard any counsel. I made an appointment with one of the people here. They was late. When somebody is late for an appointment and both to be professional, that means they don't want to hear it. I wrote a letter. I don't have no response from the letter. That means you're not important, Kurt.  And that is promote love, peace, compassion, empathy for all people. And that's what I'm doing to try to make a different with this 33 years of clean and sober. Thank you. Thank you. Let me go three more minutes, please. No, we're going to have to go ahead and close public comment. Is there any other member of the community who is interested in addressing us at this time? Okay, seeing them, we're going to go ahead and return back for counsel, action, and deliberation. We're going to go ahead and maybe take a three minute break and then we'll reconvene and get right to work with some of our stuff. We're taking a quick break with us. We'll go ahead and get to work at this point. All right. So we have it set up here. We're just sort of taking the bandaid off here quickly and going straight to some of the more difficult decisions here, so we're set up in that way. So Marcus, I'll go ahead and have you lead us through our first bundle. As mentioned earlier, what we're going to do is look at the series of recommendations. We're going to pull out those that we don't feel comfortable with at this time, and then we're going to go ahead and vote on those that we do feel comfortable with and then revisit the ones that we aren't necessarily prepared to make a decision on in that way at this moment. All right. So we'll go ahead and move forward with our first grouping. And we have a series of recommendations here. Marcus went through them originally. Maybe we can go ahead and see if there's any further input or questions at this time, and then go ahead and ask if there's any interest in moving some of the items forward. Council Member Glover and then Council Member Brown. Thank you. Since we're going about this, the consent agenda way, I wanted to pull A2, A5, A7, and A10. Okay. So A2 being 4% community programs reduction, A5 youth museum programs, A7 parks and recreation classes and A10 being the open streets reduction. Okay. Council Member Brown and then Council Member Myers. Yeah, I was, although I think Council Member Glover covered it. Wow. Council Member Myers. I wanted to pull. A10 was already pulled. Okay. Are there any additional items to be pulled or discussion around those that remain? Is there a coming? A4 and A3. Just take them one by one. All right. Okay. All right. So we have A2, A3, A4, A5, A7, A8, and A10 pulled. Remaining is A1, A6, and A9. Okay. Council Member Glover. I was going to make a motion to adopt those leftover that were not pulled. Okay. We have a motion by Council Member Glover. Second. Is there any further discussion or any input on behalf of our staff here on those items? No. All of those in favor? Okay. No, I do have a question. Council Member Matthews. And it's for the police chief and it has to do with the first alarm. And honestly, I don't expect a long explanation now. You've given your rationale for feeling that we don't get $230,000 bang for the buck here, but I think there's anxiety in the community and I would certainly like to know how we can respond more effectively to the public's perception of public safety, which is a lot of what this does and the reality of presence. So maybe another time we can meet, but I just wanted to vocalize that because that is a very genuine concern. I understand the rationale, but I also appreciate the concern. I don't have to answer it. Okay, good. Any additional questions or input on behalf of the items that are remaining A1, A6, and A9? We have a motion by Council Member Lever, seconded by Vice Mayor Cummings, if I recall. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, those pass unanimously. Okay, let's go ahead and go right back to the top. We have A2, 4% community programs reduction. Council Member Lever, you are welcome to kick us off on that discussion if you'd like. Thank you. Marcus, would you mind just reminding us what percentage of the overall budget community programs makes up? Yeah, they're just under 1%. Just under 1% and just for the community to know what kind of things does community programs cover? In what way? So I mean there's services for the community, food programs, just those kinds of things. Okay, so I think that facing the budget cuts that we're facing, it is totally understandable that we need to make hard cuts. But I think that the community programs budget has been the victim of consistent cuts during budget crises for a long time and reducing and reducing and reducing. And this is the programs that support our underserved communities, our vulnerable communities. And I would encourage us to find alternative locations to find $47,000 than a 4% reduction in our community programs. Okay, Council Member Brown and then Vice Mayor Cummings. So I echo Council Member Glover's comments. There was a time when community programs was pretty close to 5% of the city's budget. And it has, that bucket of money has experienced significant cuts along much larger lines than some of our other discretionary budget considerations. So I'm not gonna, I can't support a reduction in the community programs budget. I also would add that these are based on flat funding, three-year flat funding for these programs. And we kind of made a deal with these programs that it is a three-year commitment for in most cases. So it's actually already, we're cutting them with flat funding. So I can't support any further cuts in that line. I'm just gonna express similar sentiments around wanting to preserve the community programs as best we can because these are programs that are really critical for serving a lot of our community members who have the most needs. So I just wanna agree with that. Quick clarifying question. My understanding is that these are the funding allotments through CORE and the city-county partnership. Is that accurate? Yes. Yeah, and so in terms of the sort of commitments and previous arrangements in that regard, is the county shifting any of their funding or would be the only one shifting our funding and our kind of our ongoing commitment for the joint funding between our city and a county for some of these programs? In terms of just general process, I guess would be. Thank you, Tina Scholl again. So the county has not taken up its budget hearings yet. That will happen in June. I've not looked at the proposed budget. I can look at it quickly, but I don't know if they are considering reductions at this time. Okay. I will see if I can find out for you right now and then I can answer. Yeah, I mean, I think if we're in alignment with our funding models, it might be worthwhile to have a conversation with them in that regard potentially. Okay, Council Member Myers. Yeah, I just want to also echo my interest in obviously providing as much as we can to our community nonprofits and so many of the folks on this list provide a lot of important programs for our community. I'm just wondering if there is other methods that we could help facilitate in terms of looking at this shortfall, including acting as a group and thinking creatively about how to potentially help some of these groups close the gap. So I would be interested in trying to retain as much as the funding is possible, but I would also like to challenge my fellow Council members to think creatively and see if we need to get on a phone bank or something and try to help some of these groups with our creative efforts and see if we can maybe close some of that gap ourselves with some outreach to our community. So, but I support in general the programs and I would like to see that number go down if possible. Council Member Mathews. I support all of these programs and have and am a firm believer in our safety net partners, but we are looking at about a $4 million shortfall that we have to correct and we have to give direction tonight and I do believe we got pages to go through, but basically in the ones that were thought to be easy, we pulled three quarters of them and I do feel at this time that everyone is going to have to share in the pain. When the community programs were at their high, it was at a time when the state economy was different, the city's economy was different and we are facing as all Council members no painfully well several years of deficits. I think we should make some reduction in this number. When we look at th