Good morning everybody We'd like to call to order the March 20th meeting of the Board of Supervisors We could have a roll call, please Supervisor Leopold here Coonerty Caput here MacPherson here chairfriend here if you could please join us in a moment of silence in the Pledge of Allegiance Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good morning Mr. Plasios, are there any changes to today's agenda? Yes we have a number of revisions on the Consent Agenda, item number 12. There's an additional, there's additional materials replacement signature page, attachment A. On item 35, additional materials, a resolution setting the public caring for various CSAs. On item 38, staff requests that this item be deleted at this time. There's an agenda on the Consent Agenda, item 42.1, this is to adopt a resolution to consolidate school districts and city selections with the June 5th, 2018 statewide primary election as recommended by the county clerk. There's a board memo, there's resolution consolidating the elections, there's measure P resolution, measure Q resolution, measure R resolution, measure S resolution, measure T resolution and measure U resolution. And then on the regular agenda, item 46, there's additional materials revised attachment D. Thank you very much. Oh wait, there's one more. 47.1 on the regular agenda. This is to consider appointment of Dustin Veraker to the Workforce Development Board as a local business representative for a term to expire June 30th, 2022, the nomination accepted on March 13th, 2018. That concludes the additions to the agenda. Thank you Mr. Plasios. We'll now begin with the Consent Agenda. We'll start with the board. Supervisor Caput, good morning. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Good morning, Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, it's several items. I'd just like to make comments about item number 12 on the Homeless Center, the Emergency Center. There was a reference made to that in the recent article of the City of Santa Cruz budget issues that they're having that the counties having a tough time chipping in on this. Well, we are chipping in about $100,000, about $25,000 per month. I just wanted to let that be known. You know, this homeless crisis is everywhere. It's something that we're experiencing here and it's happening throughout the nation too. I think it's interesting to know that the census said that 68% of those who are homeless, they lost their housing. They were residents of Santa Cruz. And also that about 70% of them were high school graduates from Santa Cruz City Schools. But it's just that we're doing our part in the homeless situation. Number 26, I think we're all at the Blaine Street reopening for the women's facility there. It's a tremendous addition. It's going to provide great services for women inmates. It's going to be a comfortable setting for them and I think it's going to allow mid-level inmates to really rehabilitate it and get back on their feet. I just want to compliment the sheriff and everybody in the county for making that happen. I also wanted to say on items number 27 and 29, these are the mobile emergency response team and the MERT and the maintaining ongoing stability through treatment, the most team. These are tremendous operations that we have put into place in recent years for emergency responses, for those who need some help from mentally ill patients or residents of our area. And Dominican Hospital has been terrific in helping us in this endeavor. I'm contributing over $250,000 in the last couple of fiscal years. I just want to thank them and just thank our health services team for providing those services to those people who need it the most. And with that, I think that's all I have to say. Thank you for those comments, Supervisor McPherson. Good morning, Supervisor Coonerty. Good morning, everybody. Just a couple comments. First is on item number 29, which is the most team. It does help stabilization for folks suffering from mental illness. I just want to congratulate that team for their work. The outcomes that you're producing are really wonderful for the individuals and for the community. On item number 30, which is the formerly known as the PAC team, it's now Santa Cruz Hopes team. I want to add additional direction that the Hopes team reach out to the Downtown Association of Santa Cruz about potential clients and report back on the May 8th meeting with the results of that and then also including outcomes that focus on community impacts, meaning arrests and emergency room or ambulance rides. Okay. Good morning, Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Chair. Good morning. Just a couple of items that I'd like to comment on as was noted by my colleagues. Item number 27, which is about our Behavioral Health Mobile Emergency Response Team and the most program. I recently had the opportunity to attend the National Association of Counties Conference where they were trying to promote good practices around mental health services throughout the country. And as you know, we're part of the Stepping Up Initiative that is works to keep the mentally ill out of our jails. Both these strategies were strategies that they recognized as strategies in which counties should be pursuing. So I really appreciate the foresight that this board and our staff has had in the creation of these programs. And it was helpful to hear that these are the kind of activities that they're promoting nationwide. We're using sort of best practices when it comes to working and addressing mental health issues in our community. On item number 31, I wanted to ask whether we were going to do a special meeting for the cannabis or not. It's still listed here as April 10th. And I thought we were going to try to do April 9th. I'm looking over to the CAO. I didn't know whether that was a change. Yes, the board asked that we discuss that today at this meeting. We did poll the board to ask if they're available on April 9th at 9 a.m. And the board is available. And so it is an option that's available to the board if you wish to change that today. I would recommend that we change the date to April 9th. I understand that as a special meeting we won't be able to take action on an ordinance. But I think for us to be able to hear testimony and to have conversation will be very useful as we've seen with our own past discussions around cannabis and the two meetings that the Planning Commission had almost all-day meetings. We would be wise to do that. So I'll make that change. The couple other items that I just wanted to comment on, on item 32 and 41, it's both lease and funding to use the home on Capitol Road Extension, which has been the home for the Gemma Services. I'm glad to see that we have a new non-profit operator and I hope that can achieve its greatest level of success helping women transition out of jail back into the community. It's an incredibly important resource. It's one of the number one things we hear for how to ensure that people can successfully re-enter the community and reduce recidivism is that they have stability in housing when they come out of jail. And I think it's a very worthwhile program. I'm glad to see that we finally found an operator for the program. And last, I just want to, on item number 35, want to recognize the work of our Public Works Department and this winter storm update. On my trip to Washington, I also spoke with all of our congressional representatives asking for their help in getting FEMA to follow through on their payments to us. We're ready to do more work. We need them to come through with funding. And I got a lot of support from our members of Congress, but I appreciate the work ongoing to repair the storms from last year. Chair, if I could suggest on item 32 regarding the cannabis public hearing. It's item 31, I believe. It says 31 on our agendas. Okay, it's 32 on the electronic version, 31 on the paper version. We should pull that off the consent and make a separate motion since we are setting a public hearing. Okay, then I would ask that to be pulled. Okay, I'll make that item. We could do it right after this. Yeah, 43. I'm just going to make sure because there's all these agendas. We'll make it 43.1. Does that work for the clerk? 43.1. So, item 31, excuse me, 32 has been pulled to become item 43.1. Any additional comments on? No, I won't stop there. I will briefly speak to just item 35 as well, which is a storm damage update recently attended a community meeting in my district with the Assistant Director of Public Works. I'd like to thank Mr. Wiesner for that, for attending that to speak in part on the winter storm update with two a person. People were impressed with how much work public works has done. They were very understanding about the reality of the timeline and were impressed that some of these major roads that really looked to be catastrophic failures were fixed so quickly. And so a lot of times public works doesn't hear that feedback from people on the street, but you really do deserve a lot of credit for your leadership on that issue. So we're now going to open it up to the community on items on consent. This is an opportunity for you to comment items on consent, which are items six through 43. You'll have three minutes to address us on items on consent. Please feel free to step forward. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. Good morning, Chair, Friend, Members of the Board. I'm Tina Scholl, Assistant City Manager for the City of Santa Cruz, and I wanted to offer brief comments on item 12 pertaining to the River Street Camp. I want to thank you for your consideration of this item and express the city's gratitude for your partnership and participation in the River Street Camp. As you know, it is really taking a step forward in terms of homeless services in our community. The county has been with us all along. I know there was a reference to the newspaper article, but the city really is grateful for the support because not only are you considering participating financially to add another $100,000 in funding to the camp and providing another month of services, but you've already been out there every day through your health and human services and through your county public health services. You've been in the camp helping us achieve our goals there. So I really want to say thank you for your support and ask that you do favorably consider the $100,000 donation to the City of Santa Cruz. Thanks very much. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. Becky Steinbruner, resident of Aptos. I would actually like to pull item number. Your numbers are different than what the public has, and I think it's because there's an item at the end that was supposed, number 42, that was supposed to be put under health and human services, and that may have been inserted. I don't know if that's true, but I want to pull item number 35 regarding the county service areas, and since you've already pulled that, I'm going to, another item, I'm going to discuss it right after. I'm hoping you'll do the same for me. Yes. So 35 is the correct number for CSA. We will do 35 as item 43.2. Okay. Thank you. I would like to also commend the Public Works Department and staff for their excellent response to all the winter storm damage in the county. I see in the documents that there were also improvements and repairs made to Lompico, Nelson Road, and a couple of places in Jarvis Road. So I think that's excellent, especially up in the mountainous areas like that, where often people don't have many different ways that they can get into and out of as do the emergency services that serve them. I also want to point out at this time that the county has contracted with various engineering companies outside of the county to do the engineering work to the tune of $15 to $25 million. So I'm sure that's very helpful too, and would like to ask that as much inside in-house engineering can be done as possible to again to save costs, as was discussed by Director Presley early on in this process. I'd like to protest again the use of Measure S funds on item number 37 for the Live Oak Library Annex. This is really a community center with, quote, a small collection of books, end quote, and I think it's a bit deceptive to be using Measure S funds for a community center with a small collection of books and call it a library. I know it will serve the community well, but I think it's deceptive to use those funds for that purpose. And lastly, I just want to commend the continued use of a Measure J house for the JAMA relocation, moving to the new vendor, new live community services for transition. Housing for women coming out of imprisonment. I think that's an excellent use of the housing and hope that it can continue under good management and help these women. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anybody else like to address us on consent? Good morning. Good morning. My name is Robert Zaremba. I'm here on item number 32. I just want to make this quick and keep it in your guys' memory that- Item 32 was pulled. Oh, you guys pulled that? Assuming that we're talking about the same item. Yes, the cannabis order is coming out. That was pulled and will be considered at the very beginning of the regular agenda in just a couple minutes. Okay, got you. Thank you very much. Is there anybody else who'd like to address us on consent? Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the board recognizing that 32 and 35 have been pulled and there's an additional direction on item 30. Is there a motion? Move to second. Hold on one sec. I apologize. All right. I just had a quick question, Chairman Friend. Is that consent, correct? Yeah. I'm trying to understand the executive session. Is that open for consent to comment on or is that a different item? Are you talking about the closed session? Yeah. Yeah. You can. Okay. So regarding the employee's review, when it comes to the legal community, right? When it comes to the Indigenous defense system, is there any way that you guys can include them in the performance review? No. I mean, this isn't to get into a back and forth, but we have two employees that are sitting right there. Those of the two that will be that a performance review will be on the CAO and the County Council, the District Attorney's Office, independent elected official. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Alexander. Is there anybody else who'd like to address us on consent? I'll move it back to the board for action. Move the item as amended. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Coonerty and a second from Supervisor Leopold as amended. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. Before we take roll communications, we'll move straight into these two pulled items to move forward with them. We first have item 43.1, which is a pulled item 32, which is to set a public hearing for April 9th is the proposed new date regarding consider ordinance amendments to Santa Cruz County Chapter 7.128, 13.10, 16.01 and related amendments to the Santa Cruz General Plan, local coastal program regarding a cannabis license and regulatory and land use program for cannabis cultivation, manufacturing, distribution activities as recommended from the planning director. Is there any additional discussion that needs to be had on this? There was a gentleman from the community that wanted to address us on this item. Now would be the proper time. Thank you for waiting for us procedurally on this. I'll try to make this as quick as possible. I just want to bring it back up into your attention that this is a pretty serious issue for Santa Cruz County. We have a very, how would you say active black market that's been going on in this county? It's been here for a very long time. It's going to stay here for a very long time. And it's pretty much in your guys' hands to basically reduce the size of the black market in this county. And the things that you can do is to try to make the ordinance as inclusive as possible to draw as many of the players and actors from this industry into an actual regulated market. If you don't make this inclusive, then you're going to end up with a much larger black market. And you won't have the say over these people, such as, you know, for a regulated market, you won't be able to tell them best practices and how they should operate. If this is a very non-inclusive ordinance and you leave many of the people out, then you're just going to end up with the same problems that you've had. And what many of the people in the community have been complaining up to this point, you're going to continue to have those problems. So I just want to make sure that I keep that fresh in your memories. All right. Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to address this? Again, this is just on the setting of the public hearing of that item. Seeing none, we'll move it back to the board for action. Move approval. Second. We have a motion from Leopold, a second from Coonerty. This is to set that public hearing for April 9th. This is the polled item 32. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. Now we have the second polled item, which is polled item 35. This is polled by Ms. Steinbrenner. This is adopt resolutions confirming previously approved CPI increases and benefit assessment rates for various CSAs to adopt a resolution setting June 12, 2018, is the date for a public hearing on the proposed benefit assessment service charge reports and take related actions as recommended by the director of public works. Ms. Steinbrenner, good morning. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for hearing this now instead of at the very end of the day. I really appreciate it. And because of that, I chose to take it off to be discussed right now because I am a member of County Service Area 33. And there is a problem in nonpayment by the county for a local paving contractor, Earthworks, that performed the bundled county CSA work in October of 2016. They have still not been paid completely. And this is unacceptable. I have written public works. I have come to you. I have come to Lafkoe and still Earthworks as of Monday morning had not been paid the remaining $16,000 that is due to them. They have tried to contact Mr. Russ Albrecht. As they understand, it is up to him to sign things off and he is nonresponsive. I sent an email to multiple public works staff members and received no response. So I am asking you, when this public hearing comes up in June, I want to be able to come up here and thank you for finally paying Earthworks. They are about the only local contractor that bids on these small jobs, the county service area jobs, even when they are bundled because of the difficulty. And these kinds of things do not help the county service areas get any bids on our projects. It is becoming increasingly difficult. And for that reason, Earthworks may not participate in the bundled project bidding process in the future. That is going to make it very, very difficult for the county service areas to get good competitive bids. So I ask you, again, please implore that Public Works completes this payment process for work that has been done in 2016 by Earthworks paving contractors for the county service areas. It affects all of your districts because you have county service areas in all of your districts. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to address us on this item? Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the board. I want to move approval of the recommended actions. We have a motion from Leopold, a second from McPherson. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. We'll move on to oral communications. This is an opportunity for members of the community to address us on items that are not on today's agenda, but are within the purview of the Board of Supervisors. You have three minutes for addresses. Good morning. Gary Richard. Good morning, Chairman, Supervisors. What I want to comment is the tremendous pressures that's put on the Board of Supervisors in order to pass alien policies in favor of the multinationals. And what I'm talking about is astroturf, in other words, the fake grassroots organizations. There's two powerful unions that we saw in action across the United States within the last 10 days. The executive director of the National Education Association said the NAEA, the National Education Association, is to be a political power second to none other than specializing in the interest of that group. More and more to say about what teachers, how he's to be educated, whether he should be admitted to the profession and, depending on his behavior, whether he should stay in the profession. We also look at the union members, the service employees group. But when we go back and we look at the people that are so-called representing the workers, it ends up they belong to Rockefeller's Tri-Lateral Commission, which is among the most wealthy people in the world, A.W. Abel of the steel workers, Chulkin of the garment workers, Martin Ward of the plumber pipefitters, Glenn Watts of the communication workers, Jerry Wolfe of the Federation State and County municipal employees, Lane Kirkland. I can go on and on. These people are bought out at the very top while the workers think that they're being negotiated for. We saw this last week that the state of California is appointing illegal aliens to supervisory positions in the state. There is not a job here in this county or in the state that is being protected by the politicians and the people that support you. One of the powerful groups that's out there is a thing called AVAS. Some of the people involved in it is former Congressman Tom Pelleano Jr., a pro-war congressman by the way progresses. It also included John Podesta, the first president of the Center for American Progress, accused pedophile in Pizzagate. The Service Employees International Union also helped found AVAS. AVAS has 700,000 members in 148 countries. It's supported by millions of dollars from George Soros, who is under criminal indictment in some countries in Europe. We find also that this team for AVAS includes Andrea Woodhouse, who's a consultant for the World Bank. We have the Soros was a former member of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations, one of those powerful organizations in the country and in the world. It's funded. Is there anybody else who would like to address this during oral communications? I'm not sure I got three minutes here. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. My name is Kent Washburn. I represent the Fifth District on your Housing Commission, your Housing Advisory Commission. We only have a few authorized meetings a year and every time we meet there is an increasing sense of urgency among the commissioners about the affordable housing crisis in our society and especially in this county. We have a mandate under county law to conduct a continuous study of housing issues and housing needs in the county and to report back to you and advise you. You have in your agenda packet, I believe, a late ad letter from J. M. Brown, our new chairman. I agree with everything he said in that letter. I'm not going to repeat anything. I have five points to make personally. These weren't voted on by the commission, but I think they represent a consensus of most members. Number one, that we have an emergency. The people who need affordable housing, we're following farther and farther behind every single day, but we are not treating it like an obvious emergency, like a fire, an earthquake, a flood, a drought. But it's every bit as real to these people who are struggling to make ends meet at the low end of our economic ladder. I'm not one of them, but something prompts me to care about them. Second point, they're not skilled. The people who need this help from you, from us on the commission, from our staff, these people are not skilled at participating in the local political process. They need our help. Third, we need more staff help and funding so that the Housing Advisory Commission potentially can have more meetings and I would like to recommend that you start the political process by having meetings in each district at which you or senior members of your staff come to listen to your constituents talk about possible new ideas. Then we need to consider the fact that current conditions require us to rethink old policies and old ideas that were passed at a very different time in the housing market and in the political process and in the development of our economy. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for your service. Good morning and welcome back. Thank you. Good morning again, Becky Steinbrenner from Aptos. I really want to support what Mr. Washburn has just told you. I try to attend these Housing Advisory Commission meetings when I can and find that their members are very compassionate and very engaged in what's going on in the community and very concerned. I would like to ask that they be allowed to meet more often. I support Mr. Washburn's suggestion that you hold constituent meetings in each of your districts. I would also like to ask that the Housing Advisory Commission meetings be recorded so that those who cannot attend them at 1 o'clock to 3 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon can at least know what's going on. And I would also like to ask that they be required to declare ex parte communication. I have had a sense that there is a lot that goes on in discussion behind the scenes and would like that be transparent. I want to speak with you again about your authorization of the Measure D Paving Contracting, one and a half million dollars to the Mountain View contractor, O'Grady. And we talked about this last week, but I'm still appalled that your board did not take the proper action and rescinds those bids so that the process would be followed properly and legally. And to say that it is immaterial that a contractor did not submit a complete bid and then was contacted and then they submitted what was needed and then awarded the bid, I don't think that's fair. I don't think it's fair and this is Measure D money and you're giving jobs to workers over in Mountain View and I don't think that's fair either. When a Watsonville contractor came very close and followed the rules in their bid. I also want to just also say that I was still appalled that you, Chairman Friend, led the charge to support SB 623. Senator Monning's water tax, which will, yes, it will exempt people with low income, but those people have to apply for exemption. How many people do you think really will? Especially given the current political climate. It seals from public view all payment of polluters to the state, which is their key to continue to be able to pollute and not have any enforcement on their pollution until 2035. And you're supporting this. I'm still appalled. And finally, Supervisor McPherson, I want to applaud you for your concern about funding county fire. I was at the lessons learned of the bare fire and heard you talk about an impending ballot measure to support funding for county fire. I want to remind you yet again, there is $17 million that comes to this county with Proposition 172 and county fire gets none. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Alexander. Welcome back. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, my fellow Americans and good morning, Santa Cruz County. I want to remind us what it is to be good, flag-waving Americans, because we are good people. And now I want to be able to smile while I do that, because people tell me, smile, victorious. I want to be able to share my latest books that I'm reading real quick with members of the public so I can ingratiate myself with them, with members of the public, religion, and the politics in the United States. Really great book, right? So I'm reminded as I'm fighting for community justice and trying to keep these political agencies accountable as a civil society activist, you know, I find myself getting in trouble because the Mexican is always the usual suspect. I'm always the usual suspect. So when I want to exercise my First Amendment right, they always want to be heavy-handed and just mistreat me. I'm talking about these political institutions, whether it's the Sheriff's Department, whether it's Scotts Valley Police, and whether it's the harassment court. And I want to be able to quote from the Bible, because we're supposed to be a Christian county, right? Because the increase of wickedness to love a many shall wax cold, Matthew 24-12. You know, I would want Santa Cruz County not to let your hearts wax cold. Community justice is important. When the DEA is withholding expropriatory evidence to prove my innocence, that's an obstruction of justice. And I want to be able to say this.  When I was coming here, this is what I found in Scotts Valley, a plunger. We got three great men up, you know, five great men up here. What we need to do is we need to unclog the political pipes of injustice. And we have to give the American public their due process and equal protection clause and protect them. Hey, the DEA is withholding expropriatory evidence. Sergeant Fish, he had a body cam. They don't want to present that. I would ask, hey, we stop funding the DEA's office, because I want to be able to show members of the public what I caught at the DEA's office just coming up here. I want to show, I caught this right here. Can we see that? It's an illness spreading germ that's affecting the body of politics in Santa Cruz County. This corruption needs to end. Justice is about coming out of right. It's not scamming the American public. God said that he chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the we things of the world to shame the strong. First Corinthians, one seven, power to the people. Thank you, Mr. Alexander. Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to address this during oral communications? Seeing none, we'll begin our regular agenda, which we will start with item number 44, which is a presentation honoring our public works director, John Presley, on his retirement. He said he will spend all of his retirement coming during oral communications to make additional comments. Mr. Presley has spent 27 years here with the county.  And I know that board members have been telling me that they wanted to make some initial comments, Mr. Presley. So we're going to open it up for an opportunity for them to do so. So, Mr. Coonerty, if you wouldn't mind leading it off here. So I just want to take a moment and appreciate your public service. There's a lot of denigration of people who work in government these days, but you, through your leadership, through your enthusiasm, your responsiveness, and just true concern for the community. I've seen you come in and out during these storm days where you're going out into the county and really monitoring to make sure our basic infrastructure, what people expect in order to have, to get their families safely to and from work or from school or just to be able to access their neighborhood is intact and operating correctly. And I just want to take a moment and thank you for your true public service. And it's really a model for what we would hope public service would be these days. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Leopold. Thank you. John, it's hard to believe we're at this moment. You have done incredible work here in the county. I first got to know you when you and my wife worked together way back when you were part of the Regional Transportation Commission, which was part of the county planning department. You were a great co-worker to her. And when I came on board here as a member of the Board of Supervisors, you had just been selected as Director of the Department. And over the course of the last 10 years, I've seen you work up close. You have done outstanding work. And in the last 18 months, you have risen to a level that is exemplary for employees. You have been sounding the call about the need for resources for our infrastructure for many years. You have developed triage systems to be able to deal with our county roads when we had no resources. And when the Regional Transportation Commission decided to put Measure D on the ballot, you worked with other public works directors to just identify that there was a true need out there. The successful passage of that initiative was followed by your advocacy as Chair of the California Engineers Association. President, sir. As President, where you led the effort around SB1, which was a long needed effort to get the legislature to provide adequate funding for our road system, took a lot of work. To get two-thirds vote in the legislature means you have to work with your colleagues, which you did, across the state to get them to ensure that their members of the state legislature supported that. So then, at the same time, we were faced with maybe the biggest damage caused by a natural disaster in the history of the county. And working with your staff, you worked very hard to get roads open quickly that were severely damaged. And I know you were there the day that we opened Soquel San Jose Road. All the people that showed up there were incredibly happy, something we don't always see around our roads. And it really made a difference in the life in the community because part of the community was cut off for the rest of the county. So I appreciate all the work that you've done as a Director of Public Works. I appreciate all the work that you've done as the engineer with the Sanitation District, which I've had the pleasure of serving on and seeing the advances that we made there. And I just appreciate your constant availability to me whenever there were issues in the community. You were always there to help out. So I wish you great happiness and joy in your retirement. And I look forward to working with you as my constituent after April 6th. Yeah, I might run against you. I'm just kidding. I don't really mean anything I said. He's a terrible guy. Actually, I live in the city, so I would never want to come back up and do this. He's a great guy. Well, top that's about it. Yeah, right. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, I'll hide you top that one. Yeah, but you know, you've literally seen it all.  And you've stood up to the plate and really done a tremendous job in answering the call. You've seen it all and it has not been always a great view, I would say for you. But you know, where you've addressed it and especially in this last couple of years with, as was mentioned, Senate Bill one, the state gas tax bill, you led the charge and your colleagues recognize that they had a tremendous amount of respect. They do have a tremendous amount of respect for you and electing you president of their statewide association. And then with Measure D, which I was co-chair of, we all worked very hard on that. It just wouldn't have happened without your work and your expertise and letting us know how badly we needed this in our county. I get probably as many calls on transportation as any other subject matter in my office and what goes on. And when I call your office, you're always there to answer it. Give me the, say, this is the timeframe of what we can do and what we can do. We've been very limited. But now with some additional funds from SB1 and Measure D, well, you've stepped up to the plate and your method of operation of getting some consultants to really multitask so we could get to as many projects as quickly as possible is really to be commended. People of Santa Cruz County, I don't know how much, I don't know if they know how much they should appreciate you, but you've been phenomenal. I think you're the best of the best. And my congratulations on your retirement. Aloha. I don't know. You got to come back here though, too, to stay here. But you are a tremendous public works director and I appreciate your efforts throughout the years. Thank you. Thank you, Survisor Caput. Yes, we have a lot of outstanding department leaders of all of them. I would rate you number one. And I want to thank you for everything you've done for my district and the county as a whole. There was going to be a break in the levee it looked like on the Pajaro River about a year and couple of months ago. And your quick work probably prevented flooding in the senior village area protecting about a thousand homes. How quick you got on that and how quick work was being done to shore up the levee, it was actually remarkable. And you've worked with Caltrans helping out District 4, working through paperwork, getting bridge work completed that looked like it wouldn't be done for years, and then also school pedestrian crosswalks and many, many other things. I want to thank you. I'm going to miss you a lot and I want to wish you the best in your future. Thanks a lot, John. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. Mr. Palacios. John, I wanted to thank you for your years of public service especially for your leadership in SB1 and Measure D. And also as a resident of Watsonville, especially I want to thank you for your years of tireless work advocating for the Pajaro River reconstruction. You've made great progress on that and I think that we're at a point hopefully in the next few years when we may have seen some significant progress. So I thank you for your many years of work especially on the Pajaro River. Thank you very much. And I'll speak briefly.  We'll see how that goes in the first district. But I just want to say that John, you've really given your heart to this community. You've dedicated your professional career but also your personal life to this community. And you've given your heart to your staff.  And you've earned that love and respect from your staff because of the way that you treat your staff. And you've given that love and respect to the board and to our constituents. And you've given a voice to this community at the state and national level in ways that no previous public works director has ever done. And these things that you and your team do behind the scenes, and I know that your team does a lot of this work because they respect you.  They know that you're going to work as hard as them. And your heart is really in what's best for this community. And we are going to miss you as not just a public works director but as a friend of the board, as a friend of the community. And you were nominated for, as you know, the Aptos Chamber Community Hero Award. I mean, actually I wrote the nomination but still. And you are the only one that won unanimously of all the people that were all the other nominations for awards. I think that says a lot about, you know, although you work behind the scenes, people maybe don't appreciate enough but do appreciate the work that you do and have done. And the board has a small token of appreciation for you, which is a proclamation that we've all signed. There are a lot of inappropriate things in here, so I'm not going to read it. But I understand they're all true. But we are proclaiming today, John Presley Day, in the county. You deserve much more than a day because 27 years, I feel like you should get more than a day.  I think I know what the longer one is. Someone paid for that, right? Yeah, this was paid for by staff. First, there's your proclamation. Second, they call this wrapping paper in public works, apparently. It's a set of plans to something I don't think we've built. Really, it's an Aptos project. That's the one you guys chose. Unbelievable. Well, that's all I need. I just want to say all this stuff that you talk about, what we've done in public works, it really is an outstanding staff. And they're just, they work so hard. Public works is always pushing the rock up the hill. Sometimes we get the rock over the hill. It's nice. And I think every public works director that preceded me always thought we could always make this a better place. And that's what I always tried to do, is make it a better place, bring more resources in, especially for roads. And I think we're in a lot better shape than we were in the past. SB1 was a big deal. It was a big deal. And put a lot of effort into that across the state, contacting, working with 57 other public works directors as well as working with CSEC staff. That was a big deal. And that's going to really help this county better its road system out there. The staff, they're just, like you say, it's a great team. We brought in some really good people. And unfortunately, we're going to lose one of the better ones with me. He's going out April 6th too, unfortunately. But I just, I think we brought in some good people. And I think there's good people that will continue to carry on what we do in public works and try to do the best job we can. I just want to thank your board. You guys are incredible. I've worked with a lot of board members. And you know, it's always a joy to work with each and every one of you and try and get projects through. It's, you know, it's been good.  I poured my heart and soul into this job. So thank you very much. It's been great. I know that there were members of the community that actually reached out to me in advance to confirm that they could heap their praise on Director Presley. So if there were some members who'd like to briefly come up and speak, now would be your opportunity. Good morning and welcome. Thank you for waiting. Good morning. I'm Kay Archer-Boden. As most of you know, I've been a consultant to the homeowners at Papua Dunes for many years and worked with John. He has been fabulous to work with. He was generous with his time and unfailingly polite, always professional, even charming sometimes, even when he vehemently disagreed with me on things, and sometimes he did. He also knows a lot. He spent here a long time, so it made it easier to work with him because of the history that he had. The other thing I would note about him is that when I'm watching you guys on TV, there actually is an audience out there, you know, what really impresses me about John is his fantastic ability to give concise, direct, and informative answers to questions. So often during hearings, all you can do is shout at the TV and say, answer the question. Never have to do that with John. And he's always unfailingly polite to the public. I'm just going to miss him so much, and we'll probably invite him to the next time we have to breach the sandbar. I brought props. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Carol Turley. I represent the Homeowners Associations at Papua Dunes. First, I'd like to strongly recommend that you not accept his resignation. Is that a possibility? Is that okay with you? No, I guess not. Okay, well then I'll have to just keep my comments to thanking John. You haven't always done everything we wanted when we wanted it, but you were always there to help us through processes, to hear us when we were scared or concerned or had issues. And for that, I really appreciate you just to have somebody who doesn't matter what your problem is, doors open, willing to meet. I think you can leave the county proud of the work that you've done here. So I did a little bit of research on you to find out a little bit about you. I want to make sure nobody confuses this with stalking because I don't stalk people. I just do research. So I did find you a few appropriate gifts. I know you like to hang out at the beach, so I got you a ball. I found this kite with a picture of a five-toed salamander.  But I want to make sure you don't fly this at Papua Dunes because we've been trying to make people not believe that five-toed salamanders actually exist, at least not at Papua Dunes. So take it to a Santa Cruz beach, okay? A jar of flood water just in case you forget what it's like. A jar of beach sand. Do you have an EIR for those things? I'm going to bring stuff like that up all the time, Zach. This is a live straw. So if there's, you know, you're out camping and you're not sure if the water quality is very good, you put water in here and you suck it up the straw and it takes all the cooties out. But you know, as this is like really cool, as I look at this, I think since we're not going to be able to call you to help with our flood problems, you got another minute. I might need this more than you're going to need it. So I might keep that. Coffee mug, Parodun, a couple of brochures in case you want to come stay with us. I believe your wife is about a medium, so I got some Parodun's t-shirts and golf shirts so you can wrap us. These are all under $50, John. Don't worry about it. I can hold on to it. Just don't report it. They're all under $50. $49.99 worth of gifts. Hard stickers, you know, all that stuff. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to speak? Good morning, Chairman and members of the board. I'm Jane Nguyen from the Health Services Agency. I would like to give you permission to spend a few minutes to say something to Mr. Presley. Hi, John. On behalf of the Health Services Agency, I want to say thank you so very much for the partnership throughout the years. You work really closely with us to help open up the Behavioral Health Unit. You and Betsy were very instrumental in helping us lift that of very heavy weight, so we want to thank you. Your contribution really has helped this community to secure 16-bed inpatient psychiatric health facility for residents here, and that is tremendous. We want to thank you for that. Also throughout the years, your department and my department have been partnering on several important grants, the Caltrans Transportation Grants. Because of your work, your leadership and your staff help, we secure quite a few grants over the years to help our community. And also your leadership was recognized recently last week at CSAC seminar in San Jose. I was asked to speak to 53 potential department heads throughout the states, and during that conversation I had with those 53 candidates, they all talked about you and how famous you are statewide of the work you've done at the engineer association level. So I want to say thank you so much for your work, and I really appreciate your leadership, your kindness, your professionalism, your humble, but you're very smart and you know what you're doing. So thanks again for all your help. Thank you, Board. Thank you. Good morning. First of all, I want to commend all of you Board members for saying everything that I was going to say, and it's all definitely true. I do want to say that I've had the pleasure of working for, John is my fourth public works director in this county that I've worked for, and he's had very big shoes to fill, and he has definitely filled them without question. In fact, he's more than filled them, and his retirement will bring a very big loss, not only to the department, but also to the county, as some of you have already said, and we will miss him greatly. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to address us on this item? Kathy Malloy, planning director, and I also want to thank John. I'll be brief for your partnership. As an example of that, I'll just say that when I first came here, I heard that there had been some talk of putting a wall up between the one connection between the Planning and Public Works Department. We're both on the same floor, but rather than pursue that wall, we actually created a second opening, and you know, that's a good symbol for the partnership and really trying to view ourselves as a unified development services center that we're not siloed or not two separate departments. We have the same objective, and you and your staff have been great partners in that effort, and really wish you happiness and health and fun times in your retirement. So thank you very much. Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to address us on the item? The board actually needs to take action on that proclamation, because all of us signed it. I move approval. We have a motion from Supervisor Leopold II, from Supervisor II and III and IV, from the rest of the board, from what I gather. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. There will be a reception that Public Works is putting on the fourth floor in their offices immediately following this presentation. John, our hearts are with you in your retirement. We're going to miss you greatly. Thank you for your 27 years of remarkable service. Please do give him the hand that he deserves it. We'll continue on to item 45, which is a presentation recognizing the recipients of the Women's Commission Trailblazer Awards as outlined in a memo that I submitted, and I'll kick this item off. The Board of Supervisors are extremely pleased today to provide an opportunity to publicly recognize our Trailblazer Award winners. Trailblazers are women or girls who through their professional or personal efforts are making extraordinary differences to improve the lives of women in our community. These awards are sponsored by the Santa Cruz County Women's Commission, a nonpartisan advisory board that serves to advance the causes of all women to expand possibilities for women and girls and advocate for empowerment and equality. 14 nominations were received by the Women's Commission for these awards, and we'll be recognizing six of these nominees today as Trailblazers. The commissioners use a strict rating system to review each nomination as well as the applicant's eligibility and impact. Those who have made extraordinary differences in the lives of other women and girls by serving as an innovative leader or pioneer have been selected today as Trailblazers. We'll now present the Trailblazers Award, and we'll introduce our district commissioners and Trailblazer Award winners and have them approach the podium. Our commissioners will give a summary of our Trailblazer awardee's accomplishments. Supervisor Leopold, if you'd please introduce our first award winner. Thank you, Chair. I would like to invite First District Commissioner Teresa Carino and First District Trailblazer Awardee Heidi Boynton to come up to the podium. Before Teresa speaks, I just want to say that I've known Heidi now close to probably 20 years. We have kids the same age. She has been a Trailblazer for a very long time who's always been concerned about others. Not only here when we were at SoCal Elementary, the leadership position that she took there to help out the school community, help out other kids, but she's been going down to Mexico to help build houses for a long time, and the establishment of the mini-mermaids is just the latest great thing that Heidi has done. It's great to see you. I'm really glad that you've won this award, and welcome Teresa, another great commissioner. Thank you. Buenos dias. Good morning. I'm Teresa Carino and the Santa Cruz County Women's Commission is honoring you today, Heidi, as a Trailblazer, making an extraordinary difference in the lives of women and girls in the focus area of health. Heidi knows firsthand what it means that the finish line is just the beginning. Heidi has been a mentor to me. She is a pillar and an inspiration to women and girls here in Santa Cruz and beyond. She teaches girls and women to listen to their inner mermaid voice, and in case you don't know what that is, it means listening to that powerful, resilient voice that is within all of us, not just girls, also boys and men. And so I really want to thank you, Heidi, and I feel honored that I am in your district, and I get to award you with this certificate. Supervisor Leopold also has a proclamation for you. Thank you, Supervisor Leopold, for that. I'd like to now invite Laura Cross, our Women's Commission Chair, and District Two Commissioner to approach the podium, and I'd also like to welcome our District Two Trailblazer awardee, Kristin Peterson, to come to the front. And as a brief introduction of Kristin, who has done a remarkable amount, not just for women and girls, but for the community in general, you serve on so many local commissions and boards volunteering so much of your time, dedicating time to high school juniors and seniors when I saw you at that Vision Santa Cruz event for the students, for the work that you do on the libraries, for the work that you do with CAB, it goes on and on and on from all the way in the southern portion of the county, all the way to the northern portion of the county, not just for the representation you actually provide in Capitola, but you definitely do deserve this award, Kristin. Ms. Cross, please. This award is in recognition of your inspiring work and significant impact in the field of economic justice and political participation. As a Capitola City Council member, you promoted ideas for affordable housing and economic development. We also applied your efforts to bring back youth membership to the Capitola City's boards and commissions. Congratulations. Our next, for our next award, I'd like to invite Third District Commissioner Carol McPherson to approach the podium. I'd also like to invite Third District Trailblazer awardee, Susan Green, to come to the front. So just by way of brief introduction, Ms. McPherson was my middle school teacher and a remarkable leader in this community for empowering many generations of women and boys in this community. And I can think of no better time to be giving Susan Green this award than on the week that Blaine is reopened, on the week we reauthorized the Gemma funding. This is really a testament to your effort in this community. Well, I'm really honored to be the one that gets to give you the award. I've been just blown away by the things that you do for us and I'm very proud to be a part of your life. So Susan got her degree from Northwestern and then came to Santa Cruz and got her master's and her PhD. So this is Dr. Green. And last year she presented the county with an incredible research project. It's called Gender Matters and we're going to be working from that for the next years that we do criminal justice. It's just amazing. And I think you've also been a mover and shaker in making Blaine Street what it is today. I just so enjoyed the event on Thursday and it's an amazing place and I know that you have a lot of influence on that. So thank you so much for coming and being such a part of our community and this says for your inspiring work and significant impact for women in the field of criminal justice informed. And she was the original director of Gemma and you've heard Gemma two or three times today. And so you're looking at the creator and director very much. We're going to do further. Thank you Supervisor Coonerty. Supervisor Caput will announce our next Trailblazer awardees. I'd like to invite commissioners Maria Barranco and Ari Parker to approach the podium. And I'd also like to invite our district for Trailblazer awardees Maria Campos and Gina Galino Cole to come to the front. I am so honored to be the one presenting this award to Maria Campos. Maria Campos is an advocate with monarch services and the focus is violence against women and girls. Maria has spent 21 years providing services to survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking. She has committed her life to making a difference in our community. Maria is not only an advocate to everyone who surrounds her, but she's also a fantastic human being. She is compassionate and loving to everyone. She has made significant efforts and made positive difference towards the lives of hundreds of women and girls through support, advocacy, education and empowerment. Maria has experienced many hardships for her life and rather than giving up, she has been that strong person and has shown that things can definitely happen. Aside from the work that Maria does, she has also raised five children on her own and as a single mother. I want to congratulate Maria for all the amazing work that she has done and her passion and dedication with serving women and girls. Congratulations, Maria. Supervisor Caput will be bringing a proclamation down as well. Thank you. Today I'm very lucky to introduce Gina Cole, who is honored here today for inspiring her inspiring work and significant impact for women in the focus area of education. Gina is an educator and an advocate for health, safety and the empowerment of girls, women and families in our diverse community of Watsonville. Her advocacy for women and girls in sports and athletics has been an integral part professionally and personally of Gina's life path. Gina is a successful educator, a bold community advocate in working with parents to build connections to their children's schools and educating mothers on how to become school leaders and advocates for their children as well as lifelong learners themselves. So today, Gina, for your inspiring work and significant impact for women in the field of education, we'd like to give you this trail. Thank you, Supervisor Caput. Supervisor McPherson will announce our final trailblazer awardee for the day. Thank you, Chair Friend. I'd like to invite District Commissioner, Fifth District Commissioners Maggie Bar and Sheila Delaney to approach the podium. And I'd also like to invite our Fifth District Trailblazer Awardee Linda Skeff. Miss Skeff is a phenomenal person. She's tremendously dedicated to removing invasive species and time and again gets members of the AmeriCorps to come to our Fifth District and throughout Santa Cruz County to protect our natural resources. She's crazy to the point of protecting poison oak, as a matter of fact, which is that's what the rumor is anyway.  She gets these young people motivated and having fun doing what they're doing. I've been to dinners at her house. She feeds them. She takes lunches out to them when they're working. She does so many things, just goes the extra mile and you could tell that they're appreciative because they're so enthusiastic. I've been to dinners at her Brookdale home with them. She is really something that they really have a high respect for and it's a great learning experience for them as well. Linda Skeff is one of the top people I know who has a deep dedication to protecting our natural resources and I thank you. Congratulations. Linda is the creator and executive director of the San Lorenzo Valley Habitat Restoration Program, which is part of the Valley Women's Club and part of that program is the AmeriCorps program. Linda has written successful grants for the last three years to obtain AmeriCorps teams from all over the country to come here. It engages 18 to 24 year olds in community service, some of which are here today to celebrate Linda's award and also learn a little bit about how the county operates. I'd like to ask the AmeriCorps team to stand up. I've met you all. I don't remember your names, but I remember what you do. Linda is a mentor for those young citizens interested in the preservation of a healthy ecosystem and watershed. The teams have contributed over 14,000 hours towards the restoration of native habitats at parks and non-profit sites in the San Lorenzo Valley. I think we can be very proud of Linda, very proud of them and this will be something that you take forward into the rest of your life and Linda is the reason and there'll be a reception outside right after this. Thank you for allowing us to honor these people. Thank you. It's a great deal. Thank you. We'd like to thank the Women's Commission for your remarkable work that you do, not just in recognizing these community members of what you do every day. I'd like to thank all the AmeriCorps members that are here today. We're really counting on your generation to not just lead this community but lead this country moving forward to better places. You have taken the first step quite frankly by doing what you're doing. You have a great mentor but we're counting on you to do that. We have a reception as was mentioned. We're going to take the board's going to take a short recess so we can participate in this reception. I know. When you get lectured all the time by the fiscal people up here about the upcoming recession, it gets beaten into you. But for the reception and take a moment, if you don't know one of the Trailblazer awardees, make sure you take a moment to introduce yourself and thank them for what they do because they're working in our community behind the scenes every single day and they're an inspiration for all of us. So congratulations for all of you. We'll join you outside. We're going to move to item 46, which is a continued public hearing to consider amendments to the Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 17.10 regarding affordable housing requirements, the certification of CEQA exemption related actions to schedule a public hearing for April 10th, 2018 at 9 a.m. or thereafter to consider changes to the 2017-18 unified fee schedule and take related actions as outlined in the Memo of the Planning Director. This is a continued item from December 12th, 2017. We have the ordinance commending 17.10. We have the ordinance with the strike out and underline with the CEQA notice of exemption and the notice of public hearing in the unified fee schedule. Ms. Conway, welcome. Good morning. We're returning today to continue a public hearing from December 12, 2017, which consisted of a report and recommendations on the county's affordable housing program. I'd ask you to note that the wrong version was of the ordinance was uploaded. You've got replacement pages and there's additional copies in the back. On December 12, 2017, the Board of Supervisors held a public hearing on the affordable housing program update and took action to continue the public hearing to today in order to accommodate additional public outreach and analysis on the developer choice option through which developers, rather than the county, can elect to fulfill their affordable housing obligation requirement through the payment of impact fee rather than through provision of on-site affordable units for projects of seven or more units. In January, staff invited public input on this matter and planned to return to the Housing Advisory Commission to discuss any resulting recommendations. We received input from the public, but it was after the hack packet was out and public and too late for this report back. Input was received and staff will be recommending a process to analyze and create recommendations for your Board to consider. As a reminder to listeners, the county's affordable housing program began after passage of Measure J in 1978, which required the county to adopt policies to ensure that 15 percent of residential development is affordable to average income households. Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 1710 contains the provisions of Measure J and has been adapted from time to time. In 2015, the county retained the services of Kaiser Marston Associates to conduct NEXA study and feasibility analysis and resulted in updated affordable housing program establishing an affordable housing impact fee or AHIF, which is a local source of housing funds. Besides the impact fee approach, the Board also decided for a two-year period to give developers the option of meeting their affordable housing obligation by providing an affordable unit or paying AHIF with direction to staff to return in two years with a follow-up report. In preparation for the two-year review, Kaiser Marston was again retained to analyze the development economics of the housing program. On October 24th, 2017, the Board of Supervisors received the scheduled update on the housing program, provided direction to return with proposed amendments to Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 1710. Board direction also included a request for further analysis of the affordable housing impact fee for non-residential development and a return to the Housing Advisory Commission for a second time to further discuss on-site inclusionary requirements for rental housing, included in today's draft ordinance are provisions for updated affordable housing impact fees for residential ownership projects and commercial projects, incentivizing rental development by encouraging use of density bonus program and charging a fee rather than requiring on-site units for rental, and require AHIF payment at building permit final rather than through escrow. One of the key features in today's proposed ordinance is a change to the fees for residential ownership projects. This chart reflects the AHIF the Board discussed in October and December. Note that the $15 per square foot applies to will apply to units of five, six, and more units. The fees continue to incentivize the construction of smaller homes with the graduated fee scale and includes additions, remodels, and replacements at the same rate but only for net new square footage over 500 square feet. Fees for ADUs were changed in December. They are established to be consistent with this policy and are charged AHIF as an addition and that exempts the first 500 square feet. The AHIF for commercial development reflect the October direction of an increase to $3 per square foot for commercial uses other than certain agricultural buildings. As requested, staff reviewed commercial development permit history to determine whether the AHIF would create a barrier to mom-and-pop commercial developments. Of 182 permits, only nine included net new square footage over half were under 3,000 square feet. The majority of the permits are for tenant improvements that are not subject to AHIF. Staff is recommending that AHIF continue to apply to new commercial square footage. At the Board's direction, the HAC discussed rental housing policies, acknowledging the need for rental housing, and the fact that market-driven rental projects are not being proposed in great numbers. The HAC recognized that the inclusionary housing requirement is not a primary barrier to building rental apartments at this time, but that low density and other development standards are likely the greater hurdle. The density bonus provisions of County Code Section 1712 allow for up to 35% additional density along with concessions on development standards. The Density Bonus program provides an opportunity to add to get badly needed rental housing built and to provide affordable rental units to the inventory. It benefits both the project and it helps to address a compelling community housing need. In 2012, your Board adopted the policy of allowing owners of County affordable rental units to charge HUD FMR rather than the Measure J Restricted Rent. This policy applies to density bonus units also. Since putting this policy in place, more landlords are choosing to rent tenants with subsidy. The Housing Advisory Commission recognized that the market is not producing rental housing at this time and recommended continuation of the current policy of charging the nominal $2 per square foot. The HAC also requested regular reports on any rental projects that are submitted for approval with the intention of revisiting the program in the future. The current system requires payment of HIF when homes are sold resulting in the home buyer facing an unexpected fee that is not part of the purchase price financing. Since the October Board action, we've met with several parties who've said that payment when the permit is final would facilitate development and relieve the developer of carrying costs during construction. The fee would then be included in the cost of development, address the issue of unexpected fees for homeowners. We're recommending that we postpone the discussion of the developer choice option to pay a fee rather than build on-site inclusionary units at 15% of the total units for ownership projects of seven or more units in order to continue a community discussion on that point. It is therefore recommended that your Board take the following actions, reopen the continued public hearing to consider revisions of the Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 1710 affordable housing requirements, confirm proposed project is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, approve the ordinance amending Santa Cruz County Code Chapter 1710 in concept, direct the clerk of the Board to place the ordinance for second reading and final approval on the next available agenda. Schedule a public hearing for April 10th, 2018 or thereafter to consider changes to the unified fee schedule amending the affordable housing impact fee schedule, direct the clerk of the Board to publish notice of the public hearing at least 10 days prior to the hearing date and direct staff to return to the Board of Supervisors in October 2018 for further consideration of whether to require provision of on-site affordable units in fulfillment of the affordable housing obligations for projects of seven or more units rather than allowing developers to choose to pay the affordable housing impact fee. That concludes my report. Thank you, Ms. Conway. Are there questions from Board members before we reopen the public hearing? Supervisor Caput. You bet. I'm looking forward to this. I think it's going to help the county out. I did notice one thing. It said that we are committed to having affordable housing, which is rental housing, and it said no more than our fair share of the state mandates. That's compared to the other counties in the state. Is that correct? That's, are you quoting from Measure J? I read in the report that we're committed to affordable housing but no more than our fair share of affordable housing in our county. Right. That principle is reflected in, in Measure J as well as our housing element, the regional fair share allocation and so on. Okay. And then what I've noticed in the county, it is getting better. I would say the same thing for district four, no more than our fair share of the affordable housing in the county. So spreading it out county wide rather than having it concentrated on two or maybe three districts in the county. Thanks. Supervisor Leopold. Thank you. In reading this report, there were, I was just very disappointed in the, in knowing that after we put off making decisions on this around the developer choice option that, that we're now pushing it back another six months. And what confidence should I have in that something will actually happen in this period that, that somehow failed to happen during the last period? I mean, I think the board said, we, you know, that, you know, that, that we wanted to do something that there were enough board members who said, let's wait. But here we are. And nothing's happened. And I'm just trying to think what steps are going to take place to ensure that this is going to happen. And why do we have to wait till October for it to happen? Well, as, as we reflected in the report on the board's direction, immediately, January 2nd, we did invite community input. There was a group of people who, many of whom are here today who are highly interested in this matter and have actually been involved in a very robust discussion. And we invited them to submit materials in time for us to, you know, complete our process, go to the hack and return to your board by this date. We did get materials. They were too late to undertake that discussion, the analysis and discussion for the hack. So, and, you know, meanwhile, we've got a number of provisions pending. So what we're actually proposing today, and I believe we'll have some speakers who are, will be discussing it, there's a number of proposals that people are interested in having more discussion about. And I look forward to the chance to continue to engage with this group who see this as a very important issue. If, if they, if there's been written materials, which came too late, that seems, hard for me to understand that, but it's, it's came too late. But if those written materials are out, why wait six months on this issue? Well, clearly, I mean, we set a deadline in order to accommodate this. We, you know, did not get the materials in time. They were very interesting materials. They're very thoughtful. There's a group of people who are highly engaged, proceeding in, without having the materials in a timely way, isn't, wouldn't it give us a chance to really have the robust discussion that we're interested in having? Yeah, I think that we, we didn't see a whole lot of opportunity cost in waiting. You know, we're not aware of that many seven plus unit projects happening. And so it, it, it seemed that more in line with the board's direction to accommodate a robust community conversation and see whether we can't get closer to a consensus between the regulators and the development community. And I think that's, that's the effort that we look forward to engaging in over the next few months. Yeah, I don't, I'm not exactly sure where you're getting information. I've had developers come in and propose 11 and 18 unit developments that will, that will likely come in for permitting way before October. So I'm, I'm, I'm baffled if the materials have been submitted from the development community and others. And we got a letter here from the hack saying they're, they're chomping at the bit to have this discussion. And other things, why, why six months? I just don't, I mean, can we make this happen sooner than, than, than October? I mean, clearly it's, it's at your direction. We, we put forward a recommendation that would accommodate a process to have the more robust community conversation. But if, if it, if six months is too long, then we can certainly embark on a different timeline. Well, so let's just talk about the robust community conversation. So it was also pointed out to me by my, my planning commissioner and the letter we received from the chair of the hack that meetings that happen at one o'clock in the afternoon may not allow that robust community conversation because it's not, it's not a very, it's not a great time to get lots of people involved because of their, that they may be working, right? And I think we should be open if the, if the hack is interested in meeting it at different times of the day, or this board should, should look at allowing the hack to meet more often in order to advance these things that we say we care about. I, you know, I'm, I just think the process is getting in way of the outcome. And I'd like to figure out some way that we can change up the process so we can get the outcomes that people tell us they want, right? I mean, we have these affordable housing advocates. We have these developers. We have a very committed commission. And I'm just, how do we, how do we take advantage of that? You know, meetings at, on Wednesdays at one o'clock may not be the best way to make that happen. And so I'm just, I'm trying to figure out how to move that along so that robust community conversation can actually happen and that we can actually get something done before October. I'll just add that we do have two new staff people from authorized positions that we've been unable to fill for the past year. And so they'll be coming into the sustainability policy section. And so part of the conversation that we're alluding to is the broader conversation about the sustainability general plan update and code modernization because a lot of the ideas, you know, for how to respond to the housing crisis really involve more than just the developer choice issue and whether or not you should, they, you know, the county should choose rather than the developer to allow an onsite inclusionary unit. So we, with the new staffing, we're anticipating being able to complete some work and by fall, you know, six rumps of now, you know, bring people back into the conversation where we left off with the sustainability and the code mod about some bigger picture approaches to addressing the housing crisis. And so that was part of the thinking as well is that it seemed that people wanted to talk more about that just the developer choice issue that, that, you know, the MBAP letter came about, you know, broader policy changes, many of which we're already working on. And so kind of revisiting that and re-engaging people with the, those strategies we thought also would be by fall, you know, we'd be ready to better articulate with those work. I'm trying to read between the lines here, trying to figure out if this is one more thing that's going to get in the way of the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan getting to environmental review. We've had lots, you know, those conversations started in 2012. So if, and in those conversations, which we were a leader on in terms of talking about increased densities and looking at things differently, new zoning tools, last we heard it was going to, that there was going to be some draft out in January 2019. I saw in the recent Pleasure Point meeting that we don't expect it to be approved until spring of 2020. I'm just wondering is this, I feel like I'm chasing the holy grail. I can't ever figure out how I get to it. Right, right, right. You know, your points well taken. We're frustrated as well. And like I said, with the focus on the state mandated ADU program legislative changes, we've spent a lot of time on that. As you know, the cannabis program has used a lot of staff time and some of the other efforts. Those efforts are getting done now. And so with the two new people and finishing those efforts, it's going to be possible for us as staff to re-engage in the proposed budget. We also have money for the environmental impact consultant. And that's the contract that we would hope to have your board approve this fall and start preparing that EIR on the program elements. When do you expect that we'll see a draft EIR about the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan that we approved in October of 2015? In 2019. And we won't be able to start the EIR until this fall. And it's probably going to take a year to prepare the draft EIR. I wish we could do it faster.  And this wall doesn't ever seem to go away. It just seems to get a little bit taller every time we talk about it. And so I'm just trying to, the issue has been identified as a priority, a crisis. The board has tried to adopt some new policies and we are stymied by the lack of this environmental work for things that we've already approved years ago. And so I want to try to light a fire in some way to have these discussions. It seems developer choice seems like something that we could come to conclusion with pretty quickly. If we want to have more things, but if all they're doing is just keep on loading it up till that document gets done someday, we wouldn't have advanced the cause of housing in the community. So I implore you to dedicate the resources to start the process to get the work done so we can have some new tools to be able to address the housing issues in our community. Are there any other questions from board members before we reopen the public hearing? We're now actually going to reopen the public hearing, give an opportunity for members of the community to provide us with feedback and then we'll bring it back to the board for discussion and action after that. Good morning. Good morning, Chair Friend, members of the board. I'm J.M. Brown, Chair of your Housing Advisory Commission. I submitted comments to you yesterday by email regarding recent community or commission action on the affordable housing guidelines, but your staff report was prepared before the most recent commission action, so I appreciate the opportunity to chomp at the bit with you in person this morning. At the commission's March 7th meeting, we voted unanimously to recommend the board approve new guidelines as presented by the planning department staff with the exception of the developer choice component related to inclusionary requirements. If you recall, in light of the community debate that took place in December here about in lieu fees versus onsite requirements, the board, in that discussion of those proposed guidelines sent them in a matter back to the commission for further review and comment. Generally speaking, commissioners believe there were many beneficial provisions within the guidelines that have been well vetted by the public and could be brought to bear on development projects currently in the pipeline, should the board be inclined to support them today. However, in light of various proposals from affordable housing advocates and developers related to inclusionary requirements, density bonus incentives, and other ideas, the commission voted to recommend the board instruct the commission to take further public input on these topics with the expectation that we would return to you with a future recommendation. The commission stands ready if the board so wishes to vet these community proposals as well as hear from the planning department staff regarding whatever recommendations they ultimately make relative to those inclusionary requirements. We could do so as early as our next regularly scheduled meeting on May 2nd. As chair of the commission to supervisor Leopold's point, I would respectfully ask that if the board directs the commission to do this work, that the board also permit the commission to meet in board chambers at a time that's more accessible to the public, and that would include residents affected by the affordable housing crisis, property owners, and potential developers of affordable housing. I would likewise ask you to instruct the staff to provide the necessary support to accommodate those logistics. As it stands now, as mentioned earlier, we meet every other month in a small conference room in the middle of the afternoon, which is not a time that works for most working people. And even if the commission were to receive strong public interest at a time like that, the room is so small, we could only accommodate about a dozen members of the public at any given time. So I thank you and I thank the planning department staff for all of your efforts to increase and maintain affordable housing in our community, and I assure you that commissioners look forward to hearing from the public should you instruct us to take on this worthwhile endeavor. I plan to stick around if you have any questions, and I thank you. Thank you, Mr. Brown. Thank you for your work on the commission as well. Morning. Welcome. Please feel free to line up if there's additional people who'd like to speak on this item during this public hearing. Morning. Welcome. Good morning. Robert Singleton with the Business Council. I just want to echo a sentiment that JM came and spoke about having a continuation and a much broader public discussion about the inclusionary requirements and potentially looking at different ways in which we could incentivize the development of more de-restricted ownership units here. We definitely support looking more at an enhanced density bonus program, as well as looking at how we can make the onsite units and the onsite requirements work. We look forward to that robust community discussion. We think the hack is a great body with which to take in this public input. We are also totally happy if it is an expedited process and takes a less time than six months allotted, but we understand staff time. In a whole, in principle, support everything that's being brought to your board today, maybe with a little bit of changes to how the timing works, but ultimately we agree with having the hack be a primary body to hear more public input, have a more robust public discussion, and I think ultimately many of the people who are going to speak with you today have agreed on a lot of common ground over this past couple of months. I think there's a joint signed letter that was submitted to you guys by MBEP. We support that in concept and we look forward to filling in the details as we move forward with this public process. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Singleton. Morning, Mr. Willoughby. Welcome. Good afternoon. Still morning. Good morning. Tim Willoughby speaking for affordable housing now. As you have heard, a number of groups have gotten together and have been discussing this topic and today we stand in agreement, which is a wonderful thing. We stand in agreement, so we do support the staff recommendation. We would like to, the reason we would like to do this is because as you saw from our letter, we see this as a much bigger picture that if you're taking one little piece at a time, we're not going to make much progress. So we have to look at some larger picture items and bundle them together in some way so that we can encourage housing development and for our purpose encourage more affordable housing. We also agree with Supervisor Leopold that six months might be too long. We know staff has got lots to do, but we would like to see this move as quickly as possible because we're in a crisis, so we do support that and thank you for your consideration. Thank you and thank you for your work. Morning, Miss Steinbrenner. Welcome back. Good morning. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Leopold, for speaking up on this. I really want to thank you for this because I see this as a problem in our community where developers are allowed to pay money instead of building affordable housing and it never gets built. And so I think we really need to talk about this developer's choice now and get this cleared up and get some affordable housing coming. I was at the Housing Advisory Commission when they met and made this decision and I felt like there was a tremendous pressure from the outside group that presented the information just the day before. I mean it wasn't even on the agenda, but they had been told, had been asked by Ms. Conway to submit any information by February 15th. So it sort of handcuffed the commission and one of the things that bothered me and what they're proposing is that the county changed the policy in order to allow developers to pay developer fees that will cover the impacts of their development until after the development is occupied. I know the grave economic crisis that is looming before the county and I feel that if this is allowed it will put the onus on the taxpayers to really fund the improvements that will be needed for this and it's like putting the cart before the horse. You need the improvements to handle the impact before the people come in my opinion and this proposal that this group has put forth under some of the land, urban land institute provisions that they submitted to the commission that day propose things like that in terms and also increasing densities to the point that I think we could have small ghettos actually. You've got to look at how the quality of life of some of these places as well as just having a roof over your head. So I think there needs to be a balance. I also note in the proposed changes of ordinance 1710 that all language regarding measure J is stricken and I want to know why that has been done and I also see that in 1710 decimal 039 in section 4 the compliance with Costa Hawkins Act is stricken and I'd like some discussion about that because that as I understand it anyway has to do with controlling rent levels and I also want to just say that I think there needs to be a good connection as we'll come on my understanding with sustainable Santa Cruz County with the water demand that this level of development will do. So Cal Creek Water District does have a water demand offset. Their meeting tonight will be discussing some of those issues but we really have to address that as we do our land use policy and have water service on the plan check. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning and welcome. I agree with both Robert and four housing now's group. I'm on sign both letters and what I might take on it is that we would need more absolute number of four housing units and this inclusionary thing is an essential part but doing it alone is not going to have much more than perhaps a symbolic effect. Lately I've been geeking out and looking at some California Department of Finance, Population and Housing estimates and thought I'd share some of this with you. Since 1990 throughout Santa Cruz County all jurisdictions the population percent increase has been larger than the housing unit increase for 20 of the last 27 years and during the past 10 years it's been much worse. We're currently in a 10 year streak of population increasing faster than housing and it's to the point where there's been 10.77 additional people per additional housing unit. So the 500 homes that we talked about is given like the total number of construction represents 0.8 percent of all housing units in unincorporated Santa Cruz County. So we're just not building enough housing for the growing population. We need more housing. So I support both these letters because they take a look at the bigger picture. We need to reduce a certain D in the process of getting housing approved and built. We need to curtail exclusionary zoning and we need better financing and funds for affordable housing and we need to reduce the cost of entitlement. So you know whatever happens today I hope that it's sort of the starting point for moving beyond this single issue and looking at the bigger picture ones that both groups agree on and that will increase the absolute number of affordable housing units. Thanks. Thank you for your comments. Good morning Mr. Huerta. Welcome. Good for you all there. Good morning chair. Board of supervisors. Matt Huerta housing program manager with Monterey Bay Economic Partnership over 80 members across the three county region representing the largest major employers both public private and non-profit and housing is one of our key initiatives as you know. And so I'm really happy to actually see that kind of the disparate groups majority disparate groups that had contentions around certain issues are joining together at least today to support staff's recommendations. You know when necessary phasing in some of these major policy decisions is appropriate. So this is obviously one that you know hopefully we can get to a better more comprehensive package sooner than later but certainly the pieces that can move forward now ought to. And as an example one of our key policy initiatives is to help make sure that we see more of a middle ground in terms of different housing types. So the fact that you have a very strong you know graduated scale kind of program in terms of your fee schedule that's something to be support and move forward with as an example because that's going to help drive down hopefully the incentivize the development of smaller homes and hopefully consequentially you know more have them be lower cost or more affordable as an example. So we certainly support that we'll continue to track this back to a point that was made earlier you know we're not really going to crack this nut until we identify more sites more higher density sites and that's not going to happen until we have the map laid out in front of us and that's Santa Cruz sustainable plan other pieces that need to get baked into that. However I think that in the course of that more meaty conversation over the next few months what I think will breathe more life into these policies is recognition about what that policy ought to look like and engagement around the specific sites and densities so that maybe there's you know developer choice option and other pieces of your affordable housing policy can move forward without having to wait for the two you know this longer term process but let's identify those specific sites that can move forward without the longer term EIR process that's going to allow for even more housing to happen but we look forward to finding those opportunities and supporting that along the way with all the stakeholders involved thank you. Thank you. Morning Mr. Simon welcome. Sibley Simon I'm an affordable and workforce housing developer and I just want to make one point which is what I hope well first of all I actually do want to thank staff for making these recommendations I hope you pass these recommendations today I'm excited to participate I agree from my perspective I don't think it needs to be six months but in any case I want to move forward and I just tell you very clearly what my goal is in participating in this I hope that we can get an enhanced bonus density ordinance so that we create more inclusionary affordable housing I think we get in the bind of what is the percentage on our inclusionary ordinance and the in lieu fees and how big does the project need to be to not have the in option etc etc and wherever we put that line and those lines we don't get enough affordable housing and by my count over the last 40 years we've averaged about 14 units a year of inclusionary housing it's way better than not having those but I think we can do better and the best method I've seen in the state of California with our set of policies that we already have in that regulatory context for trying to do that is the bonus density ordinance it's really great that Santa Cruz County has done something already as Julie was mentioning that is already causing more developers to use the bonus density which is allow the fair market rents I'm really excited about that because it creates rental housing as opposed to for sale housing as often and gets that inclusionary housing built I think we can do even more and I don't think it'll have to be you know a huge policy effort to get that done I just like to make it a little bit well I think it's significantly better we'll get some more inclusionary housing and I think it is what's caused the beginning of the consensus building is the realization if we had a little bit more on the bonus density we can get more parties even more parties on board with going to with getting rid of the in lieu fee option and both those things together would create more inclusionary housing would up that average number of inclusionary housing in its per year and I would really love to see that happen so it's why I'm willing to invest more time over the next few months to see if we can get there and I hope that we do and I thank Steph tremendously for the opportunity thank you for those comments anybody else worry Mr. Barr thank you supervisors and I want to comment on Julia's hard work over the last few months and if anyone in this room is to be blamed for providing information late to this body it's me we had conversations back in December in January and we were under the impression that the the deadline was further in advance than the date that she said we submitted the material that your box is nine hours after the hack material went out so I just want to preface that as we apologize for that material being late it's been in the public domain for a number of years so it's not new new information but it's it was consensus building information that drove us to write a letter that supported broadly I'm here today to thank the folks that spoke with previously that there is consensus on the motion that you have before you we believe that on April hearing date through hack is the right means to address this issue secondly we would hope that that that a motion could be put forward to accelerate the process before October I think October is way too late it's beyond the tendency when you get into an election cycle and I think this would be lost in the discussion and I think that there's enough consensus today that inclusionary zoning should be part of your motion and providing options on the table that allow that that type of building to be built I'm going to leave it with the three a's affordability affordability availability and accountability we don't have enough affordable housing in the market we don't have enough availability of people to buy or build those houses and accountability is all the people in this room we're all accountable to each other to this community to build more housing thank you thank you Mr. Byers or anybody else that would like to address us that's Alexander welcome back thank you thank you uh yeah I just want to remind members of the public you know we have a shared humanity and Supervisor Leopold I do you know feel your political frustration and also the ladies right here talking about the six months just the deliberate um it just seems like it's deliberate stonewalling and the American public like I said they need affordable housing this is a great county and you guys are great men we have to do great things for the American public so I want to be able to offer you this uh Supervisor Leopold maybe you can help push a little bit unplug the the pipeline for affordable housing it got stuck it takes a man effort but I want to be able to say that we need we need all your guys's support to push that you know there's a lot of great people here that work that need and need that uh those affordable housing and it's important because in order for us to continue building up Santa Cruz we need people that are going to come and do that work you know imagine you guys living in a different county because you guys can't afford it here it's very difficult for a lot of people but you guys being able to do what you guys can and spearhead this and keep ramrodding and keep saying hey we got to do this a lot faster because it just seems like it's a political will of the whips that's going nowhere okay thank you thank you does anybody else like to address this in this public hearing uh seen none we'll bring it back to the board I'll briefly make some comments and make and hand it over to my colleagues for a motion um you know we are actually taking significant actions today there's just one piece that that we're proposing to defer but I think that uh the board has consensus we'd ask for additional research including on the actions that we are taking today on the fees and I appreciate the work of staff on that I do think that there's consensus as well to move the date up I think that there's consensus to have the hack take a greater uh role in this I think that uh we should recognize and we can't underscore enough the fact that you have disparate groups of people coming together people that wouldn't normally participate in a process together social justice environmental affordable housing developers uh market rate developers actually coming together and reaching a consensus and I think that we should um a highlight uh what kind of crisis we have to be in to bring those groups together to actually have that level of consensus but b also harness that energy to make sure that they continue to stay engaged because it strikes me that it's really nothing we can't do if we continue to have that level of broad base support across the community but complex issues such as housing don't have uh can't be solved by a single input so I think it is important that we actually look at this in a broader context uh and not silo this issue the way that it's been siloed is just an affordable housing ordinance issue when a significant component of this is outside of the affordable housing ordinance and needs to be addressed uh by this board and by this community moving forward because anything we do within the affordable housing ordinance actually has an impact on the other elements and vice versa about whether something can be tolerated or accepted or where that breaking point is of what builds affordable housing within our community in and of itself a single fee or a single requirement may not actually be problematic but in the greater context of a lot of things it might be and so I think that it actually makes sense to take a complex issue and look at it in a complex way to bring together uh disparate interests that are coming together in a consensus and I think we're really close I think we are close enough that I agree with Supervisor Leopold that we should be able to move this uh faster than October as a result um but I'll move it to Supervisor Coonerty first and hopefully board members will move toward a motion soon. Supervisor Coonerty. Sure. So actually I have a question for County Council which is if the hack um uh advised the creation of a density an additional density bonus ordinance would that have to go to the planning commission as well before it comes back to us? Or maybe it's you all. I think if it's in the zoning ordinance 1310 then it would. So I'll say that most likely because it affects the limits on development so typically that's defined as the zoning ordinance. Okay um so let me let me make a stab at a motion but I'm certainly open to hearing my uh colleagues uh input which is to move the staff recommendation uh to but add additional direction that the May 2nd hack uh meeting be at a time and place convenient to the public uh that uh it then um uh ended at focus on this on a bonus uh density bonus uh ordinance as well as the per square foot uh uh um fees other county fees that are charged on moving to a per square foot basis um and that that return to us uh after going to the planning commission at the first available meeting in August or September. There's a motion is there a second to that before we provide amendments for discussion? I'll second that. There's a second from supervisor McPherson supervisor Leopold additional discussion or amendments. Thank you. You know I I generally support the uh the the motion and I encourage us to have this broader discussion I think it would be helpful. I think that uh the issue of density bonuses is um is loaded and there are lots of good reasons why to look at density bonuses and there's a lot of public education has to go on so I would look to the my community partners whether it be affordable housing now whether it be the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership whether it be the chambers or others that you need to begin to have these conversations with the public. It's not enough just to talk to members of the board or members of the Housing Advisory Commission that it's really important to have these discussion with the public and you and with the the suggestions from my colleague about timing there is time to start having those discussion to get feedback from the public because that I thought in 2015 when we approved the the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan that we were really talking about new kind of development patterns here in Santa Cruz County and and I thought that would that was a that was a big lift involved lots of conversations with hundreds of people um and we we haven't moved that ball at all since then and now we want to add something else to it uh maybe it won't have to go apart of the environmental review but it's part of this general discussion and um it's going to be important to to really gauge interest out on the community for this and so I ask you to to take that responsibility to hold those meetings and start having that community conversation because I think it will inform the overall decision as I look at the the recommendations here today I would say that the the one that I I feel less good about is the lack of an inclusionary requirement for rental housing I've heard the arguments about why we why people don't think that's a great idea but then I see the reality of what is being built and as I look in the city of Santa Cruz with a new Swenson project on Pacific Avenue that which was supposed to be affordable by designed 600 square feet is going to be renting for $2,800 a month you could get a cheaper room for 440 square feet for only $2,300 a month that's not affordable by design and a lot of people I work with and so we need to me having some kind of inclusionary requirement for rental housing would have been a would have been an additional tool because I think we're going to see the development of a lot of rental housing but I hear from advocates on both sides that they were supportive of it so I'll be supportive of it but I think it's a missed opportunity and if we see more of 600 square foot apartments renting for for $2,000, $3,000 I would say that's a failure of our housing policy because we need that that is not affordable for people who who live and work here that's affordable for being a bedroom community of the Silicon Valley and and there's there's housing needs for folks who go over the hill but it doesn't really help the people who live and work here I hope that in the making of the motion my colleague didn't mention the inclusionary zoning but I'm assuming that was part of it as as part of the density bonus discussion and all the other pieces it is it is and actually I was going to make a additional comment which is I didn't mention that I specifically didn't mention that issue of developer choice because from my perspective that's a settled issue for a majority of the board so I want the hack to focus on these new issues going forward well if it agrees with me I'm happy with it it's a settled choice and I don't know why we don't do it today but the the I would want this to come back I'm glad to support having the housing advisory commission to meet in a place where more people can participate I think that to have this housing discussion and to think differently about housing we need to get a lot more people involved and that and that's a challenge to us all to ensure that that community discussion is taking place and as a point of clarification since you move the recommended actions item number seven actually is for them to come back regarding that item so presumably it's not a settled item they're coming back at that first meeting in august or september with that correct but I think I mean I just because we've had this ongoing debate I think that as I currently read it there are not three votes for to maintain the developer choice and so I would hope the hack doesn't spend an order amount of time on that issue and instead focuses on these much more complex issues around density bonuses per square foot fees going forward thank you supervisor McPherson yeah I agree we'll be supporting that this motion you know I think the point about we need to identify high density sites because there's pressure in the fourth district for agriculture to be protected the geography up in the fifth district is very difficult to be to build 20 units anywhere for instance and so I think it's going to be in for the impact and our infrastructure too this is if we can get to a win-win situation it'll be a miracle I mean you have people that say we want affordable housing and every many others to say we don't have the infrastructure and roads and water and so forth to accommodate it well we we have to I believe find a way to build more housing and this isn't just a local problem here in this county statewide my understanding is that they they want to they say the target is to build a hundred eighty thousand units a year in california and there are less than half of that is being built so this is not the only county that's phasing is facing this predicament but it's something that I think we're going to we're changing our our move here and I think it's the correct one and I'll be supporting the motion. Survisor Caput any additional comments? I'll be supporting this also I think what's important if we were to do our more than our share of providing housing will we also have to look at when you put in housing we have more water being used we have road maintenance we also have more traffic of course but then there's a point where you have to build another school especially in south county and then public safety what we're going to grow in the population and we're not going to add a police officer we're not going to add a firefighter you know all of this goes together so whatever we're taking on now is really important we got to we got to look at the big picture and uh anyway I'm committed to voting yes on this so right now. Is the motion clear with staff do you have any additional questions of the board before we take action on the motion? Is is uh are you envisioning then the May 2nd hack meeting to be sort of a public forum on broader housing affordability issues um then and and then articulating some potential changes to the density bonus provisions in particular and processing those. Correct yeah I think I think the conversations as I understand them have started um and different proposals have been made and that the May 2nd meeting uh would be an opportunity for the hack to look at these to look at uh different approaches their proposals how they might be impacted on different at different sites uh then it would go to the planning commission then it would come to us. Let me just say that if the hack is unable to to complete that discussion on May 2nd they should schedule another meeting and not wait two more months. Correct. I mean just the idea the the mission we're trying to send is to move this along. Yeah any additional clarification Ms. Provost Hatcher, Ms. Conway? And the the per square foot fees um you're speaking about all of the various impact fees and utility connection fees that we that the county controls that the okay any of them that the county controls all right. Ms. Conway any additional questions? I was working through in my mind the timing on I mean I'm really looking forward to engaging on on these points I think they're really interesting points I do think that the public process that's going to be involved um is going to require a bit of analysis um and I think the May 2nd meeting will be a great opportunity to um and we'll do everything we can to have conducted that analysis on for instance uh doubling the density bonus what what what are the CEQA requirements going to be um as a result of that and you know we will will certainly get do everything we can to gather the information um and have a process laid out uh where we can reasonably get those questions answered. I certainly share the sense of urgency and uh I'm eager to jump in and do this uh to do this work. Thank you and I'll just close by saying the board also has a responsibility when projects come forward to us that we hold strong on these projects and and because you know the neighborhoods do come forward and one unit or two that get removed uh but we have to every unit is very difficult to get built in this county and so I think that uh we can change all the codes we want but we still actually have to approve projects when they come forward and I think that we have our own responsibility to um take it as the top priority that it is for so many within our community. So we have a motion and a second all those in favor? I opposed it passes unanimously thank you for everybody that's been working on this issue and thank you for planning staff and council as well for your work on this. We'll move on to uh zone seven we'll take a second for people to come join us up here they're here for zone seven. I need one chair up here are you right here? You're just going to do squats and being there. It's a squat and hold so I want you to bend down and hold it for a minute. Perfect. I thank everybody who's zone seven for their patience we're now going to move on to zone seven if we could kick off zone seven with a roll call please. Director Leopold. Here. Coonerty. Here. Capit. Here. McPherson. Here. Lynn. Here. Belisich. Here. Deheart. Ponce. Ciri. Gonzalez. Chair Friend. Here and we do have a quorum we'll begin uh by asking are there any changes to today's agenda? No changes. Wonderful. We'll move on to oral communications as a chance for members of the community to address us on items that are not on today's agenda but within the purview specifically of zone seven. Is there anybody that would like to address us? Seeing none we'll close oral communications and move on to item two which. Thank you. Director Belisich. I'm sorry. Director Belisich please. Just just quickly I I know that uh John Presley is going to be retiring and on behalf of the city I think it would be he was a great great service for us and um Watsonville was he was always very responsible to our needs and I just wanted to acknowledge him for his service. I don't see him here but we thank him for his um for his fine work and I'm looking forward to hearing about uh all the repairs on the south's widest creek. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else for oral communications? Okay. The first item of business is approval of the zone seven board meeting minutes. We have the minutes of January 23rd. Are there any questions on the minutes? Yes. No. Go ahead. Is there anybody from the community that would like to address us on the minutes? All right I'll bring it back to the board for action. I'll move to approve. I have a motion from Caput, a second from Leopold. And I abstain because I was not present. Abstention from Director Belisich. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously with one abstention. We'll now move on to item three to the first item the regular agenda as the board of directors is on seven to accept and file a status report on the Corps of Engineers storm damage repairs on Pahoa River flood risk reduction project is recommended by the district engineer, Mr. Strudley. Thank you, Chair Friend, members of the board. I'm here to report to you that we continue to have ongoing discussion with Army Corps of Engineers on their storm damage repairs on the Pahoa River and Salsa Poitos Creek. And we continue to have bi-weekly phone discussions with them and continue to urge their speedy repair of these sites. We have been informed that Congressman Panetta and Colonel Rayfield have discussed a finalized timeline for those repairs to occur. They are expecting to award a contract for those repairs no later than April 30th of 2018, which would entail a start of construction for these repairs in June. And we are prepared at the staff level to request any advanced direct assistance from the Corps ahead of forecast for large storms should we have them. And fortunately, the storm that we're expecting this week is not one of them. I'd also like to provide an update on the Levy Reconstruction Project, Pahoa River flood risk reduction project. We have attended an agency decision milestone meeting, which is a major milestone in the feasibility stage of the project. This occurred on January 26th of this year. The ADM, or the Agency Decision Milestone, represents a corporate endorsement of the recommended plan that's being proposed by Army Corps of Engineers. And it provides a path forward to a finalized feasibility report that we continue to expect its completion for July of this year, 2018. The following work elements are provided in that report, the completion of the development of a feasibility level design for the recommended Levy Reconstruction Plan, responses to agency technical review and other comments on their draft report. It's going to have an accounting of other social effects, which we view as a very important appendix to the report to comment on life safety and socioeconomic importance of this project, which we feel very strongly about. And it is a chance to finalize the Corps' National Environmental Policy Act compliance. We're going to continue to work very closely with the Corps to help them address the other social effects accounting so that it benefits project fundability to the maximum extent that it can and to make that accounting persuasive. The Director's Report will allow the project to move into the engineering design phase of the project. We're continuing to work with the Corps and with our legislative offices to find ways to fund this project so that we can have unfettered progress into design and, hopefully, construction. We're recommending that the Board accept and file this report. Thank you, Mr. Stroudly. Thank you for your outstanding work on this issue in the last year, Director Bilcich. When were the repairs discovered on the South Pointus Creek? When you know that they needed repair? When was that discovered? District staff performed reconnaissance surveys with the Corps shortly after the storms occurred in March of last year. March of last year. And then we were told that these repairs would be made like, I think, June and then it was November and December. We are so lucky that we aren't having that great storm. How many repairs are there? 11, 13? I can't remember the number. There are 17 sites. 17 sites. So here are the people in Bay Village that keep saying, you know, are we okay? Are we okay? You know, they're very nervous. We have 17 sites and we can't repair because government moves slowly. Why? Why can't we repair these? The Corps has been very problematic in their completion of contracting to move this forward. We've been working very actively with them where we share the same exact concerns and we've also had our drainage crews replace protective measures on the most critical sites. And again, we are prepared to act very proactively should a storm of significant size come our way. So we share your concern and have been working with the Corps and our legislators to try to get this done as quickly as possible. I'm not upset with the county. I'm not upset with the city. But I don't think the Corps understands the urgency of what the people went through last year. And when we discovered there are 17 sites that need repair, certainly we would have those fixed before the next rainy season. So here we are. We're in the same place and nothing's happened. How do we, and I know Congressman Panetta has been very proactive, but how do we get them to move? Government is too slow. If this happens, what happens to the people? And they are extremely apprehensive every time we have a little bit of rain. Are we okay? Are we okay? And I, you know, the city's right there and the county's right there to fix things in emergency. But how do we get the Corps to move more quickly? We're going through a whole another rainy season before anything is possibly going to happen. We think it's going to happen in, would you say, June? June, yes. Maybe. They have made that arrangement at the congressional level, so I expect them to stick to that schedule. In a striking twist of irony, we are actually the first recipients of their repair work through that district, if you can believe that. That's a great thing that we are first. But my gosh, a whole another rainy season has gone by and I don't know how to expedite that or how to get them to understand the urgency. But thank you for your work. Thank you very much. Thank you, Director Belicich, the board unanimous. We all share that concern and thank you to Public Works for winterizing those locations to ensure that they didn't get any worse during this time and ensure the safety of people in that area. Is there anybody else I'd like to ask any questions on this item before we open up to the community? I'll wait. Do any public comment go ahead? Is there anybody from the community that'd like to address us on this first item on the agenda? All right, we'll bring it back to the board for action. And I'll make a comment now. Can you make a motion and a comment then? I will. I will move to approve. Motion? One second. Okay, one second. Go ahead. The commitment's going to be from all of us to support you and your work. I'm a little bit alarmed by the changes going on with Public Works and losing staff members that are a key to this. I want it to be known that the county has got to look at this as a number one priority and we need to hold, we have to, we've got to help you guys out. So we lost the head of the Public Works is leaving. We lost Bruce Leclerc, not too long ago and there might be other changes coming up. I find that alarming and I want to make sure that we're not going to trip this whole thing up. What is your comment? How are things going? Are these changes going to somehow hurt us? There's going to be no derailment of this process. I'm still here working passionately and feverishly on both the storm damage repairs and the federal reconstruction project. We're not going to lose any momentum with that and we continue to backfill our positions in Zone 7 staff of very talented and motivated people. Right and we do. One plus has been more energy from congressional staffing, I guess with congressman Pernetta. Does he have any help on this? So he has been having some conversations at the federal level. He's been a extremely aggressive champion of this project and his momentum has not let up either. So we're very fortunate to have him on our side working with us and we expect that to pay some dividends and we are very hopeful that this project is going to get built. Have we had any contact with a congressional member issue? I don't believe so but he has had discussions, ongoing discussions with headquarters, Army Corps staff such as Colonel Rayfield as well as other members of the Senate Environmental Public Works subcommittee on correlated issues. Okay. Well we have a motion and a second to answer that question. Congresswoman Eshu has been briefed through the authority which touches her district and has been involved throughout the flood prevention authority process. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. We'll move on to item four which is as the Board of Directors of Zone 7 to approve existing on-call list of firms to provide civil engineering design and environmental services to Zone 7 for various projects as recommended by District Engineer Mr. Strudley. Yes thank you Chair. Zone 7 District is proposing to save time and resources by utilizing a existing county public works on-call engineering consultant list for ongoing and proposed flood risk reduction and storm damage repair projects. This list was approved in September of last year through an RFQ that was issued on March 24th, 2017. The top five firms are articulated in the Board memo that we would use for various services that are strongly in line with what we require at Zone 7 for storm damage repair and other hydraulic and engineering related studies. We are recommending that the Board approve the use of this list and the consulting firms that are on this list. The consultants would be independently selected for specific projects and we would align of course our process with county purchasing policy depending on the size of the contract that we're pursuing and we would recommend that the Board approve the five consultants listed above on the Board memo for on-call civil engineering design and environmental services for use by the Zone 7 District through June 30th, 2020. Thank you I think this is a good idea. Are there any directors or questions on this item? Any director bills? It's going to make a motion. Is there anybody from the community that'd like to address us on this item? We'll close the comment period director Bilsich. I'd like to make a motion to approve. All second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. We move on to item five which is as the Board of Zone 5 to approve amendment to agreement with native vegetation network for revegetation consulting services for the Pahora River Bench excavation project by extending the contract through June 30th, 2019 and increasing compensation by $46,760 for not to exceed amount of $352,698 and take related actions as recommended by the District Engineer Mr. Strudley. Thank you Chair Friend. On April 16th, 2013 the Board approved a five-year contract with native vegetation network to provide revegetation consulting services and other survey work for the Pahora River Bench excavation project and this firm was integral in preparing the replanting designs and revegetation plan. Their scope of work includes site surveys of revegetation areas and assessments of plant survival and vigor, invasive plant growth and erosion and storm damage as well as human activities present. Establishment period for revegetation area extends through fall of this year 2018 with a final report for that establishment period to be completed in winter 2019 so this coming winter. So attached for your Board's consideration is an amendment to the agreement to extend their contract for an additional year to increase their contract to $352,698 in order to continue this establishment period monitoring and to complete the last annual report for the establishment period. Using NVM for these services is going to save the district resources because of the history that they have with this project their familiarity and their ability to expedite the analysis that they do. Sufficient funding is available in our in our budget to pursue this. It was therefore recommended the Board approve the attached amendment to the agreement with native vegetation network extending the term of the agreement to June 30th 2019 and increasing compensation by $46,760 for a not to exceed amount of $352,698 and to authorize a district engineer to sign the amendment to agreement on behalf of the district. Thank you. Questions? Director Bill Sitch please. I see that we have a botanist and a revegetation specialist, a field technician. What do we use a graphics designer for? The graphics yes the graphics designer is used mainly for the reporting purposes and also the graphics that they provide are also shared with other consultants that we use for hydraulic studies and other permitting needs. Thank you. Anybody from the community would like to address this on this item please feel free to step forward. Good morning Ms. Steinbruner. Good morning Becky Steinbruner from Aptos. I would like to make a suggestion to public works and to your board that there be some location and established for local tree companies to bring root, tree root masses that apparently took to be stored for use in in rehabilitation work. At a water advisory commission meeting county water advisory commission meeting Ms. Kittleson who is with county environmental health in stream rehabilitation work mentioned that those are in very short supply and very much sought after for this type of work. This was during last winter's storm when tree companies were plowing them and taking them everywhere and and grinding them up. I feel that we could help these efforts rehabilitation efforts if the county had some place and partnered with local tree companies that those companies could bring those tree masses and there's a word for it I can't remember what it is right now. Those those tree root masses that are integral in re-establishing stream habitat that those could be stored and used for rehabilitation projects around such as this one. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anybody else bring it back to the board for action. I'll make a motion to prove. Second. Motion from Bill Sitch. Second from Coonerty. All those in favor. Aye. Opposed. It passes unanimously. Item six which is the board of directors of zone seven to approve amendment to the agreement with capital edge advocacy incorporated for advocacy services for the Pajaro River flood risk reduction project through June 30th 2020 at the current rate of 65 000 per fiscal year and take related actions as recommended by district engineer Mr. Strudley. Thank you chair and members of the board at June 15th 2015 zone seven meeting the board approved a contract with capital edge advocacy services for our long-term levy reconstruction project the Pajaro River flood risk reduction project extending through June 30th 2020. However the board memo associated with this item inadvertently recommended only to extend the services through June 30th 2018. Capital Edge currently provides federal advocacy services to the district and for several years has organized annual visits for local district staff and officials to visit Army Corps staff in Washington DC as well as legislative offices to champion our levy reconstruction project and they've worked