Santa Cruz City Council 08/25/2026

We are live. We are streaming. We do have audio. The only thing that we don't have is the visual which I don't think is an issue. >> Okay. So, we can begin. >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> Santa Cruz City Council meeting will come to order. The clerk will call the role to establish a quorum. >> Council member Triggero >> present. >> Bruner >> present. Newsome >> present. >> Boulder. Council member O'Hara is absent. >> Vice Mayor Kellori Johnson >> present. >> And Mayor Keely >> here. Uh for the interest of the public, Council Member O'Hara will be participating remotely from a location uh at 201 Main Street in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Um and uh the agenda the agenda was posted uh at this location no less than 72 hours prior to this meeting. So council member uh O'Hara will be participating uh remotely. Statement of disqualifications. We have any statements of disqualifications? Council member Brutder. Uh, close session item number two, real property negotiations at 121 SoCal Avenue. Uh, out of an abundance of caution as it relates to my employment downtown. >> Thank you very much, council member. Do we have others who have uh any statements of disqualification? Seeing hearing none, we are on public comment on the closed session items. Those items include conference with legal counsel on liability claims under the government code and real property negotiations at 121 SoCal Avenue. Is there anyone with us in chambers today who wishes to comment? Miss Bush, do we have anyone online who wishes to comment? >> No, we don't. >> Thank you. Uh what we will do at this point is we are going to adjourn into close session to take up those items that I just mentioned. We will be back in session at 1:30 or upon conclusion of close session uh whichever one of those happens later. We now stand adjourned into close session. Santa Cruz City Council is back in session. Clerk, would you call the role to establish quorum again? >> Council member Tgerero, >> present. >> Bruner, >> present. >> Newsome, >> present. >> Boulder, >> here. >> O'Hara, >> here. >> Vice Mayor Kellenory Johnson, >> present. >> Present. Uh for those of you who may be wondering, Council Member O'Hara is by prior arrangement joining us electronically. She is in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Uh and uh we are glad she can join us. Council member, glad that you're here. Thank you so much. Uh we are on we're going to go slightly out of order here. Uh I'm going to move oral communication after these two presentations. Our first presentation is a 30-year employee service pin for Joel Braa. Uh and uh Mr. Elliott is here and we would appreciate it, Mr. Elliott, if you would approach. Good afternoon, my friends. >> Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to introduce our acting warf supervisor, Corey Quinnold. >> Corey, good afternoon, sir. >> Hello. Hopefully everyone can hear me. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. Hello everyone. My name is Corey Quinnald and I'm Joel Braa's supervisor down at the War and Beaches. We're here today to celebrate an incredible milestone in Joel's career. Joel is our senior parks maintenance worker and his years of hard work and dedication are greatly appreciated. In 1992, the Chicago Bulls won their second NBA championship. Google didn't exist. Gas was about a 125 a gallon and Joel started working for the city of Santa Cruz as a temporary employee. His shifts were split between the Santa Cruz sports department and working at Lach Loman since 1994. Joel has also continued to work with the Santa Cruz sports department refereeing youth sports programs. So for more than 30 years, Joel hasn't just served the city through parks and recreation. He has also played an important important role in our community by helping provide local kids with a positive experience through youth sports. That's awesome. In 1996, Joel earned a full-time position with parks and recreation in the downtown division. After one year, he transferred to beach services at Lifeguard headquarters. Landing that full-time position was a blessing for Joel and his family. Once Joel transferred to beach services, he found his niche. And how can you blame him? His job sites included Cow's Beach, Maine Beach, and the Wararf. The scope of the work, the constant challenges of the marine environment, and the opportunity to serve the city of Santa Cruz all made this a perfect fit for Joel. Every day, Joel helps prepare and maintain our beaches for junior guards, the volleyball community, the countless wararf and beach events. Throughout his career, he has worked through six El Nino, including the very strong 1996 and 97 event, three tsunamis, and the unprecedented challenge of shutting down the beach during a global pandemic. Throughout all these challenges, Joel has continued to show up and adapt and get the job done. >> Joel, I've had the privilege of working with you for 16 years. What I see every day is a guy who comes to work because he genuinely loves his job, his job site, and his crew. Your dedication to serving the city and preparing our beaches for the public does not go unnoticed. You're a great equipment operator. Whether you're running the Boston Wher, sand sifter, K Cabota, or loader, >> you're reliable, hardworking, a leader, and a great representative of the Warf Crew. 30 years is an incredible accomplishment. It represents not just the time you've put in, but the countless early mornings, long days, challenging conditions, and the pride you've taken in doing your job well. Congratulations, Joel, and thank you for 30 years of dedicated service to the city of Santa Cruz. Here is your 30-year pin. >> Mr. Braa The floor is yours, sir. Please. >> Hi, everybody. Um, just want to say thank you very much for the opportunity and uh to be able to serve and uh other than that, that's all I got to say. >> Well, we are so grateful to you for selecting Santa Cruz as the place that you were going to spend your professional life and it means a great deal to us that you've done that. And uh we know that there are challenges whether it's on the beach every day or out on the warf whether it's the end of the wararf getting ripped off by mother nature or people driving off to it or keeping it for the millions of people who come out there every day or every year rather uh who come out there to enjoy all the opportunities out on the longest wooden wararf in the western hemisphere. Uh we thank you for all of that. Uh that is for all of us here in elective life. oftentimes you folks are the face uh that the public sees and that our visitors see and your courtesy and decency and humanity uh with all of those folks is much appreciated. Thank you very much, sir. >> Thank you. We're on item four, a mayoral proclamation regarding Marine Safety Professionals Recognition Day. And uh Council Member Renee Golder will be making this presentation. >> Thank you, Mayor. And I'm so glad that the Warfin Beach crew is here along with our talented lifeguards and fire professionals. Um because it's really all of you that are out there keeping people safe in the community. And I know before I was on council, I used to jog in the mornings and I would see Joel in the mornings when I um down at the beach. So I felt safe down there even in the pre-dawn hours. And so everybody's doing their part to keep the public safe. >> And so with that uh we're going to read this proclamation. So whereas every day along Santa Cruz County's coastline, dedicated marine safety professionals answer the call to protect lives, demonstrating courage, skill, and selfless selfless service in unprecedented and often dangerous ocean conditions. Whereas protecting our beaches and waterways requires the daily dedication by the city of Santa Cruz marine safety personnel, Santa Cruz state lifeguards and Santa Cruz County lifeguards, firefighters, rescue swimmers, dispatchers, and regional public safety partners. And whereas on July 26th, 2026, California's state park lifeguard Ryder Williams courageously rescued a 10-year-old boy from the dangerous surf at Seabbrite State Beach, reminding our community and the rest of the world that uh marine work safety professionals perform every day. And whereas dramatic rescues may capture headlines, the greatest success of the marine safety professionals are often the emergencies prevented through education, vigilance, and thousands of proactive safety contacts. During the significant south swell swell in uh July 24th to 26, the city of Santa Cruz marine safety personnel alone completed 5,847 preventative actions. Is that just the city? >> Because I was like, yeah, there was a lot in the county, too. That's insane. That's a big number. assisted in 34 individual in need of water rescue, responded to 23 medical aid incidents, resolved 19 missing persons, and pro provided hundreds of additional public safety contacts. Whereas, Junior Guard programs throughout the county help prepare the next generation of ocean stewards by teaching water safety, leadership, teamwork, and public service while inspiring many future lifeguards and the first responders. established the program in 1996. The first the city junior guard program trains over 1,000 junior guards each summer. And whereas the professionalism, courage, and commitment demonstrated by the marine safety professionals throughout Santa Cruz County often make our beaches safer and strengthen our community every day. Now therefore, I Renee Golder on behalf of the council and the mayor Fred Keelley do hereby proclaim August 25th n or 19 2026 uh in the city of Santa Cruz as Marine Safety Professionals Recognition Day. And we thank and recognize the dedicated men and women who work tirelessly to keep our coastline safe. Chief OD, good afternoon, sir. I am imagining no one should go to the beach at this moment, apparently. Uh, but thank you so much each and every one of you. Chief, the floor is yours, sir. If I thank you, sir, uh Rob OD, uh Santa Cruz fire chief, um Mayor Keely, Council Member Golder, and the rest of the city council colleagues and community members, thank you for the opportunity to recognize these fantastic men and women who protect our coastline every day. Um I think it goes without saying that marine safety is a defining public safety responsibility in Santa Cruz. um our beaches and ocean um is among our not only our greatest asset but as we see with climate change um increased access social media um it's also becoming a very dangerous uh um endeavor as well. Um, but today again is about recognizing these professionals, but I have to also recognize some of our partners, California State Park lifeguards, um, our firefighters and rescue swimmers who also enter the water. Um, our harbor uh, patrol and law enforcement partners and all other regional uh, public safety agencies. Um, our success depends on teamwork, training, uh, communication, and most importantly, a shared commitment to protecting lives. Um, again, July 25th, the rescue at Sebrite State Beach by state parks lifeguard Ryder Williams rescuing a 10-year-old uh boy. Um, obviously was seen by many around the not only the state but the world. Um, but it represents um a small portion of what work is actually occurring every single day along our coastline. um like you mentioned earlier um the 5,000 plus safety contacts in the county there were um an additional 25,000 um totaling you know over 30,000 uh safety contacts um we state parks had 58 rescues so we totaled in the in the county 92 um and so it's just another example of all the great work that is done every single day um and it's important to remember that lifeguarding is all about prevention so every warning conversation repositioning of a swimmer and proactive contact actually prevents these emergencies before they even happen. So, they're doing amazing work um that doesn't get recognized by social media and the media at large. Um because basically prevention is one of the clearest measures of a successful marine safety program and and I couldn't um have a better program to stand in front of than I do right here. Um but it's also about building that next generation. So, I want to also show gratitude to our partners in p in uh parks and wreck for the junior lifeguard program. Again, started 1966. We get over a thousand kids every single year. And we are really, not only is it water safety, but it's about teaching leadership, teamwork, uh responsibility, and service to the community. Um, and I think it's pretty safe to say that many of the people standing behind me, u, our lifeguards, our firefighters, public safety professionals, all began their careers as junior lifeguards, and yourself included. Yes. So again, this work requires a tremendous amount of courage when an emergency occurs, vigilance when conditions are changing, and compassion when people are having one of the worst moments of their lives. Um, most importantly, these folks all work together uh without a regard for his jurisdiction, uniform, or whomever needs help. Um, so this proclamation is an an opportunity for all of us to say thank you um to those of you that are serving um to those that serve before you and for those that are preparing to carry out this mission in the future. So, I uh want to thank you all as the fire chief uh for your professionalism, your courage, and your commitment to leading our uh community um in safety and our entire coastline. So, thank you all very much. And thank you guys for the opportunity to recognize all the fantastic work they do every single day. SO, >> thank you all so much. Please do. >> I just want to say please also express we know that the lifeguards are mostly seasonal and many of them are back in college or high school. We have kids as young as 16 working as lifeguards across the county. Make sure that if they're in school that they got uh the gratitude from this this body. And don't forget our partners in Matt's home beach. >> Tola had to say it. Thank you so much. All right, we are uh if you all are waiting around for a cue from us, don't. And I want and I want to thank my friend with the cowboy hat for putting up with my cowboy hat. Judge, thank you. >> You're a good man. I will tell you the joke later. What a bunch of good folks. My goodness. That's a good way to >> wrap summer up, right? Those folks. Wow. How sweet. In order to go forward, we will go backwards. We are on oral communication. This would be the opportunity for anyone to address us on a matter under our jurisdiction, but not on today's agenda for a period of time not to exceed two minutes in the event that we have folks both here in chambers and online. We will toggle back and forth, somebody here, then somebody online, and so on. Mr. Ewing, good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. >> You know, it's definitely a good afternoon. My name is James Yuing Whitman. Um, you know, I just had to film the people that were in here and then of course like clockwork they left before the plethora of public speakers that may have said something that might have got their attention. It's pretty consistent. I just have to laugh. I'm laughing more and more. Uh, you know, I had I had the just the crazy Confederate sea of dunes to be parked at Twin Lakes on top of the cab of my truck. It's a big deck to be woken up by these intense lights and thunder. And uh I was reminded of uh CNN 1985 report. They were talking about the military's use of uh lightning as military weapons and also 60 gigahertz as military weapon. The 60 gigahertz is uh our Y gig. They couldn't come up with a better poison than 2.4 gigahertz which is our modern Wi-Fi to affect humans. So yeah, lightning is weapons. I mean, the house that I lived on Stodder, which is off of uh Alba, was turned into foundry ash, you know, dozens of fruit trees weren't affected. The redwood trees weren't affected. Um, but the houses were turned into foundry ash up Alba Road. You could see a lot of vehicles that are, you know, the first presentation I'm aware of was the church fires in 1983 in Australia that were talking about these directed energy weapons. So, it would have been great to address a whole bunch of people who are going to help the community when things happen, but they don't realize that companies like the Rand Corporation are just using them as the disposable individuals because the only people being affected more by frequencies than law enforcement and emergency responders are teachers and youth. So, it is really just kind of comical. You know, I I was at the supervisors briefly and as if there's something within their power to do and I said, "Yeah, maybe it's within your power to join the side of the living." And I suppose I'm we can all change. And at least one person smiling at that. Thank you. >> Thank you, sir. Do you have anyone online? We're going to be right with you. We're going to take person online first. Thank you for your forbearance. Person online. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Santa Cruz City Council meeting. person online three. >> Hi. >> Hi. Good afternoon. We can hear you. Welcome. >> Good afternoon. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. Um so I'm a resident of Santa Claus County. Um I work for the sheriff's department out here. I'm getting ready to retire myself. So was kind of cool to listen to the retirement speech from um the the supervisor. That was a great speech. Um but however, so my family and I were at the boardwalk celebrating um one of my granddaughter's birthdays and I am handicapped. Um my father is severely handicapped and we parked in what we thought was a handicap spot. Um it was on the street in front of several other handicapped spots that were marked handicapped. Now the reason that I thought it was handicapped is because the curb looked blue to me along the street. Um there were other cars parked along the street, the block uh previous to that. And so I did not think parking on the street was a problem and I saw a blue curb and took the opportunity to park at a place that my father and I could walk to that would um get us to the boardwalk. So when I came out at 9:00 p.m., I was shocked to see that my car was missing and honestly thought that the car had been stolen. Um, so I approached the boardwalk staff and they, you know, told me to call the police, which I did. And I was told that my car was towed because I was in a non-parking um zone. Now, there were no parking signs that were posted. However, a blue curb overrides any of that. So, of course, I ignored those signs. Um, and in addition to that, there were no handicap parking um signs saying, you know, this is the handicap space. However, again, if the curb is blue, my understanding is that you can park there regardless. So, thinking that I was parked in a blue curb spot, um I was pretty shocked. So, we were stranded um in the dark um at the boardwalk. My family had already left. They were in separate cars. Um so, anyway, we were stranded and it took us several hours and lots of money to get my car back. Thank you. Appreciate. Good afternoon, sir. And welcome. >> Hey, council. Yeah. Um I guess you trust council members to show their video on Zoom. That's cool. Um uh that sounds trying uh that that uh prior speakers. Um that was pretty heartening. You know, the thing about the marine safety um professionals, they just did uh health um community health uh professionals uh awareness, not recognition, awareness week, and it starts on my birthday, which is ironic because I have a health science degree, which I've done absolutely nothing with. Um but um yeah, I was thinking a little bit about um the Starbucks structure. someone named Carrie um Marcela who's renting or leasing that space numbers right there on a on a flyer on the building and it's it's like about 2,000 square feet. It's it's got nice high ceilings inside there. And um one thing that became a political football at various times during the uh prior um prior years politically were uh drive-throughs, drive-thru businesses. And um you know that was a different time. That was when you know the mayorship was a single year and it was it was a you know was elected um in and amongst council members and um now we have the large mayor mayorship and maybe maybe we could get that to be a little bit more flexible um just just for expedience. I don't know there there's a coffee place inside I wish I knew how much time I had left actually. Um um there's there's a coffee place inside the um the county building and obviously that's in inconvenient for people driving by. Um I suggested to them that if they took over the Starbucks building, say they got a reasonable rent or at least they could they could have someone with an electric bike who could shuttle orders over to the county building, whatever. Um but yeah um uh making it somehow a drive-thru. Um that would somehow make that um it was former Shell station a long time ago. It was like a gas station a long long long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long while long back. >> All right. I guess I have more things to say but I don't have time to say it. Thanks. >> Well thank you. Do we have anyone online? >> Good afternoon and welcome. >> Good afternoon Mayor Keely. City Council members. My name is Dana Wagner. the director of Meals on Wheels Santa Cruz County program of community bridges. I'm here today to share data with you from the fiscal year that ended on June 30th. I feel duty bound to apprise you of how city dollars have been spent for fiscal year 2026. Meals on wheels delivered nearly 125,000 meals to homebound seniors. In the city of Santa Cruz, we delivered over 47,000 meals. We served nearly 1500 Santa Cruz County residents, older adults, including the 500 in Santa Cruz City. We conducted over 2,000 wellness checks with our participants to ensure their well-being and coordinated with services with close to 800 of these in city residents. At our four congregate dining sites, we serve close to 33,000 meals to older adults, 7,200 of these at London Nelson Community Center. Seniors participating in Meals on Wheels are overwhelmingly satisfied with the service they receive. 98% of those receiving homed delivered meals stated our service helps them avoid institutional placement. And 98% of congregate diners state that the congregate meals held them to feel less isolated. As you may be aware, Meals on Wheels has had to implement a waiting list due to funding shortfills. Since April 2025, we were unable to assist 17 older adults with food and connection due to lack of funding. And we continue to get 10 to 12 applications each week for service. I know that the city and county are reviewing the funding process for safety net programs and I'm grateful for this review and prioritization of basic needs. I wanted to present these numbers today to let you know that the city dollars are optimally utilized to ensure the health and well-being of our growing growing senior population. On behalf of the nearly 1500 seniors participating in Meals on Wheels, I'm grateful for your support. Thank you for your time and attention. >> Well, thank you so much. Please take our thanks and appreciation back to all of your colleagues. It is absolutely wonderful what you do. You do so much with limited resources uh to help fill an extraordinary need in our community. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for the work that you do. >> Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. >> We're on presiding officer announcements, I believe. Oh, excuse me. I'm sorry. Please come up. I didn't mean to short shift you there. Excuse me. Good afternoon and welcome. Good afternoon. Uh, I just moved here about a month or two ago and I'm a waterman and I just have to say I love Santa Cruz. Um, I don't know what you guys are doing here, but you're doing it right. You know, bathrooms by the beach, beach access, you know, the safety in the water. So, thank you so much and your work is being recognized by by the people. Thank you. >> Well, how kind of you. Welcome to Santa Cruz. Bring your friends. Thank you. Uh, presiding officer announcements. I have none. statements and disqualification on the uh on the agenda going forward today. Seeing hear none, we will move to additions and deletions. Miss Bush, additions or deletions? >> I have none. >> Madam city attorney, >> I have none. >> Very good. City attorney report on closed session. >> Yes. Council met in close session at 1:00 in the courtyard conference room. Uh discussed liability claims. Uh the claims of Phoebe Anne Kelly, claim of John Balquist as trustee of the Anthony J. Coochi Trust. claim of Mary Sierra, claim of Maria Gabriella Martin, and the claim of Maryanne Roberts. Council also discussed real property negotiations uh concerning 121 SoCal Avenue and 1316 through 1320 Pacific Avenue with its uh city negotiator and council member Bruner disqualified herself from that conversation. >> Thank you, Madam City Attorney. Madam City Clerk, any items on the agenda, council agenda going forward you'd like to draw our attention to? >> No changes. No. >> Thank you so much. We are on the consent agenda. For those of you that might not be familiar with it, we will be taking up items six through 11 inclusive on one motion. Prior to doing that, however, council members will have the opportunity to pull an item, comment on an item, or ask questions about an item. Similarly, we will go out to the public and see if folks wish to do those things, make comment on the consent agenda. I will start through and I'm going to start with council member O'Hara who is with us remotely. Council member, good afternoon. >> Good afternoon. Nothing for me, Mayor. Thank you. >> Thank you very much, Council Member. Madame Vice Mayor, Council Member Nuome, Council Member Bruner, Council Member Bruner. >> Thank you. I have just a couple of brief comments. Um the first one is agenda item 10, safe streets and roads for all. It's a grant application public works. And I just wanted to highlight in reading through this item how valuable these grants are in moving forward uh needed safety and improvements and work in our city across our city. I think I speak um for my district as well as all the other districts uh when I was mayor. Safety on our roads uh is a high priority for our community, our residents. And um this was a very interesting grant that um uh pilots a postc crash care through EMS innovation and I found it very fascinating. I'd never heard of that. And I just want to um thank staff for going after these grants and identifying all the different areas under road safety and public safety that exist and and it's no easy feat and um I'm very curious to see the outcomes of this. So, thank you. And the other item, similar comments, agenda item 11, the HSIP 11 and 12 unsignalized crossing improvement project. Thank you for all the work and bringing that forward. >> Thank you, council member. Council member Charro. Very good. Let me see if anyone who is with us today wishes to make comments on the consent agenda. Mr. Yuing, good afternoon again. Yeah, it's nice to be here. Maybe my recording won't turn off as soon as I come to the podium like a few minutes ago. So, I'm going to comment on the minutes just my own digital idiot. Um, comment on the minutes from the August 11th meeting and then number 10, the grants and number nine, the resource recovery for the Caterpillar 826K rebuild. Uh gee, I think in the last 10 days the corporation in the United States is $40 trillion in debt that they're admitting to. Wonder how that's going to affect grants all across. How are they going to reconcile that $40 trillion? Seems pretty wild to me. Um you know, I could only imagine what the 826 looks like. I have spent a fair amount of time going to the dump probably 500 times in my life. Those things all need to be repaired at some point. That's quite an expensive rebuild, but hopefully it gets back on track pretty quickly. So besides that, we're all in this together and it is really quite the exciting time of what's going to happen next. It seems like it's an Abin on Costello show with the other areas of political leadership the past 30 years that I've been tracking it. Anyway, nice to see you guys. Thanks. >> Thank you, sir. Anyone online? >> No one hand. >> Good afternoon. Welcome again. Appreciate James willingness to jump up really fast when uh something because otherwise there's no one online. I might miss my opportunity. Um I want to echo what uh Sonia said about um uh road safety and um yeah road um yeah being road uh yeah community being high priority for the community. Um and and for non-comm community members, you know, um a certain uh demographic, you know, comes to Santa Cruz to smoke a a J with students, you know what I mean? It's not, you know, not exactly um all Santa Cruz people you see on a summer day. Um but uh the um uh I just I just got done speaking to um uh the county board of supervisors uh conveniently um run their meetings the same u the other month or day of the week or yeah um I would talked to them a little bit about the shoulder on Highway 9 which um you know is within the city limits here uh to to you know pretty far in when you're going towards Felton. Um and uh it's it's deplorable. I mean it's very very unsafe for pedestrians, you know, people stuck somehow walking that way. And that's a that the optics of that is very bad. So I'm I'm kind of pushing or promoting that they improve that. And that would include, you know, this body u maybe looking at um along there. um when they do road work, you know, uh sometimes the amount of like thought they give to like uh uh traffic uh and and pedestrians and bicycles is that's going to reflect like how well they do when they're done, you know, how how how good the shoulder is going to be. Um looking just to note that um now again, okay, here I can see um uh I think I think pe people when they come here, they drive very impulsively. there's very there's a lot of impulsive driving and I think you can do small things to um try to um stem that uh impulse or those impulses that that you know that that you know it's it's it is the you know it's the uh they call that short attention span um you know like look squirrel you know that kind of thing right um you know I do I do think that um signage is great signage signage helps um I do think that um you just just general, you know, like defense like just like just like with fire safety, defensible space like the sidewalk should be wellkept. The sidewalk should be, you know, a place to to to be able to get away from traffic, but also, you know, I mean, kind of integrated in in a certain sense because, you know, sometimes you're going to find people that need to get from the roadway to the curb and they're in a wheelchair. So, I mean, there's all kinds of things you can do to kind of smooth out the edges and not make make it look like the East Bay where there's this like really tall curb and cars are just going by at, you know, a million miles a minute, you know, and it's seems u impossible to live around. Okay. Um, thank you. >> Well, thank you. Anyone else under communication? We have anybody else online? Matters back before the body, pleasure of the body. Council member Trigger. >> Motion to approve. >> Motion to approve the council consent agenda as recommended. as presented. Second by council member Golder. Debate or discussion. Seeing hearing none, the clerk will call the role. >> Council member Triggero >> I. >> Grer >> I. >> Newsome >> I. >> Holder >> I. >> O'Hara >> I. >> Vice Mayor Kellar Johnson >> I. >> Mayor Keely >> I. Motion passes and so ordered. We will now move to general business which apparently today is the Nathan Nuin comprehensive agenda for the afternoon. We will begin with item 12, Westcliffe Drive path realignment. Uh we have material in our packet. Um and uh Mr. Nuin, I see you are deferring to one of your colleagues to make this presentation. Good afternoon, sir, and welcome. Uh, good afternoon. Kevin Crossley, city engineer. Um, it's been a while since I slip flipped through a slide deck up here. Do we have a pointer? There we go. Um, pretty self-explanatory title. We're going to be talking about some proposed changes to the multi-use path along West Cliff and a couple locations. We're going to work from uh west to east. So, we're going to start at uh the end of Getel Street where we had a pretty significant bluff failure. Um I think in December of last year and so uh we deployed those lovely orange water barricades everybody's come come to know and love and uh looked at a couple of different options. Um our first approach was looking at whether we could just fence the area off and call it good. Uh but uh we think that the bluff is going to continue to erode. Um and so we didn't think that was a very good long-term solution. Uh we toyed around with seaw walls. Um we built a lot of those so we know how expensive they are um and how hard they are to permit. Uh so we quickly concluded that moving the path back was the uh most cost-effective and durable long-term solution here. Um what that looks like is uh basically the path straightening out in this location um to what is currently the back of curb. Uh taking out that sweep um moving some benches back that currently are located pretty close to the edge of bluff. And uh the big trade-off here is that we're going to lose eight spaces of parking. Uh we did do a couple things. We looked at availability of street parking. There's quite a bit of that in the general vicinity of this eight spot parking lot and we also did toy around with alternative locations to relocate the parking. Uh but what you run into is basically pinching the path and not having enough space uh like we have currently in this location. So all things considered and given that we are working on a pretty tight grant-f funded budget, we felt that this was the most cost-effective solution that sort of fit all those different criteria. Um, we're touching a pretty big footprint here and we're going to be taking out a lot of ice plants. So, that's another uh feature of this project that's not evident from this picture, but uh trying to take out as much of that as possible and kind of clean the area up like we have in other areas that we've done recent work. Uh we had a planning commission hearing last week to go through the uh design variance and local coastal permit process and there was no uh major public comment on the item at the planning commission meeting. Um we do have to uh detour westbound traffic to facilitate construction here. Uh there's not enough space to move the pedestrians through and vehicles both ways even if we temporarily control parking. So, that's uh something that we're going to be uh preparing a noticing process around. Um this is the draft exhibit that would go into kind of a postcard mailer. We've done that in other uh areas along West Cliff during construction uh to give folks a heads up ahead of the time that there's going to be these detours in place. So, with that, that wraps up the ghetto's location. Um gotta love an engineer and a plot. Um so, This was, I thought, an interesting way to tee this item up. Um, one of the consultants uh that we work with, he shared this with me about three months ago. And, uh, kind of the key things to take away from this is that, uh, beach width has been declining at, uh, some of our most popular beaches, including its and main beach. Uh, it bounces around because the sand comes and goes with the different seasons. Uh but the trend especially at its beach has been a gradual decline in average beach width there. Uh in 2020 it was bouncing between 100 and 200 feet average width and it's down to zero to 100 feet depending on the time of uh the data collection. And so the uh the consequence of that is that with less beach there's more opportunity for direct wave attack. And so this viewing area that really had a nice sand buffer in front of it most of the time um routinely does not have any sand in front of it and the waves um splash up and over it. And um I never put videos in slides because they never work, but there's a great video of somebody that gets completely knocked off their feet. It's becoming a more reoccurring uh thing. And so, uh, parks and wreck, uh, led a process to install these very lovely concrete blocks to basically close the area off and keep the landscaping material that was getting blasted by the waves off of the path, which is another safety issue. So, what we're recommending is to um take what's been temporarily closed off and make that a permanent closure. Uh, this area that's just kind of this funny green shape would become a landscaped area. We would move some of the memorial benches and other things that are in that sort of middle area out to the edges where they're safer uh for everybody to continue using and enjoying. Um and then we would fence this area off with a a low wooden fence that would help to try to confine the landscaping material into that area and not present ongoing maintenance issues for um parks and wrecks. So, kind of wrapping things up, no armoring proposed. This is being funded through a state grant we received a couple years ago for Westcliffe resiliency and we're trying to fasttrack this to get it done by the end of this calendar year. And I would be remiss without talking about Lighthouse Point which is in the neighborhood of the other projects. Um so we have an ongoing study lower right photo was taken recently with a bunch of engineers and geologists and geo uh physicists out there looking at different things uh in this area. Um, we did survey the area at the beginning of this year. Uh, the conclusions from that survey haven't changed. We still have quite a bit of bluff material. It's keeping the two encroaching caves from combining. There's a lot of concern that that'll affect long-term currents if those caves join, uh, which could then affect the surf break. So, we still have material between the two caves. And then the cave closest to the lighthouse is still by our estimate about 40 ft from the uh the the foundation of the lighthouse. So we don't think there's any um immediate risks. There is ongoing bluff erosion happening. It's a very visible popular area. So we're aware of that. Um it presents an ongoing safety issue for those who choose to jump over the fence. Uh but at the moment we don't see any immediate issues. There's a lot of questions we have coming up with the media hyper on El Nino. So with that, I'll move to the recommendation. Questions or comments? Vice Mayor is recognized. Then Council Member Golder. >> Thank you, Mayor. >> And thank you for the presentation and the work and um all the you have done with the surrounding neighbor. So, just a few questions. Um, starting with the potential, what what outreach has been Oh, yes. What outreach has been done um already with community members? And then um uh I think you spoke this a little bit, but what kind of noticing will be done prior to um the construction? >> Uh we sent out uh through the the Westlift contact list. We sent out a couple notices through our comm's team ahead of the planning commission meeting. Uh we also had mandatory signage posted at the different project locations along West Cliff. And uh when we have a more concrete construction schedule, we'll send out those postcard mailers that'll give everybody a heads up of the the detour and the timeline for that. >> Okay. And um I know you talked about um looking at what alternatives there might have been. Can you just expand on that a little bit? If we didn't remove the parking spots at schedules, what would happen? What are the alternatives? >> Oh, the path is currently back up to the picture here. >> So, the the path is sandwiched between the parking spaces, the road, and the bluff basically. M >> and so uh I think within the next year or so the path would be undermined and we would have to close it or move it in some way. So the the obvious solution to us was to straighten it out at the expense of parking here. Um if we uh tried to, you know, do something different, I think it could create some weird geometry with a path. We we talked about saving some of the the parking spots but not all. gets a weird drainage. And so we just really couldn't figure out a way to keep those eight spaces and uh pull the path back as much as we needed to. We're still within like a I think a 30-year estimated erosion zone. So um we target things to be pulled back 50 if we can and we're not even accomplishing that with this project, but we're doing the best we can. >> Got it. Thank you. Okay. And then um so you brought up the media hype around El Nino. Well, we shall see um how it all will happen in our community, but what are we doing with public works and what are we doing as a city to prepare both infrastructure-wise and just preparing the community? Ron Delano, >> Mr. Dwin, good afternoon. >> Good afternoon, Mayor U, city council. Nathan Win, director of public works. Uh as a part of our annual uh winter preparization efforts, uh teams across uh different departments are already performing uh vegetation management in our in particular our storm uh in particular our levy system. There's vegetation management that's happening uh that will last actually through uh the month of October. Uh the teams are also going out into different uh sites u regards to like creeks and channels clearing out storm drains and coverts. Um they're also checking on different systems to help with our flood control system, our pump stations in particular, making sure that uh that our preventative maintenance is continuing to be performed as well as uh making sure we have emergency ve uh fuel available for those uh storm incidences. And so there's a a continued effort that will happen starting already and last through uh the fall season as we prepare for uh potentially a wet season. >> Thank you. That's it for now. Thank you. Council member Golder is recognized >> again. Thank you. And I do appreciate the partnership with everyone in the departments that have been working with us and the community through all of this. And this has not gone to Coastal yet, but you've been in communication with them. >> Uh so this project in particular was permitted through the city's local Coastal program >> because it doesn't require a direct coastal permit. Uh but we did consult with the coastal staff informally about the parking removal in particular. >> Yeah, I would say also to the extent we're acknowledging that we are doing these managed retreat projects when in other places especially with the lighthouse when there's a push for people that want to try and save lighthouse point where we might have to do a seaw wall or add some kind of infrastructure buffering there to protect the surf break. So I just and I'm sure you're doing that but I just would like to be noted. And then in terms of the the temporary uh is it westbound you said that was going around and >> Yep. Yeah. westbound. >> Uh with that, are we planning on doing any traffic control? And I'm looking back at Claire. Are we are we just going to just >> see back there too? What what's contemplated at the moment is uh the detour signage of course and then uh some signs that would say uh local traffic only um on some of the other streets like John and Gilles. >> Okay. I guess I'm just wondering if there's a big outcry from the neighborhood. Oh, the traffic's horrible. Are we planning on addressing that or are we just going to say it's only two months? Sorry. I guess that's what I'm wondering. I just wanted to be clear from the outset because inevitably we're going to get the emails. >> I'll chime in real quickly. I think if we need to make adjustments, we'll do that. Um so we'll be we'll be monitoring the traffic activity closely if we hear feedback from neighbors as we always do. Uh we're willing to um willing to look at what adjustments could be made. Fortunately, as as you noted, Council Member Golder, it's it's temporary. >> Sure. So the the hope is to expedite the project, get through it as quickly as possible and and try to mitigate the impacts on the surrounding neighborhood. >> I super appreciate that and I know one thing that neighbors always appreciate too is maybe extra law enforcement presence just in the area at the beginning and on the weekends as people are getting used to the patterns or maybe during the Thanksgiving holiday, Halloween, things like that where there's more people that are not in the neighborhood or not in town coming out and about. If I think if we could do those things, it would go a long way. Thank you. >> Thank you, Council Member Bruner. >> Thank you, Mayor. Uh thank you for the additional presentation visuals and information. Um and actually one of my questions about the parking was was asked and answered. Um I I I wanted to clarify my question is around the temporary in the RFP it said 60 days uh completion of work. Does that include the temporary detour route? Is that how long will that temporary route be? >> That's the total duration of the contract for both locations and we're estimating that in this location will have up to two months of detour. >> Up to two months of detour. And then my other question was what is the most effective way um for the community to give um input and feedback if there are concerns? Is it through CRISP the community requests for service portal under traffic concerns? Um, how are we when we send out noticing and mail directing them? Where are we directing input contact? >> Well, we'll have a designated project representative that's uh on the back side of this uh postcard. It will be the point of contact. >> Okay. So, they just contact that person directly. >> Yep. >> Okay. That concludes my questions. Thank you. >> Thank you. Further questions, comments by members. Let me see if there's anyone with us today who wishes to make comment on this item. This will be the opportunity to do so. Good afternoon and welcome, sir. >> My name is Richard. >> Get right over there to the microphone. >> Caver. Uh me and my buddies surveyed most of these caves back in ' 86. You cannot plug caves up. This is a horrible, horrible proposal. It's not very well thought out. I have solutions to everything here. Unfortunately, not be well paid at paid at all. The bottom line, if you guys pass this, we're going to file in federal court. All rights reserved. Thank you. >> Well, thank you, sir. Anyone else with us wish to comment? Do we have anyone online, Miss Bush? >> We do not. >> Matters back before the body, pleasure of the body. I'll move the recommendation as presented in the staff report. >> Vice Mayor moves and council member Golder seconds to approve the item. Further debate or discussion? Seeing in hearing none, the clerk will call the role. >> Council member Triggero >> I. >> Gruner >> I. >> Newsome. >> I >> O'Hara >> I. >> Vice Mayor Kellen Johnson >> I. >> Mayor Keely >> I. Motion passes and so ordered. We are on item 13. This is a Bay Drive protected bike lanes and pedestrian path project. Public works will be presenting on this item. Mr. Starky and Miss Galuli. Good afternoon, >> Miss Guly. Floor is yours. >> Thank you. Good afternoon, mayor and council members. Claire Gloely, principal transportation planner for the city of Santa Cruz in public works. I will likely be joined at times by Matt Starky, our transportation manager, but probably only if we need him. Um, I'm excited to be here today to present on the Bay Drive protected bike lanes and ped pedestrian paths project. Here we are in action. The motion before you has three elements that I just want to forecast for you. The first is a pilot design at the intersections of Bay and Escalona. The second component that we'll talk about is future complete streets uh treatments at Anita and Toledo, the intersections of Bay and Anita and Bay and Toledo. And the third component is finalizing the rightaway with Santa Cruz City Schools for the frontage of Bayiew. So there are three pieces that we'll go through one by one in this agenda report today. I want to first just level set about the schedule because you've heard from me multiple times on this project and we're delivering it in multiple phases. So you have seen the component that is complete phase one which is on bay between Escalona and Nobel. That's where we have already installed a separated bike lane and pedestrian path. Where we are right now is as we go into fall 2026, that's when recommendation one, the proposed Bay Escalina pilot installation would take place. We'll talk about that, but we're aiming to get that in before UCSC returns. Looking forward towards the end of this year and early in Q1 2027 is when you would see the full design for Bay between California and High come back to you for council action. And then we would bid that project. We'd look to go to construction for that portion of the project in summer of 2027. That would be followed in spring 2028 with CALR doing their capital maintenance project CAPM project which is their repaving project that will go between the 19 intersection and western city limits and will construct the portion of our project the Bay Mission intersection. So setting us up where we are. We're currently in design for the overall project and today we're looking at a quick build component in advance of the capital project, the capital project going to construction in summer 2027 and the CALR project following that. So lots of components here. Another reason of why are we here today and why are we talking about Bay at all. We have 137 lane miles of streets in the city of Santa Cruz. And in August of 2019, this body adopted a vision zero resolution and set a ambitious goal to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries in our city by 2030. Uh we are not the only city that's done this. This is a a worldwide effort that says serious injuries and fatalities on our roadways are preventable. We have the tools to be able to address them and we should prioritize the interventions that we take on our streets where we can do the greatest amount of good and minimize the amount of harm that we see. this uh effort in vision zero efforts that we take utilize the safe systems approach and in the past in traffic engineering what we had said was collisions happen someone's at fault and that person needs to take individual responsibility for what that was what we know from research and really borrowing from a public health framework is that there are things that we can do at the population level and at the system level that have much better impact than the individual level. So the individual level is things like um you know our driver education campaigns or roadway signage that says slow down, do your part. At the systems level where we're circled here in red, the built environment level is how do you change the infrastructure to make it so that the system is safer as a whole? How do you make it so that when you're on the roadway, you're operating at a safe speed, you're able to make safe decisions, and that we're minimizing the patterns that we see on our roadways that contribute to the greatest number of severe injury and fatality collisions, which is in what's in front of us today. The efforts that we have before us today are informed by a lot of past work. In 2021, following our vision zero resolution, we adopted the local roadway safety plan, which identified the bay corridor as one of our priority corridors based upon the history of collisions that we have there. Um, we use that local roadway safety plan actually to secure the funding that's funding the work that we're doing right now. Since that time, we've also adopted the active transportation plan, which identifies us as a priority multimmoal corridor, and we're working on the safety action plan, which will come to you in October. that went to the Transportation and Public Works Commission at their last meeting, uh, which still identifies Bay as one of the top serious injury and fatality collision locations in the city. So, all this to say, we're not pulling this project out of thin air. We're pulling this project out of a history of collisions and a prioritized framework of where we invest limited planning and capital dollars to address the largest safety concerns that we have in our community. Grounded in safety, grounded in data. And we've been to you before. You've given us direction to work on this project, to prioritize this project. It's in um our CIP and we're continuing to that which we're really excited about. That's the preamble to part one. Bay Escalona which is uh the first recommendation in your staff report today. So to ground this here we are recommending Bay Escalona to go forward as a quick build project which means that we will use temporary materials to pilot a traffic safety intervention to see if it's something that then we should put in concrete for a long-term project. We brought this to the Transportation Public Works Commission. There's a lot going on here. I'll explain it. Um, and when we went to the Transportation Public Works Commission, what we said is we did a lot of analysis and the intersection of Bayoncalona is one of the top 10 intersections in the city for collisions. Between 2020 and 2025, there were eight collisions at this corridor. And most of them were going from one side of Escalona to the other. And most of the time it was from people misjudging the speed of cars coming down or up bay. So a pattern of broadside collisions, people traveling across bay at Escalona. So when we went to TPWC, we said, "Hey, the intervention that we can do here is to just close it, put a median in the middle, and that would prevent that movement that's happening across Escalona." Um, and it would address that pattern of collisions. We could do it quick with paint and posts. And we heard a lot of feedback and I think this is an example of a really successful community engagement process is lots of folks said, "Hey, there's issues with speed." And hey, if you close that downhill left turn from Bay to Escalona, all of that traffic is going to spill over onto Kenneth and onto King and onto neighborhood streets. And there's actually a lot of people that do that. and we heard concerns from the Escalona neighbors about um localized concerns on their street related to missing sidewalks and lack of bike facilities. And so we took all of that and form our recommendation to you today. So our recommendation is to pilot a quick build intervention at Bay and Escalona that would maintain the downhill lift from Bay to Escalona roughly southbound to eastbound although it's on a diagonal um but would maintain our recommendation to prohibit the Escalona to Escalona straight movement which is where the majority of collisions are occurring. So this addresses the community concern we heard from surrounding streets about spillover traffic that would then um go onto King Kenneth and other neighboring streets which was one of the big things that we heard. So this change in recommendation addresses that. Other things that we added here in the recommendation are on the downhill where you see the ones I don't know does this have a um we added rumble strips transverse rumble strips. So you have a tactile warning as you're coming downhill as a gateway feature that you're going from where you're not in a neighborhood to where you're in a neighborhood. There's also the addition of a speed feedback sign at the base warning you that as you're moving from the 30 mph zone to the 25 mile per hour zone, you should be slowing down. You're entering a neighborhood, the context is different. Here we maintain uh bike access across Escalona. This is identified in the active transportation plan as a neighborhood connector and we do have lots of folks who are doing that. It gives them a place to land in the middle and it maintains the um existing flashing warning sign for pedestrians, the RFB at that location. This is something that we could again set up very quickly with paint and posts. And what a quick build is really is installing cheap and fast, testing out how it goes, refining, and then making an assessment if we want to keep, remove, improve, and put it into our final design. So the recommendation here is to do it quick, to do it before UCSC comes back and traffic patterns change and to assess how it goes and if it goes well to use curbs and concrete later as part of that final design that will be going to construction in summer 2027. That's part one of the recommendation today. Part two is getting design direction from council for future intersection changes on Bay at the intersections of Anita and Toledo. And I don't see Drew here from the neighborhood yet, but I would like to start off this by saying thank you to Council Member Colintari Johnson and to Drew and Ella and the um Anita Toledo all of neighbors for doing a lot of community organizing and and backing up the recommendation in front of you today. So the recommendation that we have from you last year was to put in a birectional bike lane on the west side of bay. And one of the things we said that that would require is turn restrictions at Toledo and Anita for uh cyclist safety as they're coming through due to sight distance and queuing from the intersection at Mission Street. And there are a lot of different ways that you can do that. So, we engaged with the neighbors at Toledo, Anita and Olive uh to hear about their concerns with changes to circulation in their neighborhood and we had two neighborhood meetings out there. They were really great in sharing their feedback and we thought we got it right and we went to transportation public works commission. We brought them this proposal here that changed part of olive to two-way and had one median and had some turn restrictions. We got a recommendation from TPWC, but we heard from the neighbors and they said, "We'd actually want a little tweak." And we said, "Fine, we can put in that little tweak that works for the project." Um, and so the recommendation before you today is to confirm mountable medians as the intersection treatment at the intersections of Bay and Toledo and Bay and Anita. This is what they would look like in this visual here, and it's in one of your attachments. And um this is something that worked for the fire department, the police department, the neighborhood, the project, and I think is a great example of really hearing feedback and making project changes that reflect what we heard. Part three, the final part of the action today is a recommendation on finalizing right of way. So, we've been working with um principal Renee Golder in that role in Santa Cruz City Schools to identify that as part of the safe routes to school project and making sure that students can access Bayiew and Mission Hill, we need to utilize a little bit of the Santa Cruz City Schools district property on the Bayiew frontage to widen the sidewalk out and to create enough space. And Santa Cruz City Schools in being great partners said, "Absolutely, we're on the same page. Let's figure out how to do this." So, our lawyers and their lawyers work together and what's in your packet today is finalizing that rightaway transfer that then we would go um take to the recorder's office. It was a really great experience. I'm very very thankful to Superintendent Monroe and the district facility staff and the whole team for making sure that this is a project that really checks a lot of boxes in our shared interests and was just a really great experience. I feel really really proud of. That brings me to the recommendation that you see in your report today and I'm available for any questions. Thank you. >> Questions members? I think uh I can see Can I see council member O'Hara? Do you have your hand up? I'm trying to see from here a very small screen in front of me. I can I >> I did not. But I appreciate your your attention, mayor, and I'm I'm certainly um have some comments once we get to discussion. Thank you. Would you like to be recognized at this time? >> Uh, no. I'm fine. Thank you. >> Okay. Very good. Council member Golder. >> Thank you. And I agree. It was a great collaboration trying to get to this point. I do have a question that comes to me from the public and I've I've heard you answer before, but I just want to a lot of the concern with Bay especially near Escalona that we heard from the neighbors was in regards to speeding. And so something you didn't address was people had asked why not a stop sign? Why not at the stoplight? And you've told me privately, but you didn't say it in the presentation specifically. Yeah, happy to take that question. Um, in your packet also and in the agenda for anyone that wants to reference it at home. When we uh looked at this project, we did both a signal warrant and a stop warrant, which the engineers could tell you more about, but it's essentially a worksheet that goes through the official way that you have to determine if we say yes to a signal warrant or a stop warrant. and the Bay Escalona intersection did not meet our thresholds for a stop sign or a signal at this time. We additionally did some um transportation analysis for operations and what we found is if we were to put in a stop sign at this location, it would add about two and a half minutes of additional delay and moved about 600 vehicles off of bay onto neighboring streets. And so in looking at that from the analysis, what we said was not only would we not recommend a stop sign or a signal because it doesn't meet our established thresholds, but the amount of spillover traffic into surrounding neighborhoods and the amount of delay that it would contribute here wouldn't be a trade-off that we would recommend. You would probably hear a lot from those other neighbors about the spillover traffic on their >> Sure. You would. So that I think leads to the next point of the spillover traffic. How do you guys plan to measure that during this pilot period? Um, we have traffic counters, so we'll go out and measure that. And with the changed recommendation from a full closure to maintaining the downhill left turn from Bay to Escalona, we would anticipate very little spillover traffic. And then my final question, I know Officer Black no longer works with the Santa Cruz Police Department. Is there plans to put other law enforcement out there during the pilot part or the initial part just to warn or ticket address the issue, too. >> Great question. I can't speak to SCPD operations, but I will say that Lieutenant Why, who is now in charge of traffic for SCPD, is doing a great job engaging with Matt Starky and I about prioritization and um getting speed trailer out, getting enforcement out. SCPD could probably tell you this is one of the locations that they do the most amount of enforcement in the city. We had actually some great neighbors at TPWC specifically pointing at the police officers and saying, "Oh, I see you sitting outside my house all the time." So, we'll continue to do enforcement there as we're working towards the bigger project which we would anticipate would have more speed reduction, our capital project going into construction in 2027. >> Thank you. The vice mayor is recognized. >> Thank you, mayor. Thank you so much for the presentation and of course all the work over the several years and especially in the last six months or so. really really appreciate um just the open communication you've had with community members and with myself and the whole team. Um I do have a couple of questions. Um Council Member Golder asked about Escalona and stop signs and signals. How about speed bumps? We got some emails and some communication about speed bumps in Escalona. Could you speak to that? I know that, let me just back up and say I know that um we are addressing the Bay Corridor, but as we're addressing the Bay Corridor, these questions have come up from community members. So, I wonder if we could just take a few moments to address some of those concerns. >> Yeah, absolutely. Um Escalona is a collector street and is on our fire response route and on our fire response routes, we typically do not include speed bumps because they have a negative impact on the ability to um respond with our fire apparatus. So, it's one of the things we constantly talk to with fire about. I think something that we should all feel really proud about is last year we spent about $ three and a half million dollars on improvements on Escalona. It included installing sidewalks on one side of the street within the project limits, about 50 additional new curb ramps. In some locations, we added new bike lanes. We narrowed the lanes for speed reduction. Um, and Escalone is identified as one of our neighborhood connectors in our active transportation plan. So, I think what that is to say is that at this time we're not looking at speed bumps, but we will continue to look at speed reduction strategies and other continued improvements that um highlight the features that make a good neighborhood connector. >> Okay. So, follow up to that um you mentioned the safety action plan that's underway. Um >> is that the plan that will help us look at speed reduction efforts citywide? What is what is our plan for speed reduction efforts citywide because showed that great map that showed all the different color lines in the cities? >> Yes. So, the safety action plan will come to you in October. It just went to the Transportation Public Works Commission. One of their recommendations to you is to direct us to utilize recent state law AB43 um and other relevant state laws to citywide look at ways that we can reduce our speed limits in uh the areas that state law allows us to and proximate to schools. So that action will be coming to you in October to direct us to do that. Um it's one of the proven traffic safety interventions that we would want to take on. >> Okay, last question for right now. Um you mentioned pilot um and I think you said construction of Bay Colona pilot would be in summer of 2027. So the pilot is like six to nine months or what is the length of pilot is my actual question. Yes. So we would look to construct the pilot this summer fall right now when we're in hopefully before UCSC gets back into session. We have the uh purchase order queued up waiting for directions that we can order the materials that we need. Um, and it would be the pilot would be a minimum six months we would look for. >> Okay. >> And we'll be coming to you this in Q1 of 2027 with direction for the overall capital project, which would be a great time to touch base on that. >> And this was in the agenda report, but could you quickly touch on how we how will we evaluate if the pilot is successful? >> Yes, we'll um I'm sure all neighbors will reach out and give us feedback, but we'll also be doing traffic counts in proximate areas. Um, and we'll also be looking at collisions and talking with police and fire about their experience as well. >> All right, those are my questions for now. Thank you. >> Thank you. Council member Bruner is recognized. >> Thank you. Um, thank you so much for your presentation. It was articulated very well and clear. I appreciated reading through this agenda report and the visuals. had to stare a few times and to get all the color-coded lines, but um going out there and seeing the area and combined with the visuals was very helpful. Um so, thank you for that. Uh, I wanted to I've received a few emails um concerns and if you could just speak to um there are concerns that this will not increase safety for cyclists and instead create confusion for cyclists for versus cars. Um, can you speak to that uh research with that? >> Yes, I think that's a great question. And I think a lot of the areas of um concern and confusion that we got were that I think maybe folks aren't used to us changing changing our recommendation based on the feedback we got. And so the transportation public works commission meeting where we had our um our preliminary recommendation had a full closure here and didn't have a gap for bikes to be able to make it through. And we heard a lot of feedback and we made a lot of changes. So I think a lot of the confusion that we've heard is around that and less awareness of the changes that we made >> around the original recommendation. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Transportation. >> Okay. Took that feedback made changes and I think the result of those changes is a lot more clear addresses the primary concerns that we heard. We have a really really clear pathway in here for bikes to still be able to get straight across here at Escalona. Um and I think it will be very intuitive on the ground. Thank you. Uh that's helpful. And um the other thing I wanted to say was um I think overall, you know, knowing that this will be a six-month pilot and the temporary quick build nature of of this, I know we've been talking about this area um for years. I didn't realize it since 2021. Um and I think that um I really appreciate the the data driven approach to that has informed the recommendations where we are today and that includes not just the studies and um but also the community input as well. So uh thank you. >> Thank you. Let me see if council members have other questions. Council member O'Hara, I want to make sure I give you an opportunity on to be heard on this item if you wish to. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um I have um just a few comments about um just sharing some appreciate appreciation as council member Bruner also just suggested um as to how long this process has been in the works and knowing um and I wanted to comment on the fact that our staff is flexible, nimble and open to constructive feedback is really important and I appreciate the work that you did to not not only engage with the community but take those comments seriously and um update the proposals based on that. I do also want to reflect on um as a longtime eastsider who now lives up on campus um pretty much every day coming down Bay Street there it's not well I'm I'm being dramatic here very often coming down Bay Street there are significant issues um between pedestrians bikes and cars at that corner um and living on campus and using that as my my you know transportation uh kind of plan to get down into the west side. I see that all the time and so I know how critical this work is um and I really appreciate the the thoughtful um process that is unfolded around this even though there are hard tradeoffs that we have to be considering and I and I understand those trade-offs. Thank you. >> Thank you council member. Other questions, comments by council members. This be the opportunity for and as uh Mr. Lar Mr. Larson is approaching people probably know Mr. Larson as a member of the county board of education and all around good guy but I also want to thank you for your years of service as chief deputy state controller where I know that we did some work together with state controller and you were very helpful on that in Sacramento. So thank you sir. >> Thank you Mr. mayor and thank you council manager, attorneys, staff just for your continued collective service to our city and all our neighbors. So, thank you so much. Um, also wanted to thank you for your earlier consent calendar item for the unsignalized pedestrian improvements as part of that body. You improved some improvements to Payton and King, which is a complex offset intersection right next to Mission Hill Middle School. So, thank you for that. I think those are great improvements. you're moving ahead with there and that really embodies what our neighborhood lower Escalona and the Escalona Greenway has always been focused on pedestrian and safety improve pedestrian and cyclist improvements. I come from a family of cyclists so I now have to wrestle my son for my ebike. Uh but it's um otherwise it's a pretty good deal um where we live, where we're approximate to the campus, the coast, downtown, as well as all of the west side. Um really want to second what council members have said, staff's outgoing outreach to the community has been great throughout this process. Um, I also wanted to acknowledge on behalf of our neighborhood that we appreciate that the city for a long time has designated the Escalona Greenway as a bike way, bike corridor, and most recently in your recent update to the active active transportation plan. We're now a designated neighborhood collector uh connector. So, it's intended to be a pedestrian and cyclist connection from basically downtown and Harvey West to the west side and campus. So, really appreciate that as well as all the prior bicycle and pedestrian improvements you've made on Bay that you've made at Escalona and Bay and that you've made on the eastern most portion of Escalona where I live. I'm here to speak to you about the rest of Escalona, though, because from Payton to Bay, it's dangerous to be a pedestrian or a cyclist, yet we have hundreds of pedestrians and cyclists every day walking dogs, going to school, or whatever. And while our neighborhood strongly supported option one, as they've written you in your packet today, whether you approve option one or option two, we do ask for three additional referrals to staff and maybe a fourth based on our comment today. first in the traffic study that's being done during the pilot period to make sure that Escalona traffic volumes, speed volumes, and accidents are considered as part of that analysis. We actually think the loss of the left turn on Northbound Bay. >> Mr. Larson, hold for me for just a second because I can see pretty soon that red light's going to go up. You are here speaking on behalf of a number of your neighbors. Is that right? We didn't have a coordinated meeting, but we've had emails on these topics. >> The answer is yes. Right. Okay. I'm going to grant you two additional minutes to do that. Thank you. >> Um, let's see. So, three maybe four requests for staff consideration just to make sure the Escalona traffic speed and accident information is included in the pilot period. Second, to um look at traffic calming, pedestrian, and cyclist safety improvements during the interim period to be considered when the full capital project comes forward. While we understand the argument that we're a designated fire route, it's our belief from our living there that fire trucks never use the windy, curvy, hilly Escalona as a pass through to get to other incidents that aren't on the block. So we understand the fire department issue. There are other traffic calming solutions as well. So we would like speed humps and those other solutions considered. Um third is to direct staff to include Escalona as a consideration for the 20 mph limit to come back to you in October as part of that broader study. Understand you can't make that decision today. All you can do is ask staff to consider that. That's all I'm requesting at this point that Escalona be considered for that 20 mile an hour limit. And the last one that just came up today that I haven't discussed with my neighbors is requesting fire department response data for how often does fire apparatus actually go through the hilly curvy section of Escalona, >> which is where we need the speed homes. We don't believe there's ever been a fire equipment going along that part of Escalona that wasn't responding to an incident on Escalona. So, we think it may be appropriate to look at limited speed humps and certainly other traffic calming along Escalona. That's it. Those four requests for direction to staff. Mr. >> Lion, thank you for being here. Let me see if there's anyone else who is with us who wishes to provide comment. Good afternoon and welcome. Miss Bush, do we have anyone online? We'll hear from you, sir, and then we'll go to person online, then we'll be right with you. Thank you for your forbearance. Good afternoon, sir. >> You need you need a button, Fred, that hits the Thank you for your forbearance. >> Um I uh I just want to tell you about, you know, you study medicine. Uh you're going to you're going to come up against uh this very serious topic of mortality and morbidity. And uh there are three big the big three things that tend to kill us other than cancer and heart attacks. Um you've got um automobiles, not in this or not in any particular order. Automobiles um overdoses and uh weapons and violence the big three. And uh there's two sides of each of those. There's there's the innocent um victims of those and then there are the people, you know, can engage in those activities. state of the I guess. Um but uh yeah uh it's it's been bad for a long time. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie uh Wagons East. So it's hilarious movie. Um and uh they they decide that West is like too terrible and rude and they're going to head back east wagon train back to go back back east. And uh there's a there's a moment in the movie where they're they're actually uh you know the the um the um US cavalry is gonna massacre them and they they're going to circle the wagons and the Native Americans says no square the wagons. What square? Well yeah sharp corners you just they don't know what to but they do it anyway and it works. Anyways, um for me, I look at um Bayon High and I think okay, uh the metro took a an I think I mentioned in an off-hand way a theory I had that if they just took buses to the base of campus, it would serve campus communities uh getting to and from campus. They have two routes now. They have the 18B and the 19B, but um I've never taken either of those routes, but the idea is they go to the base of campus, then they go back downtown and, you know, by their rinse their feet, right? Um and they're, you know, they're limited. They don't have too many routes per day, but there's like 470 buses that go up there uh on a on a school day in the most of the year. Um, so buses, uh, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians, ebikes, recreational motorbikes, scooters, etc. Um, you know, it's, uh, it's something that they improved only about like three years ago. I don't remember exactly, but they they widened the lanes. Uh, and I've walked up that that that way at night time. Not a lot of people do that. And there's that little path that goes through the center and you can take that or you can take the bike lane and make make you know on the down slope you know the bicyclists will you know be really um perturbed that you're walking in the bike lane perhaps or you know and cars but um that's not entirely safe and that's bad you know but now it's safer and another thing um you can do is you know bay and mission um there have been terrible um uh DND incidents you know death memory incidents there. Large trucks have tangled with cyclists. Um, a few more things to say on it, but I'm glad that you're moving in the right direction. Obviously, attention uh tends to help things. >> Thank you, sir. Person online. We're going, Miss Bush, we do have someone. We do. We'll take the person online. Good afternoon. Welcome to the city council meeting. >> Hello. Can you hear me? >> Yes, we can. Hi. Uh, this is, uh, Drew from Olive Street. Uh, thanks Claire for giving me the shout out earlier. Appreciate that. Um, I just wanted to, uh, call in. Sorry I couldn't be there in person. Just wanted to, uh, call in and say how much I appreciated the engagement um, from public works and from the vice mayor um, on this issue. um you know uh many hours were spent debating and and working on this uh this plan and um they really uh took the took the community's um point of view and feedback in into consideration. Um Claire and Matt and the vice mayor came to my backyard and handled questions from the entire neighborhood um and with great grace and humility um and gave us a really good view into how complicated this process is. So um just again thank you from myself and and from other uh residents in the neighborhood. Um you know I don't I don't think the plan is perfect. I don't think any plan is perfect, but I think this is a reasonable compromise. And uh again, thank you uh uh to public works and to the city council. Appreciate it all. >> Thank you for calling in. Good afternoon, sir. Welcome. >> Thank you, mayor. Council members, I'm Glenn Stewart. I live on King Street, 1210 King Street, three houses from Bay. I tell you that in part because I see the enforcement that's taking place out there and the police are doing a good job. When they uh catch a speeder coming down bay, they often end up in front of my house. And uh we were watching TV the other night. The red lights came on. I opened the front door and I heard the officer say, "I stop you tonight because you're going 55 on bay. We have a problem. >> Now, one of the ramifications here uh is that we're redirecting traffic as a way to get a handle on uh speed. We're redirecting traffic uh right turn in, right turn out. I live on King Street. That really doesn't affect me except folks are going to be making circles around the block in order to get home or in order to get to work. what we're asking for. And my neighbors and I have petitioned previously for a speed hump. I hope we can reconsider this, but uh on the west side of Bay, got one on the east side of Bay. And what I see is people slow down coming to the intersection on the west side of Bay. They see the green light. They race for the green light. And that's a part of where we're getting these broad sides. You can sit out there for 5 minutes any time of day and see someone run the red light >> back to life. It it just people are in a hurry. So if there is a way uh for us to get the same treatment on our side of Bay as the folks on the east side of Bay have, a speed bone would slow those people down. It'd be a big deal. Thank you. >> Well, thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Miss Bush, do we have anyone else online? >> No one with their hand up. >> No one with their hand up. Last call. Anyone with us who wish to testify on this matter? Seeing in hearing none, the matter is back before the body. The vice mayor is recognized. >> Thank you, mayor. Um I have a motion to approve staff recommendation as provided in the um agenda >> report. Um I have one additional piece and then I'll see if my um colleague has pieces around Colona. Um my additional piece is for um the fire department response data to bring back fire department response data on critical streets. I don't know what the actual term is. So maybe public works can help me here. Um when they are bring when they are coming to council on the safe safety action plan. So not just Escalona but all of the major streets. Can we look at fire department response data on what's the term critical streets is what I said but >> fire response routes? >> No. Um what I'm asking for and then we'll see how I can put into a motion is that to have fire department response data um on the major streets within the city. So how often are fire trucks going on the major streets within the city? major like Delaware, Escalona, Bay, SoCal, Water. What are those streets called? >> Are arterials and collectors? Matt looks like he has an answer. >> Arterials and collector collector streets. >> Yes, I think that would be a great designation. Currently, we have a map of designated fire and emergency response routes. They're generally those collectors and arterial roadways throughout the city. So, I think those would be the ones for us to review more closely. >> Okay. So then the motion, the added motion is to please bring fire department response data on arterial and collector streets when the safety action plan comes to council. >> I just put a time frame on it like for the last two years. Is that a reasonable amount? Okay. >> Okay. That's my motion and and I'll look to my colleague around escala stuff. So, I'm going to make sure your motion is to adopt this the recommendations in our packet plus the additional language that you just provided. Correct. >> Correct. >> Okay. There is a motion and I understand it may be added to. Is there a second? >> There is a second with uh I guess friendly amendment. >> Friendly amendment being offered by council member Newsome. >> Uh that uh traffic and speed volumes on Escalona be considered in uh the pilot's traffic study. uh and that uh explore using AB43 and other trafficcoming measures uh for speed limit reductions citywide including approximate to this project and on Escalona >> is a friendly amendment. Is it considered that by the maker of the motion? >> Yes. >> Very good. You may open on your motion, madam vice chair. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, so again, a big thank you to Claire, Matt, Nathan, all of you, um, and the team. A huge thank you to the neighbors. Um, and a request that we please stay in touch. Uh, this is a pilot. We're testing it. That's why I asked the question about evaluation, but you all are, um, the the boots on the ground, as they say. You're seeing it, you're experiencing it. So, let's please stay in touch in these next months that the pilot's in place and really see how it's working and how it's not and what other pivots we may need to make. Um, yeah, I looked to my colleague here um whose district is in that portion of Escalona that that we've heard um tonight this afternoon around and gotten some emails. So, thank you for those additions. Um, and I think Drew said, you know, the plan isn't perfect, but it's a compromise. I think it's pretty darn close. Um hopefully we we shall see, but I think it's pretty darn close. So again, we're going to test it and we're going to see. And um I really appreciate this holistic approach and um thank you to Claire for sending me this public health article that I geeked out on because it was speaking my language. That is the approach that you you and the team are taking. Um really the built environment dictates the choices that we make. I mean, we see this in my world, the public health world all the time. So, what the bigger picture is is that we're trying to make the safe behavior the easiest choice by putting these um mitigation efforts in place. So, um the research and data says that it should work, but again, you neighbors are the eyes and boots on the ground. So, um I'm I'm I don't know if excites the word, but but it's been long time coming and I'm welcoming um testing this out. Thanks for all the work. >> Mr. Newsome is recognized. >> Oh, thank you, Mayor. Just want to uh associate myself with my the comments of my colleague and just thank staff for all the work and thank neighbors for uh their feedback on this project. Thank you. >> Council member Bruner is recognized. >> Thank you, Mayor. Um, I wanted to just ask a question based on some of the based on the public input. Uh, and that and I know there was the friendly amendment. I wanted to just get clarity. My understanding on fire response data was specifically on the curvy part of Escalona if and I don't know how to define that if that's clear to you. um for the purpose of installing speed bumps there because the reason speed bumps weren't uh a considered option was because it's considered a fire response route. But according to the neighbors there, fire does not respond through that section of Escalona. And I think that was my understanding of of the ask and and no >> I maybe I can clarify my understanding which I hope will be active listening to get it right. My understanding is that we are going to use fire response data on arterials and collectors citywide for the past two years and bring that back to you when we review the safety action plan. One of the things I'm excited about doing with that is getting into that data and being able to give you more clarity on what that looks like and using that to potentially inform maybe a tiered approach to fire response routes where different treatments could be available best based on, you know, the number of times folks respond. >> I guess I understand that part of it. Yes, the arterial and and collector routes. Um what I understood from public comment is specifically on that section of Escalona to be included in that um fire response data and I just wanted to make sure that was clear in the motion because that was >> Escalona is considered one of those arterial roads. So I wanted it not just to be on Escalona but all of the arterial roads. Yes included. >> Yes. >> Okay. And then um with the uh potential of speed bumps for that section, right? Because like assessing it having that assessment with that data. So data on that assessment or traffic calming, for example, speed bumps on that section. >> Yeah. Um thanks for the question about um speed humps. Uh they're often a a good tool to use on local roadways. >> Um our collected arterial roadways handle more traffic and we need to be more careful about the types of deflection we use on the roadway particularly on Escalona in that section. It's a very hilly road and so speed humps and bicycles don't mix very well. And so there's other treatments that we may look at using on a street like Escalona based on the the context. So, I think the request we're hearing is we want speed humps. We want to reduce traffic or reduce speeds. I think there's other tools we may actually need to use on a road like Escalona to help achieve that. >> Great. And yeah, as long as with that data that's all present um when that comes back, I just wanted that clarity. Thank you. Um my other uh uh question and maybe for council member Nuome who added the friendly amendment about uh the traffic study during the pilot period for traffic volumes and speed volumes. Just clarity on that will also include accident information and collision information, injury information. Okay, great. Um and um my last comment is um again just appreciation for all of the data that has informed these recommendations and um and and also appreciating the the big picture look at uh how our built environment makes the choices that um we make uh every day. And a big big um encouragement to our residents and drivers and community members, our bicyclists that you are also partners in this. And um you know, we do what we can here in making these decisions, directing investments and funding to safer in infrastructure. And all of this comes also from behaviors that everyone has a choice and and um just a reminder to drive safe whether it's a ve vehicle or a bicycle um every day with intention. Thank you. >> Thank you. Council member O'Hara is recognized. Thank you, Mayor. And I I um please forgive me if I'm not tracking as closely as I should be because I'm it's a little bit hard to to reconcile everything that's been said with regard to the motion, but I think council member Bruner got to this, but I wanted to ask a direct question to the maker and the second. Um do did we cover all of Mr. Larson's four requests in your motion and the friendly amendments? Madame Vice Mayor, >> I'll look to my colleague um who did the Escalano part, but I believe so. >> Council member, Council Member Nome. >> Yes, I believe so as well. >> Could I Thank you. Could I get some clarification from staff as well? Just to kind of triple down on that, is everything that Mr. Larson requested being part of this follow-up study? Um, and are we tackling everything specifically that was requested? >> M. could lonely. >> I think so as I understand it and I would layer on to that that we've worked closely with the Escalona neighbors over the past couple years since COVID and we had slow streets and through the active transportation plan outreach through our project on Escalona. I feel like we have a really good idea of the interests of those neighbors. The issue that we have is similar to the issues citywide is identifying the funding and the capital project in order to address the concerns that they have. So we have those on the radar. It's one of the things I think about consistently when funding opportunities come up. And so I think not only does this motion recognize what Mr. Lson brought forward, but I think we also um have a really good understanding about the ancillary elements to that. >> Okay. Um, I think that feels good to me. I guess I would just note that the the qualification of I believe and I think is giving me a little bit of trepidation about whether we've captured everything, but I think as Miss Gallobly shared. Um, I believe that we have very productive ongoing conversations with the Escalona neighbors and I certainly know that Mr. Larson, who's not only, as the mayor recognized, deputy state controller, but our previous planning director here at the at the city, um can can and will continue to advocate strongly if we did miss anything. Thank you. >> Thank you, council member. Further debate or discussion? Seeing and hearing none, the clerk will call the role. >> Council member Tgero, >> I. >> Bruner, >> I. >> Newsome, >> I. >> Holder. >> Hi. >> O'Hara. >> I. Vice Mayor Kellen Tory Johnson >> I and Mayor >> Keely >> I motion passes and so ordered. Uh we are going to stand in recess until 3:45 at which point we will come back and we will return rather and take up item 14. Santa Cruz City Council is back in session following our afternoon recess. Clerk would call the role to reestablish quorum. >> Council member Tgerero >> present. >> Bruner >> present. >> Newsome >> present. >> Holder >> here. Um I will say council member um O'Hara has left the meeting. Vice Mayor Kalentari Johnson present >> and Mayor Keley >> present. U note uh council member O'Hara is in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She has been joining this meeting all day pursuant to our rules uh and has participated fully. She is not with us now uh and will be recorded as absent only for this item. Uh we are very pleased to uh welcome our good friends uh back to Santa Cruz and are very interested in hearing about your wonderful trip. So first thing I'm going to do is recognize Mr. Heden Jones from the parks and recreation department and Miss Barton from uh the sister city commission. Good afternoon sir. The floor is yours. >> Thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you city council. Um my name is Mr. Manhattan Jones. I'm the superintendent of recreation for the city of Santa Cruz and I'm here joined with Carola Barton who's the chair of the sister cities committee the presentation up uh we're here to discuss two delegations that recently u went to be one was an adult delegation comprised of sister city committee members and subcommittee members for bureits as well as myself representing the city and a second delegation of junior guards that went to be this past summer. So why sister cities matter and I believe chair Barton can provide background behind that. >> Miss Barton, good afternoon. Thanks to you and your colleagues for your good work on the commission. >> Thank you. Thank you. It's such a privilege to be working on sister cities. I've been on numerous boards and committees and this is one of my very favorites because it's all about making friends. I was just telling my Cisco uh community member Maggie that this is one of the things I do that where people aren't going to hide because I'm not asking for money this time. So it's so great. >> That's why we're so pleased to see you. >> Okay. Anyway, um we're very proud of our junior guards that recently went to beer and we also thoroughly enjoyed the French u junior guards that came here. It's a wonderful experience to see these young people. Their faces light up when I say how was it? It changed my life. I mean that's just the most beautiful thing to hear. Also, our adult delegation recently went to um the uh a conference about climate resiliency for coastal cities and that was also a really amazing experience and people come back with their own their own experiences that enrich their lives but also it it there's the ripple effect out into our community. So, thank you for this opportunity. I'd like now to introduce Trey >> and thank you Chair Barton. Um just some quick fast facts about BRES France and why it was selected as a sister city um a few years back. Um Bites sits on the Atlantic coast of France in the south of France. Um it's home to a number of different industries but it's very popular among uh surfers as a surfer destination. Um its economy is centered on tourism, hospitality and coastal recreation. Um it's a bit smaller than the city of Santa Cruz, but there are two other cities adjoin it. Um one is called um the I'm going to and sorry um which you know comprise the region itself. So with those two other cities, it's about the same size as the city of Santa Cruz. Um part of the adult delegation, I'm going to ask Maggie to come up. She is the uh chair of the BRES uh subcommittee. um is that we attended the ways of change forum which is an international conference on uh climate sustainability u but in general they also talk about different issues that coastal cities face uh and the dilemmas that they face uh this year's theme centered around AI coastal resilience and uh amongst the coastal territories some of the conversations that we had uh included um discussions with researchers um other uh in members of industry policy makers including at international level such um that this was uh considered a summit of the G7. So we had um delegates from Taiwan attend, delegates from Portugal attend and delegates from um various other sister cities within Europe uh for BRS. um topics included the sustainable use of AI in particular um emphasis was given towards data centers and how cities themselves are actually using AI whether it's uh for you know generating policy and doing research or in some cases evaluating data like large scale data um some cities even used it to map different um spaces along um the coast um to understand coastal erosion um we worked with a number of different groups while we were and attended a number of different sessions and we were also fortunate enough to have a presentation completed by our own uh specialists um in the city manager's office um which discuss our practices use of AI currently. >> I had the >> good afternoon and welcome to you. >> Thank you. Um I would say I had the opportunity and the pleasure to participate in one of the opening ceremonies. They had a number of sister cities um come up and give their perspective. Dr. Tiffany Wise West primed me with a lot of good facts. So, I was able to speak on the behalf of Santa Cruz and all of the work we've done with sustainability and climate resiliency. There was a city from Sagal, um a bureau's representative, someone from Cash Cash Portugal. So, it was really um kind of a cool opportunity. We were one of the only cities from the US that was attending the conference through little Trey is a kind of a superstar. Um and we had a number of awesome conversations with people and so it was really great to be able to highlight the work of the city. Uh one of the key takeaways from this and this will come back to council at some form in the future um is there is a commitment by this coalition uh for the sustainable use of AI and I know that the city council has already adopted a number of resolutions around AI. Um this particular group would like to see the city u eventually join that coalition and again that will come down to the uh in the future. Um, our other exchange also included a civic exchange with the mayor uh in the mayor's council of a birates. Um, he's right there to I guess my left in the picture in the photo. He's the bigger guy. Um, his name is Shir Blanco. He's a former rugby player and for me I didn't know that that's actually a big deal. But in the Aritz itself, he's equivalent to Joe Montana. So even beyond that, like I was in the uh airport in Dublin and I was just having a conversation with someone and I mentioned that I got to meet Serge Blanco and they were stunned. They were totally excited like you shook his hand. Um it was really cool. Um one of the things that they impressed upon us um was that the priorities for their particular uh city for the next two years includes um updating enhancing the recreational facilities. Similar to Santa Cruz, they're in the same boat where they have a significant amount of deferred maintenance, including at their aquatics facility, and believe it or not, it's also over the age of six years old. And they wanted to refocus priorities towards that. Um, they also have a number of ball fields and recreational fields that are in disrepair and disarray, and they're uh spending the next two years focused on rebuilding and retooling those spaces for public use. Um they also um want to pump um more additional funds towards tourism because tourism is a leading u economic indicator for activity for them. Um which includes international travel. Um but also maintaining that balance with the the residents and and their um their quality of life. Um so these are also some of the shared same challenges that we experience. So it's nice to understand how they're dealing with these challenges and how we can adapt and adopt some of their practices into Santa Cruz. Um, I also like to note that there is a number of slugs. There's more than one slug in that photo. Uh, Jean Peptis, he's the person immediately next to me. He actually went to UC Santa Cruz and he's a deputy mayor in Pureates. >> Um, other uh um activities that the adult delegation imparted on or included um arts, culture, and innovation. Um, we attended one of their summer kickoffs, which is similar to our Tuesday night live series or the uh Midtown Fridays series. It's called Lake Casetas. Um, it's a week-long event. Uh, it goes from 5:00 until 2 o'clock in the morning every day on their beach. Every day on their beach for a full week. Um, they have live DJs, they have live music, they have food, they have apparel. Um, well, it it was really interesting. One of the things that we observe is that earlier in the day you see older adults and families, but then as the evening hours start to Wayne, you see all the younger adults come out and have fun. So, it really was programming for the full community. >> Um, other uh exp um del um sorry uh spaces that we went to included a tour uh by the Updators. They're a local group um of graffiti muralists uh and they lead um community into creating uh new murals all around the and these are some of the most beautiful spaces that I've seen and I think Maggie can comment on that a little bit too. >> Uh this was my favorite part of the trip. Uh Adrienne who runs updators spent an entire afternoon with us taking us throughout all of these different areas where he's really worked um to educate the community about street art and graffiti. He's personally changed um some of the spaces uh to beautify them. There was a public housing development where they brought all the community members out and added graffiti. They go into schools and teach them about that. They go to senior centers and teach them about graffiti. So, he's just um a very charming, lovely person. And so, we're working to be able to bring him here to this um community and share his ideas. He's done a number of community events just around education of art. So that was that was one of my best parts. >> Uh one of the things I really appreciated by Adrian's tour is that he actually took us to their downtown area which not too dissimilar from ours except for the older buildings. Um and one of the walls they had set aside um was for the community to actively uh update that wall once a month. So every month it got a new mural placed on that wall and you got everybody participating in that which is really cool. Um and then one of the last things that we um toured um was the um University of ESIA which is an engineering school. It's just outside of Borits but similar to how Cabrio College um provides services for the full community in Santa Cruz County. This school does the same thing. Um what was really interesting about this school and we got to meet with some of their faculty and board uh were that it's an engineering school that's centered on a corporate business campus uh campus. So there's lots of other businesses um all around that school and the school itself focuses on two different platforms. It's both an incubator and an accelerator. So students that have ideas um from engineering who want to apply those ideas into their public se or sorry the private sector have an opportunity to do that um and they also have um funding routes for them. So depending on their ideas they're able to accelerate their um production or they're able to you know start their business on that campus which is really cool. And last but not least, but I wanted to bring uh our second delegation of youth um which was from our junior guard program here in Santa Cruz. Um it's a full exchange. So we had guards that went out to be from Santa Cruz, but we also had a reciprocal exchange where their lifesavers, not guards, uh came to Santa Cruz and visited. So I'll bring the kids up and they can also provide their own testimony. I think Gavin was the one who's going to be tap for that, right? Good afternoon, sir. >> Good afternoon. Uh it's a little bit strange being able to talk about something exciting that I did instead of uh housing or whatever. Anyways, >> so uh I I often get up here and talk about the need to build an affordable city, but um vital to our city also is building a livable one. And doing that through culture exchanges like this is really important. Um I think it was a really amazing experience for like all of us. No one really had any issues. And um but I think the my favorite part of the exchange was when they came here and uh we were able to show them around and I I kind of decided that that part felt like it went by faster because we were um able to to let them appreciate our town. And it was kind of interesting seeing what like they really appreciated and then other things they didn't care as much about. Um, which I think is similar to like how uh we felt when we went there. Like they took us to laser tag and we were like, "Cool, we've have laser tag, too." But some of the most impactful moments were just kind of the smaller ones where they weren't necessarily trying to show off or anything, but just um aing being able to see the small details of how they do things similarly uh similar to us or different from us. Um and then yeah when they came here uh one of the things they like most got excited about was like In-N-Out for example um in San Francisco we took them or um but then uh I think what the throughine of us being there and them coming here was just how the ocean and like our shared connection to it really always was um what anchored us like when we took we took them to uh Fingerbull which is a boogie boarding spot um off of West Cliff and that was like one of most fun days of just connecting by the ocean and then there it was really hot. It was in the midst of a heat wave and we would be in the ocean every day many hours. Um and that time was really when we bonded with them over that shared love of the ocean and that's what you know obviously brought us together in the first place was that uh we're all junior guards. So yeah, I think the program was amazing. I hope you continue to fund it, of course. And uh yeah, so I think we all had an amazing time and learned a lot. Thank you. >> Well, thank you. >> Future council member right there. So, some of the key takeaways for us um is that we learned that, you know, obviously there are practical and meaningful exchanges. uh for examp had it's not just going to a country it's actually meeting and um making new friends for the rest of their lives and these will be important friendships um in throughout their life um we understand coastal communities and we share common challenges um in which if we share common challenges we may have common solutions to those challenges um as I said I mentioned before um um there is an an idea for the city council to join the coalition uh for sustainable use of AI. And so, um, if there there's any council member that's interested in taking that charge, we're here here for you. Um, there's also future arts and culture changes. Um, especially with beautifying our public spaces. I know that we're in the midst of a number of development boom with downtown and other corridors. But it's also remember we want to make the space um a beautiful place that's in uh where everyone can enjoy the quality of life. Looking ahead, we're looking to expand um our youth outreach and youth exchange. So, while the junior gradu program is definitely that bridge program that keeps us sustained um with BRES um year over year, we like to also offer other opportunities for youth to go to BRES and other sister cities as well. Um and we'll continue this. So, with that, I I bet I do. >> Well, don't go away too far too quickly. Well, first of all, thank you very much and congratulations to all of you. Thank you for going on that trip, for coming back, for reporting, from sharing your experiences in another country, uh, cultural experiences and so on. We're very, uh, pleased that you were able to have that experience and we thank you, the adults, uh, for your part. Thank you also. This is, uh, I think how the world works the best is when we, uh, get to know each other and we get to talk to each other and we get to spend time with each other. So, thank you very much. I suspect my colleagues h might have something to say and council member Bruner and I suspect others. Council member, >> thank you so much. I've been eagerly awaiting uh a report back. Um thank you and thank you Gavin for speaking on behalf of this whole group who went. I'm curious, what was your favorite food there? >> I tried. >> Yes, I was. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I just I I I'm also a product of uh exchanges, cultural exchanges growing up and in high school and living abroad. And it absolutely contributes to your experience as a human being and having understanding for different cultures, different languages, different food, music, art. It enriches you at levels you won't even recognize until later. Maybe you do now, but I'm really excited to also hear the potential for expansion with our youth groups, not just for junior guards. I know that uh Shingu Japan had a youth group centered around music that went as an exchange and um I look forward to um seeing how we can support with more of that. And um my other comment um for the uh adult uh takeaways and um Maggie, thank you so much for your sharing your perspective as well. Um I think you know it sums up the the um what what our city uh gains from these types of exchanges. I was mayor when I got to officially sign the sister city with Beeritz documents and it was so exciting and to to have these connections means everything and I hope that all of our residents can um get engaged and and connect in different ways and make new friends and be enriched in all of these exchanges. So, thank you to everyone who participates at every level. Share with your friends and reach out to us if you have ideas as well, right? And um thank you and hopefully um in the future we'll have more more opportunities for folks to to experience this scholarships too. >> Thank you for the the vice mayor is recognized. Yeah, just briefly I also just thank you. The breadth of what you um presented what all of you presented to us and what you experienced was really impressive. So I'm excited to hear and see that you all had so much great such great experience and that there is a what's next as part of that conversation. Um and I'm going to practice my French now. Who understood that? >> Thank you. Thank you for representing us. >> Secretary, >> any opportunity I get. >> Goodness. >> I'll just briefly say how fun it was to be hosting Matthew, the coach from the life life saving savers uh group and >> vice mayor came over and helped me make salad and dinner for all of you. So, thank thank you. Um and if any of you still has those two bike locks, I'm watching for them. They borrowed. But seriously, when we had him here, even as a young adult, um the things that he found fascinating, he had never left Europe, uh was Costco, line dancing, uh thrift stores, and um just little things like that. Being able to oh drive, he drove my daughter's boyfriend's truck. He'd never seen a truck so big. It was an old Toyota, huge old Toyota. And it was just really great to see um the beginning of the delegation when all the kids' luggage got lost and they were all wearing Santa Cruz gear and when I was at the party over at the French's house, I couldn't tell who was who because you've all grown up and I didn't recognize all of you and I was like who's French, who's American, and you couldn't tell. And I asked um Matthew later, we were talking about it and he said one thing that was really eye opening for him was the fact that the kids were wearing gear from their schools. He said over there, "No one has any pride in their schools. That would never happen." And so, as a party gift, the assistant principal of Santa Cruz High gave Matthew some Santa Cruz High gear to take back to France because he was going to say, "Hey, we should be proud of our schools, too." >> So, anyway, just the little things like like Gavin said was really cool to see. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Well, thank you so much. We good? We're good. Well, thank you. And what have you got there in your hands? So, this is a gift um from uh Mayor Blanco from Morates um to Santa Cruz. And so, I will leave this with the city council. Um it will still belong to sister cities, but um you guys can certainly peruse a book and includes a number of um illustrations from the all around town and some of their really cool destinations and sites. >> We have the vice mayor who speaks French. Anyway, we'll >> accept that. And that completes your presentation. >> That does complete the presentation. I'm not sure if the kids would like to have a photo as well with city council. >> Well, we would like that. We would like that. So, what we're going to do, just give us a second here. We're going to bring a conclusion to today's council meeting. We're going to adjourn. And after we adjourn, stay with us and we'll do some pictures. All right. Let me see if there is further business to come before the body. >> Nothing for me. >> Madam City Attorney, >> nothing further. >> Motion to adjurnn would be in order. Council member Golder moves. Council member Bruner seconds to adjurnn. Non-debatable. Those in favor signify by saying I. Opposed. Motion carries. And so ordered. We stand adjourned. We'll take pictures. >> Hey y'all come up here. >> Come on up here. But I'm here.