you you Are you on now, Mayor? Testing. Yeah, I am. I'm ready to begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God in the visible will liberty and justice for all. I felt like I was an elementary school. So now could you please call the roll? Council Member Parra. Oh no Mike either. I just have the screen. My screen is not working. Okay we'll work on that one. You guys go to close. Council Member Davis. Here. Council Member Brock. Here. And Mayor Hillman Rich. Here. Councillor Member Brock. Here. And Mary Hillman Rich. Here. Sorry. Here. Again. Oh, there we go. Here. Here. I think yours is on the request to speak. Can you turn it to discussion? I'm sorry. Say that again. I think you have request to speak on the mics as opposed to. Yes. Thank you. So, and this is request to speak on closed session. Is that correct? So, can you go ahead and make the announcement first? Okay. Oh, do you want, yes. So item 9a, Carlethorpe Peel, won't be heard tonight. It's been withdrawn at the request of the appellate. So if you are here on item 9a, you can go home. You can have dinner. You can do something else because we are not hearing 9a. It's been with Braun and we will not be hearing it tonight. Okay, so now we have public input. Public comment is permitted only on items not on the agenda that are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city. State law prohibits the city council from taking action on any items not listed on the agenda including issues raised under this agenda item. And I have Denise Barton for two minutes and Jonathan Foster for two minutes. Thank you. So Ms. Barton, you may step up to the podium and speak and then Mr. Foster, your next. Thank you. And Denise do you want me to pull up your photos? Okay and do you see the clicker over there? No I don't need the pictures now. Oh okay. Good evening and I speak with you about downtown Santa Monica Inc. Operation Manager from Block by Block Richard Marongo. Because according to his resume on LinkedIn, he was the sergeant with the city of San Jose as well as being president of the police activities foundation. Yet nowhere it does it say that he was embezzling roughly $4,000 on more than one occasion. From the Santa Monica Police Practices at the LITIC Foundation, funded by the police as a charitable sponsor. But Sergeant Richard Morongo was charged with a misdemeanor of grant theft for using the foundation designated credit card for inappropriate purchases from October 2003 to October 2007 with at least one purchase being for San Francisco 49ers football game at Mazda Park, totaling $4,200. Considering this information, I also have to question why block by blocks advertisement for employment in Santa Monica ambassadors is $19 an hour. When the lowest per hour price for downtown Santa Monica Inc. is $33.50. Hopefully everyone can see the difference in those two numbers. Here I have to question of the cities and downtown Santa Monica Ains vetting process. As well as express my surprise, the sum of the criminal history, such as which were wronged up, would be put in any position of authority. But it would explain the subpar quality of his professionalism and service, considering I've been trying to get the PowerPoint presentation he gave to DTSM to know avail since May. Although isn't it interesting that you think it's okay to take advantage of children in the power program, but it's okay to steal from organizations like that, right? Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Barton. Mr. Foster. Hi, Jonathan Foster. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Hi, Jonathan Foster. Now, last time I was here, I played a recording about some Palestinian in the Israel, moving Jewish people into Israel. And I see this on 3rd Street where the prominent people won't put up a merry Christmas. It's always a holiday tree, but then they're doing a Hanukkah celebration, which is really annoying. And I wonder how, and this is all about chopping off a lamb's head in Jerusalem, right? How many heads are they going to chop off to take care of the sin of Israel? Is it one head, 10 heads, 1,000 heads? And what they're doing, they're literally killing humans so that you can perform a religious animal sacrifice in Jerusalem. They're killing people. So that you can chop off the head of a lamb. How many lambs does it take to chop off? How many lambs does it take to get rid of the sin? One lamb? You know, God already knows how many lambs he's made? And it's not enough lambs to take care of the sin. There's not enough lambs or bulls ever going to be born to take away the sin. So it's really upsetting to see what happens out there. Now, I don't dislike Jewish people. I think they're really awesome. They've been very nice in certain settings. And what I talked about in 1921, the Palestinian started taking up arms. And then I had said that Hitler wasn't around yet. And what I had found out is what got Hitler in place as a guy named Prescott Bush, who was the father of George H. W. Bush, President 41, and he is the father of George W. Bush who I call WAC job, and he became a President 43, right? So this is just to see what happened that these people put Hitler in place and they were killing Jews. I don't support that. And I believe that Hitler is burning and hell, completely burning and hell. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Foster. So Mayor, next we have for public input. And this is for the, this is Denise Bard. And she has two minutes and she wants to speak on the city manager item. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Go ahead, Ms. Barton. Good evening. Everyone can see on the screen that nothing has been done to remove the partition or the bright light and the reason of the NRDC building into compliance with municipal code. Other David White, the executive director of the housing authority, doesn't seem to think it's very important apparently. Considered Ied them trying to get him to address the issues and shortly after he started with the city, then did the conflict with the city council. He missed the August 8, 2020 housing commission meeting. And if he was there, he would have gotten to experience the disrespect and alienation the housing commission received from your housing authority, staff, and the Eagle and Jim Kepler. As well as all score dev, Mernemadina, supervisor and risk manager proclaiming that they only had three calls to have been addressed and only one was pending, which probably had something to do with Mernemadina of the ADA court date or not returning calls, as was mentioned in the Housing Commission discussion. Andy Agel stated that the Housing Commission agenda was supposed to be done by the Housing Authority. And in discussion it came out that the Housing Commission can't put items on the agenda. And neither Andy Engel or Jim can for provided the Housing Commission with all the documents they requested. So if these kinds of actions by city staff, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that nothing has happened or moved the partition or bring the light and the raising of the energy Sea building the compliance with municipal code or would the real problem be liability of the city to the city Considering the city approved through administrative approval that do not go inside with municipal code. Thank you Thank you Ms. Barton Is that the end of their speakers? That's yes, we're done Great so Barton. Is that the end of their speakers? That's, yes, we're done. Great, so now we will go to closed session. I think we don't have agenda management that I'm aware of. So let's let the clerk announce it and then we can adjourn. So we have closed session. We have a conference with legal counsel's existing litigation and it's, I'm sorry, it's Jared Powell versus the City of Santa Monica. Items 3B and 3C have been pulled, they won't be heard. And then we have another existing litigation, Mike Smith versus the City of Santa Monica. and then three E is a public employee evaluation the title of employee is the city attorney. Thank you and we will be back at seven o'clock for the remainder of our calendar thank you very much. 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Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Oh, there she is. Just in time, our mayor protests. Looking very workish, by the way. But is that something they ask you guys to ask now? So welcome back to the August 23rd, 2022 regular meeting of the Santa Monica City Council. We have just left closed sessions. So let me turn to our city attorney and ask if we have any items to report out. Only in the FA case we will not be filing an appeal. Thank you. And on that note, I guess we turn to our next item. Would you like to call it please? Yes, so I wanted to ask the city attorney where all the items hurt. All of the ones except the ones that were indicated beforehand that would not be heard were heard. OK, thank you. that were indicated beforehand that would not be heard or heard. Okay, thank you. Yes, City Manager, you're up. Let's see, we have a City Manager report and we do have a request to speak on this. Oh, I thought we had those for... I'm sorry. Go ahead. Am I right? You're right. Okay. Am I the only one? So I right? You're right. Okay. Am I the only one so much? You're right. Yeah. Is it on? Okay. Great. Yeah. It's on. Good evening. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council. So two updates for you this evening. One, I'm going to talk about the REN Control Adjustment Relief program I really excited to announce that program and then second I will introduce our police chief but he said to come up and as you may recall a few months ago there was direction given to myself on a periodic basis to provide updates on our work to address community and public safety in downtown and so in that vein he will come up and provide a brief update for the council. So quickly let me talk about the rent control adjustment relief program. So we are very excited to bring forward this program to help Santa Monica households and rent control departments that are unable to afford the upcoming 6% rent control general adjustment that will take effect on September 1st, 2022. The $750,000 available for the program will focus on households that are paying 50% or more of their income on rent and rent control departments that have received notification of an increase. Priority will be given to very low and extremely low income households. The application is opening very soon. Next Monday, August 29th at 8 a.m. and we'll close Monday, September 19th at 6 p.m. We have a very proactive and comprehensive outreach program underway. So community outreach for the program has begun with a postcard soon distributed to over 25,000 Santa Monica addresses in English, Spanish, AmeriCorps, and Farsi. These postcards will also be available at City Hall for pickup. A press release went out just before this meeting to local media and we will include the information in the next Samo news in C-Scape. Further, we will post information flyers in four languages at public counters, park locations and libraries. We will also share the flyer electronically to all parents of our school district via the district's Peach Jar system. Applicants will be able to submit their application online via the RUN control website using the neighborly software platform and will be able to choose translation in multiple languages. Residents who need special assistance can attend a community clinic at Virginia Avenue Park on Saturday, September 10th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Multilingual City staff will be available to answer questions and assist applicants who have limited access to technology or language barriers. Hard copy applications will also be available in English, Spanish, American, Farsi, and the program is open to all rent control tenants regardless of citizenship status. So you can certainly visit our website, Santa Monica dot gov, for more information, and to apply beginning Monday, August 29th. And so I really want to thank city council for your leadership in pushing this program forward. You were very clear going back a couple of months ago with your awareness of the impact to our current control tenants, giving its very clear direction of wanting us to put a program together. And I'm really grateful for all of our city staff across many, many departments that mobilize very quickly to bring this program forward. So thank you for your leadership and thank you to our staff for all that they're doing. Now I'd like to call up our police chief Batista, please. And while he's coming up, I'd like to say city manager, thank you and to all of our staff who worked on this program. I think that we were under tremendous pressure to help our very stressed tenants. And I appreciate all of the work that you and staff have done on it and I know the tenants do it. I'm sure the council does. So thank you all very much. Good evening Madam Mayor. Madam Pro Tem, Council and staff. My role today is to give you an update on our city and downtown public safety efforts so far. I want to recap really quickly that since May 22, May of 22, this year, we have been deploying a high visibility bike patrol in downtown, in addition to the downtown service officers and public safety officers that are down there working in beat one, the beat one officers that are checking the area, checking park instructors. We reassigned our neighborhood resource officer into the promenade working on alternative solutions for our business owners and homeless folks. We've been working on a transit detail to address safety concerns at the bus stops and the Allied Security Contract has been in place under the management of the Department of Transportation. So, over the last 11 weeks, citywide, we've taken about 24,000 calls for service. 4,000 of those calls occurred between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. On the third street promenade, you can see the areas that I used to coordinate the area. We'll share to Colorado, second to fifth. During a daytime, in that period, we took overall 1,850 calls for service. At night, during the hours of 11 to 7 pm, we took nearly 300 calls for service. Our police officers in the downtown area were responsible for approximately half of those calls. Their encounters were with pedestrians, business checks, citizen flag downs, municipal code violations, and disturbance calls. In the last month, we've conducted five public health and safety operations where we've deployed the command posts or downtown service officers, that same third street by detail that I talked about earlier. Patrol officers from other areas of the city have come into downtown. Our directed action response team, our peer task officers were assigned, the motor officers were assigned. The help team and our clinician was assigned to this. We had resource officers. We used our drone as a first responder. And we included our PSOs and our traffic service officers in the deployment. The purpose of it was really to try to reach out to as many folks as possible, give them mental health assistance and housing. There were during these deployments, we had a clinician on board, so we had the opportunity to help folks get mental health assistance during this. We should a lot of warnings. There were traffic citations, of course, parking citations. Our contacts for criminal and local municipal code violations resulted in misdemeanor and felony arrests. Now, one of the things that we identified in this process was that we are finding a lot of serious felons that are from Los Angeles County and Riverside County, so folks that were unregistered sex offenders, homicide suspect, aggravated assault suspect, people wanted for weapons violations, parole violations and arson suspects. What the officers that focused on in addition to what I mentioned with the outreach, was the on-view violations for public intoxication, weapons violations, in progress for arrests for subjects harassing citizens, and in progress for arrests for subjects committing thievery. Or, in many cases, the officer's proximity to the area or where the event is unfolding makes it so that we've had like near immediate arrests because they're in the area and can the event is unfolding makes it so that we've had like near immediate arrest because they're in the area and can respond very quickly. Now the downside for us for me is that putting that many officers into the area, focusing on this particular area, I realize that this is going to happen and I've had assaults on the officers and a couple of them have been injured. So what we are seeing after three weeks, a month of doing this operation is that we look at the past eight weekends going back to July. And because we're running these operations on a Thursday and a Friday, what we're noticing is that over the course of the last three weekends we've reduced part one and part two crimes by nearly half. And so what does that translate into? That means that we've had nearly zero or reduced assaults, zero or reduced aggravated assaults. And you can see that one of each, no robberies and no arson cases. Now why this is important to us is because for all the weekends that we were looking at previously, we had a combination of these incidents happening sometimes on the same day or the same weekend. So noting that we're now have cut this in half and these more serious part one crimes are not occurring, that is important to us. And we're seeing that as a success of the results of the work that we're doing. So these are citywide statistics. This changed just like within a week. It was 65,000 calls last week. It's like now 67,000. A rest year to date, we were at approximately 300 last week. We're at about 350 this week. That is still corresponds to about a 30% increase over last year. So we are still slightly below pre-pandemic crime numbers in Part 1 crimes. So although just slightly ahead, we're still doing better than we were in 2019 at this time frame, same time frame in 2019. So what we're seeing is that the operations over the last three weeks are affecting our overall call volume. And so this is what that looks like. In the past week, what we've noticed is that we've had 116 fewer calls for service or five percent reduction in the overall calls for service compared to the prior week. And the way that is broken down in this case is that we had 57 fewer incidents of calls that were related to homelessness. And we had 59 calls that were essentially everything else, non-homeless related calls for service. Year to date we've taken about 12,000 homeless related calls for service which amounts to about what our averages year to year about 20% of our calls. Year to date, non-homeless calls are approximately 53,000 or 80, 81% of the total. This is important to me in that the number of encampment calls that we've responded to this year is far of pacing previous years. So we've responded to 1100 encampment calls up to this period in August and we've issued out 450 mental health evaluations. I want to highlight a couple of recent high profile cases. The first one was a homicide case that happened at the main library. This was very difficult. It was folks that were experiencing homelessness, both the victim and the suspect. The witnesses and an additional victim in the case were also homeless, which made it very, very difficult. There was a complete case of who done it. We didn't know the name of the victim. We didn't know the name of the victim. We didn't know the name of the suspect. And so this required really a lot of trust on the part of the unhoused folks that had to rely on us for their safety, even as they knew that the suspect had gotten away. And he'd gotten away with the weapon. So our detectives and the officers in downtown worked tirelessly throughout that weekend. And in under 48 hours, the homicide weapon was recovered and the suspect was arrested. And again, wouldn't have been able to do those things, had the witnesses and the victims in that case, there were two victims, the victim that survived, wouldn't have cooperated and trusted the police department that case, there were two victims, the victim that survived, wouldn't have cooperated and trusted the police department that we could safeguard their safety through that two-day period that the suspect was at large. A second case, also tragic. Department of Complex at Lincoln in Broadway, this is a domestic violence case. Again, a neighbor recognized that something was wrong. And trusted the police department enough to call 911 and let us know what was happening. We arrived within four minutes. We often hear how there's a breakdown in 911 and the translation from the call arriving, being dispatched and everything else. We arrived within four minutes. We didn't know that this was a homicide scene. We thought we were responding to just essentially a suspicious activity, maybe a domestic violence, someone screaming. We took the suspect in the custody in that case within five minutes of our arrival. And it happened because the person had called and the person that had contact with the officers when they first arrived said, this suspect that looks like this wearing this and this just ran out the door. And the officers are arriving, see the guy and initiate the pursuit and take him into custody. Again, within five minutes. Now, I've made kind of a point to talk about the fact that a lot of these cases occurred at night and that it required a lot of trust on the part of the community in order for us to be successful. So the success that I've outlined is due to the leadership of our command staff, for sure. Deputy Chief Derek Jacob, Captain Cooper Rubius, and Captain Cooper Rubius, by the way, is the first female captain to run operations since 2004. Operations in patrol is one of the toughest and most demanding areas of the police department. Captain Rodriguez and Lieutenant Lucio to name a few. And then there are our officers. They are brave courageous women and men that start their shift at two o'clock in the afternoon. At roll call followed by another group of officers that started at six o'clock in the afternoon at roll call, followed by another group of officers that started at six o'clock in the evening. This does not count. The added officers work in on overtime details or the dark team and does not factor in the traffic safety officers, the public safety officers, that roam our city late at night and early into the morning. I can't tell you how many times they've risked their life and their safety to bring a suicidal person off a ledge, or the many times that they've had an armed encounter with a suspect wielding a knife or a gun and brought these events to safe to a safe conclusion. Just two nights ago, we had a serious traffic accident involving a motorcycleist. Our officer was the first one on scene and began to render life-saving aid to the victim who had suffered serious, a serious pelvic injury that was bleeding. I watched the video of this and I just hope that the woman does not lose her leg. It was that bad of an injury and our officer was the first one unseen. His actions cut the woman alive until the fire department arrived. Now watching our officers' actions on body-worn camera is beyond words. Their heroism and determination would make you proud. Now, this does not universally happen across the country. There are many times our officers have seen something firsthand in assault or thieves stealing catalytic converters or committing a burglary and their timing is perfect. They see something that's out of place, they get out of the car and start talking to people. In broad daylight we're in the middle of the night. But the other very important time we are successful is when our citizens, our residents, take notice of something that is out of place, something that is not right, and they call 911, they call the police. This again is not normal in many parts of the country. It requires a great deal of trust in the members of the community to call the police. Any city across the country where crime is rampant is an area where the citizens have stopped trusting their police to purpose, and they stop calling. This is why for us, trust building is paramount. Trust comes from the interaction that we have with our residents. It builds through a series of engagements and successes over time, where we demonstrate that we are competent and even tempered. It is maddening to me that our residents are ever victimized. However, time and again, it has been our officers through their professionalism and focus on getting it right alongside great witnesses that we are able to arrest suspects and return to sole property. It is incredibly gratifying to witness. Given how important trust is, I want to bring attention to the falsehood. The falsehood that our officers are not working at night. It is completely incredulous to fathom that Santa Monica police officers don't work at night. Santa Monica police officers work around the clock. Moreover, the idea that another local police department can come in and provide the same level of service, care, and compassion to the men and women of the Santa Monica police department is something for which I take great exception. As our elected officials, as the long-time architects of this professional police department, you should be outright offended as well. Our Santa Monica police officers risk their lives every day. Their human beings and they deserve our support. We don't need to look very far to recognize that undermining our social contract is inherently dangerous to everyone. This false notion stands to undercut the trust and confidence from our residents. It places everyone and everything that we work for in jeopardy. There is always more to do. I want more officers, I want better equipment and technology. We have to prepare ourselves for the full return of our businesses, our tourism, and our Olympics. Our community safety is foundational to building a stronger and more thriving Santa Monica. In last, our success in accomplishing the work of the peer task force was the net effect to bring a coalition of city departments and businesses together. The business owners hold heartedly and enthusiastically supported the officers and the city through the rigor of their work. I emphasize that the community and business support for the officers is foundational to their success. Now, I just want to show you quickly, these are the officers that work at the Harbor and community services and public services and traffic the traffic officers that work at night. These are the patrol officers that work at night. These are the overtime assignment and the officers that most often work at night. So with that, thank you and if you have any questions I'll take this. Thank you and if you have any questions I'll take this. I'll just conclude I want to thank you Chief very much for the presentation and again I want to be really really clear that Council you've been very clear to us that clean and safe is an absolute priority and you know I could take a moment and reflect on you know going back many months starting with the work on the pier that is evolved to some just tremendous work happening right now in our downtown and prominent area. So I want to thank the chief and the entire city team for the nimbleness, the flexibility, and just really with the persistence that we're approaching these issues. So thank you very much. Yes, thank you, Wayne Chief. So thank you very much. And I just want to emphasize two things. Or let me ask two quick questions. One, we do have police officers at night operating in the city. Isn't that right? Absolutely. And there's no issue that we have police officers operating every night in our city. Is that correct? Absolutely. So it's a lie to say that we don't. Is that correct? Thank you. So thank you, Chief, and thank you for this. Yes, Councilmember Brock. I want to simply say thank you to all of the officers and all the support staff of our Santa Monica Police Department. I know they're working hard every day. We all talk to our police officers constantly. We know you're doing your best. And will you please at least convey my, and I think probably the entire council's thanks for doing a great job. You run toward problems when everyone else runs away. Thank you so much. Thank you to our police officers in the back of the room who are there tonight. And thank you to the entire department. You are appreciated by the residents of this city. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Oh, wait. Oh, everybody wants to go. Okay. Councilmember Dela Torri and then Councilmember Davis. Well thank you for that presentation chief. And obviously I think we all agree with Councilmember Brock in our appreciation. I do want to drill down just a little bit because the mayor asked you about police officers working at night. But we do routinely receive complaints. I'll call them that about what is happening specifically in the downtown area and the promenade and in the parking garages. And so could you, I know you mentioned out loud security, but could you very briefly tell us what's going on in that specific area at night so that our constituents can know that in fact there is policing going on in that area late in the evening early morning hours that sort of thing. So the the kinds of cases that I'm reading about and I read about them every morning is where the officers take the time to get out of the car and talk to somebody that's riding their bicycle on the sidewalk at a time when they're not supposed to be. They are driving through the parking garages and making contact with folks who are in the parking garages after hours and it is from these contacts where we're finding out that we have this influx of folks that are walking around with some pretty serious violations. And the officers are out there making contact and arresting these folks when they need to be arrested and then moved out of the city, right? They're taken back to LA or Riverside County or wherever they came from. But that work is going on every single day, every night that occurs. We coordinate, although we don't manage the allied contract, we coordinate with allied security on what they're seeing. If there are spikes in fevery or criminal damage in a particular area, then we direct them towards that. We are working on a plan where we'd like to take over that contract in the future. And certainly we are looking at opportunities to grow the number of security personnel, to also just essentially augment our presence in the promenade, in the parking garages. Well, thank you. You actually answered my second question, which is could you describe maybe what your plans in the near future are to continue what the work you've been describing here, but maybe even also enhance it. But you've answered that question. Thank you. Councilmember Gaila Twerg. All right. There's not a little testing. Okay. Chief, but these are thank you very much for your report. And, you know, I'm sure I can, I speak for all of us and thanking you and acknowledging the hard work of the men and women in the Santa Monica Police Department, putting themselves on the line for our safety every day. So thank you for that. I just wanted to say something about the prevention intervention approach. Those contacts that law enforcement is making with individuals on our streets is preventing, potentially greater crimes because of that type of contact. And I'm trying to figure the incidents that you talked about, I was wondering, how can we prevent those types of incidents? And it's almost impossible, right? You can't be everywhere at all times. But I'm trying to think, I wanted to follow up on that question. When we find someone in the street that is wanted on a, there's a felony that there was a you know I know that there was there's some high profile cases you know people wanted for child molestation people wanted for you know their suspects and homicides and so forth. You said you said that you you you you you make you make an arrest it's tell us a little bit about that process is at that point you make an arrest and and then you take them to another jurisdiction for for booking or how does that work exactly so when we take them into custody then we begin records check on them and that is often when we when we find out that their obscunders parole obscunders wanted felons from other other parts of the county. And that's then how we notify the jurisdiction that has the warrant doubt for the rest, and then they come and pick them up and take them out of our jurisdiction. Okay, great. And then just, and this is a question for our city attorney, city attorney Douglas Sloan. Have we seen an uptick and, you know, prosecutions or enforcement within the city attorney Douglas Sloan. Have we seen an uptick in and you know prosecutions or enforcement Within within the city attorney's office as well. I mean it would I would I would think that there's a corresponding part You know to the city attorney's office of what we're seeing on our streets. Is that correct? The case filings are about double what they were even a few months ago our prosecutors are maxed out Okay, great. Well, that's that's good to know because that data doesn't lie. For people in the community who feel that, you know, we're not really, you know, developing a robust sort of public safety plan. I think it's very important for us to understand from both city departments that this is not the case, that we are, you know, addressing these issues, these public safety issues with a lot of rigor. And I think, to me, from being in this position, hearing all the issues that we see in the community, people come to us, a city council member's right to complain, to tell us, hey, things are not going so well. Today, I would say that for me since I was elected this is the first time that I feel assured that we're being a lot more aggressive in our approach and that that aggressiveness is not to violate anybody's rights, but to try to prevent some serious crimes from happening and from our residents to be and also those who are visiting our city to be victimized, you know, by people that don't have the best intentions when they come to our city. So thank you very much for the work that you all are doing. And I'll be clear that there's still much more work to do. Always, we're not, you know, we have a lot to do and that is continuous. Thank you. Councillor Member, Nick Reddy. That is continuous. Thank you. Councilmember Ngueradi. Does this go on when I start to push your mic? Hello. Okay. Thank you as well. I don't want to deliver that but thank you to you the chief and the police department as you know the entire force. How long have you been here, Chief? Ten months. Okay, and since January and the last eight months, how many officers have we hired? We are doing pretty well. I think that I just saw the number this morning. I know. He's saying that. It's more than that. No, no, it's way more than that. Because there was five more. We were like at 14 new officers. With the prospect of probably another nine more, four more this month. So yeah, we're just about 14. And then with that being said, how many officers did we hire in the last, I don't know, three years if you had to compare that? So the number just came to me. It's 18. We've hired 18. It's 18. Let's say 18. So you've been here 10 months. We've hired 18 new officers within that time frame. And I know that it was said before that was in the last two years. I think we hired less than that. Is that true? No. 12. So that's obviously going to take some time to see in the streets and I would say that we are addressing this quickly and we're responding to the community but we're going to continue to see the results of hiring all these officers I would imagine soon. So we're hiring a balance of brand new officers having to go through 18 months of training and some lateral officers that we were able to turn around and put it back on the street like within a few months as compared to 18 months and it's a balance of those two. So we're hired 18. One didn't make it through training so we've got 17 of those and we're on schedule to hire nine more by the end of the year. That's awesome and something I just wanted to point out, if you could just discuss a little bit about our hiring practices and our standards in Santa Monica, maybe as it relates to other cities, maybe not, but just our standards here in Santa Monica. So I've had the opportunity to make my way around LA County and certainly around the country. And I can tell you that our officers are incredibly professional. And I will never sacrifice the type of person or the kind of quality that we want, the qualities that we want in our officers. We want people that are courageous and compassionate that can think under feet that are highly educated. Because those are the people that are then getting out there and providing the kind of results that I'm talking about. where in other parts of the country we're not seeing those things and the outcomes are tragic, traumatic. We're human beings and we're going to make mistakes and I'll be the first one to get up here and acknowledge that when that happens to us. But by and large this police department that was put together through the hard work of a lot of people and folks in elected office like yourselves over the course of many decades. Now yield us this amazing culture and this amazing police department with very high standards. And again, we're human beings and we're going to make mistakes, but this department gets it right more often than that. I just wanted to say in closing, would you agree? I've heard this statement brought up many times that the police department and other departments often reflect the community and the community's needs and wants. And so for a long time, you know, what we've seen or maybe what's come to a head now that we're addressing is maybe a reflection of the direction we were going in terms of how we wanted our police officers to address things and how we wanted to use other departments in combination to address the issues we're seeing now as it pertains to mental health. And now that we're we've reassessed and the community is asking for something different, it has taken some time but we are definitely responding to that. I mean is that a fair statement? Absolutely. We are definitely responding and we're definitely evolving. And there's more to do. Thank you. Thanks Chief. Madam Clerk. I guess I would like to ask if anyone has anything report on travel. Yes I do. First on August, I have two things to report on. First on August 4th, I attended the installation for the LA County Division of the League of California cities. And it was a worthwhile affair. It was in Diamond Bar. There were council members and mayors from throughout Southern California. I am, was installed as a regional director of the LA County Division for this coming year. The head of the League of Cities for LA County is Andrew Chiu, Andrew Chow, who is the Mayor Pro Temma Diamond Bar, and there are council members on it from Rolling Hills, Lakewood, Bell, Calabas, South Pasadena, Hidden Hills, Santa Clarita, Rosemead, and more. So it was a very good evening. I sat with Hilda Solis, honored to sit with her for the evening, and thought it was a really worthwhile event that was on August 4th in Diamond Bar. I then traveled to Coronado. August 12 to 14th and attended the Independent Cities Association Summer Seminar, which I will tell you was as close to today college course as possible. And I want to really thank one of our my fellow council members is a director of that organization on the board of directors from Santa Monica and Christine Parra. Thank you for helping put together a really informative, wonderful session. We had 10 seminars in those two days. Everything from a seminar on water use to the state and our land use policies. We talked about taking fire department in the 21st century. That was with the fire chief from Redondo Beach. Beverly Hills led a focus on crime. There were people there on water. There was a wonderful session on hydrogen. And it was made more personal because the day before my mother who bought a hydrogen car wanted me to go with her that morning to see how the car was refilled. So we went to the station and she was so proud to take me and I was so sleepy to go as 8 a.m. and we get there and of course the hydrogen station is out of service. And so I called the call line on there which happened to be the president of the hydrogen company was at that seminar in Coronado. I was able to tell him about that fact that someone actually answered their phone. Hydrogen station wasn't working, but it was restored two hours later. My mother got fuel on her own. And so hydrogen, police, a seminar on fire, seminar on what are we going to do about water? There were 10 seminars total. I thought it was well worth while. I'm happy to share information from any of those. Oh, the keynote speaker. So I was going to bring the books to show you, but I highly recommend, I don't know if I'm allowed to recommend this, but the seminar was on the least of us, two tales of America and hope in the time of fentanyl and meth. And it was an amazing hour and a half from a former Los Angeles Times reporter who had just spent two years researching a book on the effects of fentanyl and meth on our streets in Los Angeles and throughout the nation. And I can't tell you how valuable that was. Thank you for reminding me. But I have both of his books now, autographss and I'm trying to read one of them right now So very informative. Thank you very much. It was very much like a college course I thank you to the city council for having me attend and then finally I will be getting an award I Don't know if I deserve an award, but I'll be getting an award at the League of California City's Convention in September and Long Beach. Thank you. And what award is that? Councilmember Brock. If I could remember, I would have said it right then. I have to look it up in my email. So thank you. Thank you for embarrassing me there. So easy. No, not always. I will. For the court. Yeah, so by the way, if anybody is here on item. Nine a nine a has been withdrawn by the appellant and we will not be hearing it so you can go home, do whatever you want. Why did you do not have to be here if you're here on item 9A? Mayor, while you're making announcements, I want to also let those of you that signed up for item 10F, that item is a second reading so there is no public input on it. And I believe it's the petty cap, second reading so there is no public input on it. And I believe it's the petty cap, second reading. So I just want to make that announcement. Okay, let's move on to the consent calendar. All items will be considered and approved in one motion unless removed by a council member for discussion. And in accordance with charter section 615, the adoption of all ordinances and resolutions shall be by reading of the title only unless a council member present descents. Now do any council members want to pull any items? Council member Brock. I wish to pull 5L, 5M, 5M. 5M and 5N is that what you're saying? Yes. Councillor Member Parra. People the same one. I wanted to pull 5M. Great. Okay. And now other items to be pulled. Councillor Memme just want to move the rest of the consent calendar So moved Thank you moved by Negretti seconded by Dayla Tory. Let's have a roll call vote I'm just a second here. I want to pull the items. Okay. Council member Dela Tori. Yes. Council member Brock. Yes. Mayor Potemma-Cowin. Yes. Council member Brunegrette. Yes. Council member Davis. Yes. Council member Paura. Yes. And Mayor Hillenrich. Yes, so that passes unanimously. So the first item that we pulled was 5L. It's approval of third modification of agreement with Hootsuite for social media management software. Now it's pulled by Councillor Member Brock. So we don't have a staff report on this item but we're happy to answer any questions that you have, council member. I have gotten a request from a couple of residents about this item and if you could just explain the cost of Hoot Suite versus the use of it to help social media and a little bit about the social media program the city puts out. Yeah, sure. Happy to do that, Councilmember Brock. So Hoot Suite is an essential tool that the city uses in the city manager's office but also citywide. It allows us to reach the broadest audience possible through The city uses the city manager's office but also city wide. It allows us to reach the broadest audience possible through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It allows all city departments to collaborate, to share content and critically in times of crises. With one effort we can reach an audience of 108,000 which is just over our resident population through all of the city's 45 social media platforms. So the cost is around $39,000 annually. We've had Hootsuite since 2016. Everybody across the city is well trained on the platform and it's something we use every day. Without it, we wouldn't be able to schedule content on the weekends, let's say. We wouldn't be able to schedule content on the weekends let's say we wouldn't be able to have you know city planning sharing content with the city's main Facebook Twitter and Instagram and that's true across all different departments. So it's really a critical tool and it's a cost saver for us or a time saver and yeah it's really important. Personally. Well, sorry, yeah. Whoot sweet saves time from having like an individual, right? I mean, just on average, what would it cost to have somebody manage those multiple accounts? If you had to guess what that position would be like. I mean, I kind of know what those positions go for, but. Yes. I mean, it's a huge time saver. I would say, you know, social media currently is about 60% of someone's time. If that person had to be posting natively on every single one of the platforms, you know, I would say it would be, you know, triple that position with benefits and the whole. Absolutely. Absolutely. Councillor Neill, the auditorium. Yes, thank you. Thank you for bringing the sound forward. About $39,000 annually doesn't sound like a lot considering you know if you hired one person to manage all that it would be upwards to 80,000 probably right so That sounds sounds right the question I have is it's an 11 year contract and with technology changing all the time Do you feel confident that that that will be able to have that this that this service will Not have a competitor that is better and and and and we would be locked into an 11-year contract. I mean, from what we've been using it for six years, so this gives us the capacity to use it for an additional five. And from all of my experience across these different social media management platforms, Hootsuite is absolutely meeting our needs and always evolving with trends and what's possible on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and so it really is something that we've seen a lot of value in using. Great, so you feel confident that they're making the right investments, the right research, best practices for us to keep this contract going. I do. Thank you. Council Member Brock. I move this forward. Move that we approve. Second. Move by Brock, seconded by Negretti. Let's have a roll call vote. Councillor Member De La Torre. Yes. Councillor Member Brock. Yes. Mayor Patina Callan. Yes. Councillor Member Negretti. Yes. Councillor Member Davis. Yes. Councillor Member Paran. Yes. Councillor Member Negrette. Yes. Councillor Member Davis. Yes. Councillor Member Parra. Yes. And Mary Hemmerich. Yes, so that passes 7-0. May we have the next item, please? Next is 5-M. It's award bid and enter into an agreement with Badger Inc. for AMI smart water meters and cloud-based interface. And Councillor Marrake pulled it off. Item. So again, Councillor Apologis, we don't have and cloud-based interface and Councilmember Barrack pulled out item. So again, Council I apologize. We don't have a presentation for this item, but we have all your questions. If you have any questions, we're happy to answer them for you. So I received a comprehensive set of answers this afternoon from staff, but for the residents who wrote in about this, I'd appreciate if you'd give them somewhat of that same two or three paragraph summary. Sure. What this is for and what it doesn't do versus what it will help us accomplish. So good evening. Thank you so much. No problem. Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem council members I'm signing laying the city's water resources manager. We actually just uploaded a slide deck, a couple slides. If that's okay, we can show that away. Answer the question. I think we take the opportunity to show our residents what this technology and portal maybe they look like. Sorry, I just uploaded that maybe 30 minutes ago. I think did you see a five M on there? Oh, maybe I put it wrong. Can I put it in my laptop? Okay. Oh, you got it? Okay. Thank you. So this is just a brief overview of the AMI smart water meter technology and implementation. I don't think it's projected on there. Sorry. All right. So this is a slide we actually share from about March 2021 when we're looking at outside funding. And this is a project that's also funded by the Water Revenue Bonds that was issued last August. So the current meter infrastructure, we have over about 18,000 meters that are manly red on a 60 day cycle. So what that means is that meter in your water usage is read once every 60 days. That just takes how long for our staff to make it around to read it again. So what does AMI smart water meter offers is provide our customers with real time water consumption data for both the customer as well as for us. So we can see leak alerts on our side and notify the customers that they don't see it. Previous studies and pilot studies have saw about a 5 to 7 percent in water savings. This water savings really on the customer side for residential leaks is not really in our system. This is helping the customers to save money so they don't go with the water leak that's undetected for up to 60 days. So really this is the benefit of our customers and residential water leaks. It also provides a more efficient billing process, customer self-user monitoring, and improve accuracy and meter reads. I believe this is the question Council member Brock that you're asking is what does the 13.5 million go towards for this contract award? The CIP budget for this contract was 15 million that was sent to Water Revenue Bonds. The total cost of a board is 13.5. This came in about 1.5 million under. We'll be budgeted. What that for 13 have breaks out into about 4.9 million or so is for replacement of roughly 12,000 meters so that they're compatible with the AMI technology as well as the transmitters and transmit that data. The second is the 6.4 million or so is for the labor cost to install these meters replace meter lid meter boxes staging storage for the construction data migration to our building system and also conducting a material survey of the pipe material to make sure we don't have led service line in the water distribution system to comply with regulatory requirements. And about 430 k source project management technical support and launching the new customer portal. And we have about 1.8 million or so in project contingency of about 15% of the cost because they are unpredictable the unpredictability of supply chain these days of cost and unforeseen constructions when they're out replacing the meter box from meter lid. So we put a higher contingency on the typically wood. We typically will provide a 10%, but given the unknown nature of the market right now, we increased that to 15%. And then on an annual basis, over five years, you'll have a maintenance cost for them to host that software, that portal for our customers. Over that five year period that's about 300K. We did take the anacostate escalated over five years for that service. And just to give a preview of what the portal looks like, this is when a customer logs into their account. This is what they see. So you see in the top left, that red number, this compares the current seven days to the last seven days. So this current seven days are using a little bit more water than the last seven days. So you can compare your water usage on a weekly even daily basis. The bottle monthly compares the month of this year, 2022 to the previous year of 2021. You can see this account. There was an increase of water use in April and May that was attributed to a water leak. That was detected to this, but it did still use quite a bit of water. So you're able to compare your statistics. And this is for a multifamily unit. That was 12 units. So this isn't for a single family home. This was for a apartment complex or condo complex in our pilot study. And then the chart on the right, the summarizes the water users for each single day in July. From July 1st to July 31st, and you can see a user's pattern between a week day and a weekend, a watering day, and a non-watering day, and how much water you're using. And this portal, well, this is also just a snapshot of hourly. You can look at your water use for that day. So this is really the benefit of this technology is you're a giga-liquiler now in 24 hours. If you have a leak in your system, you can start looking at if it's a toilet leak, if it's a leak in your irrigation line, rather than waiting for the high build to show up to notify you of that water leak. And the next slide is just the customer report on the app. So you could also use this on your phone, which we find it to actually be more user friendly from the app. So these are just different screenshots that we took from the app. This is the same account that's comparing this week's water used to last week on the image on the left. In the middle image, you could actually look through how your water used. So the lighter colors are showing the days are using more water, right? And what I want to point on the bottom right, you see those four dots with a little circle on there, that's indicating days when there was a water leak that was detected. And if you zoom into that month of December 2021, the last four days signifies there was a leak detected estimated about 500 gallons of water will last to that leak. But that problem was resolved within five days. It took a little longer because you have to go around and ask everybody to check within their units as a 12 unit complex, as I mentioned. So it took some time to find that leak. But that's five day detecting a leak is much better than say 60 days being notified of that. Thank you. I just have a couple slides. I would feel like it's important to share with our customers. Yes, Councilmember Brock. So I think that's great. I know that there are a lot of apartment owners, a lot of residents who would still hope that we could find a way to remeter or at least on new buildings that are we are we indeed installing water meters per unit and all the units that have gone up on Lincoln Boulevard on on 5th and 6th do they all have individual meters. So for the new construction I forgot that exact year just occurred after you're required to have submetering if you have six units over. So those submeters are managed by the property though they're not managed by the city so we still maintain a master meter and then they're required to manage the sub meter and after that and the challenges as because the infrastructure the space that you have in the streets of those meters is limited. Does the AMI structure allow the landlord to see the results of each of those sub-meters as well? No, so once again, AMIs on our side, those sub-meters are managed and maintained by them and whatever technology they choose. The AMIs only for the master meter. But the landlord is still responsible for paying all the water or because they have a sub-meter does the tenant pay that water then. That depends on the complex how each management company manages. But it's not easy with city regulations. No, we only interface with them on the master meter. Because the overall issue still is that when you want people to conserve and we can use general urging. Yes. But in reality, if a tenant doesn't like his landlord, he can just walk out the door and the morning leave a shower on 24 hours a day and the landlord gets hit. Yeah, with this case, at least the landlord will know on their master's unit that there's that. But if that's the case, that's fortunate. That's not something we get involved in in those tenant landlord, I mean, those disputes, right? That's out of our hands. Okay. Councillor Member Dela Torre. Yes it seems like the unit per cost is about a thousand seventy nine per meter is that does that ring a boat with you. If you include like labor install all in yeah but the actual meter cost is about three hundred ninety four hundred dollars per meter from the actual meter in the transmitter. And have we tracked, or have we looked at this service in other cities and see how it's compared to costs and so forth and we're getting a competitive rate here in Santa Monica? Yes, we are. Because we currently buy these meters on a regular basis from our replacement program. So there's no way to really mark that up because we know what that costs every year for us and we do our meter replacements. So there really isn't a way, I guess they can't really cheat us. I guess that's what I was saying on the raw material cost. And then we do through the competitor bidding process on the labor. That's where the differences are. And we did select essentially the lowest bidder. The lowest bid that was received, that bid did not include the meters. It only included the service and the transmitter. So that's why that bid was so low and we considered that to be not comprehensive for the scope that was needed. And in terms of the service of those meters, is that included in the contract for? Yeah, the actual meters in terms of service. Yes, that's correct. And how many years is that? A typical meter has a life about 10 to 15 useful life. Oh, okay. Yeah. And then it also is a true that it depends on Wi-Fi service as well. And is the city's Wi-Fi capacity? No, it doesn't use Wi-Fi. It uses a cellular. It's the same as our cell phone. So it uses the 4G network. Okay. And it transmits single once a day. We have an experience of major problems here in Santa Monica with that. No, unless it's like a major cell outage that all of us have the same problems. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councillor Member Par. Hi, Thinay. Thank you. So I just had one question. Under the discussion, this year. Discussion portion of the report in under additional services. There was, it said that additional services offered by Badger. It says includes a two-year cellular subscription fee and conducting a service line material survey during meter replacement for both the public and private side of the water service connection to replace lead service lines in compliance with EPA's lead and copper rule revisions. So if a homeowner's property is surveyed and is found to have a lead service line on the private side of the property, what would be their legal obligation as a result of the survey? We would be required to notify them to replace that. That wouldn't be us to replace because we don't replace that pipeline on the residential side of the private side, but we are required to notify them. So they're going to have to do it? Yes, because it does present a public health impact on. No, I mean, I understood, but here we are in the midst of inflation recovering from COVID. And so do you know what the approximate cost is to replace a service line for like a single family home? I do not, because that depends on what that line is under. If it's like grass, it's easy to dig up, but it's under pavement, that's, like say, your driveway. That would be much more expensive to dig up. So it's like dirt, grass, it's easy to dig up, but it's under pavement. That's, I say, your driveway. That would be much more expensive to dig up. So it's a range that I can't comment on. I don't have that data, unfortunately, on what that would be. There are grants out there to help facilitate up to the EPA, because they are in the effort to try to replace all these lead service line because of the contamination to challenges it poses. And when are you planning on moving this forward? Like went like to do like, for example. So in terms of survey and identifying, if that's a service line. So it would be done as part of the replacement as we go to each meter box and replace it. So essentially when we take it out, we cut the pipe. So we'll know exactly what's on the line. I'm sorry. When are we going to start the project like city wide? Oh, once we get this gets approved tonight, it usually takes about a month to execute the contract after that we're ready to roll. I'm just, you know, I get it and I understand why. I'm just a little bit concerned about. If I could add a little bit more on the lead service lines to our knowledge, we do not have any lead service lines in the city. This is just an extra measure because we haven't been able to look on the customer side. We've only looked on utility side down the utility side, we do not have lead service line. So this gives an opportunity to not to confirm also on our customer side. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Brock. I move that we award the bid introduce you a greenwood badger fray Am I smart water meters and cloud-based inner face? So moved by Brock seconded by Dela Torrey. Let's have a roll call both I'm sorry. Councillor Mourpara. Yes. Councillor Member Davis. Yes. Councillor Mourpara. Yes. Councillor Mourpara. Yes. Councillor Member Davis. Yes. Councillor Mourpara. Yes. Councillor Mourpara. Yes. Councillor Mourpara. Yes. Councillor Member De La Torre. Yes. And Mary Homo Ridge. Yes. That passes 7-0. Everyone push your button. The included. That would be new mayor proton. Thank you. And let's have the next item, please. Our next item is appointment to one seat for the newly created human services. No, no, no, five in. I'm sorry. We wish, but no, not yet. OK, so we still have, OK, so we have public input. The trees. No, we have five in. Five in. Oh, I'm sorry. Did I skip you? Yeah, anything in there. OK. Sorry, Councilmember Brock. Okay. 5-N is award bid United Pacific Services Inc. for Comprehensive Urban Forest Maintenance Program. And did you have a presentation? No, I did not. So, Matthew, good to see you. I appreciate I see the Urban Forest Maintenance Program. I read it. I'm good with that, but I am struck by the fact that while we lost 250 some odd trees over the last couple of years we were only able to replace that with 450 some odd trees. I know my facts are not exact numbers on that. But what disturbed me is we only have 12% of our city covered in an urban forest canopy. That worries me, because I think we were more four or five years ago when I was on the Recreation and Parks Commission, but regardless of that, I've seen other cities that range as high as 27%. Now, I know we're in a semi-arid, a different type of coastal climate, but what can we do through grants? What can we do through efforts of our residents? What can we do through efforts of our upcoming budget cycles to make sure that we drastically increase the amount of our urban forest canopy which will reduce the need for air conditioning in the city and reduce the effects of severe climate change that are coming. Great. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak a little bit about this and good evening, Mayor, Mayor, Pro-Tam and other council members. So, Council Member Brock is correct. The last study we had on our urban tree canopy was 12% and that was a slight reduction when we looked at data from 2014 to about 2020. The good news is is in the public realm, which is what the public landscape management, public landscape division manages. We have about 36,000 public trees and we've seen that levels slowly go up over the last couple of years. Because what you know, you saw in the data, we always plant more trees than we remove. So you know, and we're trying to be a little bit more consider on our pruning. We've had a history of like very aggressively pruning our trees. We're trying to pull back on that and maybe do less wounding. The good news is, as we've added six acres of urban tree canopy to the public realm over the last six years, the problem we're seeing in that urban tree study, and it's what I've been talking to some of the neighbourhood groups about, is really, in the private realm, we're losing urban tree canopy. And we lost about 33 acres as a whole, but we gained a little bit in some land uses, but on those single family residents zoned lots, we lost 36 acres of urban tree canopy in just six years, which we think is about 3500 trees, approximately, so that's about 580 a year. What I would caution is that we're not going to be able to outplant the loss of trees on the private realm in the public realm. We have a very good level of street trees. We only have about 1,000 vacancies for more street trees. And we're slowly working down on that to try and get us to be a 100% stock. So everywhere we could have a tree, we have a tree. We're also looking at our parks where we can add more trees, but our parks are very heavily used for recreation. So there's lots of sports fields, there's lots of other uses. So if I turn up and I say, hey, I want a new forest and clover park, much as I like it, unfortunately, other people will not like it. And even, you know, we get sometimes complaints saying, why did you put that oak tree in the middle of the field? I always played soccer and so on and so forth. Obviously, the changing of the airport provides us with maybe some opportunity to add a lot of more canopy cover to the city. But in general, I think if we really want to move the needle on canopy cover, then we've got to look what's going on in the private realm. That's really the truth of it. But we can, of of course always make sure that we plant all the opportunities we have in the public realm. We make sure we put the biggest canopy trees we can where we can. We provide good maintenance and I do want to make this point is right now our maintenance budgets are low as well. So I think that it'll be slightly full-hardy to be planting more trees than we can effectively maintain. The urban forest are actually just before I came to this meeting, provided me with a list of all the streets that we had to skip, that we are not pruning at the moment. We've got about 2,000 trees that we should have pruned, that we haven't pruned because we don't have the funding to do it. We used to prune 9,000 trees a year, now we're only pruning 7,000 trees a year, and this new contract will be taking the impact of prevailing wages, which means that all the people doing the work are being paid at a higher level as well. So I would say that yes, we need to get tree planting, we need to plant as much as we can, but we also need to look at how we maintain those trees and make sure that our maintenance budgets are healthy, and that we can make sure the trees on our streets are also safe. Yes. Okay. No, go ahead. Yes, Councilmember Davis. So I'm not sure where to direct this, but I've been on the council long enough to know that periodically we ask the question about having a private tree ordinance because you mentioned that we're losing our tree canopy not in the public realm but on private land. Does anybody happen to know do we have an update on where when we might see a private tree ordinance? So actually there is a big problem with the private tree ordinance in light of the latest round of housing bills because a private tree ordinance is considered a hindrance to creation of more housing. So I think that there is some concern that the private tree bill will not pass muster versus the housing bills. I've been told by people who are specialists in planning, right, and land use planning, that the latest group of housing bills will not allow us to preserve private property trees. Yeah, looks like the city manager might have some. So I don't have an update for you at this time, but I'm more than happy to follow up and get an update for you. I think it's a good idea to have a good time. Yeah, looks like the city manager might have some. So I don't have an update for you at this time, but I'm more than happy to follow up and get an update for you so I can be responsive to you directly. Yeah, I mean, because well, I appreciate what the mayor's saying a number of cities do have private tree ordinances and to my knowledge, many of them actually have compliant housing So the problem is not the current housing element or the problem is now creating a private tree ordinance. Well, right. Okay. Well, in any event of staff can get back to us with an update on the status of a potential private tree ordinance. I think that would be great because if that is in fact the case, then we should know that so we can tell people that. And if that's not the case and I'd like to, you you know because it sounds like that is the issue we need to address it's not the public realm but the private realm and if we have some flexibility any flexibility to do something like that I think we should think about it. Thank you. Yes council member Brock. So what I'm hearing is something I've said before and I know we've talked about in the past is making sure residents are energized to both plant trees on their private property and ask the city if they see an empty tree well. they even pay for that tree if you can maintain it. And how can they plan to tree on the public realm? How can they help? Because our trees, our public forest, is all to our benefit and all of our responsibility. So I know I've pushed before and we've done this on Arbor Day every year where we've invited the volunteer service groups to help get out and plant trees with us. And I hope we're going to resume that next March or next April. So we can make sure we keep our tree city USA in Cygnia. But I just wanted to make sure while I'm absolutely in favor of this, I'd like to know are we still, you mentioned we're short on funds. How much are we still short on funds to make up for the trees that the 2000 trees we're not doing? What do we need? around $300,000 a year that would be primarily focused on maintenance. So primarily on operating crews. You'll make that request to City Manager White for the mid-year budget, I'm sure. And lastly, we had the beginnings of a private three-ordance. It was stopped because of the coming of the pandemic and lack of staff, but that is still out there. It just needs to be reactivated. Correct. It needs to be revisited. That would be correct. Okay. So, yes, I would also second Council Member Davis that I'd like to know if there is indeed a legal impediment to having a private tree ordinance or not. And I thank you for this impromptu presentation. It's always appreciated. Thank you so much, Matthew. Oh. Quick question. You know, go ahead. I've noticed in a couple of areas throughout the city that were some trees were removed for in one case a car crashed into a couple of trees to a tool amount. And they replaced it with trees that are not sort of the type that you know that already is there. So it's like they put a eucalyptus tree where there was another type of tree you know. And I'm trying I'm I'm trying, are we going away? I mean, we're not going away from that practice of trying to keep sort of a... No, that's correct. We've been in our master plan, which we work very hard with the Urban Forest Task Force on, and we have a species subcommittee. So we've selected every single species, basically, for every single location we plant public trees. If we've changed species, it means that the species was there before. Is either not available, or we don't plant it anymore, or we're concerned about the drought that it's not going to do well in the future. So we are making slight tweaks. The other thing is, for example, is like, Ficus trees. Sometimes we will plant them on the sidewalks we're too small, so we've kind of changed from replanting fecustries on many of those streets. But overall, we are maintaining avenues. We like that look in Santa Monica. It also helps us with the maintenance of the trees and also in terms of replanting programs. It makes it simpler as well. Great. I'm glad to hear that. And then the other question I had was, you know, the side of the freeway. That's not that's not we don't that's not our responsibility for the pruning of those trees and so forth right and what's the I heard it was is it the Cal expo or Cal trans as Cal trans and do we keep constant communication with them around sort of the maintenance of their landscape and all that yeah I don't personally but we do have communications with them because we often have you you know, crossing issues with trash and things like that. You know, sometimes if we have one of our trees that goes down on a street or whatever they help us with the road closures and things like that. And also we use, they have a, just like we have 3-1-1, they also have a long online portal. So if there's problems with trees on the side of the freeways, people can use their portals to submit a work claim. Just like they do right now for us, using 3-1-1. Yeah, that's good to know, because there's been a lot of issues, not just with trees with other, you know, with humans, you know, leaving a lot of trash on the side of the freeways and stuff that we need to coordinate a little bit better on. But I'm glad that you all have communication on that but I have some issues that I'll follow up with you know later. Thanks. Thank you. Council member Brock. In reflecting on comment I heard earlier I want to make a comment then I'll move approval but it seems rather counterproductive to me that anyone would say that we prioritize nature, that if we do prioritize nature and prioritize the growth of our urban tree canopy, it would interfere with our plan to cram the city with more concrete and mental housing structures. I would think we would be able to do both successfully. We can build affordable housing. But while we build affordable housing, we have to make sure that those residents have a good place to live, that includes trees and nature around them. I move approval. approve approval. Second. Second. Moved by Brock. Second and by yet. Second. Thank you. Okay, great. Let's have a roll call vote. Fuck. Council Member De La Torre. Yes. Council Member Brock. Yes. You're up to wait. Yes. You're up to Tim McAllen. Yes. Council Member Gratte. Yes. Yeah, wait. Yes. We're about Tim McCowen. Yes. Council member Greta. Yes. Council member Davis. Yes. Council member Parra. Yes. And Mary Helmerich. Yes. So that passes unanimously. And let's call the next item please. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, Matt. Next we have public input. And this is on the remainder of the agenda. And so Mayor, do you have the name? Do you want me to call them? I'm sorry. So I have Barbara Flemette, Matthew M a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have flametta, Barbara flametta, Matthew Millen, Jay Johnson, and then Denise McGrannahan. There are more than that? Yes. Okay, well those four, anyway, you can line up against the wall and Ms. Flametta, please, you can come to the microphone and speak please. You'll have two minutes. Thank you. Yes, hi. And you were on item, yes, which item are you really sure? To be honest, before you start my time, I was told that to speak for two minutes happened at seven o'clock. That's correct. Oh, but when I came here they told me I had to be here at 5.30. So I'm okay. Oh, were you here for general public comment? Yes. So you weren't here to talk about any items on the agenda? It was two people's ad mention it. So, why don't you tell me the general's. Yeah, okay. So anyway, my name is Barbara Fiametta. If you could just give me a little extra time. I'm home, okay, I'm homeless. I just forgive me, I've never done this before. The issue that I'm here for for myself and for other people that are in a category that's not on the beach, but have degrees up the kazoo and have fallen in the cracks. And I'm a, hello everybody. The problem that I've had is I actually came up after eight years on a list for an apartment for low income, which I was thrilled after eight years of housing street, the whole thing, hiding from police when people are asking, do you know police? So my mind said it's different like like I don't want them to know. There's an issue with the homeless registry. I use this term is I immediately submitted my applications, got everything in, and then was told I had to be on this homeless registry. And I have gone to every agency I have spoken to all your employees in this building, housing everybody, and no one really knew what this was. I was looking at as an entity list of its own. I did bring papers for you. I will burden you with it right now. But so the issue I have is, well, let just back a minute, it's very difficult. I know it's COVID, I know you guys have so much on your plate. To negotiate business in the building, there's no one in the offices, they're not answering phones, everything's email, so it's been really hard to communicate, but I did submit my application And then everything was going great. I'm sorry, I'm nervous. Mayor, I called you the day before my papers would do. In desperation, do you know what this homeless registry is? I didn't speak to you. I spoke to your secretary. And the next day, as I handed in my papers, we'll put it to civil war. We are keep going, keep going. As I was in my papers, I got a email from Ms. Phillips. I don't know if you mentioned names. Anyway, all of a sudden, this piece of paper came out of the blue. It wasn't an official form or anything, and it just listed some items that might help with this homeless registry process. It's actually a process, not a list. So I hear that this is a complicated story. So I'm going to ask you to do two things. I'm going to ask you to give your name to our Assistant City Manager who will take it and we will follow up with you. That's number one. And number two, after she is done speaking, I think that, yes, speak to Denise McGrannahan and she'll be able to help you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. And now, Matt Millen, please. Thank you, Ms. Flemette. Sorry. Yes, Mr. Millen. Good evening, Matthew Millen, Pico-Nabled resident, a member of progressive landlords. 10G. This proposal is a typical example of government abuse of power. My tenant's current maximum allowable rent is $819 a month. The 6% increases $49 a month. If she states in writing she cannot afford an additional $49 a month, she does not have to pay any rent until September 2023. The city has plenty of money to give the tenant $49 a month. But the city has wasted huge amounts of money. The previous council spent an estimated $20 million paying private attorneys to fight the Pico-Nabird civil rights voting case. A few years ago, the previous council passed a xenophobic racist law requiring all leases to be for one year. That the ten must declare the apartment will be their principal dwelling place. And the unit cannot be furnished. A violation can result in six months in the gulag. This law stops rental housing providers from renting to foreign students with F1 visas, non-citizens with temporary work visas, and nurses who want to come here and work at the hospital. A lawsuit was filed in federal court challenging this unifobic ordinance and the plaintiffs wanted to take the deposition of the author of the ordinance. This city spent thousands of dollars hiring a private attorney to oppose the taking of discovery in the case and lost the motion. This person lives in the economically gated North of Montana neighborhood and could have hired his own lawyer. City money was wasted. My request is the City not enact this ordinance and instead provide funds to help tenants pay the rental increase. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Miller. Mr. Johnson. Good evening. Okay. Council members, Jay Johnson, former chair of the Santa Monica Ranking Control Board, progressive landlords of Santa Monica, item 10G and H. On brief review, we would support most of the ordinance in rent control in general. The rent board spent years refining their regulations that cover most of the language, eliminate the duplication. We recommend tabling this motion until the next council meeting to consult with stakeholders. Since the city attorney will be the enforcer, will the rent board lose jurisdiction. Mediation and arbitration clauses are needed to avoid lawsuits. The proposed ordinance gave us one day notice where stakeholders consulted. was rent control consulted to avoid any conflicts. The ordinance applies to all rentals, including those built after 1979 exempt from rent control pricing. State law AB 1482 already covers key items in this new ordinance to locations. Please remove the prohibition on fee shifting, by its new words for efforts to logically avoid lawsuits between landlords and tenants, a laudable goal. Permit owners to amend leases to reduce attorney fees to zero. Each pays their own cost to prevent attorney fee abuses. Judges have punished some attorneys for small settlements but large legal fees. Existing bad-faith city definition needs expanded clarification to accommodate the real world. Add landlord protections from litigous tenants, harassment and abuse, which is also needed. Delete the prohibition of pay rent or quit notices, which are used for late or non-payment of rent. It's an important tool owners have to enforce the on time payments. Delete the use of self-certification, which has been ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court. This ordinance must have protections for both owners and tenants. It must not contravene or duplicate state law 1482 or rent board regulations. It's one sided open to abuse and biased against owners. Since this is based on declaration of emergency, where is the sunset clause? We recommend tabling the next council meeting. Commit consultation with stakeholders. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Our next speaker is Denise McGrannahan. And thank you for being here tonight, Ms. McGrannahan. You're welcome. Good evening, council members and mayor. So, Lafla is in favor of the proposed ordinance to provide a more train amount of evictions regarding the 6% increase. We are very concerned that our clients won't be able to receive rental assistance in time for a three-day notice. In other words, the three-day notice will expire beforehand. And we have seen a lot of people who have been offered rent relief in the last four or five months where landlords, if it's past the three days, they just won't take it and the tenants forced to move. The cell certification is critical to this working. It doesn't mean that if the tenant isn't being honest, that it wouldn't be discovered in court because ultimately it's a rebuttable presumption and the court would then find that out. But we haven't discovered that as being a problem. With respect to the amendments to 4.28.03O, the Anna discrimination code, Leffla's also in favor of spelling out more clearly what things are considered to be refusing to accept a section 8 voucher. So delays are really common. Landlords won't hold units for section 8 tenants. They will for non-section 8 tenants, and they figure if they can just maybe put the papers on the back of a turtle, they'll never get to the housing authority in time or the tenant to lease up. And it does take longer to lease up with Section 8, which is another issue. One that might be able to be addressed with more technology, I think, possibly through the website. But in any event, we have all kinds of games that people play. We call that WAP the MOL game. In my trainings, I give to like social service agencies. I'm like, okay, we're not holding the unit for you. You need to get pre-approval. So I would like to have. Yeah, so finish your sentence. Yeah, provision to make it including by not limited to under subsection I so that in case there are other which there are other types of ways that landlords violate this law, we would be able to, they would be in confessed. So I just want to make sure the city attorney caught that on section I it should say including but not limited to is that what you're yeah That's what I'm saying. I mean I have other things I could say but I ran out of time but thank you very much. Thank you very much well And is that the end of our speakers on that item madam clerk? item. Madam Clerk. Yeah I see them they're under the individual it's so weird because those are all under one item. Okay I get it so the fact they're under these items is insignificant. Okay so the next speakers will be and I'm sorry now I understand Mike Butler, Hillary Brown and Jonathan Foster if he can line up against the wall and they'll be followed by Mike Veschel. I hope I said that right. Joanday Jysinski, Justin and Justin Boltz, but you don't need to line up now. And here we go. So our first speaker is Mike Butler. And you're here on 10C, is that right? That's right, yeah. Okay, good. Mayor Pro Tem and Council, my name is Mike Butler. I'm a Santa Monica resident and a member of a bird's government partnerships team. I here to speak in support of staffs, proposed long-term mic mobility program as a business with over 130 employees in and around Santa Monica. We're excited about the prospect of reentering our hometown and serving the Santa Monica community. We recognize that the relationship between the city and bird has been strained in the past. However, we're determined to rebuild our partnership with Santa Monica. Since bird introduced eScooters in 2017, our business, our operations, our city relationships, and technology have all matured. And a large part due to the lessons that we learned in Santa Monica and feedback that we received from staff and council. As a birthplace of the industry and the reason thousands of cities and hundreds of millions of people now have access to clean electric micromobility Santa Monica is certainly ready to move forward to this next phase. Bird is uniquely positioned to partner with Santa Monica in this next phase. When Bird ended operations in the city in 2021, ridership and the share mobility program plummeted. We can reverse that trend by delivering the service riders prefer over our competitors. We can also deliver industry leading and safety technology. Other operators promise the technology but currently bird is the only one that can deliver. And the city of San Diego, for example, the city asked all other operators to halt operations because bird is the only one with functional sidewalk detection technology. This is the future of our industry and Bird is always a bring that future to Santa Monica today. Lastly, Bird, our business is widely recognized as the most trusted provider in the space. And as such, we remain confident that we can work together to ensure Santa Monica has the most successful shared mobility program on the globe. Thank you, Mr. Butler. And next we have Hillary Brown. Good evening, Council members. My name is Hillary Brown, and I'm speaking on behalf of Spin, one of the four operators of the city's current Sheridan Mobility Device Pilot Program. Spin would like to voice their support of SAS proposal to extend this second Sheridan Mobility Device Pilot Program and establish a contracting model beginning in October 2023. We believe that a contracting model best serves the city and allows operators to better manage overhead, bring new innovations and pass on savings to users through reduced pricing. While the city works on issuing a new RFP for contracted services, we believe that no new permits should be issued during the pilot extension. The city's current operators, including Spin, have maintained low prices relative to the Los Angeles region. In Santa Monica, operators charge between $33 to $0.39 per minute, while operators in Los Angeles charge $46 to $0.52 per minute. Since launching in Santa Monica in July of 2021, Spin has had 190 low-income users who rode nearly 9,000 trips at significantly reduced rates. To grow ridership and promote shared mobility, Spin also subsidized over 54,000 trips using various flat rate spin passes. Spin is the first and only operator to scale sidewalk detection technology in the LA region with the majority of those vehicles deployed in Santa Monica. We've been working closely with staff to share aggregated data firmer innovative technology that could provide better insight into ridership to improve the city's final micromanability program. In addition, consistent with the administrative guidelines, Spin consistently deploys the vehicles in all eight zones citywide, ensuring access to our vehicles throughout the city. Spin's comprehensive strategies has helped keep costs low and attract riders from diverse backgrounds who ride our scooters for multiple reasons. Based on our data, Spins knows how important this program is to the city and we thank you for the opportunity to provide shared mobility, device services, and Santa Monica. We look forward to continuing to work with staff to expand sustainable and affordable mobility services to your residents. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Brown. And now we have Jonathan Foster and Mr. Foster, if you wait there for one minute. So if Michael Vichelle- Actually, he- Oh, I see they're gone. Okay, so after Jonathan Foster is Denise Spartan. And then John Ali will be donating time for Michelle Gray. Okay, and Great Thank you Yeah, so and so all these people who are crossed off are not here anymore No, there were second ratings so So they can't. So there's no public. Oh, I see on 10F. Right, right, right. So okay, Denise Barton and then Michelle Gray and first Jonathan Foster. And he was out of the room. Can you explain one more? He was out of the room when you know Jonathan no, no. So if you're here for a second reading, there's no public comment allowed on second readings. So, I'm sorry. So you weren't going to be able to speak on that tonight. Mr. Foster. I was calling a bit, or speaking about the changes in the street performers. I think it's a little bit excessive. One thing I did see in there was $1,000 if you had a permit or if you were performing you didn't have a permit. What happens if you left your permit at home or if it was in your car? You still get the $1,000 fine. Shouldn't that be like a fix it ticket? Like if you left it at home, but you actually permitted but you didn't have it with you that day and the police off Then you just show them that you shouldn't that just check on that one and When is this taking place what date does this go in effect? Anybody know what date this would go into effect now? It seems right for a lawsuit now and put in my personal feelings about this stuff because those are right I do want to know when does that go in place. But I did see the 1960 legislation for outdoor malls and it's wrong on freedom of speech and no one can afford a lawyer to do to lawsuit. Earlier today I heard another good word, upsconder. And I think that's like all government is it's just complete upscond government from the top down. It's a bunch of switcheroo, what you're doing right now, switcheroo in with the words and switcheroo in with the freedom of speech, because that's still an outdoor public, outdoor public walkway, and you have different law on there that comes from this 1960 thing that I haven't completed, been able to read, that you serve freedom of speech. And I want to know who talked about all this stuff, whether it's switching it from words on same blocks. So you can't perform on the same block twice to six hours, right? Everybody should have a cam, including staff, so we could hear who was saying stuff to staff. This seems like it's the beginning of the end of independent street performers aren't third street. It's been, I think, a really good thing to have. So, I think I'd like to know when it, when does it? Thank you, Mr. Foster. Ms. Barton. So. Ms. Barton. So Ms. Barton you had two items so you want to go ahead and just do the two minutes. Okay. Good evening. Good evening on item 10H. Since this is supposedly in place you know this just looks like you're adding your special interest categories. Then if there's no enforcement for the disabled, one does have to wonder if this program does what it says it does. So it would be the purpose of expanding it further. Wouldn't it make more sense to get your own house in order first? And here I'd like to go back to Diane Glauber's assessment of fair housing for the city where it underlaubed low priorities that the states. State and local laws policies are practices that discourage individuals with fair housing for the city where it underlapped low priorities that states. Stated local laws policies and practices that discourage individuals with disability from living in departments, family and supportive housing and other integrated settings, which goes along with the 2021 to 29 housing element goals to continue refusing reasonable accommodation, discriminating harass affordable housing tenants. So Mr. Salmon, by getting your own house in order to be better idea than expanding programs, then for item 16E with my previous comments tonight about the Santa Monica Housing Authority staffs actions toward the Housing Commission and the abuse of actions of the Santa Monica Housing Authority staff. And the city against affordable housing tenants are disabled. Why would you not think the Santa Monica Housing Authority staff is not right to subvert the formation of the resident advisory board? Isn't the RAHB supposed to be separate from the housing authority? Then why is the present version of the RAHB control by the housing authority? Next on the issue of the housing authority crane crane for mouth, and having to spend $1500 out of $24 million budget. To note, if I wrap our participants of the RAB issues, being raised on the housing commission's agenda, September 21st, 2022, why would this be? Due to, due to disinheds, Due to disinheds, has inclusions in the pH response, pH responsibility to the rab to provide reasonable means to carry out their function, including a meeting place, phones, writing material, and work. Thank you, Ms. Barton. And now, so I'm a little confused. So do we have Michelle Gray now? She will be on the phone and time is she's donating. I'm John Allie. John Allie and I'm assisting her with my phone like I've done in the past and I'm donating two minutes of my time to Miss Gray. Thanks. Thank you. Good evening Mayor, Mayor of Protermin City Council members. This is Michelle Gray. I am Chair of the Santa Monica Housing Commission and speaking now on my own behalf on item 16E. I urge you to approve these discretionary funds to facilitate the formation of a fully functioning Democratic resident advisory board that will allow low-income Santa Monica's to finally participate in the policy discussions that directly impact them. The Santa Monica Housing Authority is obligated by federal HUD policy to ensure the RAB can function, which includes facilitating communication with and among RAB members. As such, and given that they are federally funded institution with a $24 million budget, it is deeply concerning that the housing authority can't find money to send a required letter to their clients. It is also concerning that this is not the first time the housing authority has failed to facilitate grab formation and communication. I hope City Council will remember this when we discuss the rap support at the Housing Authority Board meeting on September 13th. However, Housing Authority program participants should not be punished for such housing authority decisions. Therefore, please approve the requested funds again, so these low-income, stand-to-monicans can finally participate in the policy discussions that directly impact them. Please also direct staff to ensure this time-sensitive and overdue letter is in the mail tomorrow. Then please examine the Housing Authority budget and operations to prevent the situation from recurring. I thank Council members Paura, Delatore, and Brock and City Manager White for facilitating this urgent request. Thank you to the entire City Council for listening. Thank you, Ms. Gray. Does that conclude our public comment? Thank you very much. Now we have the appointment to the one seat for the newly created human services commission. Okay, so there's one seat that's open and Mayor if you'd like to open the floor nominations. Yes. I nominate David Pizarra. Yes, Councilmember. I nominate, well it's Miller time. I nominate Diane Miller. Any other nominations? Okay, shall we have a, so it's Miller and Pizarra. Right. Two names. Okay. Councillor Member Parra. Shouldn't we wait till Councillor Memorandum ready returns? She's talking to somebody outside the door. Let's pull her back in. Okay. Well, oh good. Okay. There we go. Thank you. Sorry. Okay. Let's try that again. Okay. So Councilmember Brock nominated Diane Miller and Council member Davis nominated David Pizarra. So I'm going to go through those of the two names. Council member Parra. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. Councillor Mournay. I'm sorry mayor Prattima Cowan Cassara Poussara Miller Poussara Dela Tori Miller And Mayor Hillmourich Poussara Poussara has four votes yes I'll change my vote To David I'll change my vote. David. I'll change my vote as well. This is the individual that writes in the Santa Monica Daily Press. I like his writing. I like to change my vote to Mr. Pizarra as well. Congratulations Mr. Pizarra. You're a member of the newly created Human Services Commission. Okay, so next we have item 10A, which is introduction and first reading of an ordinance amending municipal code section 4.65.030 and approval of first modifications to contracts for emergency medical patient transport and billing services. Good evening, Chief. How are you? Good evening. Mary Hymnridge, Mayor Pratt and McCowon, Council. I'm going to go back to the meeting. Good evening, chief. How are you? Good evening. Mary Hehmelridge, Mayor Proto-Tamba-Cowin, Council. Danny Alvarez, fire chief. Thank you for your time this evening. I'll be brief. I just want to give a little bit of context and background regarding the ordinance that we have on the agenda this evening. And I will get started in one sec here. Okay. Okay, so Santa Monica Fire Department responds to over 17,000 calls a year for service, or 17,000 calls a year. About 75% of those calls are emergency medical service related. Currently, since since 2018 Santa Monica fire has contracted with McCormick ambulance as part of our transportation component as part of our deployment model and that results in about 7,500 patients being transported each year. This evening we're asking council to take action on two items. The first would be to extend the contract that we currently have with McCormick Ambulance to continue to provide emergency EMS transport for the fire department for two additional years. This will allow us to continue to evaluate our current deployment model and also identify any future potential opportunities to enhance our service delivery. The second item is to go ahead and extend the living wage ordinance exemption for the term of the contract. So it would be for the additional two years just to give some background historically of what's happening with regards to that ordinance. It was put in place and we originally put the contract in place and the exemption was extended in 2020 when we did the original extension for that contract. And so we're essentially asking to continue that through the term of the additional two years of the contract. Just to give a little bit of information on private ambulance companies or the ambulance companies and sort of some of the factors that impact their revenue. There's sort of three primary components. Number one is the number of transportation that they do. So the city of Santa Monica doesn't pay McCormick anything for their service. They provide the service and they generate revenue based on the number of transports. The second component to that is a pair mix. So each community has a different pair mix and the amount of money that they are reimbursed is dependent on what that pair mix is. So in Santa Monica, we have a significant percentage of our patients that are on MediCal and Medicare. And so what the, what McCormick gets reimbursed is significantly different than what they would get reimbursed for, for example, from commercial insurance. And the third component would be, so just our payer mix, the number of transports and then the third component is that they don't set their own rates. So the rates are established by the county of Los Angeles. So they don't have the ability to change what their rates are. So without those are the two items that we're asking action on tonight. And if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. Do we have any questions? Yeah, Council Member, do you have a tour? So, I mean, we, we extending the living wage exemption here. What, what are they being paid right now on average? Do you know what their rates are right now? I believe it's about 17. That's correct. About $17 an hour. And do we know, like, that's, I mean, it's, yeah. Give me the exact number, just a minute. 17. 17 an hour. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just, you know, it doesn't make me feel so comfortable, you know, like, like, extending an exemption on living wages, but I understand that what you're saying and, you know, the market is what it is and that That area of work Do you know like on average like how much does it cost like when you call the ambulance services? I mean What's what what's an average cost on that and does it depend on on mileage or I mean how is it just so When you say the cost essentially what what the patient is built? Yes, correct company would be built. So that's those are the rates that are set by L.A. County. So there's a number of factors that come into play. So for example, whether it's an ALS like a high acuity patient that requires paramedic intervention or whether it's a lower acuity BLS type call. So I believe right now for ALS it's about $2,700 and for BLS it's about $1,800 for the transport. But again what the ambulance company actually receives is dependent on whether it's a medical or a medical patient, whether it's commercial insurance or whether it's private pay. So there's a number of factors that come into that. Okay, so they don't make that amount. It could be a lot less. Yeah, they can build that, but for example, they won't recuperate it. Yeah, that's why I mentioned those kind of those three big factors that come into play. Okay, thank you. Thanks for that information. Councillor Mellon-Brock. I want to go back to salaries too because if our ambulance drivers and the people who respond and transport people are getting basically minimum wage, is that the same in all cities throughout LA County? That would be, from my understanding, all McCormick employees, so anyone that contracts out with McCormick, there are other cities throughout the county that, for example, may have their own ambulance operator programs, and I'm not sure exactly what their salary schedule would be. So everyone throughout LA County, so for example, LA County Fire also contracts out with McCormick, so they, I would imagine all get me today They get the same amount per hour. We have the right to set our own hourly with reimbursement by the county Do we have the right to and others do we have the right to set our own hourly rate or demand an hourly rate for those ambulance drivers It's more than minimum wage. I don't believe that. Because they're transporting people who are near deaf sometimes. I want to make sure that they're. Sure, yeah, I understand what you're saying. I don't want them to have to look for a tip from the person who's done. No, I'm not being facetious of me very serious. Yeah. I'm concerned that do we have any idea what other cities who use McCormick or other cities are paying their ambulance personnel? Because I know that ambulance's role with every one of your engines and transport a tremendous amount of people in the city. So I understand that. I know it's a money making operation, even if they just get Medi-Cal or Medicare reimbursement. So I wanna make sure their drivers are not getting short shrift if they are having to pay what's the average $900 for the transport you to Santa Monica Hospital or St. John's? No, it depends. So what? Not what's actually reimbursed, but what the billing is. That depends on what whether it's a medical, a Medicare or commercial insurance. So to say the average for McCormick, we'd have to get that information from McCormick. I don't think we have their actual exact average. Yeah, that's, that's, that's not what he's asking. Yeah, so you're asking what the, what McCormick's average reimbursement rate is per transport, right? Is that what is that? Right, and what I'm hearing is that Amnellist Rive could work for an Amnellist company where they could work and make Donald's and make approximately the same money. So I'm concerned about that and I won't support a complete waiver of that salary policy for that. And so I just got information that the last survey that they did, this was from two years ago, was $14 to $17 an hour. And so I just got information that the last survey that they did this was from two years ago was 14 to 17 hour dollars 14 to 17 dollars an hour so minimal wage for ambulance operators across the area So as far as your question. I think you asked if McCormick all McCormick EMTs I would imagine that yes, they are all paid the same McCormick ambulance in the LA area and the LA County area are all and they yes, they are all paid the same. McCormick ambulance in the LA area and the LA County area are all compensated the same. And no cities request a higher hourly base because I think we have the right to do that, correct? Yeah, I do know that the last time, I wasn't here when we put the contract in place originally, but I know that the last time there was some challenges in getting contractors to bid on the contract because of some of the requirements that we had in place. For example, we have to have a property within the city to house their ambulances. I believe there was a couple other items as well. So I don't know that we would have the opportunity to request a separate or if that would even be feasible through McCormick to ask for a separate rate for those individuals that work within the city of Santa Monica because they pull ambulances from everywhere right if our ambulances are busy they'll pull an ambulance out of Malibu or Inglewood or another area. So it's really throughout the county that they pull from. Council Member Davis, sorry. So thanks, Chief. So I think I was here when we did the original exemption from the living wage ordinance and everyone knows I'm very much support on living wage ordinance. But one of the issues we have is that the recovery rate is set by the Board of Supervisors. So if we were to say, well, you have to pay your ambulance drivers in Santa Monica, whether they were housed here performing services here. Essentially, the ambulance companies wouldn't be able to provide services because they wouldn't be able to recover their costs. Exactly. And that's what I was- Councilmember Brock, please answering your question. This is answering the question and nobody is listening That's just kind of what I alluded to in the beginning with regards to those sort of those three components that are really drivers when you look at revenue For these ambulance companies and it's the number of transports the payer mix and then the fact that the county sets those rates So which is you know probably a good thing because then the ambulance company could essentially you those rates. So, which is probably a good thing because then the ambulance company could essentially charge whatever they wanted for that transport, right? So they're operating under the parameters of what they can within the county which limits what they compare. So if we were to say we're not going to give you an exemption from the living wage ordinance, McCormick might not be able to function here because they wouldn't be able to afford to provide those services because they couldn't cost recover based on what the county set rates are, right? Exactly. I would have concerns that they would not. I saw more questions. I think you may want to backtrack a little because I'm not sure everybody heard the first part about reimbursement. So just sorry chief to go through it again. So, so, so just sorry chief to go through it again. So, so the recovery rates, we don't we don't get to say what McCormick charges, but neither does McCormick. Those recovery rates are sent by the LA County Board of Supervisors. Is that correct? Yes, yes. So, if we were to require McCormick to pay a higher wage than they might pay in some other jurisdiction, they might not be able to recover their costs because the LA counterbore to supervisors and rightfully so tries to keep the cost of ambulance service low so that people, because a lot of people don't have insurance and they may not be on medical and so the idea is to not let ambulance companies charge exorbitant rates. So this is one of the issues we had before that if we didn't give a living wage exemption, there was no ambulance company that wanted to function within Santa Monica because they couldn't be profitable. Yes. And I'll just add that part of that contract, for example, says that from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., they'll house six ambulances in the city, and then 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., they'll house four ambulances, and those ambulances essentially, unless they're transporting, they're not generating any revenue, and then when they do transport, the revenue is very dependent on the patient that they're transporting, the cutie the patient and the rate that's set by the county of Los Angeles. And then the other question I have is some of our jurisdictions here in Southern California and actually throughout California have had issues with cost recovery. As we extend this contract and then try and look at what we're going to do long term is that. I mean, it sounds like we're actually doing a fairly good job of cost recovery, but is that I mean it sounds like we're actually doing a fairly good job of cost recovery but is that something we're going to continue to look at because I know some other jurisdictions have had issues with that. Yeah that's absolutely something we're going to look at and there's some some state legislator the legislature legislation that's maybe coming into play next calendar year that may impact cost recovery with regards to patient transport to things like that. So that's why we want to see kind of how everything plays out and continue to evaluate our current deployment model and see what opportunities we may have in the future. Okay, great. Thank you. Council member, you're right. Hi, thank you. Couple questions. So just to curiously when we're talking about the living wage because we have the fire department ran ambulances as well, right? Like the ones that are by this or no. We have the CRU which runs out of an ambulance, but they don't, the only transport that they do right now would be to a psychiatric urgent care center. But so they don't transport under normal circumstances in an extreme circumstance. We were out of ambulances, from a comical to that of ambulances. We would potentially put one or two ambulances in service as an emergency type thing. But no on a day-to-day basis, the only ambulance we have is a CRU, but it really runs a different function than what a traditional 911 ambulance would do. I mean, this might be out of the realm of this topic tonight, but just the idea of what it would be like if we had our own ambulances. I mean, the city versus contracting it. I don't know what that looks like. And maybe it's more expensive as we're talking about living wage because then you have an EMT or so on firefighter. And that's a whole other thing. But sure. and EMT or SOAR and firefighter and that's a whole other thing. Sure, and that's really one of the reasons why we're looking at extending it for that two-year period so that we can evaluate the feasibility of whether it's, would be beneficial to bring our ambulance service in-house or not or some other different deployment options. And then as far as them housing them here in the city, I think you just mentioned, I just want to clarify, just because we require them to house it, doesn't mean that they're available to us, because like you said, they might be, because they're a company that's also responding in other counties, they might be using those ambulance as at a time, and they're not necessarily available to us just because they're being housed here. Or do we require them? We require it. Well, they're supposed to have six in the city, and they're supposed to have two essentially available additional within the surrounding area during those hours. Obviously, there's been times where they've had some staffing challenges just like a lot of ambulance companies and a lot of industries. So that may not always be at six. Or we may have four ambulances that are, you know, sitting with patients at the hospital waiting off though those patients. So it's not like we have six all the time ready, you know, available to respond. But those, they are supposed to have six housed in this, in the city whenever possible. So you mentioned that one of the red tape or one of the issues with finding other operators is because of the fact that they have to house and have a location here in Santa Monica. Yeah, one, and again, this was prior to my arrival, but just doing some research. One of the things that we required was that they have, essentially, like a station somewhere where they would house their, their ambient where they could have the ability to house their ambulances. And so that required to have property here in the city of Santa Monica. I mean, that makes sense to me just because obviously the response time, right? But I'm just trying to understand is that an issue where you, the idea is to look into opening it up and giving other companies the opportunity or no? Well, right now for this contract it would remain with McCormick and so in the future if we were to continue to contract out for ambulance services like we are right now then we could reevaluate what those requirements would look like whether having that property in Santa Monica requirement is beneficial or if it's a hindrance. Okay, thank you. Yes, Council Member Paura. My mic was already on. Thank you. Thank you. And just going along kind of what Council Member Nguyengette was saying for future, I mean, there is the opportunity to kind of have an hybrid, right, where we have our own paramedics, but then we also have ambulance operators as well, so that we could have a hybrid model so that, you know, to kind of keep the costs down a little bit, correct? Absolutely. So, right now, we have paramedics on our fire engines, and then we use McCormick, essentially as ambulance operators and they transport all of our BLS our lower acuity patients they just transport them themselves if it's a higher acuity patient one of our paramedics will transport with McCormick there are opportunities to essentially do what McCormick is doing through an ambulance operator program where we would house all of that internally and they would be city of Santa Monica employees, ambulance operators, and they would be our ambulances and we would then provide that transport and then generate that revenue as offset for the cost for providing that service. So those are certainly a lot of the things that we're going to be looking at during this time period as what those opportunities may look like. Thank you. Sure. Any other questions? Yeah, I wanted to just go back. Thank you. I wanted to go back to one thing. So I understand the county council member Davis sets the overall ambulance rates and sets all that What I was concerned my question was more and I'll just even I'll let it go but My question was again about salaries L.A. County supervisors do not set the hourly rates for those workers and they asked us for a waiver on living wages, but that's not required. So my question again was, do any other cities require, is the McCormick rate standard across the county or the two counties or whatever? And I don't think we know that. Yeah, I can't get that. And so look, it's not that I'm trying to get huge salaries, but I also realize that those ambulance drivers see horrible things every night and day and a lot of times. And they're also trying to save people's lives and get to the hospitals to safely and quickly as they can. So I personally would like them to see them paid above minimum wage and I just think that's being fair. So I don't know if there's any way to go back and check on that and does this contract need to be executed tonight or could it be city manager white delaying even two weeks so we look at comparative salaries? And if there is no way, there's no way. I want us to have ambulances in the city obviously and I want us to have safe transport. But I also realize that even though it seems like there is transport, it's a tough job. I've been with your crews when the ambulance drivers have come upstairs to have to carry people down who have to go to the hospital and are in a crisis. So I understand that part. And not trying to delay the process. I'm just concerned that that since I've seen them work and I've seen them stand by, I really feel that they should be getting more like I said then stuff so if there's a way to do that without jeopardizing the overall contract than I think we should. That's all. It's so Council Member Davis and Council Member Perra. Yeah, and Council Member Brock and maybe Chief Al-I don't know if other people have questions for Chief Al-Barris, but what I want to say is, we had this debate when this contract first came up. the fact that the matter is our original RFP said you had to meet the living wage and nobody responded to the RFP because they couldn't make any money given what the rates set by the county supervisors were and there were also issues because we did require them to be in the city because we wanted people to have brief response times. So this was not something that was undertaken lightly or with this regard to the work, important work that these people do. But if we didn't have a contract with someone to provide these services, or we, for example, said, okay, well, we'll give in on the having to have ambulances housed in the city, we would have longer response times for those ambulances. And I'm not sure they would be paid any more money because then those workers would be residing in other communities because I believe, and my memory may be faulty on this and maybe someone can check on this. I think other jurisdictions also have waived the living wage requirement for example in the city of Los Angeles. So if McCormick for example said, well, okay, we're going to be in Los Angeles, they still wouldn't be paid anymore. So, I mean, I just want to make it clear this wasn't something that was undertaken lightly. Really was does done to provide the best ambulance service that we can. And I don't disagree with your contention that we want these people to be paid well and that they work, they do is very hard and obviously very important. And if it's your loved one in the ambulance, you want them to be well taken care of. But this was the way we could provide the best service possible. Because otherwise we just weren't getting anyone to respond. We went through this process. We actually went through two RFPs. service possible because otherwise we just weren't getting anyone to respond. We went through this process. We actually went through two RFPs. We had to amend the RFP in order to get people to respond. So I just wanted people to understand that because I'm not sure how many people in the room were here when we did that. So I think I just want people to understand that was not undertaken lightly. So that was really sort of the history there. And I'll just add that I don't have the salary survey throughout LA County, but I do know that it's a very competitive labor market for ambulance operators right now. There's a lot of programs, not just with private ambulances, but like we talked about with other cities that have ambulance operator programs. So again, I don't have factual data on a salary survey, but I would imagine that McCormick would have to remain relatively competitive in order to be able to staff their ambulances. Councillor M. Paret. And I just wanted to make one more comment. I was looking this whole time through my phone because through my files for my other job, because you know, for the fire department that I work for, through my files for my other job, because you know, for the fire department that I work for, I was trying to find a job announcement, a recruitment fire for, because we have an ambulance operator program for my fire department. And the one I could find was for 2015, and for $12 an hour, for an ambulance operator, for a city ambulance operator. And that was 2015 and we constantly had like 2030 applicants. I mean, and we still have to get a lot of applicants. And so I think that we probably pay $16, $17 an hour now. And that's not to say that it doesn't negate that this job is not a very important job. It absolutely is a very important job. But that is what it pays, but it currently pays. So. Councilmember Brock. I move approval. Do you hear a second? Second. You want me to finish it off. Second. I'm trying to push the button that's not working. I'm not up there. He made the motion. Motion by Brock. Seconded by Davis. the the the the the the the the the the the the the the So we have a motion by Brock, a second by Davis. Let's have a roll call vote please. Council member Paura. Yes. Council member Davis. Yes. Council member Nguyengratte. Yes. Eripe Tim McCallan. Yes. Council member Brock. Yes. Council member Dela Tori. Yes. And Mary Helmerich. Yes. And so that passes unanimously. And thank Helmerich. Yes. And so that passes unanimously. And thank you, Chief, and all your helpers. And let's move to the next item. Next we have 10B, which is introduction and first reading of an ordinance modifying city sidewalk vending to allow a stationary vending with a 100 to 500 foot parameter to the Santa Monica pier by permitted vendors. On the second. Mr. Gupta, you're our staff reporter. I am. Just give me just a moment please. And I know you're going to talk about this perimeter right in the first sentence, right? I will. Thank you. Is that you in this? Okay. Thank you. Need to click that. All right. Good evening, Mayor and Council. It's good to see you all again. And Mayor Bratam, of course, as well. My name is Anjkipta, Deputy City Manager. And I am pleased to be back before you to talk about sidewalk vending and some modifications to our sidewalk vending ordinance that staff is recommending this evening. And I did want to clarify as the mayor noted that the item title that was agendas may be slightly misleading. What we are recommending this evening, as you'll hear momentarily, is a modification of the sidewalk vending ordinance that would change the specific types of vending that are permitted in Palisade's park in the 100 to 500 foot zone from the entrance to the pier. So this isn't making any ordinance modifications to vending on the pier itself, which is generally for sidewalk vending prohibited by the city's existing ordinance. And we do have our pier license for funding program as well. Before I go any further, I did want to acknowledge my colleague, Stephanie Vinegas, who you all know well. She actually was the driver of this staff report and had prepared both of this presentation this evening. She is unable to be here tonight. But I did want to send my appreciation and gratitude to her and my best wishes to her and her family as well. So as you'll hear more about the recommended action before you this evening is that the City Council adopt the and introduced for first adopt for first reading the ordinance that amends our local municipal code on sidewalk bending to expand opportunities for stationary sidewalk bending. municipal code on sidewalk bending to expand opportunities for stationary sidewalk bending. Okay, so we'll do a very quick tour of a familiar story to you all into the community that has followed this issue now over the years. But it begins in recent times since September 2018 with the adoption of state law Senate Bill 946, which then Governor Jerry Brown sent into law, decriminalized sidewalk vending statewide and required localities if they were wanting to at all regulate or restrict sidewalk vending the time place and manner of it. They needed to adopt a local permitting program. We in the city of Santa Monica, a council direction went ahead and did that very quickly springing to work across a number of departments. And in April 2019, the city council became one of the first in the region to adopt a sidewalk ending ordinance and a local permitting program, which despite all the challenges over the years, I think it's something that we really do regard as a success and as a genuine validation of the intent of SB 946 to expand economic opportunity, particularly for low wage and primarily immigrant workers who engage in sidewalk bending. We have currently over 180 permitted sidewalk vendors in the city, and we have seen a lot of success in expanding opportunity for our permitted sidewalk vendors. Now, of course, it hasn't all been easy or straightforward. We have had continuing challenges with the proliferation of unpermanent sidewalk and some of that was exacerbated by the closures around COVID early on for the first year or so when virtually none of the event spaces or other places that were popular for sidewalk-bending activities in the greater LA region were open. And of course, with the exception of the first month or two of the pandemic appear in our beach were open and very popular destinations. And so they became increasingly popular destinations for vendors as well. And we did see a real escalation in the public safety and public health risks posed by unpermited vending, fire safety risks and public health risks posed by unpermited bending, fire safety risks and public health risks and also impacts to our environment. And so in August of last year, about a year ago, this Council adopted an emergency ordinance making a series of prohibitions that were applicable to any commercial activities on and around the pier, including sidewalk, but not specifically directed at sidewalk ending with regard to prohibiting unpermitted combustible fuels and prohibiting unpermitted dumping of business waste, business trash or dumping of liquids generated by commercial activity as well. That was adopted last August. And then that did give some additional tools to staff to manage the public safety and public health impacts, but we did see still the continuing challenges. And in part, as a result of that, we did see the development of the peer-vending task force, which was an inter-departmental effort, including the police department, code enforcement, the fire department, public work, the fire department, public work, scarcity, attorney's office, a really unique effort across a number of departments to address these health and safety issues and the environmental impacts on and around the pier that began in January. And then we brought a comprehensive study session before you in February. And what we're here today is to really follow up on one of the more proactive sides of that story to expand opportunities for permanent vending, something that we heard from the council as well as from our community particularly some of our permitted sidewalk vendors in the city. So as I said that brings us to this evening on the item before you tonight. So just briefly I wanted to share an update on what is now called the Directed Action Response Team formerly known as the Peer Task Force. We do have leadership from the police department and code enforcement here this evening if there are any specific questions. But as I said, it continues as a collaboration between the police department, code enforcement and fire. Their consistent approach is to advise and educate first and they have done a really exceptional job. They have hundreds of contacts every week with permitted and unpurmit eventors to educate them about our requirements, about our local laws, distribute QR codes, outreach materials, in English and Spanish to encourage vendors to get permitted to comply with their local laws. And then, you know, when necessary, they do undertake enforcement to protect public safety and public health. On these issues and, you know, their mission and their impact has gone beyond both the immediate peer area, as well as beyond the vending issue as the sergeant can speak more to if you like after this presentation. Another update that I wanted to share is with regards to legislative advocacy. This is something we talked about in February with there are there have been two major bills before the California State Legislature this session. First was Senate Bill 1290 sponsored by our own Senator Ben Allen. And it was intended to make a very modest modification to SB 946 that would have allowed localities to have an additional tool to deter repeat offenders who were consistently and repeatedly violating the same vending laws to impose some enhanced fines for those vendors. Unfortunately, it is being held in a suspense file in the assembly side, which basically is fancy, legislative speak to say that it is dead for this session. And if it would come back, it would have to come be reintroduced by the senator or other sponsors next year. At the same time, the other major bill on this issue is SB 972 by Senator Lenin Gonzalez, and that would provide reforms to the state retail food code. It's a bill that was written and has been aggressively advocated for by sidewalk lending advocates in the Los Angeles area and statewide. It did pass the Senate as well and is actually expected to have a full assembly vote tomorrow. And if it does pass, then it would need to be signed by the governor by the end of September. Our position on this bill has been what we call a support if amended position. We did receive the direction from the council and it has been consistent with our overall vending policy approach to expand opportunities, lower barriers to entry, the retail food code certainly is outdated and not friendly to those who want to engage in sidewalk vending but we do have some real concerns about as it's currently written what the impacts would be for unpermanent vendors and some of the further challenges it might pose to preventing action to address public health or public safety risks. So I just wanted to highlight, we've shown you these slides and these materials before, but I think it's just a really important theme that on all of our vending work, we have consistently tried to lead the way with education, with outreach in English and Spanish. We've done videos, one starring Armando, from Code Enforcement that you see on the screen. We've distributed these little QR code cards and again, bilingual, so that folks who are interested in learning more about our program or applying for a permit can simply scan with their phones. We've worked with noted local artists to develop these flyers about targeted vendors, as well as targeted at the general public to help educate and build awareness about sidewalk bending. And then anytime we have changed the rules with the emergency ordinance with adjustments to what's allowed honor around the pier, we update our signage, we do additional outreach, and that would be the case again, should council adopt the ordinance this evening. So to get to the proposed modifications tonight, what we are specifically addressing is what we call the buffer zone in Palisades Park. So you see an overhead shot in the map on the screen and really you see that the yellow line illustrates 100 feet is the hash mark towards the bottom right and then 500 feet. So in that first 100 feet from the top of the peer bridge at Colorado in Ocean to the 100 foot mark, sidewalk vending is completely brobited because of the emergency access issues the fact that that can become a very congested area with visitors with tourists and we need to keep that area clear for emergency access that would not change under the ordinance before you this evening. Currently between the 100 foot to 500 foot, only roaming vending is allowed. And what we heard from many of our permit vendors is that it is obviously a very desirable, very lucrative area for vending activity, probably second only to the peer itself. And we have heard a consistent desire from our venders to have the ability to station their carts, not have to engage in sort of the roaming requirements of shifting their card constantly in order to be able to actually benefit from that desirable location. And so that is the modification to the local ordinance that we are proposing this evening between 100 and 500 feet, again, to allow stationary vending. Now, what we will do to facilitate this and to prevent what could otherwise happen, which would be then suddenly kind of a wall of stationary vendors that cause potential obstructions or public safety issues, we would develop in the coming months some fixed spaces. What we are calling sort of vendor patios designated little paved areas in that zone and then a rotation based system so that basically we would have designated spaces for stationary vending and provide our permanent vendors with equitable access to that space on some sort of a rotation basis that would be, you know, not something that could then be dominated by only, you know, the first vendor or vendors who happen to show up in that space on a given day. So in terms of the physical improvements, we have Peter James from our Public Works Department here who he and his team have been instrumental partners in helping us think through what that would look like. What you see is kind of a schematic of these vendor pedios. Roughly in this area, we're estimating up to six that could fit, they would just be installed in the grassy area adjacent to that walking path. They would be fairly inexpensive, approximately $2,000 per space. So if we did six to eight, we're looking at $12 to $16,000 for the spaces. These would be potentially temporary to start and then as part of a broader CIP that's currently unfunded to address irrigation and paving in Palisades Park, we could build these out into something further. And again, these could be put in relatively quickly. I did want to address another thing we heard from Bender's in February and have heard consistently is the safety issues and the desire for enhanced lighting in Palisades Park. This is something that staff is certainly working on and is aware of. Unfortunately, it would be more challenging and costly. These are historic fixtures in the park. Would require a full overall of the wiring. A more extensive project. Again, that we can share more about if Council is interested in following up. One other opportunity that we are very eager to pursue is you all are familiar with our peer license cart bending program. We have approximately 13 license carts. They are city tenants who vend with city authorization on the peer. They do pay a monthly rental that very seasonally and we have a variety of fruit, churros, all sorts of other things that are sold on the pier itself. What we would like to do is identify some additional locations, either on the pier itself in the potentially in the first 100 feet. We've worked with the fire marshal to identify a few locations at the top of the pier bridge that could support some additional license card spots. The opposite corner of Ocean and Colorado also something that could be available for additional vending spots as well as the lower deck north of the pier near Bubba Gum. So we've identified a few potential spots. That is based on an RFP that we are working to open before the end of the calendar year. And once we identified some additional card current locations we could work to give potentially priority to our current permit vendors who would be interested in paying that rent and becoming a part of that program to expand some further opportunity in the most desirable locations as well. So the next steps of the Council approves of the ordinance tonight would be to make updates to the administrative regulations consistent with these modifications. So again, we would work on flushing out this rotation-based system and ensuring that we would work with both the dark-eme personnel as well as our finance, business, license, staff on a system that's sustainable that could actually be set up for success. And then, as I said, we would work to translate the administrative regulations into Spanish. As we always do, update our website and distribute additional outreach materials and make vendors and other interested parties aware of these new opportunities. And then also work to schedule some in-person town halls to engage our vendors about some of these new opportunities and definitely get their input on the rotation-based system as well. So the financial impacts, as noted noted we would be working with identifying existing budgets for those temporary physical improvements for the vendor patios. If we do move forward with additional peer-card vending license locations those bring in approximately $20,000 per car per year in revenue with that seasonal rent. And then as I noted, it would be a future CIP for the broader repaying and work required in Palisades Park as well as the lighting fixtures that I mentioned. So that's the overall label and I'm happy to answer any questions that Council may have. And then I guess I said we have certain items we have our Mundo and Guilford Coat Enforcement and we've got Pedro James from Public Works as well. So council member Nguready, then council member Davis. And then council member parra. Well, first of all, I just want to say thank you. To everybody who's been involved on the city manager, Susan Klein, a new Stephanie police department code fire. This was my first sort of project coming on a council and I just wanna say that all of the work that has been done is so evident and we're really respecting the micro entrepreneur who's coming in and trying to run a successful business and prior to this and the organization and the Dart team, those folks weren't able to be successful because there wasn't a lot of regulation and organization about how it's going down. In terms of what you're doing at Policy It's Park, I'm so grateful and I appreciate it. I know you've spent a lot of hours and your staff has speaking directly to the vendors and responding to their need to not have to move the cards back and forth. And I think this is just one step forward. I think there's this just paves the way for much more. So thank you. I know it's a lot of work and there was a lot that went around on around it that distracted from that, but this is great. I wanted to ask you if we're still looking, a couple questions. One, are we still looking at the possibility of having a liaison that can really deal directly with the vendors in helping them get through this process? Thanks, couple member. Yes, so I'll note a couple of things on that. For one, I mean, I do, as I said earlier, and as I think you know, our own staff, particularly on the Dart team, they are engaging directly with the vendors and I think have very intentionally staffed the assignments on their teams to ensure that, you know, to the extent that there are Spanish speakers among the vendor population that we have bilingual staff, Spanish speaking staff assigned to these teams. So they're doing that front line outreach. In addition, we have heard from some of the vendor advocates that this is a desire kind of an outreach coordinator or liaison. We have been sort of back and forth with them, and we continue to be open to the conversation. We've asked for a scope of work or an estimated cost, and that's something that we would continue to support in terms of enhancing, again, opportunities. And then the other component that I wanna highlight is that our business license team in the finance department has really done an outstanding job already. This is kind of beyond the typical business license work for a city at least until recent history, but our business license administrator, I think in maybe March, did an actual public engagement event with the dark team in the peer parking lot to take literally take process spending applications and answer questions in the field. That's something that you know as staff in capacity allows and that she and her team intend to continue to do. And so I think between those that combination of resources we do want to ensure that we're doing everything we can to have direct engagement to help vendors through the process. And I appreciate because you guys are all doing that extra work and even responding to issues. And it's really great. And so at some point, I hope that instead of having everybody, not that you don't want to do that, but we can actually have somebody who can engage with people at the beginning process and as they move forward. Because I think the hopes are that maybe you start out maybe maybe at Palli-Ciates Park as someone who's there temporarily and then, you know, there could be a pathway that's really set for these entrepreneurs. The other question I had was in regards to the peer cart vending program and the revenue that could be generated. And just to be clear, that revenue is generated from percentage of sales or a combination of both the fee for being licensed on the pier and sales. I believe and this program is administered by economic development division. I believe it's it's a straight rent that's paid by the peer cart tenants. It's it's variable monthly based on seasonality. But the revenue figure is the sort of average annual over the course of the year. And are those carts, are you just talking about food, or could it be a combination of? No, of the existing ones that are on the period of 13, there's a mix of food and merchandise vendors as well. Do you happen to know roughly with those carts, cost to know at various if it's food or if it's not selling food? What the actual cost of a cart to have on the pier that meets the requirements to be a pier vendor. That's a good question. I don't know that offhand, but we certainly follow. Another thing I want to throw out there food for thought in the future. And we've just lightly discussed it. But just the idea of micro loans or the opportunity for the city to engage in a program to open that up and make it feasible and available to people wanting to become a seasonal vendor on the pier or licensed vendor on the pier. And then just in closing I also wanted to say I was down there again today. I make my weekly visits and everybody is so happy because they feel like they're actually able to conduct their business and they were more successful since the Dart team has been down there. And so I really just want I think that's what I think is they feel like they're actually able to conduct their business and they were more successful since the Dart team has been down there. So I really just want to extend my thank you to everybody that was involved in the Dart team and everything that you're doing. So thank you. Yes, Councilmember Davis. Thank you, Mr. Gupta. I just have a couple of questions. So the first question I have is obviously we're going to do these locations and assign them on a rotating basis, you said. I'm just kind of curious what that rotation is. I mean, is it like you get to be there four hours or is it a weekly rotation? I'm just curious what time frame you were thinking about for the rotation. Thank you, Councillor Davis. Yes, that's a good question. And I think that's something that we want. We intend to work on over the next couple of months. We will have a little bit of a runway if we cancel adopts your nits tonight because it's a standard. It's not an emergency ordinance. So they'll be the second reading in the 30 days. And over the course of that, we already have done. We did a ago across it was sort of this large group of city staff including members of the dark team some of us in the city managers offices at the attorney's office we actually went out to Pell Park and talked to a bunch of our permanent vendors to kind of introduce this idea and get their initial input would that be something that would be interested in what kind of time frames I think you know naturally there's a balance right because the I think vendors generally want to have access to the most desirable spaces so if there has to be a rotation system, they would love it to be a very short interval so they can have regular access. On the other hand, as you know, I was just talking about with the sergeant, we can't have our dart team just parked out there to ensure that folks are at, you know, at 3 o'clock that everybody's, you know, doing the round robin. And so I think, would look to find a balance between something that provides meaningful opportunity for our permitted vendors and doesn't allow kind of a takeover of this base, but also that's reasonable, some combination of dark personnel as they're doing their regular kind of circuiting of the area, and also potentially, if our finance business license team or others, if we do have eventually, you know, some partnerships with Aliazan or an organizer that can help support that. And I think one of the things that we've heard a lot from vendors as well is that, you know, if there's a model that is adopted and supported by them, that they can do some of the self-policing and self-organizing as well, if they're kind of bought into the system, which is why again as we said we would want to do a town hall continue the engagement so that we're developing something with them that has their support. Great, thank you. And you partially anticipated my next question, which is enforcement costs. Do we anticipate that it will be the dark team doing whatever we set up in terms of rotation will it be the dark team doing enforcement or there will be some additional costs. And the reason I ask is just to cite a different model but somewhat similar is in downtown Santa Monica there actually is a liaison who works with all the street performers to make sure that they don't overstay their time. And if there's some dispute between I'm supposed to be here, no I supposed to be here they can mediate it sort of on the spot do we anticipate having that kind of and is that going to be the dark team or is that someone else so I think on that we'll have to see how it goes right every every change with regard to sidewalk funding has been kind of evolutionary and we're trying to expand opportunity. Obviously not set back the success that we've seen in recent months. And so I think overall, certainly our partners who are leading on the dark team would be probably the most familiar with our vendors and in the spaces for the most part. If we're seeing that it's setting us back and if we did need to come back in the future to have some sort of a liaison or a coordinator, that's something we could look at. It's not part of what we're asking for. Tonight, certainly, we don't have an existing staff position dedicated to that, but it's something we would monitor and look at as we went forward. Okay, and then to follow up somewhat on Council Member Negretti's question, just sort of keeping track of grants and things. It seems to me that there are some micro-entrepreneur grants out there. I don't know if the city could apply for them or is that something we could help some of the entrepreneurs apply for where they can get small grants to offset the cost of the card or getting set up or is that something I don't know if they're grants at the city would be eligible for to just manage the program. Do we have any sense of that? That's definitely something we can continue to look at, you know, both in terms of local organizations and then, you know, we have over the years developed good relationships with members of the Haley Shreep vendors campaign where sometimes it odds them, but often also working closely in partnership with them. Certainly, we got a lot of their input developing the program originally in 2019, and we know that they have been advocating for this current state bill, which would intend to lower the cost significantly of acquiring a cart that's compliant with county health code, and they've been advocating as well for micrograms and additional resources, so we could look to partner with them on that as well. Great, thank you so much. Yes, Council Member Par. Thank you. Thank you Anush and everybody for all the work as well. I just had a few questions. I mean, most of my questions were answered, but in terms of the vendors that you've been talking to that are interested in having a stationary location there, were they mostly like commodity vendors or food vendors or a mix? Just curious about which vendors were. It's been a mix. I mean I think we do now have actually a very significant number of permitted fruit carpenters in particular and they often congregate in that area in Palisades Park. But then I also know, you know, just for example, I think one of the vendors that comes on Bernigarthe had connected us to and we've spoken with a number of times, Alejandro Pedroza and her family have a car that does, I think jewelry and other handicrafts. So that's an example. They have specifically asked for this change as well. And so I think it would be a mix of merchandise as well as food. And would this be an opportunity to create something like aesthetically artistic or like an opportunity to invest? Because I know that, like, you know, recently going to New York, I mean, they really, I think like every block tries to kind of outdo the next block with some of the vending and some of the way that they create their carts, if you will. At least I saw that out there and it was just really beautiful the different ways that they were presenting and showcasing things. And so I'm just wondering if there was an opportunity for us to be able to work with the vendors to make it be like an installation. What? She's that fun. I'm just just why not, you know, I mean we have such a wonderful artistic community. I mean I don't know. I'm just why not make it fun, why not maybe work with them to make it be a little bit more, you know, an experience, I think. Just don't it out there, I don't know. Or just try to streamline things. I know that on the promenade, I think that some of the vendors that are out there, they have, their carts look very similar and aesthetically, it just looks very beautiful when you look down the promenade, when things look a certain way. So just opportunities. Just. Yeah, we can, we'll be able to take that. I have photos I can show you. I really, really stood out to me. So. Thank you. Just stand out there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I really support the path that we're on in terms of expanding opportunities for street vendors. Question I have though is what do we do to inform residents? A lot of the street vendors that I see and people I've talked to are not residents. There's some, but there's a lot of people that are from outside of the city and I was wondering, maybe there are some residents in our city that would be inspired in combination even with the commercial kitchen that's going to be at Virginia Avenue parks and other opportunities with community corporation at Mercado, that they're on 19th and Pico. I'm thinking there might be an opportunity to really outreach to residents and just wanted to know how are we getting that information out to our residents so that they know that these opportunities exist? Thanks, Council Member. Yes, I'm glad you mentioned the Virginia Females Commercial Kitchen. That's something definitely, you know, it's in the works. But as we see, it's a really amazing opportunity to build a pipeline for whether it's sidewalk funding or micro enterprise home kitchens or, you know, meal delivery services, a real pipeline into kind of micro entrepreneurship in the food industry. So that's one that we definitely, as that moves forward, we will certainly connect into our sidewalk bending and other bending opportunities. And then, you know, we've been consistently throughout the program since it first was adopted in 2019, you know, communicating to our residents, via social media, via our press releases, via public education campaigns, about our program, about the permitting, about the opportunities. So we will continue to do that. And certainly the CCSM project that you mentioned is another opportunity as well. And we'll continue to take every opportunity we can to highlight these opportunities for residents as well. Of the current permitted vendors in the city, do you know how many of them are residents of the city of Santa Monica? I don't have that information off hand. I mean, I think one note, this has come up before as to whether we could, in issuing permits, can give any sort of preference and I'm understanding at least to date with working with the city attorney's office that we can, you know, set aside or, or designate vending permits for residents only and we can't cap the numbers. That's also part of the restrictions put in place by SB946, but certainly making our residents aware is something we'll continue to try and do. I think that'd be the best approach is to have a robust outreach strategy to inform residents of these opportunities because I know that a lot of residents would really benefit from that. The last question I had was around the legislation being proposed by Senator Gonzales and by Senator Elena Durazo. What is our take on that? I mean, can you please explain to us sort of what? Because I would like us to support that legislation. I think it's the right thing to do, but I want to hear from you what needs to change in that legislation so that we can feel comfortable sending a letter of support for that legislation. So sure, thank you council members. So just to clarify, we have taken a support if I made a position already based on council's adopted policy. And that has included sending a letter both to when it was on the Senate side. We also held a number of calls with Senator Gonzalez directly as well as her staff. Senator Gonzalez and Senator Allen, for a long while had these two bills. They were sort of, you know, not intentionally, necessarily, but kind of pitted one against one another in some regards, but we also participated in calls with both senators together. So we've been very much kind of at the table. We have consistently supported the retail food code reforms component, which is, you know, the heart of the bill. And there was a 13 item at the time, 13 item, I think by Max Ombar-Brock and yourself early on in the year specific to that legislation following up on what LA City did. So we did support and do support the idea of reforming the retail food code, updating it, making it more friendly and cost accessible for sidewalk vendors and making some of the requirements less prohibitive. The parts that we have specifically objected to again, consistent with our advocacy for Senator Allen's bill and our work with regards to the public safety and public health issues are about what the bill also does as currently drafted is basically remove virtually any meaningful enforcement authority even from county public health authorities. and we've heard from our dark team, our police department, that currently leads the collaborations with county DPH. They have been really instrumental over the course of this year coming out, often once or twice a month on the weekends. And if they're not able because of changes in state law to participate in those, then we wouldn't be able to engage with them. And we also just then have concerns if there is no meaningful enforcement we might see kind of a repeat of the impacts of SB 946 all over again where we're trying our best and continuing to try to support permanent vending, support vending, expand opportunities and then get frankly in some regards overwhelmed by unpermative v or ending that creates real health and safety concerns that we're not able to manage even with the county at the table. So that's we've been messaging and expressing in our letters, in our meetings, in our advocacy that we support the principles, we support lowering barriers to entry but we do have ongoing concerns about the enforcement piece. Any movement or anything that we can do to ensure those amendments get adopted in the legislation pending in the assembly? We've been doing what we can. Also I should know been working in partnership with some of our other local organizations, San Monica Travel and Tourism, Cal Travel, other cities, San Francisco, Santa Cruz that have similar concerns. Again, not to say that we oppose the bill outright or that we oppose the objectives, but that we have these specific concerns. At this stage, there is a lot of momentum behind the bill as there was with SB946, the LA Street Winners campaign and they have now expanded to a statewide campaign. They're very effective and they're the bills likely to be taken up tomorrow for a full vote in the assembly. I think it's likely to pass as is. And then it's a matter of, you know, and we will, we've already scheduled meeting with Governor Staff, again, to just take our concerns all the way to the end, not to say, you know, don't sign this or we don't support lowering barriers to entry but that we have these specific concerns and we feel like at this point that's the best we can do in terms of advocacy. Great, thank you. Councillor Member Brock. I absolutely support this plan. I have a question. How's the landmarks commission weighing in on this proposal? So we worked with, public works worked with our staff in the community development department, our lead, let me get the title on Preservation Planner. Landmarks Leais on I apologize to ensure that any modifications of Palisades Park would be compliant and would meet any concerns on that front. So the Landmarks Commission will weigh in and we hope that they will approve because they believe have ultimate authority over like these changes. We'll certainly be coordinating closely with our colleagues. And otherwise the fact that vendors can have an approach to legalization and have an approach to making a living is a fantastic thing. And that I love the idea that one of our one of my fellow council members had a couple minutes ago to make sure that these people also find ways to progress beyond the cart and we start providing other places in the city where people can incubate new businesses and has council member Delatori also said to make sure that we do our best to help vendors that are from our city use the community kitchen, use the different arenas that we have in order to have some of those businesses become successful. I'd like to see a cart two or three years from now, you know, develop and then eventually have their own storefront in the city and know that in some small way the city gave them that shove, that push, that way forward so that they could not only make a living but become a successful business here in Santa Monica. So I applaud the idea. Thank you so much and thank all the staff for working on this. I'd like to move, Tenby. I'll second. Motion, mine, a gritty seconded by Brock. I just have one question. So this is the area in which we've seen a lot of protests recently, right? A lot of protest activity. And if we thought about how we're going to handle this area when the protesters or should they come back and what we're going to do about any possible conflict between the vendors and the protesters. I figured somebody was thought about this already. Good. Thank you. Good evening mayor and City Council members. To understand your question correctly, you're asking if, first amendment activity or protest activity, which commonly congregates in Palpark, kind of collides with the plan of kind of permanent vending spots, is that the question? I'm asking, should it, yes, I'm saying that I do see a potential collision there, and I'm wondering if we have anticipated what we're going to do in the event of such a collision. I think it would directly relate to how much space we're allocating. I don't know if that's been defined yet. Corollary is not just protest activity but performers. For instance, the dancers kind of kicked them out of that fire access zone that they liked using, but it was clogging the exit off the pier. And I said, well, you got this pal park people go. So they've been setting up there where they take up, you know, with some success. and I think they'd be impacted as well by permanent vending spots depending on where they're at and how many there are. So the point is if there's a park that's meant to be used as a park, you know, like through fair, I guess the park could be used for anything, whether it's protest, performance, walking a dog or jogging, you know. So as long as whatever our permanent vendor spot plan leaves enough park to be a park, I think there's no collision at all if that answers the question. I can see that it's going to be something that will figure out as we go along because it will depend on the nature of the people who show up and the nature of the cart. But I am interested to see how that plays out, generally. Thank you. So we have a motion on the floor by Ngueradi, seconded by Brock. May we have a roll call vote please. on the floor by Ngureti, seconded by Brock. May we have a roll call vote please. Council Member De La Tori. Yes. Council Member Brock. Yes. Mayor Patel McCohen. Yes. Council Member Ngureti. Yes. Council Member Davis. Yes. Council Member Paura. Yes. And Mary Hema Ridge. Yes. So that passes unanimously and I think we're ready for our next item. I apologize. And thank you very much, Mr. Gupta. Okay. Next we have introduction and first reading of an ordinance amending municipal code 3.22 and adding section 3.23 to allow share mobility services to be provided under a contract agreement with the city Good evening members of council mayor mayor per ten my name is pepper Thomas. I'm a senior transportation planner with the Samo dot mobility Division and I'm here to presenting a staff report on Shifting from a permitted model and shared mobility to a contracted model. Santa Monica is one of the birthplaces of shared scooters and e-bikes. With Doclas shared scooters, first deploying year almost five years ago. These vehicles have been a fixture for mobility landscape ever since, bring with them a host of benefits along with some challenges. In managing shared mobility, the city has several core and related goals. First, we want shapeability to serve as effective transportation. Key to this goal is affordability and accessibility. This means fair structures that are within the means of community members following come levels. It also means that we want shapeability service to connect users with destinations across the city and beyond and to link with our transit systems. Another core goal is safety and order of the system. across the city and beyond and to link with our transit systems. Another core goal is safety and order of the system. We want e-scooters and e-bikes that make use of the best possible technology to keep both riders and non-rotors safe. And we want operations and maintenance programs to keep streets and sidewalks free and clear and keep the system in good order. A third core goal, as we manage our mobility, is environmental sustainability. We want share mobility to offer meaningful alternative to car travel and the pollution to come with it. And we want share mobility operators to manage the systems in sustainable ways, considering the environmental effects of producing, deploying and rebalancing their devices. As mentioned at the outset, we've been striving towards these goals for almost five years now. Private shared e-scrooters first launched the city of September 2017. As I'm sure many of us remembered, this launch was a time-sectic. In response to the following summer, Council approved the first share mobility pilot program to design and bring in this nascent system under city administration. This first pilot program launched the following September with four operators. The system saw its peak in ridership the following summer of 2019. Staff came to counseled up the bid on the progress of the first pilot in November 19, and it was subsequently extended the next spring and admits to the COVID pandemic. After a year of pandemic operations, staff came back to counsel March 2021. Council directed us to implement a second iteration of the pilot program, and to follow that second pilot with a new system that's which permitted operators to contract the operators. This second pilot program launched in July 2021 with a new slate of four operators and has been in effect ever since. We return to the council in May of this year to provide updates on the second pilot, but with work left to be done. The last fiscal year showed steady ridership down from pre-pandemic highs, both approximately 850,000 trips taken in the system. These trips represent a core mobility option for many community members. In recent survey of system users, we found that about 73% were Santa Monica residents. And all of these Santa Monica residents just over half reported using the system once a week or more. We have worked a lot to do though in advancing towards our goals. There's always room to improve through respect to making the system safer more orderly and more convenient. And we have particular concerns for the affordability of the system. Fares have crept up steadily since the first pilot program with affordability were the most cited reasons among users for not writing more. And while the CID requires operators to provide affordable fare programs for low income riders, these comprise a small fraction of the total system usage. So as we work toward an improved system, we believe that Council made a wise choice last March in directness to a switch from a current system in which four providers operate under permits to a contracted system, in which up to two providers would contract with the city to provide share mobility service. We believe that such a contracted system will have a number of benefits. Stronger partnership with a smaller number of operators should translate to better service. The operators will value greater exclusivity to our market, and we will be in position to negotiate service level agreements that most more closely adhere to our goals. With more exclusive access to our streets, and with a longer term, more certain relationship of the city, operators will also be incentivized to invest more in their systems, through vehicle technology and through operational measures that generate benefits to users in the whole community. Finally, managing a smaller number of close relationships will provide them for more efficient and effective oversight in the city's end. Freeing resources for other city endeavors while generating more orderly system for users and for the broader community. This leads us to our staff recommendation. We recommend to council that we adopt the attached ordinance and to follow council's prior direction and shift to a contracted model at the conclusion of the current power program. We further recommend that we extend the current power program to September 30th, 2023. This is much to give staff sufficient time to put the drafting embedding of a complex RFP and work through what is likely to be a very involved procurement process. Given the importance of the system, the complexity of procurement and the long life of any resulted contracts, we believe that this extension is warranted. And with that, I conclude my presentation and open to questions. Councillor Member Davis. Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions sort of about where we are now and how that's going to inform moving forward. Well, I certainly support the idea of a contract model and fewer providers. We are this little island in surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, which has multiple operators currently. And one of the issues we've had is people writing in from Venice, West Los Angeles, on operators that are not authorized in Santa Monica. So I happen to live off Main Street and not a day goes by that I don't see a bird scooter, for example, that's clearly been written in from Venice or somewhere else that obviously can't be used because birds not authorized here. How do we address that issue of interoperability while maybe maintaining this contract? Is there, I mean, I'm just curious, is there sort of a two-tier thing we can do or we're just going to continue to have that situation where, or maybe is, do we know what the City of Los Angeles is going to do? Maybe they're going to move to that and then how do we take that into account? I'm just curious about that. Yeah, it's interesting the point about a two-tier system. That hasn't come up in our internal discussions. One thing that we have discussed is within a procurement process to prioritize operators who also have operations in LA. They're trying to maximize the sort of efficiency and flow between cities and cross boundaries. With respect then to scooters or devices from operators who are not permitted or not contracting this case in Santa Monica, that really becomes an enforcement issue. So we have to rely on the sort of the good faith of those operators to collect their vehicles and then impound as necessary. Okay, yeah, and that's what I've observed, but I'm just curious because it does seem that, you know, unfortunately a lot of people live just over the border and it becomes a little awkward. But if you're thinking about it, that's all I'm asking because all we're doing tonight is sort of thinking about the future, but this may be our only chance to sort of talk about it. One of the questions I have is we certainly, when we went through the last iteration of this and we settled on the four providers, we were promised a lot of different things, some of which have materialized and some of which haven't. As someone, for example, I was looking forward to the three wheeled scooters and I saw them for two days, and I rode one, and then haven't seen one since. We were also promised sort of self-parking scooters that would determine when they were on the sidewalk and back off of the way, haven't seen those. And so I'm curious about, as we go into this contracting process, how do we think about, and maybe it's the contracting process itself that helps us, but sort of promises made promises kept. I know for example, I've received complaints from constituents. We really made an effort on having these services available throughout the city. I know people on the eastern side of the city are like, I can literally see a scooter, but it's a quarter mile away, and I've got a half mile to go. So, at that point, it's just easier to walk. I'm just curious, is the contracting process gonna give us a better opportunity to make sure that when promises are made to us, they're kept? I think you're absolutely right. I think it will. So, with respect to device technology, so one thing that we definitely wanna prioritize in the RFP is prompting respondents for safety enhancing features, for ordering and housing features like self-parking, so like different device types, three-wheel scooters, sidewalk riding technology, sidewalk riding detection technology, and so on. And as part of the contract process, we can build sort of a fleet-wide deployment into the contract, right? So we can try and expectations over the deployment of these things. So it's not just that we know you have a three-wheel scooter, we can actually build into the contract what proportion of your fleet that might comprise. And same thing with distribution around the city. So we currently have availability zones. We have eight zones on the city, and we have targets for deployment and for availability in those zones. And that's something that we definitely want to carry through in the Confect Program. And then my last question is, so it seems to me that, for example, when we first did this program, we didn't have the writing scooters. Those seem to be incredibly popular now. So in the contract, we'll be able to build in opportunities for technological developments, changes in devices. That sort of thing as well. I'm just concerned that if we focus on, well, today everyone writes a scooter, but then actually it turns out, at least in my neighborhood, most people really like the ride on scooters better. You know and maybe there's some other device coming down the road and I just don't know are we going to be able to sort of a look for contract partners who offer either technological innovations or maybe a wider range of devices. Yeah no it's definitely going to be a balancing act between prescribing the features that we want to see right now and being flexible to advancements and to shifts in availability of technology and shifting sort of taste amongst riders. And so that's part of the procurement process that I think is complex and part of why we're asking for extension to make sure that we get this right and we strike that balance correctly. And so I think that's just going to come down to internal discussions, discussions to other cities like Portland, Denver, or to, you know, model, you know, model systems that we're patterning our program after. And then also discussions with operators, and then ultimately a negotiation space with selected operators where we try to get that balance right between sort of ensuring that we get the devices in the system that we want that we want today while sort of allowing for flexibility in an optimal way. And then my last question is in the past there's been some controversy about the evaluation of the people responding to the RFP and how points were awarded and stuff. Are we going to be sort of rethinking that, or at least examining that process? I don't know that it needs to be changed, but at least addressing the fact that in the past, there have been some concerns about how points were awarded. And whether or not one F, you know, one area was over emphasized in another, so as to drive to a particular decision. So. We're absolutely going to be mindful of it. And so, yeah, we're going to be as regressive as this possible. And really try to make sure that, you know, we both select the best possible operators, but we do so in a way that's regressedly in the principle. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, Council member Brock and then Council member Nguyen. So, I want to sort of bifurcate this into bicycles and other e-scooter e-mobile items. So bicycle share, I had a conversation with one of your compatriots. He had the misfortune to sit next to me at a meeting for an hour and a half. And I had just come back from five different cities that all had bike share. And they had gone back, and I don't know if they had ever gone to just leave it on the corner bike share program, but all five cities I was in in the last two months have bike share that are stationary stations. And several of the cities now have stationary stations that also charge. So you're assisted power with a lot of times boss chargers and really good technology were in these cities and they were stations very throughout it looked like tourist areas and college areas and parks and residential areas. And you know back in 2011, I traveled to Denver. It has a recreation and parks commissioner but actually just for vacation that weekend but I went to see B-cycles control station there and came back really enamored with what they were doing. Trek bikes, etc. And I was really excited to control station there and came back really enamored with what they were doing. Trek bikes, etc. And they came to Santa Monica with a demo at the Santa Mic Pacific but nobody at that time was keen on doing that. We waited and did a different system but I was really excited to see, for instance, in Santa Barbara, B-cycle, Trek, Bikes, with Bosch, you know, generators, and batteries rather. I was just in Napa, where I saw Bikeshare in stations. I was just in this weekend, I was in Bend, Oregon, where they were using bird bikes. It really seemed cleaner. And as much as I know, the original concept of this type of bike share was, well, you would have them on every corner. They'd be everywhere. But they became more of a complaint system for Pete, for bikes just left everywhere. And honestly, as much as I was really thrilled about lift, they don't have bikes throughout the city. And it's a real issue, plus the fact the expense of the lift bikes is now the same as getting a lift car. So there's no comparative advantage to doing what we want to do, which was have people for sake their cars and use bicycles. We've tried to develop a bike system on the ground for better bike lanes, for better protected lanes, but yet our bike share system doesn't match that. So first on bikes, I'd like it to see us evaluate a more of a standard bike share where we use stations and also I mentioned this last week but I'd also like to see us have tossed with Metro because they're expanding and it doesn't really make sense to have our own system. If Metro would go with if they advanced to where they get all assisted electric assist bikes, it would seem like that would be the ideal. And the price for the Metro bikes was actually reasonable. You could get one on one of those and not exhaust the bank. So I want that to be something on bikes that our residents really want to use. That, you know, they replenished all day long. A single provider is a great idea and a system that will allow us to have bikes ready for residents throughout the city. That's every neighborhood in the city. As far as e-scooters, we know that the system that was sort of guerrilla, you know, hoisted on us was an issue. And I also, like Council Member Davis, I was so excited about the three wheels cycles, the three wheel scooters. And the fact that they had this great technology that was going to actually broadcast out you are now on in a park or in a sidewalk and stop them and that we saw from one of the providers that the scooters would even move back in the place. It was a miracle. It was wonderful. And yes, I saw the same three scooters, Council Member Davis, and then never saw them again. So we need to make sure that has Council Member Davis mentioned. Yeah, we need to make sure that technology is updated constantly. And we actually get the technology that we're shown. and that becomes the standard because it seemed like we had it. And for a couple of literally a few days and I saw a couple and I saw the demo and I was excited about it and then it disappeared. Has did some of the sidewalk avoidance systems, some of the, you know, the different areas that we thought we were going to see. Didn't see them. And it's funny over the last couple last three, four weeks. I've been seeing more and more scooters in our parks, more and more scooters just left. And the companies were doing a really good job for a long time. Recruiting scooters making sure they were out of the public access ways and it seems like whether they're decreasing revenue, they're cutting back on staff, whatever, but it seems like they're not being quite as efficient as they were in the past. And we need to make sure if a contract model provides that ability to actually control the product and the price for e-scooters, and we contract with one company that we can have control over. You're thinking about two companies or one? Up to two. Yeah, so there's a possibility of one or two. And I think one of the other questions that Councilmember Davis had which I agree with was that are we gonna do our best to make sure that we know technology will keep evolving and many times quicker than our ability to do other things with it. How are we going to make sure that we hold these companies to looking for the newest product, or do we do short-term contracts? It's a good question. Yeah. The initial plan is to have a three-year contract period with potential for additional year-long extensions. In terms of ensuring the adoption of up-to-date technologies and the best possible technologies for safety and for other features, that is very quick. We're certainly paying attention to it. And it's a difficult strategic problem to try and incontract, but we will do everything we can to both prompt for that in the RFP to give us a concrete plan for how you're going to adapt future technologies and to provide some of concrete plan for how you're going to adapt future technologies and to a bunch of a roadmap for future technology and then in trying that in the contract itself. With respect to you coming to on bike share, all those elements of affordability, of accessibility throughout the city and then of having sort of orderly stations, like those are all of them, instead we definitely plan on stressing in the RFP and will attach real points to it. Those are things we're gonna select on. And so yeah, we're asking. And for the East gooders, I've noticed, I think we've seen two reports on this in the last six, eight months or at least. I think I've seen two things on it. That price has been an area that local residents have price has been an area that local residents haven't been using has become a tourist use for the excitement of we get to use scooters right and it's also an upper income use and I think what we what we hoped would happen is students would be using it to go to SMC, people would be using it for a first mile, last mile, to get two in from the train stations, two in from areas in the city. They would use the bike routes for the scooters as well to make sure they were safe. And at the price point, would be something that any resident could use. And I know we added low cost programs last time, but I don't think they've been successful and they could say, well, we have 900 users at this price, but honestly, the same thing, if you're going to pay the same amount to get on a eScooter or a public bike or to get in an Uber or a lift, then we're defeating the purpose. The prices have to be kept low enough that residents will use them. Visitors can use them too. I'm happy with visitors using them, but I really want our residents to use these items, because that will make it successful and that will decrease car use and increase the use of our streets by quality mobility devices that are non-polluting and I think that's important thank you. I'm going to go to the next slide. I'm going to go to the next slide. Lana. No, no, no, no, no, are you are you making a motion? I can, but I have a question. You mentioned incentive moving to the RFP. Sorry, hello. The incentive to invest by moving to the RFP model and I was reading in the report. I'm just curious. Can you just expand on that a little bit and what would be the incentive for them to invest? Yeah, so there's a couple of core components to that. One is this idea of exclusivity. So if providers is the sole provider competing with one other provider, the market is more valid for them. So they have more incentive to sort of to invest resources in the city and we're in a strong position to negotiate for better affordability terms and other surface top web agreements. There's also the variation of the contract. So it's just a more stable relationship. And so again they have, they're more invested in the market and so there's more of an incentive to sort of provide better service in that market. And obviously that's secure during the RFP process up front and then that rate is sort of kept through the entire period, is that the idea? Yeah, the idea is that we will, you know, that we want to try certain affordability. So both base rates and other sort of frequent user programs and things like that, we want to be part of the contract itself. And then I know this maybe can't be controlled in the RFP process although I'm not sure because, you know, one of the providers before used to contribute to our schools, for example, and then the idea that the other providers were going to do that was sort of talked about, and then when it actually happened, that wasn't the case. So when you say invest in the community, I'm just curious if there's going to be an RFP point system that will also look to operators that have done so in the past or planning to invest in our community in other ways. So in saying that, the wording was intended to reflect investment in the system itself, the shared mobility system. That said, as part of the RFP, we are sort of prompting respondents with respect to other revenue sources and potential for revenue sharing. So we want to assure cost recovery through a basic fee system similar to what we have now, but we also want to open the idea of of revenue sharing. Revenue share, but also is the idea open to maybe I don't know contributing during certain times of the month or giving Tuesday back to the We Are Santa Monica fund. I mean are those things that are inappropriate to put in the RFP process? We can consult. Yeah we can certainly bring that up. Yeah, it hasn't come up today. But like, yeah, we can certainly. Just because I think the community sees that, even though I understand that investing back in the process makes sense, but that feels like investing back in the community. The other question was, is the RFP going to include that the home base of the office be located in Santa Monica or is that's yeah yeah so as part of the RFP we were going to ask about both their sort of business location but also their sort of employment models whether these contract employees W2 employees things of that nature so yeah we patterning after some of the the work they put in Denver have gone in our prior our phase for the perimeter problem yet we will we will ask about those features the company and then I know in the staff report you guys talk about making sure that they have enough because obviously reducing from four to two and I know we had numbers set per company of how many scooters or bikes or combination there are they were going to have. So obviously going from one to two I think my only concern would be going to one is that you will eliminate the need to compete but is there going to be to two, I think my only concern would be going to one is that you will eliminate the need to compete But is there going to be some set minimum? I guess is that the idea? Someone's going to be monitoring that those are out. Yeah, yeah, and we have MDS mobility data specification data fees We're getting directly monitor how many devices they have deployed at any time But yeah, that is the idea and staff is confident that between one to two companies can actually suffice The amount that we need in the city. We believe so. Yes. Okay thank you and yes I'm I'm wishing to move this item. Councillor Wilhelm Brock and I actually have a question I'd like to move that we ask the first reading and I'll second I'll second but but I do have a question So this is a fairly mature industry. I mean, it's been around for what five six years now So we know where the price points are going to be for supportable program and my question is we've had discussions about affordability but It is there any realistic probability that the price point is gonna come down from where it is now? We think so, yeah, I mean, we certainly hope so. And we think, again, because we think that having a greater degree of exclusivity has real value to the operators. We believe that we can use that to partner in a way that is more affordable, both in terms of the base per minute rate. There's an unlock and fee per minute rate, but also exploring other user programs like monthly passes, things along that nature, and things that get at what Council Member Brot said about frequent use and connecting students to school, connecting to transit, things of those things. We all know how to create frequent users. Well, and Metro has done that. I mean, we have our passes to school for both Santa Monica College and so I mean, I'm curious whether that will be built in some integration with that. That's what we're going to aim. So in terms of direct fair integration, we'll see how complex that problem is. But in terms of building in affordability structures within the contract, that is definitely what we aim to do. Great. Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments? Let's have a roll call vote please. Councillor Mouricara. Yes. Councillor Member Davis. Yes. Councillor Mouricara. Yes. Councillor Member Brock. Yes. Mayor Potimma-Cowin. Yes. Council Member Brock. Yes. Council Member De La Tori. Yes. And Mayor Hillmaric. Yes. So that passes unanimously. And thank you very much. That was really helpful. And next item. The next item is introduction and first reading of an ordinance modifying a municipal code 4.12.105 concerning amplified sound in Ocean View Park. Council, I was going to tee this one up. Let's hear it. Okay. This is the result of, I think, a number of complaints over several years about noise from residents adjacent to Ocean View Park. This is brought at the request of Council. There are several options here, but what we put before you is a very simple, very limited change in the amplified sound ordinance. It simply says that you may not use amplified sound in Ocean View Park. There are exceptions whether it's pursuant to a community events permit. So that would be allowed. It also would allow the council in the future to approve other areas to have some other restrictions through a resolution. And then it says that we need to put up signage to let people know. So that's really all it does. It does not prohibit the playing of acoustic instruments without amplification. And that's it. Any questions? Council Member Davis. So, and I sent an email about this. Maybe you could describe broadly because people are confused about the parameters of ocean view park and the area that would be affected by this. Right. I think staff may have a map available and the area that would be affected by this. Right. I think staff may have a map available of what the park actually is. I think the one thing we need to clarify is that the sidewalks that are in the right of way adjacent to the street is that part of the park or not. I think boring something that shows that, affirmatively, that is part of the park, I would say that's probably not, that it's part of the park, I would say there's probably not, that that's part of the right away. Right, because in Ocean View Park, there are actually walkways that come between the buildings from Nielsenway down to the park. And, you know, so there was some concern about his Ocean View Park only on one side of the walkway or doesn't encompass, because there's actually a grass area on the other side. And I don't know that we need to clarify that tonight, but I think at some point as we're going to put the signage up and people need to be understand where they cannot play music, amplified music, just because I would hate for people to say, well, I didn't know this was part of Ocean View Park and then get cited for playing amplifying music. That's what I think. Just at a really high level, it's basically the entire green space area, both sides of the walkway that extends all the way to Nielsenway down to Barnard and includes all the sports courts as well. At a very high level level that's what we're talking about. And I guess I'll just make a comment because this is a limited ordinance. I very strongly believe in the First Amendment and the First Amendment protects the rights of artistic expression which includes amplified music. But I also understand this is a unique situation. We've heard both from residents who love the music and residents who don't love the music. And so given that this applies to a relatively limited area, I'm willing to support it. But I don't I hope this is not the camel's nose under the tent as they say that we're going to use this to start limiting amplification in other parks where people are more likely, for example, to exercise their first amendment rights, such as protest and things like that. So I'll just leave that there. Council member Ngueradi. I just wanted to make the comment that, as the music supporter, you can still create music without amplification. So there can still be music. It's just amplified sound to be clear. Right. Council Member Brock. I move this forward. I move by Brock second to by Negretty. I'm going to roll tonight. I wouldn't get carried away it doesn't feel like much of a roll to me but let's take a vote. Councillor Member De La Torre. Yes. Councillor Member Brock. Yes. Mayor Patin McCallan. Yes. Council Member Nugrete. Yes. Council Member Davis. Yes. Council Member Parra. Yes. And Mayor Hamilton Rich. Yes. So that passes unanimously and let's have our next item. Okay. The next item is introduction and first reading of an ordinance amending municipal code chapter 6.112 to add regulations for street performers on Wilshire Boulevard, Arizona Avenue, Santa Monica Boulevard and Broadway adjacent third-street promenade. And I guess we have a slide. Councillor Oswald is going to tee this one up also. This is similarly addressed as amplified sound here on the promenade and what we found is in the restrictions on amplified sound on the promenade. Enforcement became an issue for two reasons. One, while there were limitations on the promenade, people might go right around the corner and then still cause sound, amplified sound to interfere with other uses on the promenade. So this, oh, there is my un-sophisticated map. So you see the promenade or the three blocks in the center. So this ordinance would extend the limitations to the adjacent sidewalks at 90 degrees from the promenade back to the first alley. So it extends at half a block from the promenade where you would be limited in what you can do as far as amplified sound. And then there's one other change as far that will assist with enforcement. There are restrictions on how long you can play in the existing ordinance says, then you can only be there a certain time, and then you have to go at least 120 feet away. Well, PDE or code doesn't want to have to get a measuring tape and see what 120 feet is. So instead of saying 120 feet, it says within that block, because that's very easy to enforce. So that's what the changes are. Any questions? I'd like to move this item. Well, let's any questions. Let's start with that. Okay, any comments? Okay, so motion by Negretti. Second. Seconded by Brock. Let's have a roll call vote. Councillor Member Parra. Yes. Councillor Member Davis. Yes. Councillor Member Negretti. Yes. Councilmember Parra. Yes. Councilmember Davis. Yes. Councilmember Nguyen-Grecti. Yes. Mayor Pro Temma-Cowin. Yes. Councilmember Brock. Yes. Councilmember Dela Tori. Yes. And Mayor Hill Moritz. Yes. So that passes unanimously. Everyone, push your buttons. Mayor Pro Tem and Councilmember Brock. Okay. Okay. Next item. Love those second readings. Next item. Yeah. Second reading and adoption of an ordinance to amend municipal code section 312, 3.12.01010, and 3.12.600 to allow non-electric petty calves and beach bike path and recodify municipal code section 3.12.380 prohibiting vehicle driving and parking on sidewalks and parkways and this is a second reading. Move adoption. Second. Move by Dave is seconded by Brock let's have a roll call. Please. Council member Dela Torrey. Yes. Council Member Brock. Yes. Yes. We're put in McCowen. Yes. Council Member Noregrita. Yes. Council Member Davis. Yes. Council Member Parra. Yes. And Mary Hemelrich. Yes. So that too passes and let me push my button 7 to 0. And now we are at 10. We have two more. Sorry. Introduction and adoption of an emergency ordinance to add municipal code section 4.27.080 to the Santa Monica municipal code. And did you have a presentation? I'm not seeing you. Yes, very briefly. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. Jonathan O'Rourc, Deputy City Attorney. I wanted to start with just a brief reminder about eviction protections that are already in place. So we do have the County of Los Angeles COVID-19 eviction moratorium. That does apply from now and since July through the end of the year. But it is different in some ways from what we're offering to you for consideration tonight. So that the first thing is that that only applies to tenant to our at 80% of area median income or below. at 80% of area median income or below. It also requires that the reason for nonpayment be COVID-19-related financial distress, and it requires that tenants provide a notice to their landlord and that is strict in the sense that it has to be within seven days of when the rent becomes due. And just to get a seven days of when the rent becomes due. And just to get a better sense of what that AMI threshold is for a household of one that would be 66,750 for a household of four that's 93,500. The other thing that I think it's probably worth doing is summarizing one more time what will happen with the REN Control Ballot Initiative. So if that's passed, what will happen is there is a 6% maximum increase, which I'm sure you know, is something that has already been noticed for many tenants and can go into effect starting September 1. That will stay the maximum increase. And again, this is presuming that the ballot initiative is passed in November. That will stay the maximum increase through the end of January and then starting February 1st. The maximum increase will be reduced to 0.8% above what it is now. So the rent for many tenants would actually have to go down. And the idea there is that for the rent control year, which is from September to September, the average rent is going to be 3%. And so what we have for your consideration tonight is a targeted temporary eviction moratorium that is designed to protect tenants who are faced with that 6% increase over this interim stopgap period from September through the end of January. And so that is the rent that's covered. And the way that it works is that in order to qualify, a tenant has to receive a rent increase of more than 3%. Again, that's what that cap is going to be the average for this year, but then going forward if the initiative passes, the rent control mar increase will never be able to be greater than 3%. Tenants will have to provide notice and documentation to their landlord, but that can be in the form of self-certification. Tenants who invoke the moratorium will have until September 1, 2023 to pay. And the idea there is that tenants will have fully benefited from that reduced rent down to the 0.8% by the time they need to pay back the rent. However, they do need to pay back the entirety of the unpaid rent. And if they don't do that by that September 1st, 2023 day, then they can be evicted or they can be sued for the back rent. And so I think I'll leave it there for now. And if you have questions, I can try to answer those. Councilmember Davis. Thank you. Councilmember Dillator. So thank you for that. So I just want to make it clear to anyone who might still be listening is we sort of have several moving parts here and the idea as I understand it of this emergency ordinance is to make sure that on September 4th, we don't or September, yeah, we don't get three day notices to quit when people haven't paid their rent on September 1st where there's a 6% increase. And what this does is basically buy our tenants in red controlled units time, one so that they don't immediately have to pay the 6% while we're working out our tenant. I'm not sure whether we're our tenant relief program. I mean we have this tenant relief program we're going to implement, but it's probably not going to have money in people's hands by September 1st. And if they don't pay their run on September 1st, they'll start to see three day notices to pay rent or quit sort of thing. So one is to sort of help people in this interregnum while we're working on rent relief. And then it also seems that to give people time to see if the proposed charter amendment passes so that then they can, as you indicate, we'll pay what is essentially a yearly maximum of 3% and then that will be due in September 20 to have till September 2023 to make good on that and then if they don't then. So what we're really doing is sort of trying to in a very short period of time protect tenants from being evicted while we're working out our tenant relief program and at the same time waiting to see if our charter amendment that immense rent control is gonna pass, is that right? Yeah, I do think that's a very good summary and I think as Ms. McGrath and I had pointed out earlier tonight, if a tenant misses that three day window very often, they're not gonna be given more time. And it's exactly what you said. I think it is to make sure that all of our tenants are able to benefit from the ballot initiative if that does pass and from that, that overall 3%, because of course if they're victed, they will never be able to benefit from that. Right, and so in a able to benefit from that. Right. And so in a way to maybe sum it up, this is in many respects a homeless prevention program because if on September 1st we're not necessarily going to have money in people's hands, they're going to get hit with a 6% rent increase that we can't do anything about. And under unlawful detainer law they can get a three day notice to pay or quit and they could literally be out of their home on September 4th. So what we really want to do is not have people being evicted from their units but be able to one give the proposed charter amendment time and also our relief program time. So this is really to prevent people from becoming unhoused while all these moving pieces move around. Is that right? I think that's correct. And that's one of the several reasons this is an emergency ordinance for your consideration. OK, great. Thank you. Councilmember McRiddy and then Councilmember Brock. Sorry. I just wanted to be clear, because you mentioned, I go right into it. I didn't even say hello. Good evening. Thank you for being here. You said that it's only applies, okay, well, first of all, going back to the, to the eviction moratorium, it's not just, it's the difference. If you just continue to pay your old rent without the increase, right? That's what you're continue to pay your old rent without the increase, right? That's what you're referring to. So if you get an increase of $50 just for simple math, but you continue to pay the rent without the $50 increase, right? Then you're protected, or is it mean that now you can just not pay your entire rent and you're protected under this moratorium. So the version that is before you or what is before you is somewhat broader. So there is a threshold in order to qualify, you have to have been given an increase that is more than 3%. But once you are presuming you're a rent control tenant and you have been given an increase of more than 3%, if you then self-certify that you cannot pay your rent for any of those months due to financial distress, then all of the rent for those months could be covered by the moratorium. Right, so that's the moratorium and just on that note. So basically, if your rent is 4,750 a more, because that's where it kind of hits the cap of, the capital. So that's where it kind of hits the cap of at that point, your cap because 3% would be 1.4250 if you're runs 4,750 more. So those people who are at the cap are above do not qualify for this because at this 3% level, once you're rent hits this cap and you're paying 4750 for example, the cap is $140, which is $3.00. Am I making sense here? This applies to every rent-controlled tenant who may receive an increase of greater than 3%. Right, but some people won't get that based on the math. Some people won't get a 6% increase. What you're saying is clear. If your rent is high enough, to spend on the dollar amount to, 140 will never exceed 3%. Right, so those people are excluded from it. And then he's like, I'm not sure if I follow, but okay. I do follow, I think. And then, you know, that's something that, if you determined that you wanted everyone to be covered, you couldn't. Well, because people said that, you know, we shouldn't assume in certain categories that people don't have trouble paying the increase as well. So I was just pointing that out for those that are listening. But the other issue is also I just want to make sure, because I had some neighbors that were coming over and showing the pass-throughs can add up, right? Depending on your landlord if they put those through. So this does not include pass-throughs. This is just the rent increase. I know for example, my rent is capped at the 140, but my rent went to 176 more higher because of pass-throughs. So just want to be clear that some people might look at that and say, well, if they're doing the percentage, I don't want to confuse anyone here. I'm trying to be not addressed the past. Right. I'm just saying that out loud so that anyone listening, because I've had that question, and I received two dozen emails about the past throughs, and whether that adds up in relation to this. So it's just the percentage of rent itself. Of rent itself. So that was my other question. And then when you're self-certifying, what does that mean? So it creates an affirmative defense to eviction. So if a landlord were to file for eviction, the tenant would have to come forward in response of that and say, I can prove that I have financial distress. And so that's subject to ultimately having to prove it at trial. So it's not a free pass to just say it. They have to ultimately be able to prove it too if the landlord pursues eviction. I ask for questions. Yeah, she wants to ask a followup. And then I have one more question. So based upon what you just said, if the landlord evicts, and then the tenant says, well, I can prove, is it based upon the financials at like that point in time or do they have to go back and show the financials at the time that they put in the self-certification? I think, well, probably both. One that they it was true at the time that they made the certification and then likely that it's still true at the time that there might be going to trial, which could be maybe three months after the landlord files. Okay. And the eviction moratorium, just to be clear, is if your rent increases, you're protected from being infected period for non-payment of any rent or just for the non-payment of the rent increase. It's any rent for those covered months provided that you got an increase for that month that is more than 3% and and you don't pay your rent for those months you're protected. They covered under this ordinance. Yes. Covered from being evicted. Right. And then you would have to prove all of that rent, whatever it is that you didn't pay that you invoked the moratorium for by September 1st, 2023. If you did not do that, then on or after September 1st, 2023, your landlord could pursue you for that rent and they could pursue eviction or a civil remedy, basically a lawsuit seeking the back rent. I had tenants ask that question, so I want to be clear. It's not rent forgives. I just had a lot of tenants ask that question. And so it's just like it was before. It's treated the same way as it was during COVID the moratorium. It's deferral. Okay. There have been several different moratoriums. And some of them have done, you know, what's effectively a conversion to to civil that where you could never evict for the rent. This is not that the landlord would have that eviction remedy if if the tenant didn't pay back what was owed by that September first. Yeah. 2023 deferment date. I just wanted to confirm because I was confused and then other people are about if it was covering the entire rent or if it was just that if you didn't pay the higher rent. This is for the entire rent. Got it. Thank you. And by the way, it comes to financial hardship or recommending that we insert COVID related financial hardship to make it more defensible. Right. Okay. Thank you. Councillor Neill. Yes. Councillor Member Dela Torre. So I have real concerns and questions about the last part of the statement that Councillor Member Nguyen and the city attorney answered. You're saying that if rather than not being able to pay the full 6% increase, the 3%, which is really what they're saying is their hardship, you're saying they can just negate their entire rent, which puts landlords in more of a hole than they were before before because now instead of having to pay their normal rent plus the increase or be able to certify they can't pay the increase, you're now saying they don't have to pay any rent for a year. And yeah, that's what I'm hearing and I'm hearing that in addition to not having to pay any rent, you're saying great the landlord can evict. Well, I don't want to see more tenants A being evicted, or having to go to court, or having to get lawyers. So here's my question. The way I understood our way of helping was people were going to get a 6% increase for five months, five months, and four months, five months now, five months. And the part that was going to be contested was a 6% increase versus the 3% increase that they thought they would have got. So that means to maximum that they should be able to negate for that year is $72 a month. If you took 5 times 72, I'll bet you our tenant fund that the city is proposing that we can fund at least $3.00 million. Can pay that $72 similar the way the state program worked. The tenant files, the landlord files, and the check reimbursement check goes to the landlord for up to $72 a month, maximum for five months. Anything beyond that, we're not being fair. So we already heard from landlords two weeks ago or four weeks ago saying inflation is 9%. And we only had to give them 6% for five months, but then we would cut that down to .08. And all right, then they get a balance of 3% for the year. 6% for a lot of people has council member Negretti said on a large rent is a lot of money. 140 a month or 140 something a month is a lot. But the reality is that why would we say they could now abate their rent fully from zero for five months? That makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Council? I don't understand where that justification is because to me, the, the, the honorable thing would be to say you're getting more of an increase than you thought and we're going to try and work with you on that increase so if you are a low income tenant and have been stuck with 6% and the city has some emergency funds we can provide then we should be providing that but we should not be providing that on their entire rent, which they already figured they were paying. We're talking really just about the increase and we should be talking about the amount of the increase that is an excess of what people anticipated they were getting. So if we had to pay five times 72, $450, $500 a person, I, for the people who were in need, we could do that and not end up with any evictions. I kept reading this report and reading about evictions and lawsuits and boy, and I just said great, it's great for those attorneys and it's great for those attorneys and it's terrible for those tenants and it's terrible for those landlords and it's terrible for our city. I'd like to see us revise this system. Well, this is wrong. Council, you know, we heard you before and there is a second option that we've provided. Uh, call it option two. Can you read that option because I know you sent I'll just go ahead and get the vote. I'll just go ahead and get the vote. I'll just go ahead and get the vote. I'll just go ahead and get the vote. I'll just go ahead and get the vote. I'll just go ahead and get the vote. I'll just go ahead and get the vote. I'll just go ahead and get the vote. I'll just go ahead and get the vote. I to pay your base rent plus 3% but you would have protection for a failure to pay more than 3%. And I think that's fair and I think that that helps our tenants. It provides stability for landlords and tenants for saying that you don't have to pay any of your rent. Even if you get evicted next year some people will say, hey, I'll gamble on that. Why do we need to do that right now? I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I position because I think it's a better thought out policy here is you also don't want tenants to be falling so much behind on rent. Anyone who's in a financial squeeze, falling deeper into a hole is not healthy for them. Then five months later they have this balloon payment they have to make to keep their apartments and then they're going to come to us and say hey look You know you all pass the policy saying I don't have to pay anything and then now I'm in this huge hole I need help and we don't want to have that as well so I I think it makes a lot of sense what the City Attorney Sloan has presented us Where we where we're You know housing providers property owners are gonna get some, most of what they need to keep in business. I mean, I've talked to many small, a mom and pop property owners here in Santa Monica. It's like, we forced them to do seismic retrofitting. That was a lot of money, thousands of dollars. Most jobs, most of those jobs were like $86,000 a year, and they had no relief. I mean, this is something we're forcing them to do, they can't pass that cost on to tenants. Everything else from, we talked about this in terms of the inflation on plumbing services and water rates, which by the way, we didn't decrease, we're charging way we didn't decrease, we're charging even the rent control registration fees. We increased those. The city's decided to these property owners. So I just think we need to have a fair, a more fair return. And also I don't want to set these tenants up, especially tenants that are struggling economically, tend up thinking that hey, I don't have to pay, and that's just, I think it's a trick. Down the line, you have to have now a huge amount of money to keep your apartment, and that's not gonna help them. So anyway, I appreciate the alternative proposal that- I'd like to move the alternative proposal. I'll second. Council member Dela Torrey seconded. Yes, so moved by Nograti seconded by Council member Dela Torrey. Council member Davis. So I have a couple of questions before we vote. So as I understand it, for example, a renter can continue to pay some of their rent. I mean, if they don't necessarily have to go in what's been described as this deep poll, they can pay what they can afford, but what this does is buy them some time to speak in these still COVID times to one deal with the 6% increase and then see what happens with the charter. I remember there's nothing here that says nobody can pay their rent. They can still continue to pay their rent. And for example, if the landlord says, gee, I want to continue to get paid rent during this interregnum, I'm going to raise rents 3% instead of 6% and then they get paid starting September 1st, correct? That is correct. And again, it's a threshold. So if you did not get higher than 3%, then there would be no eviction moratorium to invoke. You're also correct. It does state that a tenant can pay that money back in any number of payments or an alump sum. The only other one go ahead. Well, and then the other thing was that it sounded like there was some misunderstanding. This only applies to the five months that the 6%. I mean, other words, can someone not pay their rent for the whole year? And then in September 1st, 2023 pay a year's worth of rent? Because as I read it, it says it applies to the five months that the 6% is in effect. That's correct. It covers a protected period which is only those months of the 6%. The September 1st 2023, that is the date by which the rent would have to be paid back in order to be permanently protected from evictions. So in theory, beginning March 1st, February 1st. February 1st. February 1st, rent tenants would have to begin paying their rent. They couldn't just say, oh no, I'm excused. I self-certify. I'm not paying rent. So on February 1st, they have to start paying rent. So the only time that's forgiven is between September 1st and the end of January. Is that correct? Deferred, never. Deferred, right. Yeah, forgiven is the wrong word, definitely. Forgiven is the wrong word. The only time they're allowed to defer is during that time period. That's correct. OK, great. Thank you. On that basis, I'm going to be clear, this is not saying, because assuming right now people are not in an eviction moratorium, they're paying their rent, right? So there's no eviction moratorium right now. Other than LA County County. There's only one county of Los Angeles eviction moratorium with the requirements that I have laid out. So that's 80% AMI, COVID related financial distress. So that's still- Notice to your landlord within seven days of one rent is due. And that still applies? Yes. Right, so that's not going away. For anybody who's currently struggling and received, they can still receive this, they have this rent moratorium based on that LA County protection kind. At the end of December, it would not cover January, which would be covered by this proposal. And this proposal just does what we were just talking about to be very clear that you wouldn't, you're covered between the three and the six percent, which is what I had understood as well. That's the option two. Right. Right. Okay, I just wanted to be clear because I don't want to lock up. Again, it's set up as an affirmative defense. So which then creates a rebuttable presumption. A tenant may be in the position of having to show if it were actually to be contested in a in a viction case that they were unable to pay either under proposal one, the full rent due to financial distress or under proposal two, being able to show more narrowly that they were not able to pay the increment increase due to financial distress or under proposal two, I guess it would be unable to pay the increment increase due to COVID-19 related financial distress. And is there a program under the county for still that landlords or and or tenants can apply for rental assistance in this program? So no, so anyone who's under this moratorium now who's able to not pay based on the county. What you just outlined from the 80% AMI. I was just saying about protection or protection. Yeah, protection protection. The moratorium protection that's provided by the county. With the limitations that it has, yes. Right. So right now you're saying that anyone who's in that protection moratorium does is not paying their rent under the as long as they qualify that it's going through December. So far unless it's extended, right? We don't know. It could be extended. But under this, you would still be covered through December, but come January. You would just for this one month have to pay. We're just talking about one month is what I'm trying to say for anybody who's currently under it. County version and this version would cover slightly different pools of people that it applies to. But yes. Right, because there's an additional pool of people, right? But it doesn't lessen it. I guess what I'm trying to say just to make sure that, because I wanted, I'm hearing council member Davis is saying that we're, that really we're talking about January if I'm correct. If I'm somebody who's qualified to that falls under this 80% AMI under the county eviction moratorium and I'm not paying my rent because I qualify. I am not impacted with what we're doing here until January 1st. In which case, I could then say I can pay my rent with the 3% increase or I'm going to have to pay that, cannot pay the additional 3% and I show proof to the city of Santa Monica to then be covered under that and get the additional assistance and then come February 1st everybody is back to having to pay is going down to the point 08 correct assuming the charter of minute passes. Okay. I'm making that clear for myself and I don't know if I just confused everybody else. Well, but let me excuse me one minute. So there's one thing. There are two things. First of all, I think that this incentivizes landlords to charge 3% from the get go because then this protection isn't available because the protection is available only if if it's if it's only over 3% so anybody who only charges at 3% won't be subject to this ordinance. Excuse me I'm not quite done and then my next question is this on the backfill program. It's my understanding that the only thing that we are agreeing to pay is a difference between the 3% and the 6%. We aren't paying all of their rent, but the argument that you were making that then will owe all of this money doesn't apply because all we are really backfilling is the 3%. And I'm looking at the city attorney. I'm sorry, the city manager and asking that. Here, can I can I try and answer that in the meantime and I have two questions while the city manager looks that up? Sure. Okay. One, in response, the Assistant City Attorney said originally when I asked this question, if someone couldn't pay the increase, they could choose to defer their entire rent for September, October, November, December, January, and then repay it by the following September or start repayment in September. That's correct to what you said. You would have to pay the entirety of the amount that you didn't pay prior to September 1st, 2020. But the first part of what I said then was true, which you said that people could defer their entire rent for those five months because they couldn't theoretically pay the 3% increase. And that's why I proposed that we use this alternative. I have a question. You mentioned that some people could pay if there was a good landlord, the good landlord could just charge from 3% starting in September. And I think Mayor Hill will reach back that up a minute ago. My question though is, do they still have to decrease their rent increase to point 08% in March or can they just maintain it at 3% for the year? Does that does my question make sense? I believe we handled that in the charter amendment. We did. No, they have to reduce it. It was a whole thing that if they charge 3% they could just stay at 3% through the whole year. Okay, that makes sense. I'm fine with that part. So we don't have to worry about that in this because that's in the charter amendment that would go to voters. So if a landlord wanted more stability rather than try and take that quick fix of extra money now, they could just go 3%, not have to do separate forms, not have to go back and forth. And Mayor, you were saying that negates? Well, because this ordinance only applies the- Yes, that's a three. If they're charging in excess of three three so it's an additional incentive to charge only three and as opposed to trying to get your six right up front. That part I like and agree with. No I'm saying either one either one doesn't matter because the ordinance the threshold for it is the 3%. If you're below below three, if you're at three or below, you're fine. And then my last question would be there was consternation about the month of January 2023. The county may have ended their moratorium by then. We would not have a moratorium for that month. So theoretically, a really crappy landlord could try and evict in January if someone couldn't pay that extra 3% increase. Is that the question? Is there a fix that we? So it winds up to February? It's up to you. Well, ours goes to February 1st. Both of the versions here go to February 1st. Okay. So we're covering till February no matter what. No matter what the county does, no matter what we do, everyone's covered. Nobody can be evicted if they can't pay that full 6% that a landlord decides the charge. That's what I want to know and that's in here. On both their versions, yes. All right. Thank you. I guess sorry. I think Councilmember Davis was saying like the LA County covers to December 31. It could be extended. We don't know that. But in the extent in the instance that it doesn't, I guess I'm just trying to make sure people are protected all the way through. My concern is that the pool of people who are eligible to take advantage of the county program is a smaller pool than the tenants that are being rent burdened by our 6% increase because we have people who are making above 80% AMI who are still rent burdened. And LA County program only protects people up to 80% AMI and they also have to make some other certifications that are different than what we're requiring. They have to jump through a lot more hoops to get in that program. So for me, as the mayor pointed out, if someone says I'm a landlord and I want to continue to get my rent in September or October and November December, they can raise the rents 3 who are burdened by that delta, if you will, of the 3%. That's going to be a lot harder, I think, for people to prove. And so if we're depending on the county ordinance to protect people, there are going to be people who fall through what could be in a potentially very large crack. And those people could end up without housing in the United Kingdom. I think what's confusing for me is this whole time we've been talking about an increase and about the fact that it should be 3% and where the increase should be. I didn't know we were now talking about I feel like this is a separate thing that we might need to discuss about rent moratoriums in its entirety. Like, we're talking about two things, like people who can't pay their rent at all, and whether what group you fall into, because I pointed out that yes, they're exactly right, because we heard people who are rent burdened that pay above that cap, right? So someone paying 4,750, they might be rent burdened too, but they're at the 140, so they don't get to apply for any of this help just by the nature of the cap. So I guess what I'm saying is there's two things going on here. I thought we were talking about this increase and the difference, and that's where we were coming in and helping to make sure people, a, do not lose their homes over this massive increase, and b plan to be able to receive the help so that it also suffices that the landlord gets that difference if someone can prove it. So that's where I'm drawing confusion on the two. Well, and if I can add one thing from the landlord's perspective, if the, and again, this is all contingent on our rent control charter amendment passing but I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and hope the voters come through on that. Landlords are still only going to get 3% over the course of the year. That's how the charter amendment is constructed. So if I'm a landlord presumably and I don't want to allow my tenants to get the rent deferral for those five months. I'll just go to 3%, which is what I'm going to get in any event of the charter amendment passes. So why not, as the mayor says, provide this incentive for landlords to stay at the 3%, they'll get 3% each of the 12 months of 2022 through September 1, 2023, which is if the charge amendment passes the total return they'll get anyway the only difference is if the charter amendment passes they'll get 6% for 5 months and then they'll get 0.8% for 7 months but it's constructed so that it's 3% over the course of the year. So I like the idea of the carrot of saying this is a way to reduce the rent that people will have to pay. Without it presumably negatively impacting landlords because of the charter amendment to pass us all the landlords are going to get anyway. So I hear you now. So I'm just clarifying for myself because this is a comp, I see now that we're using Proposal 1 as a tool to change it to 3% immediately because we can't, we couldn't do that unless we went to the, you know, we had to put it to the voters. In essence, that's what we're saying that this is a way to, and it's a carrot, and it's, right, I get that. So I didn't know that that was the discussion and the plan that this was what we were doing to make it to go to 3% immediately, which overall we're going to 3% across the year. The only concern I had was, or the confusion, I didn't know that that's what we were discussing. This whole time I thought it was about people not being able to pay this difference, and that was the whole discussion. And I hear you that this now gives an incentive because then the landlord say, well, geez, I don't want to have to deal with someone saying they can't pay any of their rent now. And so to go back to your proposal, you're saying that at the and the version in the original one says if it's 3% what you're saying if any, you know, and landlords are going to go with and why would I charge more I'm going to end up getting 3% anyways. So this is just an incentive to go ahead and make it to the 3% and not bother with the 6 and go back to 0 eight and so and council that was not the motivation for designing it that way that's an indirect effect. However we wanted to lay it out I mean motivated indirect effect so this is the effect it's gets you get to this 3% faster instead of doing all this confusing 6 and 8 and notifying everybody so essentially I think what the only thing I was concerned about was like oh no does this inspire people to just now we're going to have this problem where people are in the whole because they're not paying and then on the other end. Small mom and poppul and lords are, you know, in the whole as well. So now I'm understanding what is going on much clearer and I needed to clear that up for myself. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. There is another problem that I just was alerted to is that if a landlord gave the 6% increased notice, August 1st, they can't switch it now. They'd have to give a new 3% notice, September 1st. So then the 6% would still be there for September. So that throws yet another wrench in, a little wrench, but for the landlords who I was hoping would be good and just go 3% for the year, right? Which balances out their income more completely. They can't even do that for September. They'd have to file a new notice, right, and do a new notice for October for a still September would still be an issue. But I hope landlords would do that. And I'm still supporting the alternative measure, which we have a motion in the second floor. I have a question. Yes. I just wanted to know in terms of the legality about self-certification. I read that there's a US Supreme Court decision. There's a case, I'm going to get you the case. Anyway, I'll probably know about this case. That found that self-certification to be improper and unconstitutional, and I just wanted to get clarity from legal counsel. The difference here is that this is an affirmative defense, so due process would be provided in the eviction process. The only thing I would add is that that's something that we've done. That's something that a self-certification the County of Los Angeles, Mortarium uses and as well as the state eviction moratorium. The tenant still has to ultimately prove it. Yeah. But it's sound I mean from this from the ordinances it would be they would just have to say, you the land lord did not believe the tenant the landlord could proceed with the eviction and the tenant would have to prove it. But it's sound I mean from this from the ordinances it would be they would just have to say you know I can't afford to pay the rent. That's what they do now. If the landlord did not believe the tenant the landlord could proceed with the eviction and the tenant would have to prove it. Okay. But again for my part at least I I don't want to see evictions. I want to not see landlords go, oh I can go to court and try and get rid of someone because I don't want that in the city. And I don't want us, it felt when I read the first version, it felt like it was we were providing an incentive to say, hey, let's launch lawsuits and I don't want to see that. I so yeah, go ahead. Speaking to Oscar because I made the motion on the second, but after all of that discussion, I'm now feeling like we're voting on the first and not this because it's incentive. It feels like we're voting on the second. Well, I'm just pointing out that in this discussion, well, that's what I was saying. If I'm pulling my second because my first, I made the motion. So I'm withdrawing my motion after that conversation. I will move to that we vote on the alternative. Because the first one still says that people can bait their rent temporarily for up to five months. They're full rent, not just the income. Great, but I just, what I'm saying is we just had this whole discussion about the incentive and it sounds like it only lies if it's within the first ocean in the first version. And we can always amend version two. The problem with the first one is that people don't have to pay their rent for up to five months. Period. Now, look, I don't think it's smart to do that. All you think is a whole. I don't think it's smart to do that. All you think is a part of it. But they can decide to do that. To go with the original proposal. And that's what I'm going to do. I move that we go with the original proposal to abate all of the rent. As again, because this is a carrot and stick. Really what it is is it means you can't be evicted and it doesn't mean you can't pay your rent. It just means you can't be evicted and eviction has become a major problem here. I think that eviction is a problem. So I believe that the carrot is to get the landlords to charge 3% instead of 6% at the beginning and not try to trap the landlords, trap the tenants with the 6%. But they can't do that this month. Again, they still would have to charge a 6% for September. If I could address that council, that landlord may not be able to at this point, you will laterally change the rent notice from 6% to 3%, but the landlord, ten, could agree to pay and accept only 3%. But in the meantime, look at, I'm going to repeat the same thing that I said at the beginning. The concern I had, which will lead to more evictions, is the tentative says great, I can sought this money away and not have to pay it in the next September. They weren't able to pay it back. Meanwhile, the landlord who was suffering from 9% inflation, who is already losing their booty right now on their rent for the next five months. They're already suffering for the next year because the maximum they can get a 3% when inflation is 9. Now we're saying a tenant, well meaning they're not, can't decide not to pay any rent for the next five months. Any rent, not just the increase, any rent under version one, that is a mistake. If that happens, and I don't know how, but if that happens, what we will be incentivizing is for some small housing providers to go out of business. You know, most of the evictions that we've seen, or at least a huge amount of evictions that we've seen is because of the use of the evictions that we've seen, or at least a huge amount of evictions that we've seen is because of the use of the Ellis Act. And housing providers get out of the business. And so I think that we need to find a way to support those small mom and pop operators in the city. They're good landlords. There's organizations even called progressive landlords of Santa Monica. These are, I know these people, they want to stay in business and they have a relationship with their tenants. We want to keep them in business. If we lose them to LSAC, you know, transitions, we're going to end up losing affordable housing in the city, Santa Monica. Corporation, for the one. Excuse me, I didn't call on you, Council Member Davis, and then Council Member Nguereti. Thank you. So I just want to make a couple of points. And I'm not sure I'm going to characterize this right. The structure of the two alternatives is the same. It's just where they apply. So to councilmember Brock's point about, well, I don't want to see litigation. You're going to see the litigation in any event. They're just going to file an eviction or a non-loveled detainer action for the people who can't pay the additional 3%. In other words, you're still going to have litigation surround. And then because in both instances, if the landlord decides to file a lawful detainer, this operates as an affirmative defense. That's how this comes into play, is that correct? In both instances. So both in a sense sort of turn on this only becomes an issue when a landlord tries to evict a tenant during this period, whatever this period is. Right. And then the second thing I want to address is Council Member De La Torre statement, which is certainly I think we're all sympathetic to the idea that we want landlords to stay in business. Assuming, and again this is an assumption and we all know what they say about assume, but assuming the charter amendment passes, mom and pop landlords are still only going to see a 3% rent increase over the course of the upcoming 12 months. Now, if it may be that they get the 6% up front and then they get the 0.8% or they make a decision and I think the city attorney is absolutely right. Even if they've already given notice on the 6%, they can voluntarily go to their tenant and say I am not going to evict you if you only pay me 3% and oh by the way here's a revised rental notice increase that going forward I'm only going to pay you 3%. So either way the mom and pop landlords get the same rate of return because again yes and then I can see you're making a face council member Brock in theory if the landlord says, no, I want my 6% and I want my 6% now, then yeah, they may be in a position where they don't get paid that for a few months. But again, this is not rent forgiveness. This is rent deferral. Ultimately, they will recover that money. But if it truly is for mom and pop landlords or anyone else, it's a concern about having a steady rate of not losing rent for those five months, then it behooves them to say, okay, tenant, I'm gonna take 3% in the month of September. I'm not gonna file an unlawful detainer action against you. And here's a revised notice of rental increase going forward until September 21, 2023 that your rent increase is only going to be 3% and then the tenant has to pay. So it's not as if we're somehow taking that flexibility away from the landlords and in fact we're giving them the flexibility to say I'm going to get a 3% rate of return again assuming the charter amendment pass or a 3% rent increase. And I'm either going to get it 6 percent for five months, point eight percent for seven months, or I'm going to get it, you know, 3 percent steadily over the year. So nobody's taking money out of landlords' pockets. And it's really up to the landlords if they want to run the risk that their tenants are going to avail themselves of this opportunity, then sure they can go ahead and charge more than 3%. But if they don't want their tenants to avail themselves of this opportunity, then they can charge 3%. And either way, they get the same amount of money. So we're just giving the landlords, whether they're mom and pop or institutional, the opportunity to decide how they want to get their 3% over the course of the year. That's all that's happening. One does not give them more rent increase than the other, again, assuming the charter amendment passes. So I'm not sure why we need to do a lot of hand-ranging about landlords, with all due respect to every landlord in the city, because it's within their power to make it so that their tenants have to pay rent effective October 1st. And if they go to their tenants and say, look, if you pay the rent in September, I'm only going to charge you up to 3%. Then it seems to me they're still getting the same amount of money. It's just math. No matter how you slice the bread, they're going to get 3% over the course of the year. Wait, hold on. I was next. I understand that. And that's what I wanted you to hear that. I heard it the first the first way you did. So after listening, like she just said, it's 3% regardless. The only time this you can't pay your entire rent applies is if it's over the 3% increase. So I think the amendment could be, we need to make an amendment to candle because we're sort of forcing the, you were saying this, it's this carrot and stick and I get that. Any landlord would say, well, then I'm not going to deal with that. Any smart landlord, I'll just do the 3% now. But now that we've already given out the rent increase and people are paying that new increase in a few days, how can we amend this to cover that first month so that landlords aren't in that position? Do you know what I'm saying? So this initial month of above 3% doesn't put them in this position where they're now in this eviction moratorium because I don't even know how that would cover as just one month and then they go to 3% and then you know what I'm saying? In other words, if they go to 6% September 1st, but they already did. Because they already did. On October 1st. Right. Can we close in such as any landlord who automatically or who issued a 6% prior to us doing this? Yes, prior to this. It doesn't get some memo. Right, because they should not allow us, I wanted to say not everybody's watching these meetings. Right. I don't know who's organized enough they have management companies. So I think if we could cover that month to protect both ends the tenants and the landlords That would be the most fair thing because we're coming up with this now again late in the evening A few days before the new increase goes out. It's not impacting anyone the way you're thinking it is Okay My landlord's been my landlord, my family, and many friends have been landlords for 70 years in Santa Monica, LA. It's very small landlords, but landlords nonetheless. You'll end up with a tenant who says, I got a 6% increase. The landlord won't be able to change that quickly enough and they'll say well we don't have to pay anything for five months so for heaven's sake why wouldn't we take out that loophole and stop the argument you're not very simple I think you're not hearing no I have here take out take wait wait let's make it simple I have one request whether it be option one or option two take out the clause that says a tenant can abate their full rent and say they can only abate the amount of the increase over three percent. That's what we're saying that's what I'm saying. No that's what I'm asking right now. It's not an either clause. That's what I'm asking right now. It was my turn. So I said given that it's August 20, whatever it is right now, it's too soon. It's a week away. So my mic is on and I took the floor to ask the very question that you're now excitedly proposing that it's not fair to the tenants or the landlords given the timing that we should they should not be responsible since we're reading this tonight. If we had passed it and we didn't understand it clearly we're having the discussion. So now that we've cleared it up we should do something about September so that this does not occur. Does that make sense? And I am turning to you to come up with a appropriate link. I think we could insert language that says that it doesn't apply to landlord issues that revised rent notice to not exceed 3% or doesn't collect more than the 3% increase. Wait, say that again. So what they're saying is if the landlord now despite having issued the 3% thing, either revises the notice to say this, having issued the 6%, either revises the notice to say 3% or only collects 3%. So regardless of what the notice says, if they've only collected 3% then this does not apply. So what if the residents hear this meeting prior to their landlord, which is very common? And they decide, well, I'm gonna go ahead and write in my rent increase with just the 3% in hope. I'm gonna use what was talked about at Council that I'm covered. How do we cover all our bases? Well, if the tenant pays only a 3% increase, then I think they're covered under either version of the ordinance. Well, we gotta be be clear because I don't want to set someone up for eviction I think that's what we're trying to do Right and either version of the entrance that they'd be covered charge They're only paying 3% but the landlord is sent out the 6% for those good landlords who say okay You only have to pay 3% and I'm revising. Well, let's look at the worst case scenario, Brock. Let's look at the worst case scenario. Because we're talking about the same thing. I want you to hear this. Worst case scenario. We're coming to an agreement and it makes sense. I think if you're agreeing and you're hearing what I'm saying. In worst case scenario, they sent out the 6%, even with hearing this meeting and understanding, they don't want to change it. Now, does that mean that that person can debate their rent for five months, or is it just this 30 days, and then they have till December to pay it? We can clarify at minimum that it applies as long as the 6% has been increased. In other words, in October 1st, they go back to 3% that it wouldn't apply. We can make sure that that language would be inserted. If that's the version that you're going to go with. I see, amendment. I'm proposing so we protect ourself. Perhaps you just say that no landlord who has collected rent from a rent-controlled resident by more than 3%. So they would have to actually collect it. So they could negotiate collecting last, even though they've given notice. I understand that, but I'm a rent controlled tenant. Okay, and I know you live in an apartment too. I don't know about you, but I'm not, I don't have a relationship with my landlord where I knock on his door or call him up because he owns 38 buildings. Okay, so I don't text my landlord where I knock on his door or call him up because he owns 38 buildings. Okay, so I don't text my landlord. I don't think he wants to text me. So the chances of me negotiating, I don't want that pressure and I wouldn't want to put that on residents. So I think we need to do something a little bit better than putting it off on the residents that they've got a negotiate with their landlord. Most people don't want to engage with their landlord about rent decrease increase. So if we could just make it really clear, we're presenting this as the city. We should take the onus of what's happening. And maybe it means we have to cover that rent. We should pay for it. Like if people can't pay that month, we use $750,000. We have to assist people for this month that they can't pay their rent since we're doing it so late in the evening on before rents do on the first, right? So if rents do on the first and people are unable to pay, I mean, we've got to figure something out where it's not on the residents to have to call up their landlord and negotiate this. So let me just chime in, and City Attorney's Lund just. You want to listen to this? Let me just keep me on track with this comment. So our rent control relief program will cover the rent. I think part of what this is meant to help address is so our application period starts Monday and goes through September 19th. So there's a definitely going to be a timing issue. And which is I think part of what this eviction moratorium helps to kind of stem because otherwise right folks who don't pay September first have an issue. In the absence of this ordinance before we can get money flowing. So I just want to make sure I got that right. Because that's how, and I know councilmember Davis, you're trying to sort of sum that up. But I want to just come back to that point. Because that's kind of the problem that I think this helps to solve for. Because we can't, we just don't have enough time to get in front of the September first timing with money. Right. You're saying that the court covered through the application process goes through. And this eviction monitoring covers people. So in essence, there could be people who got this 6% they just say, I can't afford any even under this new eviction monitoring. I'm not paying anything. They apply and there could potentially be money to cover their entire rent for that month. That no this will cover the increase in the rent. The $70 let's just say if you're right. The max will cover up to 140 so we're only covering the increase. But I think it's important to note that this only comes into play when the landlord tries to evict the tenant So if the landlord knows that there is relief coming down the pipe that's going to help the tenant if the landlord is willing In my mind to be reasonable and say I'm only going to take 3% Nobody has to lose their housing during September and in terms of notifying people I mean the one thing we do know is who all our rent control landlords are. I mean, they have a lot of documentation they have to file. And so it seems to me we can notify them as soon as we get out of this meeting. You know, hey, this is what we're doing. But again, I think it's important to note, you know, with all due respect again to our landlords, is one, if they're willing to be patient and let our relief program come into effect to help people, they just don't have to file an unlawful detainer action to evict anyone in September in which case, and they can go to the tenant and say, if you pay me the 3% increase, I'm not going to move to a victue out. You get to stay and we don't have a problem. I'm going to send you a new formal notice that effective October 1st, your rent officially will only go up 3%. In the meantime, the tenants who are really stressed even by whatever it is have the right to apply within the parameters as any manager described earlier this evening, for rent relief. So the idea that somehow on September 1st, people are gonna stop paying rent and landlords are going to go bankrupt, I think is a little apocalyptic and a little hyperbole at this point in time because it is within the landlord's control about how they want to react to this. And even if they want the 6%, but they think, gee, maybe I want to wait for this rat relief program to come in, they just don't have to file an unlawful detainer action against the tenant for not paying rent on September 2nd. And I know actually we do have some landlords who have worked with tenants who've had problems and said, I understand you're getting paid on the 15th, I'll take the rent on the 15th or whatever. So it's not as if sort of this is out of the landlord's control and they're immediately going to get screwed by this system. The only time this comes into effect is when they try to evict the tenant. If they don't try and evict the tenant for nonpayment of rent and let the program for rent relief come into effect and are willing to accept 3%, then nobody's ox gets gourd. Well, there's also just one other new one. Excuse me. I want to make sure I think it's important to this conversation that I think assistant city attorney Kolomenshin is that the one provision I believe I heard you say you want to add into this is that it has to be attributable to COVID-19. So that really limits the applicability that this ordinance will actually impact people. So I just want to make sure we're not really talking about the universe of rent control tenants. We're talking about those folks who will have a COVID-19 justification. So it's just it's a smaller population. That's what I heard. And I just want to make sure everyone that's clear. Oh, okay. Can I just I just wanted to point out that there's I'm just feeling a tone of frustration like you know if we get out of here like as if we're belaboring this I think it's important to be clear after what happened the last time when there's no clarity and no ability to have a discussion then we move forward making a lot of assumptions and a lot of assumptions were made off of the last conversation we had up here about what council members were proposing and talking about. So I just want to be mindful that while we're sort of scoffing and laughing and there's like maybe we all know all the landlords off the top of our head, I don't think that that's always true. I talk to tenants every day because I live and breathe it and people come and ask me all the time these questions. They don't know and they don't watch, including landlords. So I just want to be clear that I feel like while we're sort of going, oh, if we can do this now, we're doing it at this late time before September 1st. Like, had this discussion been brought forward earlier, maybe that message would have reached the tenants, the landlords, and we would have all seen a 3% but I got my full max plus pass throughs and so I'm just pointing out that it's important. I made the mistake, the grandiose mistake of having a conversation and bringing up something in the wee hours of the morning and so now we're having this discussion and I just want to have a lot of clarification for people who are watching or listening or watching it tomorrow and following up so that they're clear on their options and what this is intended to do. So I just want to respect that process and while some of us may not clip on to all the legal information as quickly because clearly we're all having a discussion up here as to what it really means in the carrot and the stick and going back to making sure we're all having a discussion up here as to what it really means and the carrot and the stick and going back to making sure we're addressing the entire community and in particular that residents aren't put in a position where they're surprised or they're evicted or this is used as a tool for eviction so I think we're covering all our bases and I think we're all doing a pretty good job of doing that. We're having a robust discussion over it and I just want to be able to do that and move on as you so you made the motion. I made the motion. Who did I hear a second? Are we? Did we put any additional language in there? Was there a substitute motion? The clarification. This is back to the original motion. The original motion and there was some clarifying language. We added the language about COVID and then we need the language about September. Can we just be clear on what that language is? The version. Well, in the original motion was option two. The steps to do motion was option one. Correct. But then I was drew so we went back to. Okay. But then council member Brock made the original made. No, but then she's saying after I was drew it, then council member Brock went back to the one and I made a substitute motion. Right. And do you get a second for your motion? Not. I'll second. And in that substitute motion, we have the clarifying language and the substitute motion that Mayor Himalorich presented. To clarify, either version would like to have the same clarifying language on both COVID and September 1st. And that we're voting on right now. OK. The substitute motion would be voted on first. Yes. Substitute motion, which is the original ordinance, which is the same. Right, which is the limitation to financial stress due to COVID and the fact that any landlord who is willing to and I don't know what language you just but accept 3% even having given the 6% they can then go forward. Yes, Councilmember Brock. Yes, Council Member Brock. Your mic's not on. Thank you, Denise. I wish to amend the motion that's been made to extract the portion that says that someone could defer their rent for the five months. They should only be able to defer the increase period. This is what we started off this conversation down an hour ago with something I thought was really simple. They should be able to defer their increase if necessary, but they should not be able to defer their entire rent. So my amendment, I guess amendment or substitute motion? Well, no, there's a substitute motion. So we have the substitute motion on the floor, which is the original with the amendment. So I'd like to add that one last amendment. And that is not friendly to the maker. I am the maker and I don't believe that's friendly. So you still want to let people defer their entire rent if they want for five months. If there is more than three percent. But if there is more than three percent and. And there, and if there rent has been raised more than 3% and if their landlord tries to evict them, yes. It's the two things that have to happen. I was, I was. And how was it so, it was so simple just to eliminate that portion that said they could defer their rent for five months. This was the point. How was this conversation? We had to have this conversation to clarify it. He came up and laid it out, but we did. Okay. Okay. Let's have a bullet. I'm going to challenge. Oh, do you want to do it? I'll just vote and then I'll explain why I voted. Okay. Okay. Are we ready? Yep. So the motion that's up right now is not my motion. It's an emergency ordinance. So it needs to be taken off the motions. Oh, it needs my vote. Did you guys hear that? Everybody hear that? Because he was saying something I didn't hear. We need five votes. It's an emergency ordinance. Did we need to discuss anymore? Are we discussed? Yes. Okay. Are you guys ready to vote? Yes. All right. Councilmember Parara. Yes. Oh, you put no. Oh, yes. Okay. Council. Council Member Davis. Yes. Council Member Gritte. Yes. Erpo Tim McCallan. Yes. Council Member Brock. No. Council Member De La Torre. No. And Mary Helmerich. Yes. So that passes five to two. I want to explain my vote on my no vote. I just feel that, you know, we're creating a division between landlords, housing providers, and tenants. And I just think it's not the right way to go about this. I think we're going to incentivize people, you know, getting out of the housing business in Santa Monica, and I think we're going to lose affordable housing, and I think renters in the end are going to pay the price, so that's why I voted no. I'll also mention that what I've said already is that I supported the city helping pay the increases for those tenants who were in trouble on the 6% increase. We created tonight with this vote more confusion for landlords, more confusion for tenants. It increases the paperwork for rent control. It increases the amount of paperwork for the city. It was something that was pretty simple that we just spent an hour on and pardon me, but we didn't use common sense. So I voted no, not against renters, but to keep the process simple and clean for all renters and all landlords in the city. And I'm disappointed that we just spent this hour of our lives discussing something that should have been taken care of in five minutes. Thank you. I think that all the time. Thank you. Let's move on to the next item. Okay. So the next one is introduction and first reading of an ordinance amending the city's tenant protection laws. Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and Council members I'm Gary Rhodes I'm a deputy city council or deputy city attorney and we owe you congratulations, I think, on your latest injunction, right? Your section 8, does that? Yes, yes. Congratulations on that great victory. Yes, thanks. I have this, this of amendments has five proposed changes to our tenant protection ordinances. The first proposed amendment is to our fair housing ordinance, also known as the anti-housing discrimination ordinance. Our fair housing ordinance like the state and federal fair housing ordinances prohibits housing discrimination by landlords based on protected classes. In 2015, this city council added source of income to that list to protect the classes. And in a pioneering move, they added to the definition of source of income section 8 voucher holders or anyone else receiving rental assistance. And that definition has resulted in many applicants, antennas, and San Monica being able to turn nose by landlords and to guesses. And that's been due to the help of the Housing Authority, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, and our office, our own offices enforcement program. So it's been a very successful program. Other cities and even the state have consulted with us on how to make that happen for them. Tonight's amendment clarifies what exactly, what are some of those protections. And the two main things it does is it clarifies that both existing tenants and prospective tenants are protected under this relatively new protected class. The other thing it does is it clarifies that delays by landlords in filling out paperwork that's needed and returning that paperwork to the housing authority can be a type of discrimination. And as you've heard in public comments period that was made by Denise McGrannahan, it's a very common problem. Laughless sees it all the time. We see it all the time. Her very vivid image of, you know, the paperwork being on the back of a turtle. That's, that is, that is appropriate. And by the time that turtle gets over, if it ever gets over to the housing authority, the, the tenant has often moved on. Like they've had to settle for sub-sandard housing somewhere or left San Monica for other housing. So we'd like to clarify these two things that will help us. It will help Lafla and it will help the housing authority make more connections between voucher holders and landlords. So that's amendment number one. Amendment number two, we're also wanting to add some specific examples to our ten harassment ordinance. Our ten harassment ordinance prohibits certain types of conduct by landlords that are made in bad faith. And one particular prong, this is at prong F in the code. Prohibit landlords from influencing or attempting to influence a tenant to vacate a rental unit through fraud, intimidation, or coercion. And given our years of experience with enforcing this ordinance and the questions we get, we think it'll be helpful to add some specific examples of fraud, coercion, and intimidation. So those examples are excessive rent increases, baseless threats to evict, threats to report immigration status, terminating tenancy on a fraudulent basis of under-occupancy, and excessive and baseless entries. So those are all examples we've seen. We've litigated actually most of these successfully, and we just want to be able to point to the law and show landlords early on that this is clearly a lawful activity that will help us probably deter this conduct and probably prevent it as well. So that's amendment number two. The third amendment is also from our 10 harassment ordinance. Another prong in that ordinance is it prohibits landlords from violating state and state and federal fair housing laws especially in bad faith so that a fair housing violation can also be a 10 harassment or a violation. That list under that prong is a closed list, and it has some protected classes that have since been kind of outdated. For example, it's missing source of income, and it's missing immigration status. So we want to add those two for sure because we see that, we see those in Santa Monica, we've litigated those two protected classes in Santa Monica. And then we also just want to make this an open list instead of a closed list. So the language that we've added to make that open is it will include any other class protected by a local state or federal law. So moving on to the fourth proposed amendment, eviction reporting. This would be virtually identical to an emergency order that we've had in place since 2020. It requires landlords to report to the city any attempt of evictions or unlawful detainers. And then follow up information about whether what the outcome was and what was the legal representation on both sides. You know, we're trying to figure out what we want, this helps the city assess the impact of evictions on our community and also assess this issue of legal representation, you know, how is the DACS, DACS DACS on one side or the other? And what is the impact of, especially Lafayles work through the Right to Council Program on, you know, trying to even the odds here. And then finally, the Fifth Amendment is addresses an issue we've seen where landlords will send tenancy notice that will change the lease, they say. And it will change the attorney's fees provision in that lease to say, divorcap the amount of attorney's fees that either side can get in a litigation that may come up between the landlord and the tenant, or that there will be no attorney's fees exchanged. Now, our tenant harassment law in our fair housing law specifically provides for attorney's fees for tenants who win under those claims. And most civil rights laws do the Californians for housing law does that too. So when a landlord sends a notice like this to a landlord, the tenant is gonna be perhaps misled in the thinking, oh, well, I guess I can't pursue a Terri's fees in those cases. So they may not pursue them. I would guess even some attorneys may not realize that. They may see that letter when the tenant brings it to them and say, well, it's going to be hard for me to be able to afford to take this case because there's not a attorney's fees at the end of it. So we want, I'm sorry, we propose that when a landlord proposes to change the attorney's fees provision that they provide a notice and we've provided the language for that notice that would clarify that for some laws such as our harassment ordinance and our fair housing ordinance that those fees can't be waived or shifted back. So those are our five proposals in a nutshell. I'll take questions on any of them now. Any questions? Yes, Council Member Davis. So my first question was, Ms. McGranna-Han wanted us to insert, including but not limited, too. But I'm not sure where that was supposed to go. Do we know where that was supposed to go? And I'm assuming there's no objection to that? I thought you said subsection I, but when I looked at that section, it already had that language. Yeah, that's why I was a little confused. Right, maybe. And then the other question I had was the subsection H violate any law which prohibits discrimination and you talked about that being a closed list. And so we extended it to any other class, expressly protected by a local state or federal law. So I have a very, maybe it's a very specific question. So on that list already, is sexual preference and sexual orientation? But I've been hearing an increasing number of folks were in the, what I'll call the transgender or the sexually fluid or sexual identification group who are having some difficulties with their landlords. And I don't know because I haven't done civil rights law on a little bit about the extent of those folks being protected classes at state or federal law, but if they aren't, is there a way to make them a protected class under local law? Because this does give us the option. It says that they're protected under local law. The state law does include those folks. Okay, so I just wanted to make sure about that because- But should we add it to our law is the question. We could, that we are- I mean, I would love to specifically add transgender or sexual identity, or you know, because I do think, at least I have been hearing from people in that community that they've been suffering some discrimination in the housing market, even to the effect of landlords going into their units if they may sexually present as men at some times and going in and finding dresses and that sort of thing and assuming that they're transgender or something like that or attempting to be transgender. Yeah, I would just caution us in like, I mean, protected classes is a long history of how we got in this country to identify and protect the classes. And, you know, I don't think you can equate sort of a person's physical sort of skin color, let's say, like someone whose black can't hide that they're black, you know, someone whose gay, like someone whose black can't hide that they're black. Someone whose gay, a male, for example, whose gay, it's not as evident. And that's why protected classes has been historically, they're looking at the issues of historic discrimination by these groups. And I'm trying to understand how a landlord can even go into an apartment and see a dress, and then all of a sudden discriminate against that person. An African-American, let's say, or a Latino, or someone of the traditional protected classes that we are accustomed to hearing about, that's something on the front end of the relationship of a tenant in a landlord where you get discriminated against, you don't even get the apartment. The fact that in the example that you're given, this person is already housed, already received the apartment and somehow a landlord, I don't even know how a landlord gets access to go look in a person's closet like that. Wait, that's just her example. I mean, what she's saying, I think, is that the same sort of discrimination that black and brown people, people of color have had, it also extends to gay people, right? I mean, to other protected classes, including Section 810, and to certainly don't look any different than anyone else, right? So, this is not something that's defined. I'm just trying to understand the reasoning of Councilwoman Davis in comparing sort of sexual orientation and race for example and making a comparison. I'm not interested in is those are now, you know, maybe when this ordinance was originally written, those were sort of what people were focused on. They were focused on the gay or the LG. But now we know that that community is larger. For example, I have heard of people who have had conflicts with their landlords regarding their transgender status. I wonder what we covered though under LGBTQ. Well, right. That's what I was asking. He says that it's already covered by state law, but I'm just wondering is there any harm if it's already covered by state law and certainly it into our local ordinance as well. There's no reason you can't also repeat it in the local ordinance. Right. So it seems to me for that community. And by the way, I did here, of someone who had a problem in their apartment, it was someone who most of the time physically presented as a male, but who was considering, thought of themselves as transgender, and the apartment, the landlord commented on the dresses and their apartment, and these dresses look like they can fit you, and those shoes were, you know, that sort of thing. And when you hear that, whether those comments are made in good faith or bad, it suggests that the landlord has an issue with someone who might consider themselves transgender or a transvestite. I mean, they don't necessarily have to be transgender, they could consider themselves a transvestite. My favorite comedian in the world is Eddie Isard. We're checking the state list right now to see how they expressed those. Yeah, so I would just like to, we know right now that that is a particular community that is under assault across the United States. I mean, they're literally now as a lawn Florida that says if a student can't tell their teacher that they're gay or that they want their transgender. And it seems to me these, this is a community that's under assault right now and being able to offer them some protection within our own local statute, particularly if it's already included in the state law would be beneficial. So I just wanted to mention that. They're protected in state law. I'd like to include whatever language the state law has. And if it isn't, and maybe this isn't tonight, but it's something we think about how do we extend local rights to that community. And I just want to clarify, because I don't want anything to be misinterpreted. I'm against all oppression, all discrimination against all people. I just wanted to understand your logic in terms of equating sort of a person's sexual orientation to a person's race. And I wanted to make it very clear that it's different on the front end of trying to get an apartment if you're African-American or even if you're a section eight holder. No one knows. No one can see, for example, your sexual orientation. Member Deilator, I think one, I don't think that's what Council Member Davis was saying at all, and two, and it's been a long, long time since I did constitutional law. But if I recall, one of the cases that led to LGBTQ folks being protected class had to do with the sheer fact that it isn't something you necessarily see, but when you enter someone's house or encounter this in, like, then that can create problems. And so there is entitled to that right, as it protects classes, I am walking around the black skin and like And so I don't even know why we're here Having this conversation at this point. I think all councilmember Davis is asking for is like how do we ensure that just written into our local Ordinance is language that's consistent with state and federal law because it sends, because it just makes a statement of our values, and so that's it, and then we can move on. Then I think the phrase would be gender identification, we could put it right after sexual orientation. What I see is gender identity and gender expression. Yeah, I think that's true. The two terms that I see. I think that's true. Yeah, right, right, because, right, I think that's how the two terms that I see. I think that's how the two terms that I see. Right, right, because I think that's fine. I just want to include some language to help what is a community that's currently failing persecuted. We've looked up a fair employment housing act. So gender identity, gender expression. Those are the two. Right, yeah, and that's in section 8, right? I mean, you would add it. Yeah, so I would just like to see that language added to section 8 whenever somebody makes a motion. Can I make it clear? I'm not trying to create a hierarchy of discrimination here. I'm not trying to say one is different or better or worse than the other. I'm just trying to say one is different or better or worse than the other. I'm just trying to say that we know that there are various communities that are suffering and there's a community that doesn't seem to be addressed by the current language of this. I'm not certainly trying to minimize discrimination against people on the basis of race or gender or section eight eligibility here or whatever, just trying to be more inclusive. That's all I'm trying to do. Council Member Brock. Did Council Member Davis just make a motion? Sure. I'll move the staff report with my suggested changes to section 8. Emotion by Davis, seconded by Brock. Any more discussion? That's that overall call vote. by Davis, seconded by Brock. Any more discussion? Let's have a roll call vote. Yes. Council member Brock. Yes. Mayor Pro Temma, Councillor. Yes. Council member Gertday. Yes. Council member Davis. Yes. Councillor Member Brock. Yes. Mayor Pro Temma, Councillor Member Grette. Yes. Councillor Member Davis. Yes. Councillor Member Parra. Yes. Mayor Hillenrich. Yes, and that passes unanimously. Thank you very much, great report, and great results lately. Thank you very much. So next we have a request of Councillor de la Tori that the city council allocate $5,000 of council discretionary funds. We're about $16,000. Yeah. Good on this one. Who? Oh yeah, okay. So yes, we're past 11, long past 11, but now I hear a motion to go past. Seconded, yeah, moved by Davis, seconded by Dela Tory. Can we do this by acclamation? There's no money in it. By acclamation, yes. Everybody says yes. Oh goodness, it does say 16A. Okay. All right, it does say 16A. Okay. All right. Now 16A. Okay. So request of Council Member Davis that the Council allocate $10,000 of Council discretionary fund to the Main Street Business Improvement Association to partially offset the cost of a community open street event on Main Street in October. This event is replacing the summer solstice, which council has financially supported in the past and will continue to showcase the local businesses, artists and musicians as well as a Halloween pits costume contest which had over a hundred participants last year. The funds will be used to pay permitting fees and other city and polls cost of staging the event. And just very briefly, because the city is undergoing a re-evaluation of its event permitting process, the city can't co-sponsor this current event. And so Main Street Merchants has to pay the permitting fees to do the event. We typically have financially supported summer solstice. We did Main Street to not do summer solstice this year so this is just $10,000 to offset the permitting fees that they have to pay to do a close street event because the city can't co-sponsor which could lead to a waiver of the fees but in any event and you should all come out for the pet contest because it's a who the pet costume contest was a who? Councilmember Brock I think has a question. So I just want to clarify I talked to someone in marketing on Main Street and this this event will be longer in terms of the street with be longer in terms of the street with, not street. The length of the event will go from approximately Earth Cafe down to the South City border. So this will be a major event closer to coast or some results that's in the past. Not just a one block or two block closure, but it should be a really fun, really extraordinary event down on Main Street for that day. That is the plan as I understand it. Thank you. I was just clarifying for you. And my and everyone will listen to the three people. I'd like to make a motion to move. Move by Nguretti. Do I hear second? Second? Seconded by Davis. Oh, seconded by Davis. Let's have a roll call Councilmember Parra. Yes, Councilmember Davis. Yes, Councilmember Greta. Yes, Eric O'Connor. Yes, Councilmember Brock. Yes, Councilmember Dela Tori. Yes, and Mary Helmeridge. Yes, so that passes 7 to 0 Councilmember Dela Tori Sorry Denise the past is 7 to 0. Council Member Dela Tori. Sorry, Denise. And then you. Okay, request the Council Member Dela Tori that the City Council allocate $5,000 of the Council discretionary fund to the Santa Monica Peer Corporation to fund entertainment for the second annual day of the dead celebration on the Santa Monica Pier. The celebration will be hosted inside the historic loop hip-a-drome carousel and will be open and free to the public. Councillor Member Dela Torre? Yes. I just want to clarify that the Santa Monica Pier Corporation did not request me to make this item and bring this item before you all. But the artists that were higher to put the event on, I said, hey, as council, we'd like to support what you all are doing because they have a great plan to just convert the carousel, the whole area. They're going to take up the whole carousel and make this amazing event happen. And they said they didn't have anything in the budget for entertainment. And so by us supporting this, we'll be supporting the entertainment portion of the event. And we're hoping to grow the event to make it a sort of a really nice event that happens annually on the Santa Monica Pier. I'd like to make a motion to move this item. I'll second. I like to make a motion to move this item. I'll second. Mayor can you press your button? I just seconded it. Oh, and I'll press my button. I haven't done that yet tonight. Council Member De La Torre. Yes. Council Member Brock. Yes. Mayor Portima Cowan. Yes. Council Member Brite. Yes. Councillor Member Brock. Yes. Mayor Portima Cownin. Yes. Councillor Member Gritte. Yes. Councillor Member Davis. Yes. Councillor Member Par. Yes. And Mayor Hillenrich. Yes. So that passes 7-0. I will even push my button and make that so next item. Request of Councillor Member Davis at the City Wave Rental rental fees associated with the partial use of the parking lot On the Santa Monica peer to support the city's annual commemoration of Veterans Day honoring the cell and celebrating All those who have served our country in the armed forces being Plan in coordination with the US Army Councilmember Davis. Yeah, so briefly the U.S. Army Council member Davis? Yeah, so briefly, one of our local boys scout troops back in 2018 noticed that we did not have an annual Veterans Day celebration and at the time Mayor Winterer instituted one and every year it's gotten bigger and even doing COVID we were able to celebrate those who've served our country. This year in conjunction with the U.S. Army there's a much larger celebration being anticipated, which may even include a jet flyover and participation of the Army Golden Knights parachute team. So we need a little bit larger space than doing it just in Palisades Park where the Veterans Memorial is and the idea is that this would be open to the public again a free event and we would invite veterans from throughout the region to come celebrate veterans day with us. So we just need to be able to wave the parking lot fees in order to allow this to go forward. And we did this together when we did this last year we did it down in the parking lot. In the parking lot. Yeah, because of COVID we wanted to be able to spread out one of the issues in Palisades Park as it is a little narrow and with COVID. But we're hopeful this year to actually have we're coordinating with the Army to do a much bigger celebration. We're hoping it all works out, but having access to the peer deck is key to getting the other participants to agree. And last year it was really an inspiring event. And it is. They always swear in some new recruits, which touches my heart, being the mom of an army officer. And it's great to see their parents being with pride. So it's always a very touching event. And of course, very important to honor those who've served our country. And then comes the motion moved up right now by Nguredi, seconded by Dela Torrey. Roll call. Well, somebody wants to say so? You have to press second. Go ahead. There you go. Council Member Parra. I just wanted to say, I think it's anything. Thank you for bringing this forward. And I'll be attending with my dad who's a Vietnam vet. Excellent. Glad to hear it a Vietnam that. Excellent. Glad to hear it. Thank you. Yes. Councilmember Davis. Yes. Councilmember Greg Day. Yes. Mayor Pro Temma, Cowan. Yes. Councilmember Brock. Yes. Councilmember Dela Tori. Yes. And Mary Hammer Rich. Yes. So that passes 7 to 0. Moving on. Next we have request of Mayor Pro Temma Cowan and council members Brock and Negrat Day that the city council allocate up to $15,000 of the discretionary fun to the public policy institute at Santa Monica College to support the 2023 public policy symposium and event jointly sponsored by Santa Monica College and Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District. So I saw that there were two emails and to one I would say this is the point of a discretionary account and to the other I would basically say the same thing. But this, I think it's important that we support these opportunities to sort of, and this is a DEI-focused event to benefit students, the community and people at SMC, faculty, and others at SMC. We're hopefully going to start doing more partnerships like this, and I think it is important that we show that we are willing to support our other partners and collaborators. And so I also wanted to give the City Manager an opportunity to share if he wants some updates on conversations he's been having with SMC on this topic. Thank you both. Just the other day both our Assistant City Manager and myself met with the community college the public policy institute in the school district to talk about the event and we're really excited that this item is come forward obviously for a very formal partnership but we're really excited about talking about ways that we can integrate some of our work particularly folks around DEI going forward with this initiative. So for example, we understand both the school district and the community college have led discussion groups with their leadership teams focused on this specific author in the book. We're talking about doing something very similar ourselves in the organization. Good news is this is until May of 2023 and for a slow reader like myself mayor. That gives plenty of time to digest the book and also first to facilitate conversations. We're also going to be talking with our library about how they can be supportive and facilitate and then we've talked very specifically about how we can support from a communications perspective and we anticipate leading up to the event as planning gets underway that we'll be able to work with the school district and the college and the public policy institute to support. So we're excited to work under your leadership in your direction supporting this tonight to align our work and our efforts going forward. Well you're welcome but I won't be here so it will be somebody else's leadership. Well you'll be here but you'll be a part of the city. Yeah. Still be here in the city. Yes, Councilmember Davis. I just want to emphasize, because I think the implication of some of the emails we got is somehow that we were funding this. The college is funding this. This is a much larger program. And we're simply just sort of the cherry on top of the Sunday, but what this does is allow us to be a coast, coast, a sponsor of the event so it really becomes a truly community event. And the council is absorbing most of the, and the council of the college is absorbing most of the cost. So it's not as if this is somehow some magnanimous gift that's underwriting the whole thing. This really is us just sort of putting our money where our heart is to support education and support what I think is going to be a really fantastic program. Councillor Member Dela Tour. Maybe I missed it, but is there a topic selected yet for this panel discussion? Isn't this, yeah, a city manager? Yeah, they're having Heather McGee come and speak, and it'll be centered on her book, The Some of Us, and she'll be speaking doing a keynote event. And then with stakeholders and partners, we'll be doing intimate discussions. And the Some of Us is really quite a remarkable book. She was the head of Demos, right? The Think Tank, right? But a real, and this book, the sum of us, and I have it if you want, and I think I have it in hard cover, but it's an amazing book. She's a phenomenal researcher, very deep dive into all of these matters of equity and justice that we talk about all the time. So one of the hopes is with the public policy institute and our sort of staff and stuff can really start to collaborate on larger public policy issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion. Oh, that's great. I mean, I just, because we had a bad experience on one Issue around gentrification and the public policy is to was you know come up Basically did not include the people neighborhood, you know leadership We have an elected body and I hope that doesn't happen again I hope it's truly more inclusive this time around to really engage people and it's not political But it's more like hey, let's they take a deep dive you know on an intellectual level to really find solutions to the problems that we face. I just wanted to point out that it's also including the high school so I think it's really great because the kids that are in government and to mayor it's such a long title mayor of Rotemakant Kristen's point is that it's actually extended to the entire student body and I even know that it's possibly reached the younger kids too because I know the book itself at least. So I think it's really cool that we are completely connected as the city and the school body and it is it's about diversity, equity, inclusion and it truly is bringing in all the stakeholders, all the residents, the young people which is honestly for me, the fact that the high school is so involved is a big deal for me. I think that was the best part of it. Council Member Brock. So I just want to, yes, I got some of those same emails and Facebook messages, et cetera. From residents saying if the public policy institute at the college, I think their budget was 67 million or something or 6.7 million, that why do they need the 15,000 from us? I understand trying to be inclusive and doing all that and helping, but it seems like for the past few years they haven't really included us even though we've been giving donations every year. So City Manager White, if indeed, as he drinks as tea or water, indeed if you've really got a cooperative base where we're going to start working together, when the institute, then I'm all for it. But in the past, it seemed like it was the college doing it, and we were just handing them some money. And some of the responses I got on written emails and Facebook messages were sort of like, wait, when they do their deals, they negotiate them better. I don't think this should be a deal. And I think this should be a city project and the school district college and the city should be cooperating more and doing much more together. So if this is a positive step toward that, I'm all for it. Well, I think for, I think part of too, you know, it's important to be thoughtful, you know, about what we put on here, right? And I think part of this coming on the agenda when it did was because I also wanted to make sure that the city manager had an opportunity and to sort of talk through what this could look like, as a longer term relationship. And so he's had the opportunity to, and I think Susan, were there too, right? To meet with the school and all these, so many of these, you know, relationships are new, and because we have so much new leadership, and I think public policy institute, the college is a, you know, there's a lot of opportunity to do more there and it just seems like it makes sense for them to work with council on things because we are a policy body, policy making body. So you move. Oh, second. You move it. Or I'll move it. Okay. I second. Seconded. Second and thirded. Yeah, moved by theAllen. Seconded by Nguredi. Let's take a roll call. Council Member De La Tori. Yes. Council Member Brock. Yes. Mayor Potemacallan. Yes. Council Member Nguredi. Yes. Council Member Davis. Yes. Council Member Paura. Yes. And Mayor Himmaric. Yes, so that passes unanimously. I'm pushing my button now, Denise. There we go. Next item. Next item is request of Council Member's Parra Delitory in Brock. That Council allocate up to $1,500 of Council discretionary funds to offset the cost of sending a miller to all housing authority housing voucher holders providing information and Notice of housing of a housing commission meeting on September 1st To solicit input and feedback that will inform recommendations from the housing commission to the City Council regarding the Santa Monica resident advisory board. And council member, which council member wants to speak on this? I can start it off. I want to make sure that we communicate to some of our most lowest income tendons in the city of Santa Monica. These resident advisory boards, these are federally mandated by HUD. We receive HUD money to support our resident here in the city. There's about 1600 residents, households, and we want to get them involved in, you know, in the policies and practice that directly impact them. We, I'm just really fortunate right now to have the housing commission that's really bringing this forward and really tackling this and getting us to organize and to bring those residents to the forefront so that they can participate. After we pass this, the meeting is gonna be next week so that we have to get this letter out tomorrow. So I hope staff, after we get this funding approved, we can move expeditiously to communicate to people so that they can attend the meeting. And that's it. I don't know if you want to add anything. One thing, I want to- I just did this by accident. Yes. Also, we can communicate with a press release after we pass this today so that we can get the Santa Monica Daily Press to also write a quick little story, the more outreach the better. While I support this wholeheartedly and support our housing commissioners wholeheartedly, I'm sort of dismayed that we had to bring a $1,500 allocation to the City Council that the housing department somewhere in the city couldn't find $1,500 out of our city's budget to take care of this without this having to come out of our discretionary budget. So I hope that once we pass this tonight that that city administration will find that $1,500 and re-deposit it into our accounts. And I'll make the motion, I think I accidentally made the motion to pass this. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's have a roll call, both. Council Member Parra. Yes. Council Member Davis. Yes.. Council Member Parra. Yes. Council Member Davis. Yes. Council Member Negrete. Yes. Mayor Patel-Temma-Cowin. Yes. Council Member Brock. Yes. Council Member De La Torre. Yes. And Mayor Homo-Ritch. Yes. So that passes 7 to 0. Okay. And our last item is recommendation to accept Carolyn Charles' resignation from the Disabilities Commission and authorize the City Clerk to publish the vacancy. Move to accept with regrets. Second. We can do this by acclamation. Who did the second, I'm sorry. I got the gritty. Okay. And we can do this with a voice vote all in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. We have two adjournments tonight. can do this with a voice, vote all in favor. I. I. We have two adjournments tonight. And the first one I, somebody who actually is, yes. So tonight we adjourn in memory of Anita Hernandez, a life not long resident of Santa Monica and the beloved grandmother of our own Stephanie Vanegas. Anita grew up on 19th Street at Michigan and raised her four children at 16th in Colorado. She graduated from SMC and is held tightly in the hearts of her children, her nine grandchildren, and six great grandchildren, including Stephanie's son Cruz. The council joins me in sending our deepest condolences to Stephanie who works with us and her entire family. And Al vinegar Stephanie's father was a captain in our police department for many years. And now I'd like to adjourn also in memory of Marissa Rubin, is with great sadness that we adjourned this council meeting in memory of longtime resident and activist, Marissa Rubin. Marissa was born Maxine Goldgraven in 1939 in the Bronx, New York. She attended the high school of music and art in New York City before moving to Los Angeles with her family. She later attended UCLA, changed her name to Marissa, and received her master's degree in art. She went on to become an art therapist and worked at the UCLA No Psychiatric Institute for 25 years. Marissa was an avid tree lover and helped found tree hugging friends. at the UCLA Neuocyciatric Institute for 25 years. Marissa was an avid tree lover and helped found tree hugging friends. She also helped found activist support circle, the first emotional support group for progressive activists aimed at preventing burnout. Along with her soon to be husband, Jerry Rubin, Marissa planted the children's tree of life in Palisade's park on Earth Day in 1983. They were married there just a few months later. Marissa survived by her loving husband Jerry, two daughters Pamela and Michelle from her first marriage to Norman Rothburg and one granddaughter Emilia. On behalf of the entire community, we convey to Mrs. Family and friends our deepest condolences. And our meeting is now adjourned. I will see you here tomorrow night at 6 p.m. Tonight, sorry, whatever. The date will be August 24th, or is August 24th.