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I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. Thank you. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. Thank you. you . I'm going to make a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a you Welcome to the City of Beverly Hills City Council regular meeting and parking authority meeting. Today is September 17th, 2024. It is a little after 7 p.m. And we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance. And I will ask, I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking, Fred Bernstein. Fred, you're the lucky duckie. Will you lead us please in the pledge of allegiance? Thank you. Okay. If we could ask the clerk to please call roll. Yes. Good evening. There are two roll calls for this evening. The first one is for City Council. Council Member Wells. Here. Council Member Corman. Here. Council Member Mirish vice Mayor Nazarian here and Mayor Friedman here the Nexus for the parking authority director Wells here director Korman here director Mirish here vice chair Nazarian here and chair Friedman here okay well we will get right down to business with text B.H. text messages on any city-related topic maybe sent to 310-596-4265. City staff will acknowledge receipt of the text message within one business day, however resolution of issues may take longer. If you would like to receive updated text alerts from the Beverly Hills Police Department, please text BHPD alert to 888-777. Text alerts will keep you informed of police activity within the city. Our telephone call in number is 310-288-2288 and members of the public are invited to listen to the meeting telephonically or share oral communications on this phone line. And we will start with audience comments on non-agendized items. And I have one speaker card, if anyone else has a speaker card on a non-agendized item, if they could bring it to the City Clerk at this time. We will ask Mr. Girard Gonzalez, please, to come forward. I'm going to go ahead and get the staff. Good in you, Mayor Freeman, Vice Mayor and his area and honorable council members. First off, I'd like to thank you, the city council, for your ongoing support of efforts to bring attention to the Israeli hostages in Gaza. It makes me proud to be a part of the city that righteously stands for those in need during this time of crisis. Last Wednesday, I had the privilege of visiting the Nova Exhibition in Culver City. Like many other visitors, I was left speechless by the powerful displays that presented the horrific experiences of the victims of the attack. As 11 long months have now passed since that tragic day, it pains me to know that there are still 101 people in Gaza suffering in the hands of terrorists. It gives me hope to know, though, that while these people are still trapped in tunnels and where else, there are thousands of people on the surface, including those in our very own community, who won't stop advocating for the return until every single one of them gets home. While the war grows more complicated each day, I pray we don't lose sight of these innocent people still in Gaza. So thank you again to all those who have taken the time and energy to fight for this extremely important cause, and Ms. Rahishem, as many of the hostages as possible, return alive and well. And soon. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Seeing no other speaker cards in the chambers will go to our city clerk with any communications that she has from people on non-agenda items. We do not have any other comments for non-agenda. Okay, so we will close comments on non-agenda items and go to our part and authority consent calendar and I'll ask Vice Mayor Nazarian if she could read that. Yes, I move the adoption consent agenda as follows. Number one, consideration by the parking authority of the minutes of the meeting March 11th, 2024. Number two, consideration by the parking authority of the minutes of the meeting of March 18th, 2024. Second. We have the roll. Director Wells, Epstein. Director Mirish, Vice Chair Nazarian, Chair Friedman. Yes. Okay. Going on to the City Council consent calendar, which I'll ask. Councilmember Mirish to read just up through one through five and we will stop there. I move the adoption of the consent agenda as follows one consideration by the City Council of the Minutes. The special meeting of March 8th, 2024-22. Consideration by the City Council of the Minutes of the adjourn study session meeting of March 11th, 2024-3. Consideration by the City Council of the Minutes of the adjourned regular meeting of March 11, 2024. Four, consideration by the City Council of the Minutes of the adjourned study session meeting of March 18, 2024. Five, consideration by the City Council of the Minutes of the adjourned regular meeting of March 18, 2024. Second. And if the clerk can please call the roll. Council member Wells, abstain. Council member Corman. Abstain. Council member Mirish. Vice Mayor Nazaria. Yes. Mayor Friedman. Yes. And if I could ask Council member Corman, if he could please read, starting with I move the adoption of starting number six all the way through number 11. Before that though, are there any polls? I want to accept number 11. Let's do that. Let's do number 11 first then if we can. Go ahead. So I move the adoption of the consent agenda as follows. Number six, review of budget or demands paid. Covering dates, August 30, 2024 to September 9, 2024. Number seven, payroll disbursement report. Covering dates, August 30, 2024 to September 9, 2024. Number eight, amending title, chapter four of the Beverly Hills Municipal Code, establishing appeal and city council review processes and adding processes for house and development projects, second reading for adoption. Number nine, resolution of the council, the city of Beverly Hills designated the city's voting delegate and alternate voting delegates for the 2024 League of California City's annual conference. Approval of number 10, ratification of a letter sent by City Manager Nancy Hunkoff, regarding the redevelopment of the West Los Angeles Armory, and number 11. Authorize the City Manager to execute agreements. We're going to pull down. I'll leave that one off. Oh, can I also pull number? Number nine. Okay, so we will, so we will only be voting on items number six, seven, eight, and ten at this point in time. So do we have a second on that? A second. Who's the second? You pick them. Go with the vice mayor. Vice mayor in this area. Okay. May I take roll? Yeah, please. Council member Wells? Yes. Council member Cormin? Yes. Council member Mirish? Yes. Vice Mayor Nazarian? Yes. And Mayor Friedman? Yes. Okay. Let's go back to the polls in order of number number nine. Council member Wells. I'm sorry. Council member. Not Council member. Vice Mayor Nazarian. Yes. from my understanding I'm going to this conference on October 16th and it's not indicated in this report. So this report was strictly to indicate who the voting delegates were. We weren't mentioning what other staff might be attending outside the voting delegates. So the voting delegates for Friday, which I believe you will not be there on Friday, would be Councilman McCormann is our primary voting delegate, Councilman Everwells, as our primary alternate voting delegate. And then we have the deputy city manager, Keith Sterling is the second alternate, but it doesn't mention what other staff or council members might be attending. It's traditional that way so I do apologize. No, no because we had discussed putting it on agendas if there were going to be council members going to conferences so I wanted to just confirm so that there wouldn't be any confusion because we are splitting it up between three council members over the course of, I don't know, is it two or three days? So I don't know if it's any kind of, if we need to indicate that or if there's a brown act violation of some form or do you know what I mean? But I just wanted to make sure that it's clarified. It is clarified. We will give you the usual instructions before the three of you go. You know, if there are things that are a part of your jurisdiction that are discussed, that not all three of you would be in the same place at the same time, that kind of thing. So we will do that as the time gets closer. Thank you. Okay. So we vote on that one before. Well, it's just in number 11 also. Councilmember Wells, you pulled number 11. Yes. I just thought it would be important to talk about this since it's on the consent and we've talked about knowing that we're going to have this event here in Beverly Hills but I thought it might be nice just to pull it out and just get a little more information about that just in general and how the planning is coming along. Sure. So we have Deputy City Manager Keith Sterling will introduce and I will fill in some areas. Thank you Mayor. Thank you Council members. Good evening. Yes. This is a combat anti-Semitism movement conference that's being hosted here in Beverly Hills. We're very proud to host this event in December, December 11, 13. Mayor Friedman is going to be chairing the event. This came to the city about a year ago or so. This conference has taken place in Athens, Greece, and our national chapter as well as in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Former Mayor Bosse was attended the events in both locations and was contacted about possibly bringing the event here to Beverly Hills. So Mayor Fremont was also there. And Johnson-Cutsman, Mayor Shreser is well, thank you. And Mayor Fremont was gracious enough to accept the invitation and we've been working closely with the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement on the logistics of the event. My Delena Davis is here who's been our primary staff liaison with the group. And we're continuing to refine the program for the event with the group. But it's beginning in December 11th through the 13th of May, Friedman, I don't know if he's ending you want to share specifically about your plans. Sure, you're right. So this was really initiated when I think then Mayor Bosse and when Mayor Bosse and Council member Mirish both attended the Fort Lauderdale Anti-Semitism Movement. This group, Combat Anti-Semitism, is one of the largest groups which is non-political. It's both sides of the aisle and then some in the middle. Getting awareness and really educating mayors to how to combat anti-Semitism in their communities. I went to Israel with this group and in my group that was there, there were some people from Florida, couple from New York, myself, and then two individuals from New Mexico. And it was not an exclusively Jewish group, certainly the two from New Mexico were not Jewish, and some others were not, but everybody in every community deals in some way shape or form with anti-semitism. I was also at the US Conference of Mayors, conference in, where was it? I was at Kansas City, yeah, Kansas City, Barbecue, how could I forget? We're also, I attended a seminar on anti-Semitism and it's something that we are dealing with in the world right now and we felt that it was important, certainly because of the makeup of our community and there is going to probably be over 200 mayors that are going to be here. And there will be seminars that are provided. Most of the funding is coming from combat anti-semitism. I think they've pledged, I think it's $1.2 million of funding. And the city is contributing, some I think we're asking for up to $250,000 in order to put this program on. So I hope that answers the questions. Yes. Which fund is the money coming from? General. General. General fund it is currently budgeted in the policy and management budget can't be average yeah we discussed this before but and maybe we can have a discussion of future meeting as to whether for specifically for the conference to bring back the flags which we're bringing back in a couple of weeks but we have to take them away for the conference to bring back the flags, which we're bringing back in a couple of weeks, but we have to take them away for the art show. I think that would be, you want to talk about a picture worth a thousand words having 200 mayors in front of that would be an extremely powerful image, and I think it would be well worth it. So maybe we can have that discussion later, but I'd love for us to be able to do that. I would be very much in support of that and I agree that that would be a very impactful message. Okay, anything else? Yeah, thank you. Okay, so with that, we'll ask Councilmember Wells if she'll read both number 9 and 10 and with the preface of I move the adoption of 9 and 11, I'm sorry. With the preface I move the adoption of. Okay. I move the adoption of designating the city's voting delegate and alternate voting delegates for the 2024 League of California City's annual conference. Number 11 authorize the city manager to execute agreements and necessary fiscal year 2024 2025 purchase orders related to the annual combat, cemeterism movement, cam annual mayor conference and the not to exceed total combined amount of $250,000. Second. Yes. Councillor Member Corman. Yes. Councillor Member Mirish. Yes. Vice Mayor Nazorman. Yes. Councillor Member Mirish. Vice Mayor Nazarian. Yes. And Mayor Friedman. Yes. And with that I can adjourn the meeting? No, I guess we have another item. Okay. So we will move on to item number F1 An appeal of the planning commission and rather than me reading it and then the city clerk reading it We will wait for the city clerk. I'm doing this slowly You read the preface. This is a time and place set for a public hearing to consider an appeal of the planning commission's June 26, 2024 decision approving a tree removal permit to allow the removal of three heritage trees located within front setback areas for the property located at 1-001 North Roxbury Drive and finding the project exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act and a resolution of the Council of the City of Beverly Hills conditionally approving a tree removal permit to allow the removal of three heritage trees located within front setback areas for the property located at 1-001 North Roxbury Drive and denying a related appeal. Let the record show that the notice of this hearing was published as required by law, the records and files of the community development department and the report of the assistant director of community development, city planner, concerning this matter shall be entered into the record. Now is also the time for council members to enter into the record any communications or evidence not currently in the record that council members have received before this evening's hearing. And we will start with council member Wells as to any communications or evidence not currently in the record that you may have received. I do not have any. I have received emails as all the council members have, but other than that I have not. Thank you. Council Member Corman. I haven't had any communications other than what we've seen. Council Member Mirish. At his request I met with Mr. Raskin, but no information that wasn't publicly available or discussed before was discussed. And vice-ministerium. I have not had any communication regarding this project. I have received many, many, many emails. And I like my colleagues have received a communication in the form of emails, although I have not had received any evidence not currently in the record. So with that, may we have an oral report on this matter from the Assistant Director of Community Development City Planner. Good evening, Mayor Friedman and members of the City Council. This is a appeal hearing for the previously mentioned Tremble Removal Permit at a 1,001 North Rocksbury Drive. As background, on June 26th of this year, Planning Commission approved a tree removal permit to remove three heritage trees located within front Saphek areas at the subject address. On July 9th the city received an appeal from Hanson Bridget on behalf of Maple Leaf Benchers and that appeal was filed timely. On June, July 16th, the City Council considered calling up the Planning Commission's decision but ultimately decided not to call it up and the appeal ran its course and the City Council held a two-set hearing and set the appeal for today's date. So the purpose of this hearing is to hold a denovo public hearing to consider the appeal and the points raised in the appeal, as well as review the project as to whether the required findings can be met to approve the project. So the request is a tree removal permit to remove three heritage trees located within front setbacks. That's plural because there are setbacks on both the Roxbury and Lexington sides of the property. So the project description is the removal of two coastal redwoods, 94 inches and 107 inches in circumference from the Roxbury side, and a London plain, Sycamore, which is 75 inches in circumference on the other side of the property. So the three trees to be replaced would be replaced by trees on the landscape pallet that's included in the landscape plan, and the trees would have a minimum height of 25 feet at time of planting, and a minimum mature height of 70 feet. In addition, the landscape plan identifies 31 other additional trees that will be planted. So the landscape palette includes Western Sycamore, Magnolia trees, and Cathedral Oak. So the two front yards are on the Roxbury side and the Whittier side. I apologize, the Lexington is the side yard. So two of the trees are located on the Roxbury side that are proposed to be removed and ones on the Whittier side. So this is a look at the site plan, proposed to be removed and ones on the widier side. So this is a look at the site plan which shows the anticipated future proposal for a home on the property. The circled in red are the three trees that are proposed to be removed. Taking a closer look at the Roxbury side. The red circles and heavy red are the two protected trees proposed to be removed. The green hatched are protected trees that are proposed, and the red dashed are non-protected trees that have been removed from the property. And this is a look on the wittier side. The blue is the proposed new vegetation. The green is the protected trees to remain and the red dashed are non-protected trees that have been removed. Looking at the two trees on the Roxbury side. On the left side of the screen is 3.14. That's proposed to be removed. It's located on the more northly end of the front yard and then the other tree, tree 15 is on the more southerly portion of the property on the Roxbury side. And this is the London plain tree located on the Whittier front yard. So when the Planning Commission approved the tree removal permit in June, two project specific conditions were added. The first is the applicant shall install three replacement trees that shall be at minimum of 25 feet in height at time of installation and a minimum of 70 feet in height at maturity. And there was much discussion of the types of trees that would meet that criteria and ultimately the Planning Commission landed on the trees in the planting pallet were appropriate and that could be resolved as the final landscape plan was finalized. And also the planning commission wanted to ensure that the trees were installed early. So as a condition of approval, they need to be installed prior to the issuance of permits for the primary residents. Looking at the timeline of activity on the site, so at the time of planning commission application, there are 44 trees existing on the site, 30 of which were protected and 14 non-protected. After the Planning Commission approved the tree removal permit, the applicant did remove nine non-protected trees on the site. This project is to remove three additional trees. So at the completion of the project, 32 trees of the original trees would remain, 27 protected, five non-protected, as well as 31 additional trees would be added, including the three conditioned replacement trees. So according to staff's count based on our review of the landscape plan, there should be 63 trees at the conclusion of the project, compared to the 44 prior to the project. On July 9th, Hanson Bridget filed the appeal and in quick summary, the appeal petition states that the planning commission's findings of support approving the true removal permit are not supported by evidence. They cite that there's a replaceable environmental benefit to the trees and the replacement trees would take many years to reach maturity. Second, Hanson Bridget asserts that the city failed to comply with CEQA, the city abused discretion in improving the Class 4 exemption, saying that there are direct, indirect, and cumulatively, cumulatively significant impacts. And thirdly, Hanson Bridget asserts that the city failed to provide legally required noticing and that surrounding property owners failed to receive legally required notices. the first assertion regarding the findings not supported by evidence. The planning commission did make the findings in resolution 2062, which is included in your packet. In short, the commission took into account the proposed landscape plan and replacement trees, the physical characteristics of the site, and physical characteristics of the site, and the characteristics of the trees being removed, including their fire performance, in making the findings. Secondly, in support of those findings, the Planning Commission adopted two specific conditions to require larger replacement trees at the time of installation, and for the trees to be planted prior to the issuance of building permits. Secondly, the appeal petition sites that the city failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act. Both staff analysis and the planning commission concluded that the project qualifies for a class for exemption as the proposed landscaping involves a replacement of existing conventional landscaping with water efficient and fire resistant landscaping. So it fits within the four corners of the defined sequel exemption for a class for exemption. The coastal redwood trees are non-native so they developed under different water conditions and have flammable properties of concern, and this site is located within the very high fire hazards of variety zone. The London Plain Tree on the Whittier side has higher water requirements than native sycamores, and the tree was found to be in fair condition, according to the Arborist report. Staff look at the exceptions to exemptions and there's no cumulative effect. That would result from use of this exemption. So it qualifies for the exemption. It's removing three of 30 protected trees and adding 19 trees to the site. We took a look at tree removal permits that were issued in the general area and there was only one we found and it was for sort of movement of existing protected trees. The project's cited and the appeal is over two miles away. That's that tree replacement project on Robertson. So there are no unusual circumstances. None of the six circumstances cited in a sequase action, 1,300.2 apply. The location is not an agency mapped environmental resource. The landscaping modification is a typical activity within a residential area. There's no scenic highway that would be affected. landscaping modification is a typical activity within a residential area. There's no scenic highway that would be affected. It's not a hazardous waste site and it would not affect a historical resource. Thirdly, the applicant, I'm at the appellant asserted that the city failed to provide legally required noticing. The tree removal permit noticing requirements are spelled out in our code. Notices required to be mailed to any adjacent property owners whose property rights may be substantially affected by the approval of the requested permit. So 10 adjacent properties were noticed. In addition, the interested parties list for the project was noticed and the city also put up non-required public hearing signs posted on each street frontage of the property. This is a look at the property surrounding the site that were noticed by mail. For this hearing, the same noticing occurred and posting of the site on all three street frontages did occur. So all public comments that have been received have been provided to the city council and that includes the public comment that was received by the planning commission. So the recommendation is the project appears to qualify for a class for exemption for minor alterations to land. Also, looking at the project in preparation for the City Council hearing, the project also appears to apply to meet the qualify for a class 32-categorical exemption for infield development. And that's included in the staff report. So the recommendation is to hold a denouvo public hearing to consider the appeal and adopt a resolution approving the project upholding the planning commission's decision and denying the appeal. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, can I, can I wait one comment? I wanted to, something the council member Mirish mentioned earlier reminding me of something. I did briefly have a conversation with Mr. Raskin on the phone. He asked me if I would talk to him. He called me, was very brief. I said I couldn't talk about the project. To be honest, I can't remember what we said. It was very short and nothing that was said in that conversation. I have any bearing on this matter tonight. Okay, thank you. Okay, so now I will open the public hearing on the matter. And before we hear from the applicant or the appellant, I will call those members of the public who need or want to leave early or have any other reason to speak before the applicant or appellant and wish to provide early public comment. And I have been provided two of those notices, and this will be the only opportunity for those people to speak on it. It is early comment on the and the first one I have is from Norma and Malcolm Baker. This is early comment. Good evening. We're Norma and Malcolm Baker, Eric's parents, Eric Baker's parents. for giving us the time to speak. Mayor Friedman and vice mayor Nazarian and council members Wells, Korman and Mirish. We have deep roots in Beverly Hills in 1952. My parents bought a home in Beverly Hills. I graduated from Hawthorne and later from Beverly Hills High School. In 1974 Norman I bought a home in the flats of Beverly Hills. We raised our children there. We had many and have had many happy memories. In fact I would like to say that my son Eric and my daughter in law, Nikki, grew up also in Beverly Hills. Back, my son Eric went to the same school as his father, which was a block away, and he walked a hothore and elementary every day. I have a lot of fun memories when they were growing up, and I'm going to give you just a few examples. I remember buying shoes at Harry Harris and eating ice cream at thrifties a long time ago. And going trick and treating. Eric played many sports and enjoyed many of the sporting activities in Beverly Hills. In fact, I think his favorite sport was playing at the Y and playing basketball there. So we really enjoyed our life in Beverly Hills. We were thrilled when Eric and Nikki decided to move back to Beverly Hills. Very delighted to have our grandchildren grow up here in Beverly Hills. I think that Beverly Hills is a great place to be a child. And you go ahead. We very much look forward to the completion of a new home on Roxbury Drive. The Roxbury Drive home is not just a residence, but it really is a dream home for our family. As grandparents, Mal and I look forward to spending precious time with our children and our grandchildren in their new home. We all hope to enjoy this home for many years to come. We appreciate your continued support to bring our dream to fruition and to make it a reality. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you very much. Next speaker, card I have is from Fred Bernstein. I rehearse the pledge for you again. Good evening, esteemed mayor and official scorekeeper Friedman, vice mayor Nazarian and council members as well as Corman and Mirish. I have been a Beverly Hills resident for more than 17 years now. I develop property, and I'm also a partner at West Side of State Agency, which is headquartered on Canon. The situation of the Thousand One North Rocks very concerns me deeply and for a very good reason. Beverly Hills real estate, as we all know, is some of the very best in the world. And this has a great deal to do with the decades of prudent and consistent leadership by this city council. This leadership has nurtured our unique and beautiful community, with its well-maintained streets and outstanding city services, supported by a stable and dependable process that property owners or prospective buyers rely on when buying, building, or renovating their properties. Our property values largely depend on confidence in these processes. When decisions are made unanimously at the commission level after extensive and excellent research, it is critical for the city council to uphold them. To question and undermine the findings of both staff and commission, which show a clear departure from due process, which erodes the confidence in our city governance to which we completely rely on. As you know, the Baker family owns the lot at a 1,000-1 North Roxbury, and as all of us here are well aware, they have meticulously followed the city's process and rules to a T for the past three years. Nine months ago, they applied for a tree removal permit and in June receive the requested permit to remove three trees. There is zero doubt that the landscaping and building plans will not only conform to code but also exceed every environmental and other requirements setting a new gold standard if you will for planting and building in our city. Their neighbors on North Rocksbury are eagerly awaiting the long, empty lot to be graced with a stately family home, built with the highest level of taste in an urban forest of trees. Now a totally blaceless appeal filed by a corporate entity has delayed their progress for several more months, and resulted in a serious misuse of the city's process and resources not to mention punishing the bakers for simply doing the right thing, which is completely their MO. The heightened scrutiny that has been applied to the desire to build a home for their family is in my opinion inappropriate and not based in fact. This lot is not different than any other lot in the city and does not deserve special treatment or this type of consideration. Overturning unanimous decisions and derailing our city process, based on personal grievances, rather than objective assessments, create uncertainty and absolutely deter investment. I urge you, please deny this appeal to maintain the stability and reliability that Beverly Hills residents and property owners expect. Thank you for your time and consideration. While so much is being done around LA right now to severely damage property values, your leadership is beyond crucial in preserving the value and integrity of our Beverly Hills community. Thank you. Thank you. Probably do well in the 22nd clock too. The next speaker card I have is Brian Goldstein. Probably do well on the 22nd clock too. Next speaker, a card I have is Brian Goldsmith. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Brian Goldsmith. My family is proudly called Beverly Hills Home for four generations now. My home is here as well. My office is here. And my family and I have always appreciated the very strong leadership of this city. Your commitment to making Beverly Hills a safe, vibrant, and gracious place to live. I'm here tonight to express concern over the appeal filed against the owners, the bakers of a 2001 North Roxbury following the staff and the planning commission's well-researched unanimous five to zero decision to approve a permit allowing the property owners to remove these three trees that we've discussed. The issue with hand involves minor modifications of private property. The owner's plan is not only provide for the replacement of these trees, but additionally 31 more stately trees to the property, along with a landscape program of additional plantings, all of which by the way will consume approximately one-third the water of the existing landscape. Both the details and the broader picture here are of a family working meticulously with the city to follow the process, follow the rules as they work to develop a family home that they're going to keep for a long time. It's troubling that something so clearly beneficial for both the homeowners and the broader community and the homeowners following the process to a T is being questioned in this way. The planning commissions process which concluded with that unanimous decision was thorough and fair. Reversing it would set a troubling president of undermining the city's own appointed experts and its professional predictable process. Beverly Hills has a proud tradition of respecting property rights, fairness, and the rule of law. I would respectfully urge you all to deny this appeal, uphold the original decision, and allow this family to move forward in building their home. Thanks very much for your time and your consideration and also for your continued service to our community. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Next and last early speaker card I have is Peggy Saville. Good evening, Mayor Friedman and members of the City Council. Beverly Hills has been my home since childhood, 1987. I grew up here at Tendet School and currently resided 156 South Spalding Drive. My parents, siblings, and many of my extended family also live in own property in Beverly Hills, deepening our roots to this wonderful community. The Baker family, friends of ours embody the kindness and care that make this neighborhood so special. They too cherish Beverly Hills as their home and are eager to build their forever home in the place they grew up. I vividly recall one day I picked up my son from their house. Nicole Baker excitedly ran up to me holding the plans for her new home in her hands. She was eager to share her vision with me. She was filled with pride and anticipation ready to turn her dream into reality at 1,001 North Rocksbury. I am deeply alarmed by the recent appeal of the Planning Commission's unanimous 5-0 decision. This ruling was made after thorough consideration of all relevant factors and it passed without issue. Now seeing this project, subjected to arbitrary and inequitable rule changes, including promises of heightened security, scrutiny, an automatic call up of future commission decisions to the council level is deeply concerning as it should be to every resident of Beverly Hills. This property like any other residential lot in Beverly Hills is not historic, it is not public property and is not a commercial development, yet it appears to be treated as such. This treatment feels like a clear infringement on the owner's rights to use their land as they see fit, in adherence to existing codes and laws. My family and I are all appalled and alarmed that this situation could set a dangerous precedent, potentially restricting, property rights owners across the city including my parents, my aunts, my uncles, my grandparents, and my sister, not to mention friends of ours. The bakers who have gone above and beyond to comply with city regulations and exceed environmental standards are only seeking to remove three trees from their property. I trusted the city will adhere to the law and support the Baker's right to move forward with their project. Protecting property owners rights is essential and I urge you to reject this appeal. But the planting of the new trees will substantially improve the property and the view of the premises. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Okay, so those are the early comment cards I have. to the applicant. If we'll housekeeping here. But the applicant will, the applicant's representative, come forward. I have two speaker cards on behalf of the applicant, however you want to divide the time. Mr. Handler, how much time do you think you need? That's fine. I just want to be sure I give an equal amount of time on both sides and if Miss Baker wants to stay seated, it's okay if you need her up front, that's fine too. Dr. Baker, I'm sorry. Thank you. Doctor Baker, I'm sorry. Good evening. Honorable Mayor Friedman, Honorable Vice Mayor Nazarian, esteemed Council Member Wells, Korman and Mirish. I am Dr. Nicole Cooper Baker, and I'm here tonight with our family. But before I introduce us, please allow me to offer my sincerest thanks to the Beverly Hills Planning Commission and staff for their time and meticulous research not just on our project but in everything they do. I would also like to thank our esteemed city council for your careful study and time. I'm a clinical psychologist and my specialty is working with trauma survivors and people with PTSD. I have a private practice on bright and way in Beverly Hills and I volunteer teaching at UCLA's medical school. My husband Eric, my parents, doctors, Steven and Donna Cooper, my mother and father and law and norma and Malcolm from Alpine Drive, are here tonight and our children are watching from home. Eric and I both grew up in Beverly Hills. Eric walked to Hawthorne School as Norma and Malcolm told you. And both of us shopped for shoes at Harry Harris and got ice cream at thrifties and frozen yogurt at the cultured cow. And my mom and I shop for party dresses at Pixie Town. After college, graduate school and establishing ourselves professionally, move back to Beverly Hills, which is where we always plan to raise our children and we are delighted to be back home. Several years ago we were thrilled to purchase the lot at 1,001 North Roxbury Drive and for the past three years as council knows and commissioners know we've worked very closely and collaboratively with the city following each and every rule to the letter and respectfully so. Our property is a private residential lot, an empty lot at this stage. It is no different than any other lot in Beverly Hills. And we respectfully ask that it and we, the owners, be treated just the same as any other. For, we are simply trying to build a home for our family, a home to raise our children, to have wonderful and memorable times with their grandparents, to gather with community and loved ones, a home that we hope will remain in our family for generations. The Planning Commission and staff after extensive and impressive research voted 5-0 in our favour. As we move forward, we simply ask the city to please uphold its own commissioners' expertise and to please follow its own rules. We are grateful for the overwhelming community support we've received from old friends, new friends, and folks we've never met. And we ask you respectfully, Council members, to deny this appeal and allow us to proceed. Thank you for your time and consideration. And I will now turn it over to Benjamin, who will lead our presentation and answer any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Nikki. Good evening, honorable Mayor, vice mayor, and council members, Benjamin Hanolin, on behalf of Eric and Nikki Baker, Beverly Hills residents. Maple Leaf Ventures is a corporation appealing the planning commission's unanimous thorough and well-reasoned approval of the Baker's landscaping plan and permit. The appeal must be denied. A pellant has really lost the forest for the trees. The bakers are saving 27 of their properties 30 protected trees and planting 31 new large trees. There will be 63 trees. The three trees being replaced to enhance the landscaping and form a property owner planted in the 90s are not climate adapted and not native to the region. In the 1990s, there were very few, if any, trees in the front yard. Look at this picture here. No meaningful trees on Roxbury at all, none in the front yard. Then, in the early to mid-'90s, the trees we're talking about today were planted. These trees are less than 30 years old. They're not old growth trees. No general shirman's here. The Arborist report explains that these trees are an overplanted monoculture. As a result, the trees have been competing for resources, impacting soil quality, and the trees branch systems. The letter you received earlier today from Matthew Ritter, a professor at Cal Poly's Biological Science Department, confirms that coastal redwoods struggle in the dry southern California climate. The Beverly Hills Fire Department recommends coastal redwoods for removal in the city's very high fire hazard severity zone. Our arborist, the amazing Lisa Smith, who is here tonight, worked with the team at Christine London to design the landscape enhancement plan with a pallet of native species and climate adaptive plantings that will improve this overplanting. The new landscape plan will replace large swaths of lawn and hands the overall look and health of the properties trees, reduce water use and keep 27 of the properties 30 protected heritage trees. It will also improve the city's canopy and garden quality. There will be 37 trees alone along Roxbury, 15 existing and 22 new. Together with the seven existing street trees, there will be 44 trees between the street and the front of a house. The property is fully shielded by existing hedges and walls on Lexington and Whittier. As to the three trees to be replaced very quickly, only two are really visible to the public. Those are numbers 14 and 15 as staff previously mentioned. Both sit in groups of like-sized trees, a passerby would be hard pressed to differentiate one from another. The two redwoods we're talking about are part of the 90s landscaping and are not climate-adapted and they're also not that large. The southern tree number 15 is 32 inches in diameter. That's like the size of an end table. We're not talking about that large of a tree. The northernmost redwood to be replaced is only protected because the baker's current proposed layout sets their garage farther back from the street than is otherwise required. If the garage were at the minimum front yard set back a 50 feet, the bakerers could remove that tree by right without any approval from the Planning Commission or the City Council. These three trees will be replaced, excuse me, with native and climate adaptive trees that will be large when planted up to 30 feet tall and with a 12 to 15 foot canopy. The 72 inch box sickamores will reach up to 70 feet in height at maturity and have a canopy of 20 to 50 feet. They're going to grow fast. About three feet a year, Lisa Smith, again, confirms this is an ideal size to plant. Large enough for instant impact, but not so large as to lead to transplanting and establishment concerns. The planning commission's conditions of approval, require that these trees be planted before a building permit issues. So they're gonna have a head start on the house by a long shot. On text is also critical here. Compared to neighboring properties at 917, 1000 and 1025 Rocksbury to name a few, which have no or very few trees in the front yard setback. Again, the bakers are gonna few trees in the front yard setback. Again, the bakers are going to have 37 in the front yard. And here's an elevation showing what that's going to look like. You can really see how dense these 44 trees on Roxbury are going to be. This rendering here shows how the front yard landscaping will be viewed from the sidewalk on Roxbury. This is the perspective from which the public will view and take in the property. I think this tells the whole story. The findings that you're asked to make tonight can readily be made. There'll be no impact on the adjacent neighbors and the trees removal will not impact the garden quality of the city. The city's garden quality will be enhanced. The city's canopy will be enhanced. Staff's analysis was correct, and the Planning Commission was correct in its findings. Just very briefly as to process. The Bakers originally submitted for a design review on their architects. We're discussing moving ahead in November of last year, so 2023. Planning staff directed that they first seek a tree removal permit. This makes sense. A property owner cannot design a house without knowing where they can build and the city can't approve it without knowing where the property owner can build. The bakers work with their team to sketch out their family home and at the city's direction applied to remove the three trees that need to come out to accommodate their preliminary design. When the tree removal permit is confirmed, the design can then be finalized and the design review process can move forward. As you can imagine, and maybe you've experienced yourselves, it's very time consuming and expensive to design homes. It makes no sense to design a house assuming a tree is not there, yet to the end of the city's long process, only to be told that the tree must remain. Taking the tree removal process first as city staff directed provides certainty to property owners while ensuring the city's garden quality and canopy are protected. This is what the bakers have done. The same process should apply to the bakers property as to other residential lots in the city. It's not a park, it's not commercial, it's not a hotel, it's not historic. It's private property that's going to hold a family home. With little exception, the process of building anything in Beverly Hills goes through planning first and then to architecture and design. The Bakers have followed the city's rules and the process has worked. The end is what you see, the end result is what you see here, a landscape plan that improves the city's garden quality. We ask that Maple Leaf Ventures appeal be denied, and the Planning Commission's unanimous well-reasoned and thorough approval affirmed. Staff has done a tremendous job responding to the appeal. The Faceless Corporation's appeal is without merit. We are pleased that so many Beverly Hills residents, over 30, have voicers support and letters and here tonight. We ask that you stand with them and deny the appeal. We have our entire team here tonight to answer any further questions that you might have. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So we will go on now to the appellant or the appellant representatives. Would they like to be heard at this time? our point presentation if you'll bear with me. Well, good evening again, Mayor Friedman, Vice Mayor Nazarian and members of the City Council. My name is Ellis Raskin of Hansen Brigid LLP. I'm here tonight on behalf of the appellant Maple Leaf Ventures. To give you a little bit of background about myself, I'm the former chair of the Santa Monica Planning Commission, former member of the Santa Monica Urban Forest Task Force, former member of the Santa Monica Heritage Tree subcommittee. And I helped draft a private tree ordinance for the city of Santa Monica. In large part, because Santa Monica, like Beverly Hills, has seen an epidemic over the past several decades of the loss of mature canopy cover in its city. This is a serious issue that's been affecting not just Beverly Hills, but again, region wide in the broader LA area. This is a serious issue that's been affecting not just Beverly Hills, but again, region-wide in the broader LA area. It's a phenomenon that's been well studied by folks in the urban forestry community. I've worked with stakeholders across the area to figure out how we can find solutions to address these issues. And again, the key issue is really the loss of mature trees, the ones that provide the greatest level of ecological benefits, the ones that provide the greatest level ecological benefits, the ones that provide the greatest canopy cover for our cities. With that, I would like to make a few points moving forward through our presentation. And I don't want to repeat anything you've heard already. You've already heard from staff. You've already heard from the applicant's team about what's happening here on the ground. But I do want to touch on the point about process. We don't have finalized plans for this property. And without those, we can't know whether it's possible to redesign this property in a way that can minimize or mitigate the impacts to these heritage trees. We would submit that it would make sense to simply put this process on hold so we can take a close look at the finalized plans so we can understand how we can potentially find a win-win solution, not just for the family that wants to live here, but for the community as a whole so we can save these trees. So the key issue in this case is the question of whether you can adequately address the loss of mature trees through replacement with immature trees. It's undisputed that the trees that are going to be coming in here are going to take at least in the best case scenario, 15 years years to reach the height and size of the trees that are going to be lost. In the meantime, we're going to have at least, and it could be more, but at least a 15-year period where we don't have the same canopy cover, we don't have the same ecological benefits, and the trees are simply not the same. If the city really wants to make sure that the findings can be made with respect to ensuring that there are no impacts to the community and that there are no impacts to the garden quality of our city, we would submit that you should add conditions of approval that require the replacement of these trees with replacement trees of the same size. I would point you again to comments from the applicants team that talk about the age of these trees. And again, I don't think that that's disputed in the letter. And I really want to emphasize that what we've seen on a region-wide level throughout the LA area is that, again, mature trees provide things that are truly irreplaceable and can't be met through replacement trees. They provide habitat in a way that immature replacement trees can't provide. They provide shade cover. They provide soil retention. The issues that have been raised by the applicants here with respect to the suitability of the trees for the environment and their resilience to fire are really non-sequitors. Matur trees are exactly that. They're the ones that provide the greater range of ecological benefits. And we have not seen any evidence to the contrary that the replacement trees would immediately provide the same ecological benefits on the contrary. We're going to have that 15 year waiting period where the city is going to have to wait to catch up to get to the same time period or the same level of ecological value with respect to these trees. And it's also crucial to note that this can't just be viewed in isolation. Across the city we know for a fact that the city, on any given year, will remove 50 mature trees from the public tree stock. That's just the public trees. There are many more private trees that are removed. And in the last year in particular, you had the proposal on Robertson Boulevard. We heard from the applicants that we shouldn't look at that because it's on the other side of the city. The law doesn't require that. You've got to look at city-wide impacts of what's happening, and in fact, region-wide impacts. The latest data from experts at USC and UCLA and other areas have shown a loss of mature canopy cover in the LA area in the ballpark of 20% over the past decade. In Santa Monica where I work, in single family residential neighborhoods between 2002 and 2022, we had a loss of mature canopy cover in the range of between 14 to 22%. Beverly Hills is similar. You've seen from your own study is known evidence that there is, a city-wide decline in the mature canopy cover and that has real world impacts on the city. And so that takes me to the point about the SQL exemptions here. We're not arguing here necessarily that every single single family home project requires an EIR, or requires a negative declaration. But what the city has to do at some point, and now is the time, is take a hard look at the citywide impacts of these mature tree removals. Take a look at the cumulative impact. And in this case, here there is a significant contribution to a citywide and regionwide cumulative effect that is made up through all of these combined tree removals. And it hasn't been studied. And so before you approve this tree removal tonight, take a time and do the citywide and in fact regionwide study of what these environmental impacts are, make sure they're appropriately mitigated, make sure they're appropriately disclosed, and then you can proceed. It's what the community deserves. I also want to point out that we've added in a comment letter that was submitted on Sunday that provides some fairly technical legal arguments, and I'm happy to get into it if you're interested. But even a very, very small contribution to a big problem is a cumulative impact that has to be studied under sequem. We cited a case that showed, for example, that even a 1% contribution to a very large region-wide problem can be a cumulative impact that has to be disclosed, analyzed, and to the extent possible mitigated under sequem. And that's really the key reason why this project here is not eligible for a sequa exemption. What we would recommend again is that the city do a city wide programmatic study of canopy loss and its effect. Look at that in an appropriate sequa document. And then you can proceed with projects like this that contribute to the cumulative problem. I just conclude by saying that maple e-fenters here is a property manager in the city that manages property on maple drive and has itself planted a grove of maple trees. It brings us to the peel because it's concerned about these cumulative city-wide impacts and we have a plan to make sure that you are able to make sure that you are able to make sure that you are able to make sure that you are able to make sure that you are able to make sure that you are able to make sure that you are able to make sure that you are able to make sure that you are able to make sure that you are able to make sure that you are able to make sure that you are able to make sure that you're replacing these trees with appropriate replacements, and that you wait, and do the proper environmental review before moving forward. With that, we're available to answer any questions. Otherwise, I'll reserve the balance of my time. Okay, thank you, and stay seated. I'm sure there'll be questions along the way. Or you can stand if you want to. Okay, so now is the time where we will take public comment. If there, I do not have any speaker cards here. If there are any people in the audience who would like to provide a speaker card that would be appropriate now. If not, do I see movement? No I don't. Okay. So, do I see movement? No, I don't. Okay, so yes I do. Okay, so seeing no speaker cards here, we will go to any comment cards or comments in either in person, video, email, et cetera, read by our city clerk. Appreciate that mayor. just to clarify, there was a little confusion regarding the callers they were calling in, they thought they could participate via during their early comment phase. So those who hung up, if they would like to call back, this would be the time for them to do so. So the first caller is Mr. Joseph Sessoun. Hello. Hi. Go ahead. You hear me? Yes, go ahead. Hi. Yeah. OK, I'll be really short because I know there's a lot of people on the line. Yeah, for the limited time, I've known Eric and Nicole. I think they're like of like the highest steam character. Very great people. I don't really have my roots in Beverly Hills like they're like Eric's parents. But I will say I grew up here. I studied at USC Marshall. And I think, first of all, what they're doing is gonna be great for the neighborhood. It's gonna be great for the economy. I think they're creating a lot of jobs. And I think there's no really, I think 100% I reject that appeal. And there's no reason for this to halt their construction at all. I mean, there's probably like 50 jobs like people are waiting on the line for this to pass. And I know like, you know, I don't think from that perspective, but it's, I feel like it should probably move a little bit quicker. I don't know why this kind of, I feel like it's such a, like a, kind of, I feel like it's such a, not inconvenient, I feel like it's such an easy thing to sort out. I don't know who submitted the appeal, maybe a jealous neighbor or something, but yeah. Yeah, I think for sure they're gonna build a beautiful, beautiful garden and it will be great for the neighborhood and yeah, I support them with a whole heart. Yeah. Thank you for your time. Okay, thank you. Next is Jordana Yesho. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Can you hear me? Oh, hello, Thank you so much. Honorable Mayor Friedman, Vice Mayor Natharian, and the St. Council members, as well, Coleman and Mirish. My name is Jordana Getjela. I live here in Rexer, drive the bacon of my first family to welcome me when we moved here from England. I made Beverly Hills our new wonderful home. I actually visited the 2001 Rocks Reprop to myself to consider buying it and decided to get it when I saw how much work it needed to update for our family today and the extraordinary amount of time and money that needed to go into it. I was so happy to see it go. Nicole and Eric, who hired the best of the best teams, architects, glad scapers, arborists, designers, consultants, you name it, the Horsche Bang, to build the most elegant family home in the most responsible, professional, aesthetic, environmental, and professional way. I watched them suffer under the objections and almost obsessive scrutiny. They've been under before this and then worked diligently for three years through all the cities, processes and procedures, so they can just start to build their home. So when I heard there were objections of a three-ordinary trees, not on public property, but in their own private property, which has no special designation, I had to ring in and voice my concern as a homeowner and support them as a community member. I think it's wonderful to see a native Beverly Hylian as Mr. Baker, who's to stay in his beloved city and raise his own family here and invest so deeply in it. I think we should appreciate and support as much as we can. This is not a commercial property or a developer home or a home that's going to be rented out or less to empty without a towner. This is where they're going to raise their family and build their memories. I come from London, I appreciate correct architectural protection and preservation and I respect process. But frankly, this is ridiculous. They're adding an extra, I mean, what do you say? 33 to the property, resulting in a greener, more beautiful landscape, hardly a loss of canopy cover. They're only caused heritage because they've chosen to pull their home back and underdevelop and not overdevelop. Not because they are historic, holding this family up any further, quite frankly as abuse, and every homeowner should be alarmed by it. This is a decent, hard working, low-abiding, bull-following patience beyond professional family of standing, and we should be wrapping our arms around them and supporting them and not infringing on their property rights any further. And I urge you to turn down this unfair appeal and uphold the planet's original decision. Sorry, I'm getting heated. Thank you for your time and your amazing service to our city. That's all. Thank you. Next, you have Mr. Sonny. So soon. Hello, can everyone hear me? Yes, go ahead, Sonny. Yeah, I'm actually out of country. I waited an hour to get on this and it actually, I'm in a way, happy I waited because I had a script, I was going to read from and it basically echoes everything that the other speakers said on behalf of the bakers, Dana, Fred, Joseph, most of you know me, the council, the Honville Mayor, Vice Mayor, council members, Mayor's Cormin Weld, Mayor Friedman, Vice Mayor, and Asdarian. The reason I'm glad I stayed for an hour. And I heard the Italian think everything he said is a joke. And basically, you guys should not even miss him, Dan. He does not live in Beverly Hills. You all do. He quotes some project manager who does not live in Beverly Hills. You all do. And this was approved by you unanimously. And all it takes is one, whatever he is, a lobbyist or a troublemaker. And he's causing a lot of anxiety and suffering for this wonderful family, wonderful couple and their kids who, as you've heard, been in Beverly Hills for generations. Now I'm 30 years now in Beverly Hills as most of you know and I'm actually angry that we've all been put through this and more angry, the basements are being put through this. And there's one lone wolf die who's just causing a lot of trouble. And I implore you guys to stop this, let them do their work, build their house, plant those beautiful trees, and maybe get together to pass a law that if anyone wants to protest against anyone doing anything in Beverly Hills, they'd better Dan well be living in Beverly Hills, or they should shut up. He should speak to Santa Monica, not in Beverly Hills. That's all I have to say. I'm sorry. I'm angry. It's late over here, but I needed to say that. Thank you very much. and the community. I'm sorry I'm angry. It's late over here. But I needed to say that. Thank you very much. We love being in the city. We love all five of you. I have no doubt you guys are going to make the right decision. Let the bakers continue. Thank you. Next we had, we had, and I just want to double check that we have Mr. Larry Larson are you still on the line? It doesn't appear that he's on the line anymore, so I will go to the written comments. Okay, and then we can check check back to see if he comes on. At the mayor's request public comments are being summarized for this item. City council members have all received or had the information forwarded to them already. The original text will be available on the city's website and will remain as part of the official record. The following, so we did receive one comment that was from the council for the appellant, that's from Mr. Ellis-Raskin. We won't be reading his comments because he's able to read, sent them to you. They were in detail and he's also presented to you directly. The other comments are opposed to the appeal and support of the Planning Commission and those be Andy Lyck, Russell Fogarty, Steve Needleman, Judy Fenton, Miles Lee, Moody Weissick, David Nathanson, Michael, and Victoria Hooks, Debbie Sesun, Josh Friedman, Gerald Friedman, Darren Saville, Mark Boyan, Adam Nathanson, Miles Bowman, Gerald Friedman, Darren Saville, Mark Boyan, Adam Nathanson, Miles Bowman, J. Levine, J. Levine, Meyer Levy, Barry, Milken Bernstein, Todd Hassan, Camille and Mason Hooks, Amy Conroy, Lenore Greenberg, Andrew Huffman, and Marty Bartoff. The remaining, so these comments from the group were supporting the Planning Commission's 5.0 decision to deny the appeal. And comment letters included were from local residents, inclusive, inclusive of those who lived, some of them who lived on Roxbury Drive. Many were lengthy letters, so this is a brief snapshot highlighting some of their comments. These comments are in favor of affirming the commission's vote to allow for the removal of three trees from the Roxbury site. As some have stated, whether one agrees or disagrees with the decision to demolish the prior structure or agrees or disagrees about the removal of the trees. It is about the city's process. They have stated. Commissioners spend an inordinate amount of time reading, analyzing and listening to testimony about projects prior to rendering a decision. Their decision was unanimous. Additionally, comments shared that they, the commenters shared that they were concerned regarding the appeal and that it was against a granted permit. They believe this is to be a very straightforward case and are concerned with a potential reversal of the approval. It was felt that it is a slippery slope which residents should also guard against what is happening to this family could happen to any one of them. The land in question is a piece of private property owned by a family who plans to build a home, a private residence, per the commenters. It was shared that the homeowners project is being treated as if it is public property or a commercial development and the entire community must agree upon every aspect of this family's house. It is none of those things, no different from any other residential lot in the city. Their property is large, but it has no special designation to set them apart from any other residents in Beverly Hills. At the City Council meeting to determine the timing for the appeal to be addressed, one of the council members promised to scrutinize and delay every single decision on this home because of the prominence of the lot. Isn't this the council member who unsuccessfully fought to prevent the former home on the site from being demolished. The representatives from this property have shared information of the three proposed heritage trees to be removed and have expressed that the project will be saving 27 protected trees as we understand the project at North Roxbury will have a total of 63 trees when the project is completed. The, just looking at my time, the inappropriate derailment and ongoing delay of their process that we are seeing here sends a disturbing message to residents and future home buyers. It says that even though one follows rules, one can still be harassed delayed, called up, and publicly made to justify the most minor of decisions while being forced to expand exorbitant amounts of time and money just for the right to build a home on your own property, it deeply concerns them. It sends a destabilizing message to the real estate market, and if they can't rely on good faith following up on the city's own rules to build on private property then why would someone want to spend millions it requires to that is required to live here. This is a concern to the group and they think it would be fair if you the council would protect those property owners who follow your laws observe your regulations just because neighbors have a sentimental attachment to something. It doesn't mean they should bend the law to make our street conform to their personal preferences. And that pretty much was a sentiment from all the writers who sent in their comments with the exception of Mr. Raskin. Okay, let's go back and see if Mr. Larson is back on the line. It appears he is not back on the line. Okay. And then I just wanted to make one comment. There were two individuals whose last name happens to be the same as mine, Friedman. In fact, one of them has the same full name as one of my sons. Neither one are related to me. I do know that they reside here, but I just want to make that clear that there are no way related to me. Okay, with that, I'm going to go to the next part of the script, which is, does the applicant wish to provide any response and rebuttal and closing argument. That would be Mr. Hanlon if you cared to come forward. Or honorable mayor, thank you for the opportunity. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have but I have nothing further to offer at this time. Thank you. Okay, thank you. And does the appellant wish to provide any response and rebuttal in closing arguments? Closing remarks. Thank you, Mayor Friedman. I think one point we really do want to emphasize here is that, well, we don't think that the project's specific findings can be made here, unless you want to condition this under placement of trees with the same size. This really isn't a case about this one property. I've been hearing time and time again from commenters that this isn't attack on this one property. But it's more than just that. The city has at no time done a city wide environmental analysis of the cumulative loss of mature canopy cover for the city's urban forest. And until that happens, once you have these types of cumulative contributions to that cumulative impact, you should wait and say, all right, well, let's wait a minute. Let's do the environmental analysis that's required and figure out how we can appropriately mitigate impacts from all of the cumulative projects including this one. And with that, I'll be available to answer any questions and your consideration. Okay, thank you. So, is there anyone else in Chambers or I guess on the phone who would like to make any closing remark. No, we do not have any other comments. Okay, so we will now go to any questions by Council members of the applicant, the appellant, staff or members of the public from the council. And I do want to recognize Terry Kaplan, who's here from the Planning Commission who would be available to answer any questions. Or Miss Kaplan, if you want to come up and if you have anything to say, you're welcome to do this. I'm sorry. Mr. Mayor, I think you need to offer Mr. Hanlon a chance to rebut the, that is correct. That's what it says right here, Mr. Hanlon, if you care to rebut. Very briefly, just to the point about the need to conduct a citywide review of see how brilliantly green the city is and I think the city does a tremendous job of managing its urban forest. To I believe that council has the law wrong on CQA and cumulative impacts when you're looking at categorical exemptions, the staff report addresses this point and I think staff gets it exactly right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah, I know I got to go through the list again. Would the appellant care to give any rebuttal response? I see a no there. And is there anybody in the audience who cares to give a rebuttal response? No, we do not have any other comments. Not seeing any? I can now go to any questions of the applicant appellant staff or members of the public from the council. And again, I will state that Terry Kaplan is here from the Planning Commission if we have any questions. If he's starting with, council member Wells. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Wells. Okay, thank you. And thank you everyone for being here this evening. First, I have a couple questions for the appellant, Mr. Raskin. Good evening. I've read your most recent email that you had forwarded and as well your previous emails and I have a question for you frequently when you're referring to talking about the three mature trees that are being requested to be removed. You're comparing them to the immature trees that will come and how long it would take for them to get to that size and the impact from an environmental ecological sense and the loss of the benefits in addition to the tree canopy. When you're talking about an immature tree, what are you referencing as an immature tree? What is the definition for you of an image or tree? Yeah, this is a good question. And we mean that in a relative sense. In that the trees that are proposed to be the replacement trees here are less mature, obviously, than the ones that are being taken out. There are, of course, technical terms as to how you define a sapling and immature tree and mature tree. What we really meant that in is as a point of reference to compare the fact that you would have a 15 year gap between the time in which the replacement trees would mature to the size of the existing trees. As well when I looked at the different attachments that you included and the different abstracts and different studies that you included, many of those reference, in many ways, it's tree versus no tree. It doesn't reference whether it's a mature tree. Some of the studies you looked at were, if it's a new development in an area, it's mature neighborhood with mature trees versus a new development in an area, it's, you know, and mature neighborhood with mature trees versus a new development that had immature trees, which typically many times when you see a new development, you're not gonna see people buying big, huge mature trees are putting in much smaller trees in those different neighborhoods. So I'm curious why you put those in and what was really the finding, the takeaway that you wanted us to have by including that. Well, obviously there's a difference between, as you're saying, clear cutting of property and leveling it, not putting any replacement trees and putting in trees that will mature over time. But the point of the study is that they do talk about the relative value of mature versus immature trees, or less mature trees, is maybe a better way of putting it. And the relative, the findings of those, of those studies is that the relative ecological value is that the less mature trees obviously offer less ecological value, less ecosystem services, less opportunity for habitat, less opportunity for canopy cover. And when you accumulate that all of those impacts over a region wide and city wide scale, then that's where you can really see the large scale impacts of all of this. Okay. As well when you included the urban, the city of Beverly Hills urban planning, forest or planning, I'm sure I'm saying this wrong, the city's urban forest management plan. Again, what was the point of including that? Well there's language in there that speaks to the fact that the laws that regulate the removal of trees on private property have to be strictly construed and strictly enforced. In large part because a large number or a large proportion of the urban forest canopy in the city is on private property. And it's not in the street trees that are under the city's immediate purview, but rather on properties like this, where you have folks come in who are going to be redeveloping the property and applying for tree removal permits. And it recognizes that over time there has been a significant loss of mature canopy cover in the city. And it's going to take a long time, you know, the arborists who wrote that report and the City staff report that report recognized that it's going to take a very long time on a large citywide scale for the less mature trees to catch up to the benefits and the canopy cover that are offered by the mature trees. Okay. Those are my questions. Thank you. I have some questions for staff. Hi. I have a couple of questions we're talking about the garden quality and evaluating the impact on the garden quality. What in your words is a definition of what garden quality means? A appropriate green environment that fits into the residential area of the city. Would you say this property? I don't know how well you, how aware you are of the other properties on this street. Are you aware of the different properties there? Yeah generally it's larger homes with landscaped sites that surround this. I actually may actually ask the applicant but just from my driving down the street and just observing and as well looking from Google. To me, it looks like the house at 1,0001 has probably has more trees. I mean, especially if you look at the net number of trees in this project of 63 trees, it's probably more trees than a typical home, any of our residential homes that are of that type and size. We do agree. They are adding additional trees within the setbacks so that they would be readily apparent to the neighboring properties. Right. And that they have, I think the count was in the front, just within the front set back on Rexford, there'll be 44 trees just in that frontage. I think that was the number included in the applicants material, yes. And would you say that that's considerably more than most frontages for new homes that are getting done. I would say that this is generally more trees than we see on landscape plans. Thank you. How would you define a heritage tree in terms of in this situation and or protected tree? Those are at defined terms in our municipal code. I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next slide. Those are a defined terms in our municipal code. A heritage tree is any tree not listed on the city's official list of native trees but has a primary trunk circumference greater than 48 inches. So a larger tree located within a setback area. And what is the, does it have a height or is it just the circumference? It's just the circumference measurement as defined by our code. And then how would you define a protected tree? It is any native tree or heritage tree, which is that size that's located within the setback area. Is it protected tree? The replacement trees that have been discussed at I think it's 25 feet high. I guess because it's not based on height, it's on circumference for a heritage tree and it's placement within the front of the setback. So the height measurement for the trees came out of the planning commission's discussion. They wanted to ensure that there were larger tree species that was concerned about using box size and other points of measurement and I think they landed on height because they thought that would be a large species and that's what they wanted to see installed. Would you consider that a mature tree? I would consider that a larger tree that will probably require quite a large block size greater than 48 or 60 inches which a lot of landscape plans call out trees of that size. This might be even larger than that. Can you speak specifically to the argument around CEQA that Mr. Raskin made and why the reference to the overall citywide cumulative effect or that impact is not apply here in this situation. I think that the Mr. Raskin identified that as some sort of city wide sequestuddy should be completed before any individual property had a project occur on it. I mean, sequa allows for us, the city to review projects. And if a project fits in in the four corners of an exemption it does not have to go on to further sequa review and I think that this fits within that framework. Yes the city could do larger studies and the city has done larger studies including the urban forest management plan. That is not a sequa study but that is a study of the urban canopy and a lot of the goals that are called out in that study apply to what's being proposed in this project. If I could just add to that. So Mr. Raskin does talk about cumulative impacts and sites a couple of cases to talk about the discussion of cumulative impacts. But when it comes to cumulative impacts that would remove a project from an exemption, right, this is exempt under a couple of categories, that cumulative impacts are only relevant if the cumulative impact of successive projects of the same type in the same place over time is significant. So I don't think it's appropriate. It may be appropriate to do a study of canopy covers for the whole city, but that is not going to be projects of the same type in the same place over time. So I don't think he is using the proper test for whether this significant impact, whether it's cumulative impact, should disqualify the project from an exemption. This project started with 44 trees and once 30 of those are the heritage trees leaves 27 trees. And 17 of those trees will be I believe sickle moors and that are heritage trees which is the same as one of the trees. I'm sorry. I think it's 17 are the redwoods. And there will be 17 remaining that are heritage redwood trees that are like two of the trees being removed. So there will be 17 remaining and of the London plain I think there will be 10 fully mature heritage trees that will be remaining even with the removal of one. There will be 10 remaining. That's correct, right? Yes, I would have to look at the landscape plan, but it sounds right. I think actually I'll ask the landscape architect, but I just want to confirm that. I don't have any other questions for now. I'm going to ask, actually, ask the applicant to come up and also the landscape. Architect and perhaps the arborist. Hi. In the process of addressing this property because there were so many trees that there's so many heritage trees, there was 44 trees on the property, there's 30 heritage trees, there's other non heritage trees. There's 44 trees on the property. There's 30 heritage trees. There's other non-protected trees. And I really appreciate wanting to keep those trees and work around the different trees in terms of a design for a garden landscape from watching the Planning Commission meeting. It sounds like the applicant is wanting to keep that woodland at Garden Field. Can you talk a little bit about how challenging it was to place the house, find a place with all the different trees that were placed already because they're mature trees, there's roots, and it's not even if you were three feet away from the tree, the trunk of the tree, you still have to consider the roots and what those impacts are in terms of creating plans for the house. Please be sure to give your name, I know your name, but if anybody else speaks, okay? Council member Wells, if I may invite Suzanne Shepella, the architect for the project to address that. Thank you. Hi. Hi, name, thank you for having me. Suzanne Shepella with Landry Design Group. When working with the bakers over the past year or so, we not only have the city setbacks that we have, right? We have our two front yard setbacks that are both 50 and then our side yard setbacks. So when we laid out the house talking about program, we're quiet, et cetera. And as I explained at the City Council meeting, it was kind of threading the needle through these trees, right? If you move the house ever so slightly, there's another tree that's going to be impacted. So we really looked at not only the setbacks and the really significant heritage trees, but how we could weave the house in and really mitigate. So if you move the house to the left, another tree moves, if you move the house up, another tree potentially would be protected, and that's what we explained. And while working with the landscape architect and the arborist, we looked at those trees that were non-native and that were fire receptive to fire looking at those species and the ones that potentially could be the best to be removed. And that how did you determine to put this back even further than the 50 feet that's required from Roxbury? It was looking at the trees and if we push the house back even farther we could save a few more. So it was really working with the Bakers and Christine London's office of keeping that natural urban landscape and keeping as many trees as we could. And as you can tell from the site plan, the front setback runs parallel to the street, but our house does not run parallel to the street. It's almost a little at an angle. So by that, we were even able to keep save more trees by not following the line of the street. Right, I think I notice on one, like if I'm looking at the house to the left, it's actually, I think it was 17 feet beyond the setback. Yes, the 50 foot setback. And then where the garage was was just under five feet. As Mr. Hannelin said, if we had pushed the garage forward to the setback, that one tree in particular we could have, the clients could have removed by right, but we really wanted to give the city even a deeper setback that the house would be even more protected. And the overall size of the house, the properties that I think 81,000 square feet, no. Oh, just the overall size of the property. Oh square footed the property. Yes, yes. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I'm so sorry I do not have that great was 12 the foot print the footprint is 12,000 square feet And total total square footage is around 24 24 so that's A that's significantly smaller we are not we're not going from step back to step back. We are really tucked in within this Garden of trees. Thank you. I think the other question I have been is for our landscape architect and our brisk, both. Thank you. So you're adding 31 additional trees to the plans and I mean I was looking at the plans and you have 30 heritage trees, three are removed that at least 27 as I said there's I think it's 17 of the redwoods and 10 of the sickamores and then if I recall correctly in the planning commission meeting you reference that you're adding another eight of the Western sickamores Instead of the London plane the European style the Western native sickamore will be added in can we can we also have Introductions, please I'm so sorry. So sorry. My name is Lisa Smith. I'm the registered consulting arborist, board certified, master arborist. Thank you. And the size of those trees, what size boxes are you anticipating that you're putting in? My name is Maya Barona. I am the landscape architect on the project and the proposed trees are 72 inch box platenous race mosa which are California native sycamores. And how would you categorize that in terms of age? And we've talked about immature trees. We've talked about immature trees. We've talked about mature trees. Where is that tree in its lifespan, are not even lifespan, but when it becomes to become a mature tree? Sure. So 72-inch box, which is a specimen size, that's going to be cramed in, weighs several tons. And the age of that tree could be between 12, around 10 to 12 years old. Some of them can be up to 20 years old. So some of the other species that were designating as larger box trees. So it's in no way considered an immature tree. Definitely not. And being native, it'll have the opportunity to have a much longer lifespan than the non-native particular trees that maybe we don't know what's going to happen in the next 10 or 15 years with climate change. So having the native species gives us a ramp, a ramp of, you know, could be 100 years. We know Western Sycamore can live to several hundred years here in Southern California. So that gives us an opportunity to capture all of that benefit for a much greater period of time than the non-natives would be. So when I looked at the plans I saw that there's your adding, that you're adding the Western Sycamores, your adding, I believe it's an oak. As well, all of these are large size trees and magnolia as well. The net impact is, you have on the plant 63 trees, pretty much, none of these are immature trees. None of them, that's the smallest size, right? So none of them are small trees. We're planting Quarkas,iana, which are oak trees, magnolia, grandiflora, and platinum, racemosa. All of them larger box sizes, and they would not be considered immature trees. So those 31 trees are being added to the other mature trees that are on the property for total 63 trees. What's the impact of the canopy on that property by adding that many trees? I mean, it's in effect almost doubling the canopy. Exactly. Also, these species are more broad, so they're not as upright like a pine or a conifer. So they're going to have a broader canopy. They're going to be providing more canopy coverage, shade, habitat, carbon sequestration. They're all evergreen, except for the Sikamore. So they're going to provide that canopy and shading and cooling year round. So that's a nice thing. That broad, more mushroom-shaped, broad oak canopy, and magnolia provides that benefit. Along the same lines, I believe on one of the attachments you included the carbon dioxide uptake this chart here. So can you speak about this and just what that impact is on this property with this landscape plan? So as trees grow through that growing process, they incorporate carbon into their tissue. And this carbon calculator is coming from the USDA Forest Service, so it's a very reliable source. So it's a very reliable source and it calculates the amount of carbon that would be sequestered in a period of 20 years. And you can see in our diagram we've prepared one. The amount of carbon sequestration of the trees that we are proposing on the site by far exceeds all of the sequestration of the three trees that are being removed at least by five or six times. One of them is 3,000 carbon, 3 million pounds versus 20 million. Yeah, 3,000 versus 20,000. So definitely. And you're going to get more mileage out of that carbon sequestration due to the items I just discussed is the longevity of the species, their native, they're going to be providing that benefit for much greater length of time without utilizing all of the things that The previous trees required so this carbon sequestration also doesn't even go beyond 20 years. It's just the first initial At the Other ecological Benefits from this plan, it sounds very similar to what our urban force management plan is. What they really identified is if we want to increase our canopy, the greatest opportunity to increase our canopy is really in residential properties. And in this situation, it seems to me that we're really multiplying it at, you know, more than 50% of this by increasing, by planting this many trees. But in addition to that, can you speak a little bit about the benefits of, I mean, previously there was a limited variety of species and of age because from what we understand, they were all planted around the same time. So now what this is providing is diversity in terms of species, in terms of the age of the trees, as well as creating, you know, more resilience and sustainability for the garden. Should any of the trees get diseases or bugs or different things? I know I have a lot of trees at my house and it's constant evaluating if anything is happening. Our environment is happening in my garden and can actually threaten the life of my trees or their ability to thrive. Just to make sure I'm answering your question is that the garden variety and adding to the urban canopy is always a goal. And even though 110 years ago before the city was incorporated, this area was much more arid, dry, open, land, chaparral, oaks dotted the landscape. And as people moved in here into the Southern California region, that area became populated. We started putting in street trees and people started planting their own trees and their properties. And they brought in all these non-native species from back east, from their travels around the world. And a lot of non-native, beautiful species were brought into these regions. And even Northern California red woods that grow in the rainy areas with fog, thrive there. They were brought down here to beautify the city. As time goes on though, and researchers and researchers and scientists and myself and I teach at UCLA in the landscape architecture program, I teach my students that you need to understand the future. And so we have species, we want to have them thrive the best we can and recognize we want to get those red woods to have more longevity. You need even the London plain that are dotting city streets throughout the city. But we also want to be smart about putting a new species that are developing a diverse culture of plants So if you have one pest that comes along like we're having right now and Beverly Hills is not immune to it Is the shot hole borer and they're killing lots of trees? So having that diversity allows an owner, a city, a region to be more resilient against issues, climate change, things that we can't predict, things that are control and not. So that was something I really worked in concert with Maya and the team on helping them to select, that's my job. They're doing everything so they want to have the little minions help them guide them and help them create the most resilient and beautiful future canopy for the property and add to the community. With regards to planting more trees in the front, I think it went from there's going to be from 33 trees in the frontage of the property to now 45 trees in the frontage. If you're standing, if you're standing on pretty much, you know, on Roxbury or you're a neighbor and you're looking over at the house and the house is now set back further than the 50, the 50 foot set back. How will you be able to see the house and is it going to be prominent or what's the, what was the goal in that? The house will be set completely in a garden setting. So the way that the property is going to be viewed from the perspective of somebody walking through the city, it will be completely shielded by green all around it, completely encompassed by a garden. And that's been the intent of the clients from the beginning. They have wanted the home to be within a garden setting which is why the design is based on having a smaller footprint for the house and maximizing the amount of garden that surrounds the house. So from the perspective of somebody looking at the property from the city side, it's going they're going to see a garden essentially. Okay. All right, well this is my question. Thank you very much. And I will pass it on. Okay, thank you. Council Member McCormann. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Hanlon, I wanted to thank you for your very thorough submissions. They were very clear and concise. I'm not going to ask you any questions about them. I think I got one and you did it out of them. I did have one question for you. You mentioned earlier that your clients initially started design review and then were told, hold off, request the tree removal permit first. Correct. So is it correct that your clients have waited until now to submit any additional building permit or architecture review applications? Yes that is my understanding so since I think it was back in November of 2023 that the architect Miss Chapella who we heard from and her team were meeting with city staff and at that time They had a plan they were developing and further developing the plan to bring forward through design review and At the time they were told to Put that on pause and that they would move ahead with the tree removal permit And I believe it was in early January then that the tree removal permit trap was submitted, and then we've continued to go through that process. So the tree removal permit application is the only application you have on file currently with the city. Council member, I don't technically know if the design review permit might still be active. I don't have that technical answer Yeah, currently there is not a design review permit on file My understanding as there has been a communication between the applicant group and their urban designer just taking a look at some ideas But no, there is nothing on file. Those are my questions, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mourn. Thank you. Thank you. Masha, I have a couple of questions. So as you know before, when it, in general, this is several years ago, I stated that my feeling is that before we process a demolition permit, we should have a replacement project. Now, the council's discussed that a few times we haven't done it, but the same logic applies here. Why wouldn't we get a submission for a house before looking to get a tree removal permit. It sounds like we're saying that they should go the opposite direction, it sounds to me like putting the cart before the horse, because the ultimate design may or may not require a tree removal. From an order of operations perspective, we have generally taken items to planning commission, cleared that hurdle, and then the code provides the architectural and design review commission now, the authority over sort of the architectural review of the site and then it goes on to building permit. So that has been the general path for all our permit types that we go to Planning Commission first. Clear the entitlements, move on to architectural commission for that. But would the entitlement first be to forget architectural review to build a house. That's the main thing. Wouldn't the Planning Commission approve, okay, we're going to approve the house, and we see it needs to remove a couple of trees. We'll deal with that then. Wouldn't that make sense? In a lot of cases, tree removal permits, the entitlement for a tree removal permit comes with other entitlement requests for, let's say, a hillside R1 permit or a true sale R1 permit. And in those cases, the Planning Commission looks at the entire pack. So wouldn't that make sense to tie them together? Because in theory, again, what if someone asked for a tree removal permit? They said they needed for the construction of the house. And then they changed their minds, they cut down the trees, and then they build a house that actually wouldn't have required the tree removal. What, in theory, what can you do to protect that? Could you grant a tree removal permit, but condition it upon the ultimate approval of the property? Say that you can't take it down until that house is approved and you actually need it. would that be a possibility? I think the way that our code is structured, that the authority over the architecture review is with the architectural commission, or the design review is with the architectural and design review commission. So, it's a separate body that's reviewing another than the planning commission. But my point is you could say you have this but you're not allowed to remove the tree until you get the building permit for example. Why would that be? In other words, be- I mean, a timing restriction on the removal of the tree. I mean, yes, conditions could be- No, but just in other words. Okay, just to be sure that, again, I'm not saying they're gonna do it here, but someone could change their mind, they could tear down the trees, someone could change their mind and then build something else that didn't require a tree removal. My question is, what could you do to allow them to move forward to grant them preliminary, if you will, or whatever you want to call it approval, to remove the tree that they are able to implement as soon as they get their building permit. I think that it would be possible to structure a condition. Okay. And that wouldn't be something though that would cause them any delay. What it, assuming we approved it now, you know, because as said, to me it just feels in general, and I stated that before, card before the horse. I mean, tearing trees, getting, removing trees, and then getting approval for, it's not just the architecture, it's to be able to build their house, and then they will get the building permit. And so it could, in theory, it could be structured that way. Yes. Okay. I have a question to Ms. Smith about the trees, please. Ms. Smith. So I appreciate that we're replacing non-native trees with native trees. On the other hand, isn't Quercus Vrginiana also a non-native tree? Why did we pick that kind of oak as opposed to Quercus LaBotta or Quercus Agrafolia? Well, that's a good question. Yes, Quercus Vrginiana is an oak. It is a southern live oak. It is definitely utilized more here in southern California. It's grown here. There are cultivars that are grown specifically for southern California. So that is a good question. But it's not native. I mean, it's native too. As far as I can see, southern live oak, Texas and all that. Whereas I guess you could say that Valley Oak, Quercus, Lobata, that's here maybe not on this side of the the ridge but certainly in the valley but certainly coast live oak. You're correct. Yeah. The Lobata, the valley oak would be good in the valley because they want to be in the bottom of the valley where there's lots of water. The agrofolia, I couldn't speak to that maybe the architect can why they selected one of the other. Sure, because that is a native tree, and we have been, when we've been replacing city trees, we certainly have been looking at the coast live oak, and that is, you know, would be an excellent. Sure. Who should, who should, so. I will say just from a characteristic is that the Virginia on it has a smooth leaf. And so it's not as challenging in a residential setting where you have, you know, walkability. So the Virginia on is a desirable. It's just also the species, the cultivar is called cathedral, so it has a more upright broad canopy. But they're not deciduous, are they? No. No, they're both evergreen. Right, exactly. Yeah. The corpus virginiana have a very beautiful form that we love in terms of design. So we would like, because this is a beautiful, stately garden with a very stately architecture, we felt that the Virgin and I would be more appropriate. The Quircus agrofolias are beautiful, but they have a more wilder form. They grow naturally on the hill sides. So it didn't feel quite appropriate for a residential setting with a very stately design. So when you design houses or whatever, you've never used coast live oaks. We do. We do use coast live oaks, but there is a level of refinement in design in terms of we look at trees from a sculptural standpoint as well. We look at them in terms of their form and their shape and how they create the sense of space and arrival and sequence and when you enter the property, what kind of feel they give you, and the agrofolias have a more of a naturalistic wilder form to them, which can be appropriate in some cases. But we felt stronger about the Virginianas, and they're both evergreen. They're both, they both do well in this climate. So- Just one is native and the other is not. Right. Question about the Southern live oak. That was going to be a replacement tree. How big was that going to be? The one that you were planning on planting? Southern live? Question? The magnolias. No, sorry, Quercas Viginiana. The one that you just mentioned that you feel as an elegant look. How, what was the size of that that was going to be? We've specified 48-inch box, and if you look at the location where we are proposing them, it's a narrow driveway coming in from Whittier. So proposing very massive trees in this narrow space was not very appropriate in terms of first getting them in there. So at this point we've proposed 48 inch box a time of installation. And that's is that for all, for the site of the replacement trees. Are they all narrow or are they all limited by the driveway? Council Member Marragrich, if I may. So specifically with respect to the replacement trees, the replacement trees have been identified all as Platinum, Rasmosa, the Western Sycamore. Each one of those is specified at 72-inch box. 72-inch box. Correct. The other trees that we're talking about are not the replacement trees, the specific three removal, three replacement. These are the additional trees. These are the additional trees. And they're going to be in a range of sizes from 48 inch to 60 inch, all of which, as I think Miss Smith or Miss Berona said, are mature specimen level trees. Right, not, but you're expecting them to grow at least 30 more feet according to this, correct? And you mentioned they grow three feet a year, so it's 10 to 12 years, something like that you could expect them to grow out. That was specifically to the Western Sycamore. Yes, and if you wanted to. And Western Sycamores, those are native trees here, right? Yes. Yes. Okay, thank you. I have a question from Elsa. So, we hear that the replacement trees are anywhere from 48 inch boxes to 72 inch boxes We had a recent Landscape of of a house that was Historical where the owner got approval, you know on Beverly the Sasloff property what were the size of the replacement trees or the boxes on that property? I'm sorry, is this the Bedford property that year? Not Bedford, it's Beverly, the Pendleton house. Woodland and Beverly, in between the Lynn and Beverly. And it's been a while, Council Member Mirosh, since we've processed that project, it's been a few years now, but my recollection is they were all in the 48 to 60-inch box range generally. They may have had one or two larger special features. Is there any way we can pull that just to compare what the largest size was just out of curiosity? I will try. Okay and I will you know there'll be other questions and that sort of thing. So thank you. Thanks so much Vice-Mirror. Thank you First off, I want to start off by thanking the community for showing up and for coming and for sitting through the process It's we appreciate your time. I'd like to ask Terry to please come up Hey Terry thank you for being here. I know that you and your fellow commissioners worked very hard on this project. How long would you say that you spent reviewing the details of this project? I was trying to validate that, but I was afraid if I turned on the tape that I would disturb the meeting, but it was well in excess of an hour. I feel like it was probably two. We listened, we questioned, we deliberated, we discussed very thoroughly. So that's what that was going to be my question. Do you feel very thoroughly? Very thoroughly. Very thoroughly. So that's what that was going to be my question. Do you feel they do a thorough job? Yes and I will say that there were members of our commission who had a healthy skepticism going in and were just they were persuaded and swayed by the presentation and the answers they received to their questions. And so would you consider the commission to be the eyes and ears of the council doing kind of some of the work that we would otherwise have to do? I would say that's certainly one role that we feel. We're listening to both sides. We're kind of the after staff, of course. We are first entry into the city process. Yes. All right, those are my questions for you. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. May I speak to the arborist, please? Hello. Hi. Good evening. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you. So I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of things, but from what we've discussed, you're adding 31 new mature trees, correct? Yes, correct. And how many are you removing? Three. Three. Thank you. And with regard to the water usage, is this going to be less or more water that is going to be used? Well, three trees are being removed and 31 trees are being installed. The design, though, is putting in trees which are water less frequently than the turf that was previously residing in a great portion of the property. So the net will be a loss of water usage. And I don't remember the exact number, but it was quite substantial and it might have been in the 1-3rd is what I have. Yeah, I think it was a one third. It's about a one third reduction in total water usage given the elimination of the substantial lawn that's on the property replacement with appropriate shrubbery and smaller plantings and complementary plantings as well as mis-smith noted the climate adapted trees that will require less water. So considering that we're in a drought and we have a very robust urban tree planting program that our city is participating in, would you say that this would benefit the city? Most definitely and I think it's wise, it's smart and I've been working in the city 27 years as an arborist and I have seen those days when the code enforcement was out monitoring people's homes and watering and I was trying to get creative and I'd bring in water trucks and I'd say it won't show up on your water bill and I'd say but keep your trees alive and we had those days from 2011, 2012 until about 2022 and that 10-year mega drought really impacted a lot of trees and those trees that were challenged and required a lot of water ended up you know a loss of canopy as other people have talked about a loss of canopy. As other people have talked about, a loss of canopy without attributing the things that are out of our control. So how do we manage that by managing those things we can control, which is our selection? So I think this is gonna be a benefit to the city, for sure. I grew up in that area and I used to drive by that home often. And it was really an of the gorgeous trees that are always there so I appreciate that the trees are going to be maintained the majority of the trees are going to be still remain is that correct. Yes, in fact all of the ones that are mainly remaining are the outward frontage on on Roxbury and flanking over in Tolexington on those more traversed corridors for the public. And so all of those are providing that perimeter of greenery and canopy and beauty and habitat and shade and the things that you would see without even replanting all these trees. Right, because the discussion was about decreasing the canopy of our city. And to me, when I think about that space, I don't see that happening. No, no. I don't believe that's true. And you know, there's a point we call this super adequacy in the industry where you plant 30 years ago because they're also cute and small and you install them because you want to have some instant impact but then you've brought home too many trees and they all compete with each other for soil space, water, nutrients, sunlight and that competition starts to create a competitive environment where too many trees are now not able to succeed. So editing, calling, reducing the volume of that congestion can help to improve the longevity of the remaining trees. The loss of three trees will be in consequential to canopy. Right, thank you very much. Those are my questions. Thank you. the presentation. With regard to new developments, is it common for people to remove trees when there's new development in residential areas? People alter landscaping along with constructing a new home and we do receive requests for tree the last two weeks. So, I think we're going to be able to see the same thing as we're going to be able to see the same thing as we're going to see the same thing as we're going to see the same thing as we're going to see the same thing as we're going to see the same thing as we're going to see the same thing as we're going to see the same thing as we're going to see the same thing as So this isn't something out of the ordinary or specifically something that is happening only in this residence No, I mean with new development on residential sites. There are landscaping changes. Okay. Thank you And with regard to Single-family homes is it is it typical to require a sequel? I mean typical single-family development Falls within the the foreconers of exemptions. There are various different exemptions and they usually fall within those categories. There are unusual cases that do not, but typically they do. But those does. Yeah, and this does. All right. Okay, those are my questions. Thank you very much. That's it. Okay. us. Okay, those are my questions. Thank you very much. That's it. Okay, just a couple questions. Mr. Askin, you seem lonely there. I'll ask you first. Looking at one of your letters, I'm going to quote from it. It's the September 17 letter, but the quote is, until the trees reach full maturity, the public will not benefit from the same ecosystem services or level of canopy cover that exists today. It appears to me that that has certainly not been the position of the applicant, in fact quite the contrary, that you're getting more use of correct words, carbon sequestration as a result of what is going to be planted as opposed to what is there. How do you respond to that? Well, they're correct, but there's quite a carbon sequestration. You have younger trees that are growing, and as they grow, they're sequestering more carbon. But you have to look at a range of other ecological services here. You have to look at habitat. We've submitted evidence in the record talking about how trees that are more mature, provide a greater opportunity for habitat than the younger trees. With respect to shade, that's another one, with respect to groundwater retention, that's another. And the full range of potential benefits is discussed in our common letters, and I can go on. But that's a general idea of what's happening here. And I'll say for the record, I don't think we would disagree that when these younger trees grow up in 15 years, you can make a like for like comparison, but in the meantime, there's a 15 year period where the community is missing out in those benefits. Well, let's go to Habitat for a moment because I thought I heard, I believe the arborists say that there's a fuller canopy than the trees that go straight up. Wouldn't that be indicative of the fact that there is more habitat available? Well, not necessarily. There are some species that prefer to nest at higher elevations, so to speak, of taller trees. So, when you have those taller, skinnier conifers, it provides a different nesting opportunity for different species. With respect to a broader canopy, that might affect shade, but it doesn't necessarily provide the same nesting opportunities. Okay. And that was the second point that you made about shade is that it would seem to me that the larger canopy would provide more shade at least potentially. In the long run potentially, but in the meantime, you're left in a situation where the city again is left without the same benefits because the trees are younger. Okay, thank you. Yeah, one more question over here if you don't mind. Hi, are you? I have a quick question. Have you been to the property physically? I've been just outside of it. It's fenced off. It's a construction site. So I haven't gone inside of it, but I have gone to the street outside of it and looked at it. So you've seen the canopy on the property? I have, yes. And do you feel that it's really gonna have a big impact with the removal of these trees? Well, the legal standard here for tree removal permits doesn't ask you to compare the individual trees relative to other trees in the property. It's really a question of what are the impacts specific to those trees that are being removed. And so specific to these trees, you have to ask the question of whether those specific tree removals are going to have an impact on the garden quality of the city, whether they're going to be environmental impacts associated with them. And so when you make that analysis specific to these trees, our position is that you can't make those findings unless you were to condition this property in such a way where you're going to have a more like for like replacement with these specific trees. Thank you. I think Larry mentioned that it's only relevant if this is the same project in the same place over time. I don't know if... Well, that specific standard is for SQL exemptions. And so there are really, I think, two separate layers of standards that you have to look at. One are the standards under the municipal code for the findings for granting true removal permits. Those were the ones I was referencing just a second ago with respect to impacts to garden quality, for example. And with respect to the secret exemption, you have to ask whether there are unusual circumstances or cumulative impacts. And then if those are the case, then it falls outside of the universe of projects that qualify for an exemption. And with respect to the place issue, the case law is clear that it's not so confined to just the immediate surroundings. Place is context dependent in CEQA and when you're talking about the impacts of cumulative tree removals, obviously that's something that impacts a broader community to much larger scale. And so the universe of cumulative projects and cumulative impacts is the place, quote, and quote in that context, as much broader than just the immediately surrounding properties here. And do you know what people call Beverly Hills? As far as our canopies. Talking about the tree city. It's called the Garden Capital of the World. Right, yeah. And when you're flying over Beverly Hills, it's always very indicative. It's very clear because of the trees. Yeah, I certainly don't disagree. I think the point that we're making is that notwithstanding the fact that the city has done a fantastic job with its urban forest over time, there is still a cumulative loss of the mature trees that has an impact here. All right, thank you. Those are my questions. Ms. Smith, if I could have you come up again, if you were there. So thank you. One of the trees, I was at two of the trees are redwoods that are, is it two of them? Yes, correct. What are redwoods doing in that area? Can you tell me? I'm not sure. Unfortunately, yes. Well, as I was joking earlier, redwoods are so cute and everyone wants to have them in Southern California. I worked on some large projects, Griffith Park, for instance. And Griffith Park has a sea of redwoods, unfortunately, in decline. And that decline increases, botrist, spheria, canker, and all these issues. So redwoods, people love them and they create a redwood forest here in the city. People love to have a forest in the city, but redwoods need to be in the forest near the coast. That's why they're called coastal redwood. And so, and to the point about habitat, I was thinking, you know, oaks have acorns and oaks provide to a score of habitat from small bugs to birds to all they that thrive on acorns. Sikamore have seeds and they have the western Sikamore. They provide habitat instantly. So it's not going to be 15 years of finally one day they're going to start to provide habitat. Instantly they will hit the ground running and providing that habitat. They're coming in big, large boxes. They're going to be cramed in. There's already 27, 70-foot tall trees for habitat and nesting and birds and falcon and hawks that live in Beverly Hills to already be nesting on the property. So this is going to exceed and improve the habitat not only for that property, but for that whole quadrant of the city. So the habitat will be realized very quickly. So that area is considered a high fire danger zone. Would you ever recommend planting a redwood in a high fire damage area? That is a good question. I've worked on over 1,000 fire cases in the state of California, so I have a lot of experience. I've been all over the state and Redwoods are resilient if they catch on fire, but they do catch on fire. So we recognize that. We recognize that there are areas we don't want to have them as close to our homes and things like that. These trees are skirted up meaning the fire ladder. So if you get into fire resilience and defensible space that is the key. So have them skirted up a certain number of feet. They're skirted up at minimum of 15 to 20 feet so that understory plant material can't catch into the canopy. So there are ways that we use fire escaping. We get to keep our conifers, our bigger trees, but we design intelligently so that we're not encouraging that. And also we're not losing those trees because we don't want to go cold turkey and rip out every single tree that doesn't meet a fire criteria. There's other ways for us to think intelligently about this. But Redwoods are a species that you just have to be acknowledging and recognizing. Okay, Council Member Murge has a question. I'm very glad that I spur these questions. Well, when we talked about fire resistance, I just like hearing confirmation about my favorite tree, wouldn't you say that coast live oaks are among the most fire resistant trees around? In fact, they're used fire departments urge that they be used to create fire protection zones compared, in other words, words like barriers that they're among the most fire resistant trees around. Well as I was just saying maybe I'll say it in maybe in a different way is that there's a difference between fire resilience and fire fuel. So fire resilience like an oak has a thick bark. It's a corky bark. Right. Redwood are the same. They have a very thick bark. So if a fire hits them, the cambium, which is the live veins underneath the bark stay alive, and that's the key, is that that fire can scorch through the forest, can burn off the outside, even go into the canopy, and that redwood will respawn again, because there is a live cambium under the bark. That's different than will it catch on fire? Yes, redwoods have needles. Needles stay in the canopy. Dead needles collect. That can become fire fuel, cleaning an understory and keeping thick layers of kinlein below the trees are not recommended. You don't wanna do that. Landscaping below the trees are not recommended. You don't want to do that. Landscaping below them can be more appropriate. So the difference between fire resilience, they can handle a bad fire? Yes. Can they catch on fire? That is a problem. So it's a double-edged sword. I don't think that going back to the big picture here, redwoods are not even on the target species list. No, but what I'm saying is that coast live oaks are considered to be very fire resistant because they have among the thickest, I mean, actually even confirming my confirmation bias, that they have the thickest bark of any California oak, which helps protect them from fire damage. So. Yeah. So. Yeah. Well, I think it goes back to what I just said, is that yes, they are resilient. They can handle a fire, but that doesn't mean that their whole canopy is not going to be catch on fire and be torched out. The way redwoods adapt, their adaptive ability is to resp out from the base. So if you lost an entire tree through a fire and the tree resprouted, that's considered resilient in the world of fires. But that doesn't mean that it's not going to catch on fire. Right, the redwood. Yes, exactly. But I agree. I love a red wood. I just was up in Humboldt for a case. So I just want to say, I'll just sit down on another question. I don't have another question, but I watched the planning commission meeting and usually try to go through it real quickly, but when you and both you and Miss Verona were speaking, I was glued to it. I mean, the amount of knowledge that you guys add was really amazing to me. So I thank you for that. I'm honored to speak with all of you too and answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. One quick question for Masha, and then I will go on. So we've heard the term protected tree. Okay so protected doesn't in this doesn't mean we're protecting it because it's rare. I think you said well why don't you tell us what does protected tree mean in the terminology that we are using it here? Yes, it's a defined term in the trees on private property section of the zoning code. And I'll just have to pull it up here. But it's basically any tree of a particular size. So I mean, if a mature tree is located within the SETBAC area, it is a protected tree. OK, so if we're not in the SETBAC area, it would be a tree, but it wouldn't be a protected tree. It still be the same tree. But by moving the SETB they've now the ownership of the property has, quote, made it a protected tree. Yes, because it captures the front sat back area as well as that additional distance beyond the front sat back area. If the trees located in that area, it's also considered a protected tree. So a protected tree is either a heritage tree, which is a tree that's 48 inches or more in circumference, trunk circumference. And then if a native tree is greater than 24 inches in circumference, it is also considered a protected tree. Okay, thank you. And I was not truthful. I'm gonna ask the architect to come up with Mr. Peelle if you could. Just want to confirm that movement of the home in terms of making that tree a protected tree really saved, did it save other trees from having to be taken down? Exactly. And if you watched the Planning Commission meeting, I was pointing with a pointer and saying, if we moved the garage forward down, we would have taken out two more trees. I'm sorry, I can't. The numbers here are hard to see, but say if we had moved the garage down 14 was saved or Then 14 would be within our the clients right to remove because the garage would be at the setback would have been potentially wrong. I can't see the number. That's OK. I'm so sorry. It would have been. But it's, it's, it was kind of, like I said, it was threading a needle. And we've really worked with the clients seeing where we could save the trees that most impacted the community and the garden like quality. Okay, and I didn't mean to not include you in that terrific room. Oh, that's fine. I take no offense. Of women who are presenting, and I don't want to slide either Mr. Hanlon or Mr. Raskin, but what a wonderful presentation you all made. Okay. but what a wonderful presentation you all made. Okay, so with that, go back to my script. The hearing is now closed and we will go to discussion and comments from members of the council starting with council member Willes. Okay, well thank you all for being here. Council member Willes. Okay. Well thank you all for being here. You know we, I look at this property and I would say that you know it's very visible. It's very well known. People have loved this piece of property. It has the two different frontage. It's not just the house that was there previously and how stately it was in the garden is going to be staying there. In fact, I would say the garden is going to be enhanced. Because there are 31 more trees. These are mature trees. These are not in mature trees. These are species that are one we're keeping the tree in. We're keeping the tree in the garden. We're keeping the tree in the garden. We're keeping the tree in the garden. We're keeping the tree in the garden. We. These are not in mature trees. These are species that are one more keeping the tree, even though we're losing three trees. Of those type of trees, there's still another 27 of those trees there that are mature heritage trees. So from a habitat standpoint, from having an impact on the environment, I would say that because those other 27 trees are still there and you work so hard to position the house in order to save those trees, it really is a benefit and it's an increased benefit. I would also say the fact that you've increased the diversity of the types of trees, even that they're all mature trees, you're increasing the diversity that protects the garden, that will keep the garden ability to be a sustainable garden. Should anything happen, you've increased the diversity in terms of the species and terms of the age of the trees, but yet they're all still really matured trees. That's a huge investment. Most people, if they're building a home, they don't have that kind of investment put into their garden. Especially when you already had that many, fully grown matured trees there. To add in another 31, big trees is really phenomenal, and it's going to increase the canopy. It's going to increase the garden quality of that street and for the neighbors and beyond. And I would say for the city as well because we want to be able to use residents as opportunities to increase canopy in the city. And not only are you increasing the canopy in the future, you're doing that by putting bigger trees in now. And that's a lot of commitment, so I applaud you for doing that, because that's truly a public benefit for our city. I would say that with regards to the findings, I would say that we have, I can make the findings in terms of that tree is not going to remove those trees. And another thing I'd like to say is this, you're removing three trees, but quite frankly, you're not putting in three replacement trees. In my mind, you're putting in 31 replacement trees. And that's pretty phenomenal. So I do not believe that this will adversely impact the neighboring properties in general, the welfare and safety of the surrounding community. In fact, it's making an even healthier contribution to the city and to the neighborhood. The removal of the protected tree will not adversely affect the garden quality, which I just said in so many ways ways it's going to only enhance it. So I certainly can make the findings there. As far as our staff coming up and speaking about CEQA and whether or not this qualifies with the exemptions, I would say that. I feel very comfortable with that. So I really don't have much other to say than that, except for this one thing. I was on the school board before this. And so many times we talk about in this city, how do we get young families to move to Beverly Hills? How do we attract them? How do our kids have the benefit of growing up here and raising their families because they can't afford to? It's not available. They choose to live someplace else. So the fact that you have decided to live in Beverly Hills and raise your family is really what we as a community really hope for. It's really a joy and it's a gift and I really thank you for making the investment in this community. So I would say. Thank you, Anne. I have one last thing. I'm so sorry. It's just as soon as I talk to somebody or something to say. We've had some conversation about whether or not you should have a tree permit removal. You should get that approval for the removal of the trees before having a permit for the building. And you spoke, this is a very unique property. There's so many trees when you look at the, when you look at the plans, there's trees everywhere. So, it's not so simple to just move a house and you. And you just went through this process just now. It is not easy. And the fact that you did it and solved the puzzle to only have an impact of removing three of the heritage trees, I just cannot even think that we're not appreciating how difficult that is. It's like a land mind of trees. And I don't know how you even could solve that. And I also would say, at a time when we have so much new development where people build out their properties to the max, this is not the case. This is a house that is at, I think it's a third of the size that it could be on a double lot. And when we talk about having basements and the square footage that's above ground, this is modest in so many ways compared to what it could be. And it's just surrounded by a beautiful garden. So I think it will be stately. I think it will be a beautiful garden. It will be even more enhanced than the beautiful garden that we all love and that we all were mourning that could potentially be gone. So I think it's fantastic. And so I would not recommend it anyway, asking for approval of the building before approving the removal of the tree. I think from a cost and time and effort to do a design and then find out, we didn't get the approval to remove the tree. It just does not make sense. I don't think that's fair further because this is the process that has been, what the bakers have been directed to do in order to go through this process of building their home, I do not think it's fair at this stage to require something different because we're on an appeal. I don't think that's a solution in any way. I think that if we want to consider that in the future or consider having the plan to prove before you have a demo permit. I think that could be fine, but that's not the case here. And I'm certainly willing to entertain that for future projects, but I would not consider that here at all. Thanks. I think I'm safe now. Council member Corridor. Thank you. So I too want to thank everyone for coming tonight and speaking and I am sorry I've taken the bakers nine months to get to this place because I really think this is a fairly simple case. Of course you get a couple of good lawyers involved and you're going to wind up with an impetrable forest of complicating issues, but I mean based on my eight years in the planning commission, I don't think it's that difficult. I mean, yes, it is always a sad day when large heritage trees are cut down, but we do permit it under specific circumstances that are prescribed in our municipal code. There are really two questions we need to answer tonight, And one is, do the trees qualify for removal under the municipal code section 103-2902? And is the removal of the trees allowed under SIKWA without further study? With respect to the municipal code, as we've heard repeatedly the standard for removal is a two-part test. The first one is which is, would removing the protected trees, adverse effect neighboring properties, or the general welfare or safety of the surrounding area. And I think the answer to that first question is pretty clear. The answer is no. I mean, it would not adverse effect neighboring properties of the general welfare or safety of the surrounding area. All three trees are far away from any neighboring property. None of them even appear to be visible from the one neighboring property that shares a common property line. The two redwood trees, while relatively healthy, are still a disfavored species due to their increased fire risk. The London plain tree is something of a water hog. We've heard a lot of talk about canopy and shade. Well, the redwood trees have sparse limbs and trees, they're very, very vertical. And the London plain tree is a deciduous tree, so it actually has no leaves six months out of the year. So I just don't see that as being an issue. The second part of our test in the code is would removal of the trees adversely affect the garden quality of the city. Now typically when you remove trees of this stature the answer is yes. And then we start talking about replacement trees and their number and size to mitigate the adverse effects. But you don't typically see this many large trees in the front and side setbacks. You typically only find like one or two heritage trees in a front yard setback, as the case was subled and they bring properties on a Roxbury, which Mr. Hanlon points out in his letters. Here, there are 30 heritage trees in the front and side yards of the property, with 14 more outside the setbacks. I count 14 heritage trees in the front yard setback along Roxbury alone. And we're over the three slated trees, three slated for removal are spread out, three, spread out around an 81,000 square foot property of the Redwoods on Roxbury. They're not clustered in one place. Of the Redwoods on Roxbury, one of them is in a stand with seven other trees. The other is in a stand of six other trees. And these clusters of trees are so close together, there can at least have actually grown together and someone interfered with each other's health according to the arborists. So if you take one tread of each stand, I don't know if anyone really miss it. And it's also worth knowing that these three trees have not even been on the property for generations. They are planted in 1991, which means for much of the history of Beverly Hills, the trees weren't even there and they didn't contribute to the garden quality of the city on an historic basis. So given the number of areas trees remaining on the property, I think in a few years time no one will be remembered, truthfully, that these guys, these trees, were even there or where they were located. So under the total of the start game sances I cannot say removing the trees, three trees and questions would affect the garden quality of the city. I think they qualify for move on to the municipal code and I think this is true without regard to how many new trees are being planted in the property or the size of the replacement trees. Now for the sequel analysis. Polimmonarily, the baker's attorneys have suggested, Mr. Hamilton has suggested that in addition to the class for exemption on which the planning commission relied, both a class two and a class three exemption under SQL would apply. Now, these exemptions apply for construction of new homes. And typically we use those in tree removal permits when there is a building being processed so that the building permit application or the design review application, because although class two and class three deal specifically with construction, landscaping is an ancillary part of the construction, it gets wrapped in. Unfortunately, here, as we heard, there is no pending application for the structure other than the tree removal permit. So I think relying on class two or class three exemptions could be problematic. But I do think that with respect to the class four exemption, I think that that is a valid exemption. Now, the appellant asserts it doesn't apply to removal of healthy, mature, scenic trees for non-forestry, non-agricultural purpose. And argues that the trees are healthy, mature, and scenic, and they bring remove foresthetic purposes only. Appellant also argues without any support, evidence that some people have observed the trees have been used as wildlife habitat. But as Mr. Hanlon points out, as we've heard tonight, there's no real evidence that anything other than birds and squirrels have been in the trees. So I think the issue of animals, living the trees is a little bit red herring. But while I agree, the trees are mature and arguably scenic, and despite some qualifiers in the Arbor's reports, mostly healthy. That's obviously not the end of the matter because as the staff report points out, under SQL guidelines, a class for exemptions appropriate for new landscaping, that includes the replacement of existing conventional landscaping with water efficient or fire resistant landscaping. And here, the beggars committed to replacing the two redwoods with more fire resistant species in the London playing with less water hungry species. So while the replacement trees didn't factor in new minorities in the municipal code, they do underseek well. And I believe the commitment to replace the removed trees with more desirable varieties qualifies the project for the class for exemption. And by the way, we've heard about 72-inch boxes and 4-inch-inch boxes. Those are plenty big, plenty mature, and a story. So anyway, in closing, let me address to other issues that were mentioned in Mr. Rasson's letter. First, he says that when it is possible to redesign and propose development to avoid or mitigate adverse impacts The city should require design changes. That's actually one of the standards in a different municipal code section 10-3-21-01 This this application process under different municipal code standard Secondly, we've heard a question about whether a tree removal permit should be granted, should not be granted until full project plans are provided to the city. That's really not required under the code. And I think to impose that as a condition when it's not required is not really appropriate. The question under 2902, which is how the bakers have proceeded, is the garden quality of the city and adverse impacts to the neighborhood. I've addressed those. The Hamlins and Mr. Hamlins addressed them appropriately, and I think the answer is clear. So, for all the reasons I stated, and based on all the facts in the record, I believe we should deny the pending appeal, and uphold the planning commission's decision in all of this particulars Thank you Did you really save that there's no animal such as birds or squirrels and then you call that a red hairing? Okay, other than birds and squirrels Okay, what about awesome is what it would be about what about the forest and penitutable complicating issues? I mean, last time I checked a hearing was a fish, but whatever. Okay. Going on council member, Bismarck is also hearing. First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for coming out here. And I do want to say we heard at the beginning that some people felt that having this hearing was an abuse of process. And I just want to say, no, this is part of the process at City Hall. Appeals are part of the process. Appeals are part of the process at our court system. And in fact, there's a reason for that. And that's actually so that we can ensure that hopefully we get decisions right. That says, said, I do feel that we have to going forward change the process. Because the notion that, again, this feels to me like a little bit of putting the cart before the horse. I think you can give applicants the security and surety that if they need to remove a tree because it's necessary for a to build a house or to construct something that that will happen. And as said, I would change the process going forward. I would necessarily change it now, but I think going forward, you could condition it upon the ultimate building permit being issued, which they're separate, but in theory, you could have someone who could say not in this situation that they need to cut down a bunch of trees to build a house and then they decide they're going to build it somewhere else and you would have cut down trees without necessarily having to do that. So I think that's an easy fix. Just as I would still be in favor of conditioning demolition permits upon approval of a replacement project. So I think we should look at that going forward. That said, you know, I like the fact that they're using mostly native trees. They're the sicker more certainly are more fire resistant than redwoods, but of course Coast live-oaks are the most Fire resistant they have thick bark they have evergreen leathery leaves they have quirky roots and They're among the best and they just have to be my favorite tree, but it's not my property. It's the property of the applicants. And they certainly are doing their part to have a tree canopy, to replace trees. And it is well thought out. And my guess is that their project will be approved. And so the notion of approving something, approving a tree removal that's unnecessary, in this case will be moot. But again, in the future, it might not be. And I think we need to be able to address that. Asset, I do appreciate when they hire an arborist like Miss Smith, who certainly knows her stuff. And also, personally personally as said, native trees I think are something that we should be focused on. Also you've heard me say this when it comes to replacing city trees. It's always sad to cut down a mature tree but in this case, as said, they, they are replacing them and in this case, they are also replacing them with a lot of, with the sickimores that are native with the Southern Live Oak that isn't, but it, it's still a nice tree. And so, um, as said, I hope we can change the, the process going forward, but I also would support the planning commission's decision and would reject the appeal. Vice Mayor. Thank you very much again. Thank you everyone for being here, especially at this late hour. Thank you to staff and to the commission for your hard work. So we have a very robust urban forest management program that's in place in our city. And we also have a climate and adaptation committee that I served on. And so we're very well aware of the impacts of the trees in our community and in fact as I mentioned We are called the Garden Capital of the world and as council members we count on the commission to serve as our eyes and ears They did a very thorough job this project has been under review for I guess three years and As somebody stated, it's not public property. This is a private residence, it's not a park, it's not historic, it's not a hotel, and it's not a commercial property. So this is exactly the type of project for us to welcome new families with young children into our city. We always talk about this and I know that Councilmember Wells also mentioned this. This is exactly the type of families that we want to welcome and celebrate and bring new young families into our community. So we appreciate that there are many other options for families such as yours and we are grateful to have people who have deep roots in our city want to continue to live in Beverly Hills and to raise their families here. I know that the Planning Commission made the findings and they put strong restrictions in the need to install new trees early prior to issuance of permits and larger trees I think is going to be great. It was a unanimous 50 vote. They followed extensive process. As was mentioned, these trees were planted in the 90s. It's not something that, you know, you could say they're good. And there's still going to be a canopy that will absolutely exist. It's actually a gorgeous area with the existing trees that are around there. And this is, frankly, their own property. It's not our job to tell people what to do on their property. And it's not uncommon to remove trees when you have a new development and to replace 31 new trees in place of these three trees. I think is fantastic for the environment and the community around it. As was mentioned, the SIKWA was exempt due to the four corners and what was discussed with that process. So we want to make the permitting process reasonable and to preserve the beauty of our community, but also to have the process not be punitive. And sometimes I feel like some of the processes that we have in place are just, they take so much time, resources and and scrutiny and that shouldn't be the case just to build a family home. As far as environmental impacts, these new trees will use one-third less water, even though 31 new trees are being added, I think that that's truly significant, and it will contribute to the Urban Forest Management Program that we have in our city. And I am in agreement with my colleagues. Okay, before I talk, is there anybody else who wants to say anything? No, okay. So, you know, being an attorney, I do believe that there is a right to an appeal, but not every case needs to be appealed. And quite frankly, I think notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Raskin, I think you did a bang up job. I thought you were a gentleman all the way through. I just don't think that this one needed an appeal. And I'm really sorry for the delays that have occurred to the bakers. I hope that the rest of the process goes smoothly for you. This just wasn't a necessary appeal. I mean, it was a 5-0 at the Planning Commission. It looks like it's going to be a 5-0 over here also, not to say that there wasn't the right to appeal. I just don't think that this one was one that was necessary. You know, the Bakers are building a home that is using, let me see, about 30, not even 30%, it's about, not even 20% of the total square footage of the property, if I'm not mistaken. It's 12,000 square foot footprint, 80,000 square foot home. That's something we don't generally see in Beverly Hills. Generally it's using as much as you can possibly use. The fact that they really have an urban forest and are enlarging the urban forest of their property is a testament to the development that they're doing. I think it's certainly appropriate. In terms of the findings, I don't find that there's an adversarial effect. I do think it affects the garden quality of the neighborhood to a very positive position. The sequel exemption, I think, is appropriate. And I like my colleagues are supportive of the planning commission decision and in fact we are making the same decision. And I'll say this again, I salute the bakers for their choice of a fantastic female team. I'm glad they made an exemption for Mr. Hanlon. But I think this is just a really really wonderful project and I'm very proud to be supportive of it and I'll ask the vice mayor if she can make a motion. Yes. Mr. Mayor. I just heard one comment from Councilman Recorman which I didn't see in the resolution. He mentioned that the trees would be far from the neighbors, so we could add that to the resolution in section 8, a sub-pair graph 1. The first line says since the three protective, well that should be replacement trees, are located within the front setbacks of the project site and we're located, and we'll be replaced with three new trees and other site planting and are located far from the neighbors. The removal of the three protected trees will not have any significant impact. So you're suggesting to add that phrase? Yes. And located far from neighbors and. Are my colleagues in favor of that? Any discussion on that? I'm fine with that. So with that as amended? Yes. So I move that the City Council deny the appeal, approve the project based on the required findings as amended, find the project exempt from the CEQA and adopt the resolution entitled a resolution of the city of the Council of the City of Beverly Hills, conditionally approving a tree removal permit to allow, removal of three heritage trees located within front setback area for the property located at 1-001 North Rocksbury Drive and denying a related appeal. As amended. As amended. I second. And could we have the clerk please call the roll. Council member Wells. Yes. Council member Cormin. Yes. Council member Mirish. Yes. Nazarian yes and mayor Friedman yes Congratulations, thank you all for being here and Terry Kaplan. Thank you very much for representing the planning commission Okay, with keeping in mind that at 11 o'clock I'm going to have to ask whether or not we want to continue. I'm going to go on to item number G1. If we can just wait. If everyone is speaking could kindly go outside, we're going to try to conduct the rest of this meeting and get done by 11 o'clock. So maybe we have an oral report on this matter from the Municipal Affairs Program Manager. We'll get even mayor and city council. I am city Owens, the municipal affairs program manager for the city of Beverly Hills. I'm here tonight to ask the city council to consider supporting opposing I'm sorry to consider supporting or opposing or remaining neutral on measure G Which is an LA County ballot measure on this November's ballot that would amend the county's charter on their government structure ethics and accountability On July 9th of this year the LA County Board of Supervisors directed their office, the County Council to prepare the necessary documents, including an ordinance for a special election to vote on amendment to the County Charter on November 5th. It's approved by the voters of the county, the proposed charter would make many changes to the structure of the governance. This would include establishing an office that an elected county executive who would be able to appoint and dismiss department heads with the approval of the board, develop and submit the budget to the board for adoption, and veto any amendments made to the budget by the board, unless the board had a for-fist to override that veto. Additionally, the charter amendment would expand the board of supervisors from five members to nine, establish an independent county ethics commission, require agenda to be posted five days before a meeting, and require the implementation cost be absorbed without implementing any new taxes. In a historic first for the county, the registrar's office is tasked with bringing a non-partisan fiscal analysis of this measure in all county ballot measures this year. The analysis for this measure divided the cost into categories. So the implementation cost for your startup cost and the ongoing cost. As written in the ordinance, all implementation costs are to be absorbed within the county's current budget structure and those start-up costs are estimated at around $8 million. Since most of these items wouldn't be fully implemented until 2030, the school analysis could not estimate the ongoing cost or how those ongoing costs would be funded. The ongoing costs are not bound under this ordinance to the same financial constraints as the implementation costs. The county could consider adopting a future tax to cover those costs or other program cost cutting measures. As mentioned previously, the Board of Supervisor did pass his measure in July, but it was a three-two vote. It was not a unanimous vote. Supervisor's Barger and Mitchell were the two dissenting votes. And at the July meeting, Supervisor Mitchell, sorry, Supervisor Mitchell did have several concerns with this measure. One of the first things she brought up is there was an only meaningful collaboration with the community to develop a solution for better representation of the 10 million residents that are in LA County. She stated that numerous community groups reached out to her and expressed concerns that consolidation of power with an elected County executive could and would diminish the voices of the elected supervisors who serve marginalized communities. She expressed fiscal concerns ever supporting the expansion of the board and what budget reductions would need to curb now to cover those costs as well as those in the future. Supervisor Mitchell also stated that while the intent of the ordinance is to create greater representation for the uniqueness of each district in the county, there could be challenges in obtaining agreement with five out of nine supervisors for making investments with the budget. She also believed the ability of supervisors to truly fight and advocate for the unique needs that their communities would be severely compromised. As far as supervisor Barger, she felt that there just needed to be more input for the development of this ordinance and that it was rushed. So at our August 8th, Westside City Council of Government meeting the city is attending that meeting. It's Culver City Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and Santa Monica as well as the City of LA is a part of our West Side City Cog. They rarely sent a representative to the meeting and we did have representation present from Supervisor Sorghaz's office as her office does have someone on the board to vote in her place. At this meeting we received a presentation from LA County on the benefits of measure eight and some of their stated reasons for needing the charter amendments is that your current five member board was established in 1912 and in 1912 there were 500,000 residents in LA County and we have 10 million today. The proposed structure would increase effectiveness, accountability, representation, and transparency. And finally, it would separate legislative and executive powers of the county government, similar to how the legislative branch of the federal government, which is Congress, the secretary from your executive branch, which is your president. And as well as the division of powers here in the state, the sector from your executive branch, which is your president, and as well as the division of powers here in the state, the governor is in the executive branch, and then you have your state assembly and state assembly state senate making up your legislative branch. So at the Westside City Council of Governments, they ask for each member of city to bring this forward to their city councils for a position on measure G. The only city at this time part of the cog that has an official direction from their council is Culver City and they decided that earlier this month to oppose this measure. Santa Monica will be taking it up after we are tonight so they'll be taking up later this month and West Hollywood is currently discussing potential pass forward with their city manager so we don't know when they'll be taking it to their council. So at this time staffs recommending the city council provide direction on the Los Angeles County ballot measure G. The city council could support a pose or remain neutral on this ballot measure. It is a confirmed ordinance. It is listed with the LA County Register's Office. We do not have an opportunity to request amendments to this as part of our position moving forward. Okay, thank you. Question, are we taking one of those three choices solely for the purpose of our position on the Westside Cog or is this a position for the city in general? So this would be the position of the city in general and then would allow us at the October 10th Cog meeting to say our city is in support opposition remaining neutral because the cog itself can send a letter of support or opposition or remaining neutral on the subject. They actually ask for each city to hold their own vote on this subject. And whether you want to do that just for the recommendation to the cogogboard or you want to do that for both the Cogboard and for officially being on record as support or oppose or remain neutral. That is up to the council tonight. Okay. Thank you. When are the other cities deciding, you said? So Culver City decided earlier this month to oppose. Santa Monica has this agenda is for after our meeting tonight. I don't know the exact date. I can't recall from the email that I received. And then West Hollywood, her non-Malina, who's my counterpart over there, he just returned from Argentina and he's meeting with his city manager to receive direction on what their next steps will be. Okay, so let's go to public comment. Anybody in the chambers if you have public comment? Please bring your comment card up not seeing any. We will go to our city clerk with anybody on the line. There are no public comments for this item. Okay so we will close public public comment and go to Councilmember comments and direction see if we can get this done so we can do the next item. Okay I have one question about the elected county executive and if you have any idea Where that I where this came from in terms of are they modeling it off of another city that's doing this So they did not make that as part of their presentation that I recall to the Westside City Cog. They were modeling the selected executive officer position off of the President of the United States, the governor, and then some cities do have directly elected mayor's. But they don't have a directly elected executive. That would be like having our city manager be elected by the residents here. Oh, it's not. I spoke with Lindsay about it. It's exactly not like an elected city manager. It's more like the president of a group or a mayor or something like that. I even discussed with her. I said I think the name makes it sound like it's the city manager but it's not. It's someone that is going to have an executive position as opposed to the city manager that has a different function. So she like said and you have any other suggestions for names, President of the board or something like that maybe but that's that's at least according to Lindsey, what the function of that position is. Thank you for clarifying that. I would say that, you know, I like the idea of having better representation. So increasing the number of supervisors makes a lot of sense to me. I like a lot of the other recommendations in terms of really bringing transparency and accountability to this organization or this governmental body. But I don't feel that I would say going from five to nine at the same time to having the elected county executive, there's something about that for me that makes it feel more complicated, potentially more political. So I understand and I appreciate so much about all of these things really driving towards better governance and better representation. But my fear is that the elected county executive and the veto power is in some ways could undo the very goals of making this a more functioning and a better governing group. So I don't have enough information about that to feel comfortable, so I would remain neutral at this point. Okay, thank you. Council Member Korman. Thank you. So I too agree that expanding the five-member board from five to nine is probably a good idea given the population, Ruth, it's 1912. But the rest of the program I have questions about, you know, we're going to create a large bureaucracy that's just going to require more tax dollars or take tax dollars from other programs that we desperately need. I don't believe creating bureaucracies automatically increase effectiveness, accountability, and transparency quite the opposite. I think it's typically make things more opaque. I think the five-member board as a legislative slash executive body, whoever you wanna look at it has worked just fine for over 100 years. I don't know if we really need an executive. It strikes me as sort of just another office for someone to run for. So I would oppose the measure G, but I would be supportive of something like it that did give greater representation to people by having a larger board. Thank you. Councilor Mayor Remirs. It's interesting. Any time someone asks do you want to expand the board, people say, well, do you really want more politicians? And I don't look at it that way. I look at it as do you want more representation and better representation? When you think about it, each supervisor represents two million people. There are states that don't have two million people. That's something like, what is it? Ted Lu represents, it's less than a million, isn't it? So each supervisor represents places many people as our congressmen. So I think it is desperately important for us to expand that representation. And in fact, they said that they'll start start with nine they could see if it's more. You can get 10 million people is more than I think it's 35 or plus other states. And think of how many people they have in their assemblies. You have cities where you have 20, 30 people. No, you can say that's unwieldy, but it's democratic. And I think we definitely need more and better representation. I also had some issues with the notion of a county executive as said. I don't like it because it did sound like it's an elected city manager, which it is not. It's supposed to be sort of that marital role. And even now there are certain supervisors when they take over the chairmanship of the board, they call themselves the mayor. This would be more of an executive position. I think there's time to work things out, but I really think, as said, the main issue is expanding representation. And five people representing 10 million people, that just doesn't work. And there's a reason they used to, now it's all women, it's five queens, but it used to be five kings they used to call it. And we live in a democracy, there shouldn't be kings here. So to me, this is actually a good reform. I think that it was Lindsay and Lindsay and Janice who were pushing for it. I know they got three votes. They did get three votes. I believe it was Lindsay Horvath and Janice Haute. And I commend them on this and I would want to support it. Okay. So far we got one support, one oppose, and one neutral. This is going to be interesting. Vice mayor. Yes, thank you very much. I too think that it's important to have representation and to have proper representation. And I do agree since 1912, it's been a while. There needs to be perhaps an expansion of it. But I don't know if it's necessarily the supervisors role. I certainly don't clearly understand what an elected county executive does. I would be concerned about that because I think it's a professional position. It's something that somebody needs to have the training I think that this is a good concept, but there's still a lot to iron out. The way that it is right now, perhaps it was a little premature before it was brought out. I think that this is a good concept, but there's still a lot to iron out. And the way that it is right now, perhaps it was a little premature before it was brought out. And I do appreciate the supervisors who did bring this forward. I just think that it perhaps needs a little bit more work because before we can wholeheartedly support it and get behind it. So I could either go with being neutral or opposing I would probably go with being neutral. But I could also be convinced otherwise. Okay. Now, all of a sudden, you guys don't want to talk. I'm not even going to let you talk. So, you know, I agree that having a supervisor representing two million give or take people, it just doesn't make sense. It really doesn't. There needs to be some change on that. I don't like a lot of the other aspects of it. I don't like the county executive. I'm not even sure what the county executive does. I certainly understand what Lindsay has told you, at least in those terms. I don't think it's spelled out well enough in the legislation. I'm concerned about the cost of this. Eight million dollars absorbed by the current budget, what that means is that something else is not going to get funded because eight million dollars is going to be used for that. So it's not like it's a zero sum game there. Can't estimate the ongoing cost. Another big problem that I have. Obviously there's going to be an increase in cost. You're going to have more staff members. It's not like the five supervisors who are there are going to want to give up a third of their staff so that the others can be, the other new supervisors can have staffing. It's going to be an increase. On the other hand, maybe that's necessary. Maybe in order to have adequate representation for all 10 million people, that's necessary. Maybe that in order to have adequate representation for all 10 million people, that's necessary. I don't know. I'm kind of in the it. I knew it. Go ahead. So the only thing I would say is if you are on the fence between opposed neutral, if you're neutral and it gets passed, you're going to be stuck with this. I'm not going to get it and then change it, right? So I think you're better off, I think we're better off opposing it. On the basis that the ideas behind it aren't going away. The main motivation obviously is better representation. And if this doesn't pass, then undoubtedly they'll come out with something else that addresses those concerns and hopefully you don't need to narrow a fashion. If I may say, I don't think that's necessarily the case. Let me give you an example. Maybe 20 years ago, Australia voted to become, should they become a republic or not. Australia is still actually the King of England is still the King of Australia. And Australians thought it's a good idea. Let's not have, it doesn't make sense. Why should the king of England be the king of Australia? But John Howard at the time who wanted to maintain the relationship with England gave them a choice. It was either you become a republic, but you have the sorts of poison pills in there or you stay. And they stayed and you think, well, that idea hasn't gone away. Yes, there are still people working on it. But 20 plus years later, Australia is not a republic. And my fear is that we could be stuck with five supervisors for a long time to come. Your fear is we could become Australia? No, my fear is that you're saying the idea is still gonna be there and the, well they could say, I don't know, we tried that, people voted against it, even though maybe they only oppose the executive or whatever. So in that case, I actually do think it would be better to stay neutral than to oppose it. People are going to vote the way they vote anyway. So. Well, but by staying neutral, we're potentially letting somebody else make the decision for us. So I will oppose it. So what does that give us? I'll oppose it as well. I will as well. Okay. So, looks like based on discussion that we have, if I'm not mistaken, for in opposition and one in support? Yep. Okay. Okay, thank you all. And we will go on to, do you want a motion on that? I don't know if we need a motion. Do we need a motion? I didn't look Well the presentations a little bit longer than my normal ones because it's kind of a complex subject So I would suggest we take a Yeah, I think if you wanted a motion on this so that there's a Record of what the council has done. So we do need it so that is part of the script, right? Yes. So I'll make a motion. I move the city council. Where are we? One. Here we go. It's the first page of it. Yeah. Opposed? Right. I moved. I moved the city council, oppose, oppose, oppose, oppose is Los Angeles County's measure G, the government structure, ethics and accountability to charge our amendment. And we say add or less amended. We don't know what the amendment would be though but we've done that. And that before. Another other legislative matters. We say no. Yeah, you say oppose unless amended because we have similar concerns. We think that it's a good idea, but I think that it needs some work. Cindy has the ballot language been finalized. So the ballot measures final. So what you see attached, the report is the actual ordinance that will be adopted. Should the measure pass in November? There's no opportunity for us to go to the county and negotiate changes for this ballot measure. The register of voter's offices in the process of finalizing sample ballots to get out to people in the mail, vote by mail. But that goes back to my original question as to whether or not this is in part for the West I cog and in part for what our position is as a council. So I mean, I am okay with if as amended in terms of taking a position. No, we can't for the West Side Cog, I think we need to make a decision. But as far as our community, I wouldn't have a problem with if as amended, but we know that it can't be amended. So it's kind of a- It's fine. I think maybe you could oppose it, but suggest that the county reconsider it should it fail. And if so, to take certain items that the five of you can occur on into consideration in the future. So while you're supportive of the nine, but these other aspects are not like it, you know, and like Supermitch fires are Mitchell said more community input, right? Supervisor Barters said this feels a little rushed and not well developed. And so those may be things to take into consideration when you oppose. Okay. I would suggest that we just take the vote as far as our position with the West side cog and not necessarily have it as a position of city council for that would be my suggestion but let's have discussion on it. I mean, I agree for what's I call to have it to be clear. I think what are there options do we have in terms of maybe further clarifying to your point if it should not pass that we would support with amendments. Greg? I if you oppose you oppose it, it's hard to whether it's in the west, the cog, or venue, or just public venue, I can't be inconsistent. Well, the only reason I'm saying that is because I believe that among at least four of us, we're not opposed to the idea is just these specifics. So the question is whether we oppose measure G. Measure G has been drafted, it can't be amended. So that's the issue. We all agree that we support the concept of greater representation and increase in the size of the board. But that's not just measure G. I said what measure G is just about. So the question is do we support or oppose measure G as it's drafted? I think that the West Side Cog is a perfect spot to actually share what our thoughts are because that's a direct link to Supervisor Horvath so that she understands what our concerns are I don't know, I know the mayor is on that committee and if you could share our concerns, I think, because I want us to continue to have a good relationship with our supervisor and if something is oftentimes not explained properly, it may give the wrong impression. I think it's important to share why we don't feel comfortable supporting this as it is written now. Okay, so we're back to. So we're opposing, but when you'll have the opportunity at the west side cog meeting with her representatives there to share our city's view We still need a second We will Call the roll please. Councillor Member Wells. Opposed. Thank you. Opposed to the motion? Opposed to the motion. Opposed to the motion. Opposed to the motion. Opposed to the motion. Opposed to the motion. Yes. Yes. Thanks. Councillor Member Corridor. Yes. Councillor Member Mirish. No. Vice-Marin is there in? Yes. Mayor Friedman. Yes. Councilmember Mirish. No. Vice-Mariniserian. Yes. Mayor Friedman. Yes. Okay. We've gone. We got Cindy again. Now you this has got to be done in 20 minutes or else 19 minutes. I have to ask everybody if we want to stay. So can we do this? I do it. I say well the presentation is probably about eight minutes. It depends on how much you guys want to talk about it. You have five slides up there. So this took a little bit more than five slides. It's a little bit more of a complex item. So what we have before you are actually two items, but because they're so closely related, we put them together in one report. The first item is asking the City Council to consider position of support opposed or re-neutral on Los Angeles County's measure A, the Homelessness Solutions and Prevention Now Initiative. And the second item is asking the City Council to provide direction on implementing Beverly Hills Measure RP. Do the placement of measure A on this November's ballot. So just really quickly the effective sales tax in any specific area of California consist of three parts. So you have the state sales tax and use tax. You have a local sales tax and use tax and any district transaction and use tax. Currently statewide, this adds up to 7.25% with the state receiving 6% of it, our local jurisdiction receiving one, and then there's 25% that goes into a local transportation fund. So some areas in California do have a higher effective sale tax rate than the state 7.25%. As a result of voter-approved district taxes imposed by certain counties, cities, or other local jurisdictions or districts. For Los Angeles County, which is what this slide covers, the sales tax rate is minimally 9.5%. As there is another 2 and a quarter percent in district taxes, first, the sales tax rate is minimally 9.5%. As there is another two and a quarter percent in district taxes, all of which are voter-approved taxes, supporting primarily transportation projects, those are their first four here, and the last one is supporting homelessness initiatives. Just a quick note, without specific exemptions, technically distributed taxes cannot exceed 2% in the state. So some of these measures here, and we're not sure we think it's Proposition A and Proposition C, had language contained in them to exempt them from consideration for this 2% district tax. Measure A also contains that language, so it would not count against that 2% tax. the case. The case is a consideration for this 2% district tax. Measure A also contains that language so it would not count against that 2% tax. And then just one final note, measure H which voters did approve in 2017. It's a quarter-sales tax and it So under state law the maximum effective sales tax in Los Angeles County, like I mentioned, is 10 and a quarter percent. 49 of the 88 cities in the county are already at this maximum level. The cities of Compton, Linwood, Pekel Rivera, Santa Monica, and Southgate do not pay into measure H. They reached the 10 and a quarter percent sales tax. B4 measure H was passed in 2017. All other cities pay into measure H. However, no further to district taxes can be applied to the cities at 10 and a quarter unless there's a change in state law. Which happened last year. So Los Angeles County Representatives approach Senator Santiago and asked him to gut and amend one of his bills from a horse racing bill into a transaction and use district taxes for the county of Los Angeles. We love those gut andamend bills and we love getting them ending horse racing bills apparently. A.V. 1679 requires the county to adopt an ordinance proposing the tax by any applicable voting approval requirement and that includes a citizens initiative that would gather signatures. The proposed measure must replace the tax currently in place by measure H. So the proposed tax measure H goes away, but this new tax would come in. And all revenue from that tax has to be dedicated to addressing homelessness and preventing homelessness. The bill does not, does require a robust oversight of the sales tax measure. And we already see that with measure H. The recorded reports that the board receives on how the money is used and how many people are helped with that money. This bill, sunset, since December 31st to 2028. So the county has a couple years to try to get a sales tax measure approved. This bill did pass both state legislative houses and was signed by the governor. So measure eight, it was a citizen initiative. LA County Registrar's office received 393,293 signatures. And on June 18th, they did certify that the required number of valid signatures were received and qualified measure A for this November. Measure A, as state law requires, it does repeal measure A to H if it is passed. It imposes a permanent half percent district tax to reduce and prevent homelessness while providing affordable housing. The quarter percent of that half percent is going to continue the funding for homelessness services provided by measure H. So it's almost as if measure H would not sunset, measure H would continue, it just continues as part of measure A. And then the other quarter percent would provide funds to the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency, also known as LaCossa, to build affordable housing in the county. Measure A itself has no sunset date, so it would continue in perpetuity unless there's a voter initiative in the future to repil it. So should measure A pass, what would the effective sales tax look like? And what we have to look at is there's gonna be a net increase of Only 25% in 83 cities in LA County with five cities seen an increase of half a percent So this light here it groups favor the hills with the city of Los Angeles We currently have a sales tax of 9 and a half percent you'd see the quarter-cent of measure age roll back and then this half-cent Come in so you have a net gain of a quarter percent. So our sales tax would increase in 9 and 3 quarters percent if the sales tax passed. Or sorry, if this district passed. Burbank, Culver City, Glendale, West Hollywood, they all are at the current 10 and a quarter percent. They all pay into measure H. So their net impact is going from 10 and a quarter to 10 and a half whereas Santa Monica Southgate Linwood Compton and Pico Rivera would all see that half sent add on to their total rate. They'd go to 10 and 3 quarters So now we roll into measure RP because this measure does trigger a discussion by the council on measure R.P. On August 20th, our city council declared fiscal emergency because of COVID-19 and we placed a ballot on measure on the November 2020 ballot. the measure did was reserve the remaining 3.4%, so we're at 9.5%, it reserve the remaining 3.4% for Beverly Hills. And in our communications to our residents, we told our residents, our piece not going to raise your sales tax unless the county or another entity imposes an increase to the sales tax. At that point, measure RP would be imposed to capture that revenue for use in Beverly Hills. RP would prevent that loss of local sales tax to a regional control and instead retain that funding for local use and under local control. But due to the passage of AB 1679, even if the city tried to protect the remaining sales tax for revenue for local use, measure A would still be added on top of that 3.4 cent tax. So we would see our sales tax jump from the 9.5 to 10.4 and then because we already paying to measure A, we'd still have that other quarter cent on top of that. And so what this slide kind of does is it shows you if nothing happens to measure H, we'd still have that other quarter cent on top of that. And so what this slide kind of does that shows you, if nothing happens with measure RP, we go to nine and a quarter, but then in that third column Beverly Hills, if we did measure RP with measure A, we'd go and end up at an effect of 10 and a half percent. So we jump almost one full percentage point. So tonight, I'm seeking your direction on two items. The first one is should the city support oppose or remain neutral on measure A? That was presented also at the Westside City Cog meeting. So we're anticipating they're gonna ask us on October 10th what our city council is in support opposition remaining neutral on this and then the section of what action would the city council like to take regarding implementation of measure R. P. And there's a reason why that says continues next slide because there's quite a bit of text associated with that. So the council needs to decide if they want to suspend the implementation of measure RP. That's just part of the requirement of the ordinance we have. And we would not notify the state on November 1st of the city's intent to implement this measure. We would do this by resolution at the October 10th City Council meeting if that's your direction tonight. The second option before you is to notify the state on November 1st of our intent to implement measure RP and then council could direct staff to bring the item back after the results of the November election are certified to provide further direction. And then this little table which is in your report, if measure a failed, we are required under the ordinance to suspend whatever we do with measure RP. So completely go away if measure a failed. But if measure a passed, we would come back to you to take, do you want to keep 3.25% in place and pay measure a and have our total sales tax go to 10.5. Or you can bring us back after the election and you can suspend some or all of that 3.25% sales tax. So to keep it simple, I'm going to go back one slide and just talk about measure A first. You think that's easy? It actually isn't too bad. Okay, so I'm going to ask my council members at this point in time. Well, for a follow-up, we asked this is a time of the essence issue in terms of we need to make a decision tonight because if not, then we're going to lose that opportunity because of the timescrate. Why? I don't know. Well, there is, you do have an opportunity before November to make a, to decide whether you'd support a poser remain neutral on measure A and what action you'd like to take on measure RP. So it is, it is time sensitive, but it's not drop dead tonight time sensitive. So then I'll go to my colleagues and ask whether or not if it goes past 11 o'clock, you would be willing to continue on this item. I'm okay with that. Yes, go on. Yes, but let's say until 11.30. Let's not say until all hours of the night. Yes. Okay, I am too. Okay. So with that we'll go to public comment. Anybody in chambers who would like to speak on the item? Please, please, please bring forward a speaker card not seeing anybody. We'll go to comments electronically. We do not have any public comments on this item. Okay, so we will close public comment and go to councilmember Wells. Questions, comments and hopefully direction maybe not the first time around. For measure A. Yeah, for measure A. Well, I think we can do both. Yeah, I think we can do both. Well, the question regarding measure A, from what I understand is permanent. And there's no sunset date for that. That's correct, right? That is correct. There's no sunset date for measure A, the only way measure A would go away as if there was a valid initiative down the road in the future to repeal it. And I was speaking with our city manager yesterday and asking how much money did we see from measure H as a city from a benefit? And I think you said 450,000 a year? roughly so how much did the city of Beverly Hills we received from measure H my recollection last year was 450,000 oh is Jeff giving me a signal no he's wiping his face approximately $450,000. For each year. And for each year on this if it's a quarter it's estimating if you use similar numbers it's 9.9 million that would be generated and we could potentially only see 450,000. Is that a leap? Can you say that again just a little bit slower? Okay. I don't have the A in front of me. I think that somewhere you're at. So in the report what we talked about was for the city of Beverly Hills for every quarter cent increase in the sales tax. That's right. It would result in approximately $9 million of revenue to the city. That every quarter cent to the county would not generate $9 million to the city. Right. But this measure would generate, oh no, this is, I'm confusing the two actually. Well, in general, I don't support measure A. So I would oppose. I feel like we haven't seen the results from measure age. The fact that it's permanent, that there's no sense at date around it. Our issues for me, we haven't seen the proof and I'm not comfortable with it being permanent. When it's not a proven entity and thus far we haven't seen any performance around age. You want RP? Yes. Okay. My issue around RP is that the ballot, when this was placed on the ballot, the voters voted understanding that this was not going to increase art. If there wasn't, if there was this ballot measure put on, that's what would increase the tax, but the dollars would come to the city. And that's not the case anymore. So I guess my challenge with this is that if we were to implement this, it's not truly what the voters voted on. It's changed. On the other hand, I like the opportunity of being able to, you know, have flexibility because if it doesn't pass, you can peel it back. You can put it on and even if it passes, I believe we could also pull it back. So it's always, I always think having options and flexibility as a city is important because we cannot predict the future. And it's already been voted on but the biggest sticking point for me is it's not what the voters voted on. In terms of an increase in the tax and there would be an increase in the tax. So at this point I would not implement it. And just to be clear, if measure A does not pass, then you're required by the initiative to repeal your 3.25% tax, the measure RP tax, whatever that is. But if it does pass, are you able to reduce it or repeal it if you so choose? Can't you can choose to do that at any time. That's the flexibility part that I think is intriguing for us and it's option. But it really was voted on by the voters and when I look at the communication, that's not what they voted for. So that's where I'm at. I mean, I'm willing to discuss it because I you know if we could I mean another option I thought about is we could implement it if it passes we could have outreach and we could have public hearing around it because of that and that may be another option we don't have to do it we could repeal it but I do think we have to have a communication and be transparent about that because of the change and it's it is significantly different in the in the sense that it does impact everybody Tough going first. It is but that's why I am. Councilmember, councilmember Corbin. So, quick question. What is the tax rate, the sales tax in Orange County? I don't know. And I was just there paying sales tax last week. I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't know what they did. Jeff, Jeff may know. Jeff knows. Seven three quarters. All right. So we're already competitive disadvantage for some high-ticket items versus businesses in, you know, the Newport Beach area. So I'm, first of all, with respect to Bejure. I like the idea of funding homeless programs, but I agree with Councillor Wells that I'm not sure that just throwing money at it is solving the problem at this point. It sounds like, well, we haven't, they've thrown money at it, hasn't gotten very far, so I want to throw more money at it. I just don't know whether that's the answer. It's hard for me to support Measure A. I'm not sure I actively oppose it. I guess I'm neutral on it in the sense that I just don't know whether it would do any good. There's just increasing taxes. I have a concern that it puts more of a competitive disadvantage with respect to the Orange County businesses that we compete with. So I guess overall I would have to oppose it for that reason. I don't think it's good for the city and I'm not sure it really does what good they think it would do. Respect to measure RP. Yeah, I agree. We pitched it and to the residents and they voted for it in the basis that if sales tax went up, we want to capture it for ourselves, not have it go somewhere else. But the way it would work with measure A, we just be increasing the sales tax on top of measure A. So I don't think we can good faith can implement it if measure A passes. And I'm guessing it measure it doesn't pass and it doesn't get triggered anyway. So I wouldn't be looking to implement it. measure a pass and I'm guessing it doesn't pass and it doesn't get triggered anyway. So I wouldn't be looking to implement it. Love to have $9 million more a year for the budget, but that's not the way RP was sold. And I'd be a little concerned saying, well, let's go ahead and potentially implement it and have discussions going forward because I think we get a lot of people saying well that's not what you said and now you want you just want the money so I would I would oppose measure A and I would not look to implement measure RP even if measure A passes God thank you so I'm on the LaCossa board, so I'm supporting the measure A. Although I have to say, the split is not 50-50 between homeless services and LaCossa. LaCossa is actually only getting about 37% of the projected revenue, and that wrinkles me quite frankly. Wasn't my first preference for attacks either? I proposed, I believe actually Lindsay wanted this. I proposed a progressive, not a progressive commercial parcel tax or commercial business tax, not in other words not on homeowners because you don't want to make homeownership More expensive, but they did something similar on commercial space in Palo Alto over like 10,000 square feet It passed and that was actually a good way to fund it That's that's how I would fund it. I wouldn't I have a problem with a sales tax in general. It's regressive I understand that there are certain exemptions, but it's going to impact families not just in our city and in other cities in a way. So this wasn't my favorite way of doing things. And also, some of you may have gotten the brochure from United Way. And I think that there's a lot of information in here except for the fact that it's actually a tax increase. And I don't like that. I find it's actually a little bit deceptive by omission and I'll tell Tommy Newman that when I see him. But I do support the tax because I think we need to do something. We created a new state agency, a new, it's a state agency, but it's for our county. And the goal is as opposed to measure age, which aims to help people who are homeless and get people off the street, is to stop people from falling into homelessness. And the way to do that is by the three P's, production, preservation, and then tenant protections as well. And so our agency needs funding. Now, shame on the state for creating an agency like LaCosta without funding it. When they created the Bay Area version of that, they started them off with $20 million or whatever, and they're looking for a tax as well. We're running on funds from charity, from the Hilton Foundation, from other foundations. That's not a way to do things. Again, they've explained it to us that when it comes to measure H, the problem isn't actually beds, it's services. There are enough beds supposedly to help the homeless people there, but you need to have active service providers who are providing wraparound services, and that's very expensive. In fact, some of the service, the people who work in that are getting paid very small salaries. So that was the explanation. I don't quibble with the fact that we feel that a lot of people feel they haven't gotten their bang for the measure H buck, but there was not going to be two separate taxes or proposals, one to fund what previously was funded by measure H and the other to fund LaCossa. So I am supportive of this because as said, LaCossa needs to be funded, I'm convinced that there is a model there that will work and that we can leverage those funds and get things done. On the other hand, Craig, as you mentioned, I just look, coast to Mason, Upport Beach, Irvine are all 7.75%. So I would also not support implementation of measure RP. If that legislation hadn't passed which raises the ceiling, then it would be another story. That's in fact why the residents passed it was to protect us. But the state found sneaky ways around that. And if you didn't have that, that would be another story. Then we would actually have to implement it. And the question is, is the state now each time some other taxes propose going to have legislation allowing the ceiling to go higher and higher and higher. And again, that's also terrible policy, I think. But I personally do and will support measure A, LaCosta needs the funding, but will not support the implementation of measure RP. Vice mayor. Yes. I have a few questions. So when measure H came out, I think there was in a person who was in favor of it. Do you know what the number was for the? I don't know what the vote was. Yeah, what the vote was. I don't know what the vote was for Beverly Hills for measure H in 2017. All right, and I think it raised like two to three billion dollars and from my experience, I think it was very poorly managed, unfortunately, from what I understand. I think you're probably correct, because in 2017, the worth thinking I'd raised $355 million last year. It raised $527 million, and this year the county budgeted for $524 million. Just those two fiscal years along put you at one billion. So I would say you're correct and then it's been a couple billion dollars. I may be three. So I think many housing projects are taking years to complete and end up costing a lot more. And homelessness is frankly going up. I'm concerned about that. I think that raising taxes in this economy right now, there's already a burden on a lot of families and to raise sales tax, I would be concerned also with how it would affect our cities taxes because that was a concern that I had as well. What position have the other cities taken on West Side Cog? Do you know, have any of them taken a position yet? No, Culver City has not yet taken it to their council. Santa Monica is taking it again later this month and West Hollywood has not yet taken a position. Right and how do our taxes compare to surrounding cities within LA County? We are about sales tax rate or the amount of money we collect. Right and so my concern was also with regard to high end goods because that is something that is important for our economy and how that would affect our people wanting to purchase things here versus in other cities. As far as measure RP, I think the original intention of council is different than the way it would be implemented now if we were to bring it to the voters and especially if it's a full percentage that would have to be implemented in order for it to take effect. But I'm wondering, are we able to turn it down now, but have the ability to use it later if it would benefit us in any way? So do you mean would we be able to, does measure RP apply to future attempts by the state or the county or some of their body to impose a, you know, what percentage or something. I think the answer is it remains in place. Right. So it's okay if we don't utilize it now, but if in case we need it for invoking in future, right if it were to okay all right so I mean I want to be a Zemphathetic and Supportive to fund homeless programs as possible. I think it's extremely important for it not to have a sunset in place and It's it hasn't been managed very well. That concerns me the way that it's written now. So I would also oppose this and also not impose measure RP. Okay. So my feeling on measure A is that had that quarter cent gone directly to the cities for them to implement what is necessary, then I would have been supportive of it. But it did. That would be great. But it did. And I also think that I have a significant problem with the state now just saying, well, we're just going to extend the maximum rate from 10 and a half to 10 and a 3 quarters. From 10 and a quarter to 10 and 3 quarters. From 10 and a quarter to 10 and a half. 10 and a half. Just to get around it, I think local government has a much better record of spending money than the state does. And it really troubles me not to be able to be supportive of measure A, and I would either remain neutral or oppose it. So I think as we had this discussion before, I'm not gonna let somebody else make the decision on remaining neutral. I think that I will oppose it also, and in terms of RP, having spoken on RP, many occasions and support of it, the intention was to take the area up that would have gone to the state. That's because of what the state has done in terms of extending it. It doesn't satisfy what I was campaigning for. I think we need the money in the city of Beverly Hills. I think it needs to go back to the voters because that is not what they were sold on RP. So I would not implement RP because it's inconsistent. So with that, do you have, we need to take a motion on this too. Yes, I think if, sorry, excuse me, if you want to take a position on measure A, there's a motion for that. And then also, we need to bring back a resolution to suspend measure Rp, so there's a motion for that and then also we need to bring back a resolution to suspend measure our piece So there's a motion for that as well So we have two different motions and Measure a you can decide you know not not take not to take a motion Then the council will not have taken a position or people can decide. Okay, they'll let's make that decision whether or not we want to remain neutral or oppose or support John. I believe you want to support it. Mary, you have a,'s not like there's the cog is waiting for an opinion on this. So you have an option not to take a position or you can take a position. It's up to the council. So we could take a position. Are you suggesting that we perhaps table it and then see what position the rest of the cog takes? No, I was not suggesting anything like that. I was just giving you what the option is. Try not to be clear. I apologize. I'm ready to have a position as well. You're going to oppose? Okay, and I will oppose it all. So, let's have somebody make them move. I moved at the City Council, oppose Los Angeles County's measure A, the homelessness solutions and prevention now initiative. We have a second. A second. And can you call the roll? Council member Wells? Yes. Council member Wells. Yes. Council member Corman. Yes. Council member Mirish. No. Vice Mayor Nazaria. Yes. Mayor Friedman. Yes. Okay, then we need a second motion on the staff. On RP. Is it the suspending?. Is it the suspending? I'll make the motion but it's the suspending, right? Yes. I move that the City Council direct staff to prepare a resolution suspending the implementation of measure RP and to not notify the state of the city's intent to implement measure RP. I'll second that. Council member Wells? Yes. Council member Korman? Yes. Council member Mirish? Yes. Vice Mayor Nazarian? Yes. Mayor Friedman? Yes. Ooh. Okay. All right. Thank you, everyone. First day in so late. Okay. So now we are going to go to report from the city attorney on closed section items. Yes. We have a report tonight. The city council decided in city of Whittier versus Superior Court of the State of California, which is an action to challenge the judicial no bail policy. The City Council unanimously decided to support a petition for rid of review before the California Supreme Court. And that's the only item on which I have a report tonight. Thank you. Report from the City of Manager. Not this evening, Mayor. Take a deep breath. City Council Member and Committee reports and comments starting with Council Member Wells. I have nothing to report. Thank you. Council member Quarment. So the litigation committee met in closed session and discussed a matter which way I cannot discuss. I have nothing to report. Great. Councilmember. It has been an eventful day, also a long one, so I will keep it short. As I do, each meeting, I propose that Qatar be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, that its assets be frozen and used to compensate the victims of Qatar-funded terrorism, and that we ask the State Department to expel the Qatarie consulate from the City of Qatar funded terrorism, and that we asked the State Department to expel the Qatarie consulate from the city of Beverly Hills. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Nuzerian. Yes. So I attended the LA Sanitation Meeting for District 4, which was quite productive. No. And today is also the two-year memorial mark since the brutal and barbaric murder of Massa Gina Amini. And on Sunday, I was invited to speak at the new square dedication for the establishment of the Woman Life Freedom Square and Memory of Massa, hosted by Councilmember Katie Erslovsky. And to me, the square symbolizes a commitment to stand up for women's rights everywhere. If we truly want to be a voice for women, we must advocate for all women, regardless of their religion, cultural background, or ethnicity. The struggle for freedom and equality is not just isolated to one country or one group. It is a global fight, including the women who were brutally raped, burned, murdered, and slaughtered on October 7th. Masha's story is a painful reminder that women's rights are still under attack. And if we remain silent about the injustices faced by women in any part of the world, we fail all women. The square is not only a tribute to Masha, but it also calls to action for us to continue advocating for a dignity, safety, and freedom of women everywhere. And respectfully, I ask our mayor to adjourn in memory of all of those women. You know, and I think it's also important to remember the women of Afghanistan, which is just an awful, awful situation. I mean, it's unspeakable. The minister runs long, unfortunately. So this evening, I also want to recognize that it has been two years since the tragic death of Masha'a Mini in Iran. You will recall that Masha'a Mini was a 22-year-old woman killed in the custody of the quote morality police, close quote, for not wearing a hijab. Beverly Hills was one of the first municipalities to publicly condemn Masha'a Mini's murder. Following her tragic death, the women life freedom movement took hold around the world to stand up against the discrimination and oppression of women in Iran. To honor Masha'a Mini's life and legacy, Beverly Hills City Hall was illuminated for many months with a message, Justice from Masha Amini. On this solemn anniversary, let us remember the life and legacy of Masha Amini. May her memory be a blessing and shall we adjourn in her memory. Thank you all for being here and good night. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go back to the next one. I'm going to go we put the ROV in the water when it comes back up on deck. Everything has to be very organized and everything has to be very planned out to the hour. And so it's in many ways a lot different than being out in the field when you're on land. So this is the AFDEC. It's about the size of a basketball court. It is huge. There's Hannah. So you can see the crane that we have here that we can use to lift equipment onto the ship. It is massive as you can see. And back here we can store equipment. We have vans here for mobile laboratory space. And we have an arm on the back that we can use to lower equipment into the ocean. We're not using much of that right now on this expedition. We're mostly using the CTD and the ROV, which are kept in the hanger behind me. So let's go take a look at that space. That is so cool. And I should say for our audience, some of our members of Ask and Ask Biology, our producer and director Mike Toyon, and Sarah Treadwell, who is in the chat right now, have also been on research vessels in the past, which they both told me that this is a much higher state of the art research vessel the Fowl Court too. Oh, this ship is absolutely incredible. Yeah, I mean, I've been to see twice before this and the Fowl Court too is just an amazing vessel. I mean, it is huge. It is so technologically advanced in terms of its capabilities, just anything you could possibly need. And in addition to that, S.O.I. has an incredible science team on board that work with the scientists on every cruise that are just so knowledgeable, so helpful, so accommodating. I mean, they have just anything that we have needed. They have done their absolute best to make it possible. So not only do we have this incredible ship at our disposal with all of its capabilities, which were so excited to show you, but we also have this team of very, very experienced people who have just done everything in their power to make this cruise a success. And so it's just been an experience unlike any other that I've ever had at sea. Even the people that have many, it's this tradition like this one when they first got into the chip, they were like, what, if you just look at all the fantastic things we have around, yeah, it is massive, it's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, even just as a place to live and work, it's just, it's very clear that the folks at SOI, when they were building this new ship, they really took into account that not only are we working here every day, but we also have to live here every day. And so they've provided so many comfortable spaces for us, places to relax, places to sit together and watch movies. The food has been absolutely incredible, I must say. So this has just been all around a great experience, totally first rate. So we're in the hangar right now. Over here is where the ROV Sebastian lives and he's in the water right now. so you can see the winch and the cable that connects him to the ship. But when he's on deck this is where he hangs out. And in a moment, yeah, it's such a huge space. I mean, it's just awesome that we have this place that, you know, the ROV can be and whenever he comes back up on deck, we can get all of our samples off and every time he comes back on deck, there's so much that needs to be done to turn around the ROV and prepare for the next dive. And so we have lots of room to to work around him and get what we need. Over here we have the CTD rosette or the CTD carousel. So this is a ring of niskin bottles for capturing sea water from different depths. It also has a variety of sensors on it that tell us about the temperature, the depth, the pressure, the conductivity, the salinity and oxygen of the water that we can measure in real time as the CTD descends. And then as it rises back up in the water column, we can capture water from the depths that we choose and sample it. So this is a really important tool to notion on the field that we've been using to study the sea water. And over here, it's a question. So real quick, Lauren, real quick for our audience, just to describe, so CTT is for, could you, could you describe what that means for our audience? Con-activity, temperature, and yeah. Yeah, so the tool that oceanographers have used for a long time, right? Yeah, so you'll find one of these on pretty much every oceanographic expedition. Not all of them will use it. Some are more ROV-driven, but we've been using both the CTD and the ROV on this expedition. So over here, we have one of these monitors that shows what Sebastian is doing right now on the C floor. These are all over the ship in the labs, in our rooms, in all of the spaces. So that if at any time the ROV is on a dive, we can see what the ROV is seeing in real time. And if we see something exciting, we can run down to mission control and say, hey, can you grab a sample of that for me or even just watch what the ROV is doing and enjoy this science from anywhere on the ship. So we don't have to be in mission control to watch the ROV. We can do it from anywhere using these monitors. Looks like right now they're picking up a rock sample using the scoop. There's a little shrimp. Yeah, it's so cool. So we are actually cutting over to the ROV feed directly in our show right now. So that the audience is seeing the arm up close and what they're doing. I know we've had a joke already mentioned in the YouTube chat about the Falcore 2 and the Sebastian as names. I'll allow our audience to share in the chat if they want to about where those names come from. We do have a question for our audience as well. So Sebastian is a very fun name. And so for our audience, we're going to drop a little poll in the chat just to ask everyone of, you know, you see this amazing robot, but what would you name a robot for exploring the deep ocean if you had the opportunity to do so? And maybe also ask, where did they sing the Pal Koran's vassals came from? Yeah, who gets the ref? I know at least one person has made a joke about it. So. Yeah, so you can see on these monitors, not only can we watch the ROV, but we can also see the depth of the ROV is at the temperature of the water, the salinity, and the oxygen concentration as well. And the cameras on the ROV are all at 4K, the side cam is at least. And so we can really see all of this in like really great definition. The resolution is great. The camera feed off of this this fashion is just awesome. We've already captured so many beautiful images of the C4. Looks like the geologists are super interested in this rock right now. It's got some really cool banding for sure. And enough forget that they are the one you are seeing here is being moved by a person that will just show you admission control. The person here moved it on arm. That is taking place, the actual 1.8 kilometers long, ask here. From here again, it's amazing. Yeah, there's actually two pilots that you'll meet when we go into mission control, who control the ROV. One flies the ROV while the other one controls the arms. And it's all done through controls controls almost like a video game. There's like a joy stick that they use and they can manipulate the arm of the ROV from mission control and 2,000 meters down or more. It does everything that the pilots tell it to do and you can imagine how tricky it is as an ROV pilot trying to manipulate this large robotic arm to pick up these often very delicate samples and place them on the ROV to bring them back up to the scientists. And sometimes we have to try multiple methods of sampling in order to successfully capture the sample that we want. But the Sebastian's capabilities are just truly incredible. There's lots of space for different types of samples. We could take samples of rocks, samples of sediment. We have bioboxes for taking animal specimens, rock boxes for taking rocks. There's more niskin bottles on the ROV so that we can take water samples on the bottom. So every time the ROV comes up, he's just loaded with samples for all of our scientists to analyze and explore. So this is where our pilots work. So we always have two pilots flying the ROV, controlling the ROV, as well as a science technician. We have a partner right now is our watch lead, so she is directing the dive and also narrating the dive because we live stream every dive, every single one, no matter what time of day it is, you can tune in and watch what ROV Sebastian is doing whenever he is on the C-floor. That's so cool. And I'll share that at the end of our audience as well, how to watch those feeds. I will say for our audience, remember this is mission control which sounds a lot just like space exploration. And so our feed is a little pixelated in the video But we are slowly getting some better resolution here to see some of our awesome Pilots and operators of the ROV, but you know we are talking to a ship out in the middle of the ocean doing this incredible research with that robot down on the bottom of the sea floor And so yeah, so we're getting slightly better resolution here now. We can kind of see some of the monitors and other controls that they're working on I Wonder it could we actually see the controls the pilots are using could we get closer with that without getting in their way? Yeah, yeah, absolutely and we even have a pilot here is that Who has been incredibly helpful throughout this entire expedition. Very, very good smooth pilot ears you can see cruising along and you can take a look at his controls if you want and see all the little fine movements he's doing to keep everything nice and stable. It's a lot more work and it looks like but it's obviously one of the fun of jobs you could possibly do in my opinion. Um, certainly something I look for super high tech. Yeah, it's something I look forward to every day of course. Sure. Oh yeah. So these are dual T4 manipulators which are hydraulically powered. State of the art very, very finesse capable arms. We just picked up a king crab by delicately grabbing him in the backside with these 3D printed rubber grippers and then picked him and put him into one of our collection boxes. Can you look down with the sit camera and we'll show them? It's very angry crab in there Yeah, let's look at them That's so cool So you might have to bring your camera over there, but he's right in the bottom left of that screen. Oh, yeah, there he is. You see him? Wow, he's huge. Oh, yeah, he's huge. We had to sneak up on that fella. He was on the lookout for us. I don't bet. And then if you look over on this screen here, we'll show you the manipulators. So on this, each side, they're identical. They're titanium, 6,000 meter rated. If you're delicate enough, you can pick up an egg with these. That's the kind of precision control they let you have. They're pretty amazing piece of kit. On this one over here, you'll see that the tip of precision control they let you have. They're pretty amazing to get. On this one over here, you'll see the tip of it is very different. And I'll show you here real quick. This is a custom made one that we use for collecting delicate samples and corals and things like that. Can you turn on the lowers for me? Thank you, sir. This guy here, you can see he has a blade and that blade is for cutting the coral and on the other side of the blade is two 3D printed rubbery pieces and that allows you to still retain control of the piece that you just cut because we try to take the minimum of any kind of animal sample we have to take of course because we don't want to harm anything we don't have to harm. I think each of these arms is in the neighborhood of 250 to 500 grand if you're curious. Yeah, it's incredible. Every time I see the robot arms do anything I think of 2001 a space Odyssey and the the remote or the the little space bubble but Dave is it moving me awesome stuff yeah so cool so cool thanks Zach yeah thank you so much Zach and Tyler thank you for letting us see the operations of the rover from mission control. That's so cool. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for watching. All right, can make our way back out of here for our audience at home. Just a reminder, you can ask questions for our Mando and for Lauren again about the ROV, the ship, about the science. We have a little bit time of time left in our episode here. And so we are going to do another transitional walk, I think, in a few moments here. Is the bridge our next stop? One other person I wanted to introduce you to you quickly, and then we'll go up to the bridge. Over here we have Nick Skizas. He is our myofana expert. Hello, how are you? Yeah, hello, how are you? My name is Nick expert. Hi. Hello, how are you? Yeah, hello, how are you? My name is Nick Schisers. I'm a professor in of Inverver biology and working at the University of Puerto Rico for the last 21 years. And I'm here in this expedition to provide my knowledge and expertise in Benfic and also some pelagic invertebrates. Most of my work has to do with looking at biodiversity with different methods, more for logical methods, genomic methods. And I'm also here because I have several, a lot of experience with the previous marine expeditions. So usually my usual spot in the expedition is here in this place where I consult my colleagues about the possible idea of different species we see on the screen. And this is actually my favorite place, okay. This is where I like to be. Yeah, every dive we were calling for Nick and Guillermo to come in here like we don't know what this is. Can you tell us us I think I'm running it. That's awesome. So when I see those post and it's like a dumber locked up post and a crudenoid in some of those things we have some support from experts who are telling us what those things are when they're supposed to coming out. Yeah, absolutely. Now the majority of the work of course were here, were exploring. If we knew everything, we wouldn't be here, right? So the, a lot of the work, most of the work will be done back in the lab when we have the specimens and we're not able to work with them. So the, so this is just the exploration part and the collection part, okay? But we do have, of course, a good idea of what, you know, what those group of animals are. But to go down to the species level, that's much more work. And okay, yeah. Thanks Nick. Yeah, incredible. Yeah, thank you so much Nick. Thank you. Hi Jess. Jess is data logging for me. Jess is my lead tech. She's incredible. She sent so much work on this expedition. And Muriel is our contact with the Chilean government. She's our observer on board. All right, and we're going to head up to the bridge, which is I think the other coolest place on this ship. Katie and Drew, who are biosecnture seekers. And we have Antonio and Oscar, who are geologists on board. Awesome and for those who are tuning in for the show, we're now speaking with our experts from the bridge of the Falcourt 2. So a few audience questions first. The first comes from Eric Rooney who wants to know if the sea floor is being affected by climate change? Oh, good question. I mean, I would say that pretty much every part of the world is being affected by climate change in one way or another. Certainly, the deeper ocean, I think, is still buffered from those effects somewhat, but in shallower seas, we're already seeing the effects of climate change with things like coral bleaching, fish kills, you name it. And of course, the weather effects too are huge and they've changed the way that ocean currents work up welling events, having these extreme, Melnino, La Niña events. I mean, the effects are so far reaching that it's hard to really sum it up in a few statements. But a lot of work is being done as we speak and has been done for many years to explore the effects of climate change on our oceans from surface to bottom, and to also project what those effects might be if things continue the way that they've been going. So yeah, it's a very serious issue that's on the mind of every oceanographer. So I can add one thing that we have seen from working with marine biologists in my own department is that there are examples of changes in the ecological distribution of organisms where as the is we are just learning about this deep now. So it's a bit sad that we are not maybe even to analyze these deep waters before they are affected by all these changes that happen in the planet. Immigration is surprising that we find the entire hills made of carbonates down there and what is will be the changes that we're having to that process are the temperature of the sea star racing up. Yes. And there's the pH of the ocean changes as well. Very cool. So we have a couple of questions about how deep the ROV is going. Again, Armando, you mentioned that earlier, but we had just someone who asked if you can reiterate how deep you are right now with the ROV and how deep it will be going. But we Mundo you mentioned that earlier, but we had someone who asked if you can reiterate how deep you are right now with the ROV and how deep it will be going. But we also have a question that on top of that from AC on YouTube, they want to know to what extent the biochemical pathways are altered by extreme pressures. For instance, is there any modifying a protein enzyme, folding structures, and things like that in these very deep waters. Do you want to start with the depth and then I'll take the barrel file question? Okay, so what? Yeah, so how deep it now? No, no, no, but it's a mommy one point eight, but tomorrow we're going to go 4.5, which is the limit of the road that can go. Kilometers. Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, yeah, certainly, uh, there are organisms that existed at the bottom of the ocean that are designed to withstand these pressures. And when they're brought up to the surface, they completely, uh, lose their structure. I think that the blobfish is that become a pretty famous example. Everybody has seen pictures of the blobfish on the internet. They're like, oh god, it's so, it's so ugly. It's all like droopy and sad looking, but that's because it's been brought up to atmospheric pressure when it lives like 300 atmospheres of pressure. And so its body is just not designed to exist at pressures that low. And it just completely falls apart and becomes that blobby shape. And there are microbes, too, of course. They're adapted to these pressures. And there are special culturing techniques that we can use to study these barophilic high pressure loving microbes that basically these high-pressure vessels that maintain microbial cultures under extreme pressure. And the last time that I looked into this and I attended a talk about barophily, the report was that we have not yet found the upper limit of pressure That life can tolerate They went as extreme as they possibly could go and the microbes could still grow and thrive which was amazing to me Very cool. Let's see we have a question coming in if you're monitoring ocean bioacoustics at sampling deaths, I guess are you listening on the C-floor as well? So, we have that capability, but we aren't currently using it on the Falcon Core 2. However, Falcon Core does have the capability to use bioacoustics. So, if we were interested in listening to animal communication, for example, at depth. Falconcork does have those capabilities. Very cool. So, Mujudhuls, hi, Mujudhuls, on YouTube, wants to know how the discoveries and the research that you're doing is going to impact our exploration of worlds like Enceladus and maybe even Europa for the upcoming Europa Clipper mission. So for all of you, how do you see your research impacting our search to understand worlds beyond the Earth? Yeah, in our case, my research team is already making the first approach. Now we know we have found here. Oh, how, what depth it would be the equivalent considering that you have less gravity in moons like in southern Europa and the reaching between pressure, gravity and depth of the ocean and what kind of adaptation you would look for, that's what kind of vicinity you may find, when you look for, you will go to such worlds. So we're already making the first approach now, and we know, okay, so this steps we have on these guys, and this is definitely this other guys and so on. Here we have on-camp carbonate, here we have other type of rock, segment, set, set, set, set, we have pressure of this type, temperature of that type, in order to make the first proposal, where would you like to go in this ecosystem? And this one, this is the most that it looked like in terms of environmental parameters to what you would expect to find, for example, in the moons of Europe and other settlers. And also the exploration of Europe and Selado, we will look very similar. We are doing here with the Spasdem and also is approved that we can do it, but we need to research and to do a better project to send a mission to Robo or Estela. For me, my focus is in the research, so the IC Moon is very important to be here to know who this kind of ocean is the behavioral, the salt, the interaction between rocks and the salt. The assistance of a meta-ship that is could be one of the best focus to the astrobiology. That is the main world of Armando Antonio and I. So it's very excited to be here. And to many, we have many, many data that we would use for the resets of ICMUS in, say, RoP and Celerator or wherever or other in the solar system. And I feel like I forgot to mention that there was supposed also to be an instrument testing machine. We were trying to get this RAM and spectrometer, an instrument that will detect in situ, they are down there, the mineralogy, or whatever we're looking for, like your own geologists down there, right? We couldn't get it in time, but it would come. Why is that important? Because those more or less the same approach you want to then take to the size moon. So we were able to do that kind of with the other pressures, with all the technology that means to do that. And then we can also dream about maybe building such an instrument in order to tip it somewhere else. I think our work in some ways contributes to that because what are the signatures that you're going to look for? And so by organics, we think universally will be signal molecules that we might be able to find for either active biology or at least the fingerprint of remnant biology. Yeah. I started my career as an oceanographer and became an astrobiologist as a postdoc and one thing that I noticed right away as I sort of transitioned into this new field is how similar they are in the fact that they're both incredibly interdisciplinary. Oceanography and astrobiology really go well together. That's like peanut butter and jelly, just a match made in heaven. I mean oceanographers and astrobiologists think about global scales, geologic time scales, or we're thinking about things on a planetary scale. They just really, really, really applies well to thinking about other worlds. And in particular, because the search for life is the search for water, so much of what we apply as oceanographers applies to the search for life on other worlds. And I think what's really interesting about this particular cruise is that normally on a research expedition like this, you have a lot of oceanographers who are dabbling in astrobiology. And here we have a science crew that's primarily astrobiologists who we train to be oceanographers in the space of about a week. So it's been an incredible experience. That's so cool. Again, I love the interdisciplinary nature of your entire crew. You have a large group who are working together from very different backgrounds. Another question from one of our audience members who's watching, is if you can explain some of the differences, maybe both in the biology and the geology, of the ecosystems from high temperature in the biology and the geology of the ecosystems from high temperature and low temperature ocean environments. I think they're thinking primarily things like hydrothermal vents versus where you are right now in these lower temperature methane, sea, serpentinizing systems and things like that. For me, basically, they're the same. As I mentioned in the beginning, it's energy. I mean, it's life getting energy from chemistry, it's really free. Right? Micronesium that I were able to learn how to use iron or sulfide, methane or whatever component of it to reduce it, oxidize it or whatever, and then they pop to get ATP. And then they be depriving of produce. So, this seemingly very different ecosystem, which are basically for me, the same, the same, the concept is the same. Of course, one is being made, one, you find one where the plates are being made, you hear where, finding the opposite, where the plates are one on top of each other. But for me, basically, they are the same, they are different temperature ranges. And that's it. Yeah, I mean, I think you could certainly look at these two very different ecosystems and talk about how they differ chemically and they differ in terms of temperature. But ultimately, the reason why they're both so interesting to astrobiologists is because they provide a source of geochemical energy for life. And in particular, hydrothermal systems, whether low temperature or high temperature, could be a great place for a life origin to happen. And so yeah, I would agree that ultimately, what we're thinking about is geochemistry for life. And it really depends on what's available in terms of the planetary structure. Maybe you have a planet that doesn't have tectonic activity. And so hydrothermal vents are highly unlikely, but serpentinization, for example, where you have water rock interactions, could still be possible. So you have these lower temperature hydrothermal systems that's opposed to like black smokers. But in the end, like it's the geochemistry that fuels the energy for life and an origin of life. And let me add a beautiful example that was described a few years ago in which people found my global life doing photosynthesis at the bottom of the sea because these guys invented a type of trophy. I don't know what it was, but a telecorofilor wrote up scene that were able to translate life being produced from the Chinese lava infrared radiation into ATP. So that's what I mean. It's an amazing example of how, again, as you said, life finds a way. So what was it? What we're going to find, that was where? Yeah. Even from a former place that was potentially hospital of the life. So, when we think about Mars, Mars at one time, had, we believe, had a warmer core. And so, how could that energy of supported life? So, I think what we learned here is immediately adaptable to our search for life beyond. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's so cool. So I'm being told right now by folks from S.O.I. and my producer that there is an octopus on the live feed from the river right now. I wonder if it's possible for us to switch over and see it for a moment for our audience to see what the ROV is looking at on the ocean floor. I think our pilots now are controlling the ROV so we can have a look down. Hopefully we can still see it. They're going to try. But sometimes in ocean exploration you see the things you see in a moment and then they can also disappear right away. Yeah, I'm not quite seeing it right now. I think we might have missed it, unfortunately. That's totally okay though. So we do have a few minutes left. I want to say there are more questions coming in. So for all of you on the cruise, I know that there's a website for the mission and all of you, you know, have ways of sharing. I'd love for our audience if it's okay to like reach out, find ways to learn more. I will say for our audience that SOI has really great video feeds of all the dives. They have a lot of information on the website from SOI about this mission and other missions they have. I know some of our audience members had questions about things like what kind of connection they're using right now for having all of these wonderful experts join us on the internet right now from across the world. They also have questions about the fuel for the Falcon 2 and some of the things like average time duration of cruises. But I think since we only have a few minutes left, I do want to finish up on what we call our faster than light segment now at the very end of the show. So these are our questions that we have for our experts to highlight a few of the ideas that come up in astrobiology all the time. The questions that people have about what it's like to be an astrobiologist. Many of these are my own personal questions too because I think they're a lot of fun. And so I'll start off for our Mondo and Lauren, what is your favorite thing that life on Earth does? Oh, very easy. I'll wait for a bit. It's about time. Well, I have seen in the camera, at least, that you find the most surprising adaptations. Every time I go something in some new site, I find something really unexpected. Every time, the same thing. So the reports are like that. I report us in science. They come very easily because it's so novel. I mean, they don't have to do much work as to properly describe it. And we'll say, hey, I just found the first member of entire and quite a microalny that is able to live on the bottom of the world. Start to spread the world because on the spread of the world I would drop water from the bottom of the world, start to spread the world because there, on the spread the world, I would drop the water from the bottom and fall. So for me, is how life adapt to the most amazing condition, the most unexpected conditions? I think for me, as a microbiologist, the thing that fascinates me most about life is the connection between life and the non-living world, and how sometimes those that that delineation is kind of fuzzy, especially at the microscopic level, microbes are constantly taking non-living matter and turning it into living matter and then decomposing living matter back into inorganic material. And it's this constant cycling of minerals, water, gases into living material that just absolutely fascinates me. And I love that really everything on this planet, life and all the non-living things as well are interconnected. And I just think that that's incredibly fascinating. Wonderful. You're out at sea right now and you're seeing all these incredible organisms from micro organisms and you know as we heard from Drew and Katie collecting viruses and other materials but also larger creatures. If you could communicate with any non-human on the earth, what would it be and why? Me, oh, I'm a tough question. Off the top of my head, I would love to be able to communicate with an octopus. I know I'm a microbiologist and I always stand microbiology, but octopi are just fascinating to me. They're so, so intelligent, and I would love to be able to have a conversation with one. In my case, actually, just remember that we actually did that. A team of researchers, that time we could all reported that for first time, it's big whale to a whale. And they called the whale to come and they have this conversation. Of course, they didn't turn much what the world was saying but we are in a pathway in order to have the first inter-species communication which also brings us to the world of astrology because if we haven't yet learned to communicate with a fox or a whale how do we expect to find an Indian being if it's suddenly lands in front of you. That is for me again it's an interesting question. of you. But for me, again, it's a very interesting question. In my case, I would like to talk with Cros. Me? Cros? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very smart as well. From my end, it looks like I just lost the feed just momentarily here. So I think we're going to keep working here on trying to figure out how to get the feedback. I lost audio and video. So for our audience turning in, these are fantastic questions. Thank you so much. I can't speak to the exact kind of connection they're using or the fuel the Falcon 2 is using. For AC, earlier you asked a question about if slowly decompressed can these platforms from the deep be brought back to the surface? And can they adapt? Of course, the answer to that is yes, in some cases, because we've seen them already on the ship. In other cases, there are some instances where things have adapted so much to that deep sea environment that you can't bring them back to the surface, not without drastic changes to their metabolism and biology. Also as Lauren mentioned earlier, the blobfish, which does change drastically when it's brought from the deep sea back to the surface. It looks very, unfortunately, ugly. It was once voted the world's ugliest organism, which is so unfair. That's like putting a human face into like a giant wind factory or a wind turbine kind of thing, like blowing your face back and being like, well, you look ugly because it's a different environment than you evolved to. I will say so. I think our researchers came back to us. We do want to share real quick. We put a poll in our YouTube chat, just asking how fast you think the ROV Sebastian might maneuver underwater. We had answers like 3 knots, 5 knots, 1 knots, or 10 knots of the 28 who responded. You got it right. It is 3 knots, which is actually pretty darn fast for an ROV underwater. So Lauren and our Mando, it is great to see you both back here again. We have just a couple of minutes left. I think I'll do three more questions if that's okay. So Lauren, this one is directly for you. Since I know, you know, it's you and I are both very nerdy and you know, we've talked before about some of our nerdy interests. I'm wondering if you can share with our audience what stories have inspired you to want to explore more about life in the universe? Oh, wow. Oh, I love that question. Oh, my goodness. So I teach an astrobiology course. It's a general education course that's stocked in. So it's available to everybody, not just science majors. And there are three movies that I show in that class, not just because I think that they're great examinations of alien life, but also because they were so inspiring to me and so formative to me. And that is Ridley Scott's Alien. James Cameron's The Abyss. And Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. And in particular, those last two, the Abyss, I think maybe want to be an oceanographer and 2001 made me think about space as a kid in ways that I never would have, I believe. Very cool. Yeah, I love those films as well, they're fantastic. Armando, my next question is for you. You've had a remarkable career already. You've done so much research in the out of comma. You've been a researcher in Spain for some time now and also a member of Blue Marble Space Institute of Science like Lauren and I. You've had a lot of experience in astrobiology and understanding our Earth, but I'm curious, as we look forward to the future of Astrobiology and understanding things here on Earth and out there in space, what is something that excites you about the future? Oh, actually, I'm kind of sad about the future because I'm going to meet so many great missions, I'm going to visit Europe and Saladu's and the colonization of Mars. Probably I will be very old, but as far as I'm probably my grandkids, we'll get to see how we step on the surface of the Saladu's for a sample. So for me it's like, oh come on, give me 100 years more to see all the different types of devices we're going to visit. But I think doing this way, along Lauren and all the amazing team of scientists, along the team, the crew of the Smith Hospital Institute, the Falco and the Suasian pilot, et cetera, we're paving the way in order to do that. And how we're going to think about exploring Enselo's, we will have this kind of experience beforehand. Absolutely. So I will be part of the story some way about that. Fantastic. So we are at the very end. If I can have just two more minutes real quick, from both of you, what is an unbelievable science fact that still blows your mind? Oh. What is that question? That's a tough one. I'm going to say, because when I learned this as a first year graduate student, it blew my mind and it still blows my mind every time I think about it, there are more bacteria in the ocean than there are stars in the universe. I love it. Nice. And in my case, it's how little we know and how different speech interact. Now we know, for example, all these network and fun data in giving different trees of different species and forest to communicate with each other, seeing that we're even dream of how life is talking to each other. We are not aware of what they're saying. For me, the next big field is on this inter-speeches communication. The thing that you didn't dream that would be taking place, like as she mentioned in some part, where the microbiota or my case, if I don't have the proper microbiota, or the wrong microbiota isn't my magnet at the fraction because it's interconnected and talking to my brain. So this field of knowledge for me is the one that is quite amazing. Awesome. Well, thank you both so much. Thank you to Hannah, to Sophia, who are in the background with the camera, who've been doing so much work in helping us to highlight all of the researchers on board the Falk War II. Thank you to Drew and Katie and Oscar and everyone else who joined us. I'm so glad we had a chance for our audience to hear from so many voices. People who are working on Falkworte to make your mission possible. Now I will say at smithocean.org, the website for SOI, there's so much information about this mission, the living fossils of the Otakuma trench, as well as many other missions, the cruises that have happened. There is the live feed you've shared in the chat. You can find it on YouTube from Schmidt Ocean to watch all of the live feeds from the ROVs to Gaston when it's underwater. If you wanna check out Lauren's Twitter slash X, she's been sharing a lot of really cool stuff there. She's at Dark Microbiome on Twitter or X, a lot more to learn there. It's been so great having both of you join me for Ask an Astrobiologist. Thank you so much. Thanks, Graeme. I was great chatting. Bye. Awesome. And for all of our audience, as usual, we're so happy you joined us. We're going to share ways that you can keep up to track with upcoming episodes of Ask an Astrobiologist. By joining the email newsletter from NASA Astrobiology. You get lots of information there, opportunities and events and all of the things going on across the realm from the NASA Astrobiology program. Of course, you can always reach out to me online. If you have questions for me or for our guests from the show, we are always happy to try to answer them for you. If you can't get ahold of people from our show, it's reach out to me and I can help you to answer questions as much as possible. So for everyone tuning in for this, our very first Ship the Shore episode live from the Falk War II with Drs. Armando Asiobustos and Lauren Siler, thank you so much for joining us. And until next time, remember, stay curious. Brought into the right room to make a certain decision is your safety team, you know, whatever kind of safety team it might be? Are they brought in from the very beginning to help with conception of the product, really think from the start about, you know, what implications this might have? Or are they handed something a couple of weeks before a launch deadline and told, okay, make this as good as you can do. Here I'm not trying to refer to any specific incidents at OpenAI. I'm really referring to, again, you know, examples that I've heard reported publicly, heard from across the industry, that there are good efforts. And I worry that we should not, that if we rely on the companies to make all of those trade-offs, all of those detailed decisions about how those commitments are implemented, that they're unable, they're just unable to fully account for the interests of a broad public. And I think, you hear this as well from people, I've heard this from people in multiple companies, sentiment along the lines of please help us slow down. Please give us guard rails that we do, they're external, that help us not only be subject to these market pressures. Justine in general is your impression now? It was open AI doing enough in terms of its safety procedures and protocols to adequately vet its own products and to protect the public. I think it depends entirely on how rapidly their research progresses. If they're most aggressive predictions of how quickly their systems will get more advanced are correct, then I have serious concerns. If they're most aggressive predictions may well be wrong, in which case I'm somewhat less concerned. Let me finally, because I want to be mindful of the time and I've got colleagues who want to ask questions. Let me just end with this. You, in your written testimony, you make, I think, a very important and helpful point about AI development in China, and why the competition with China, though real, should not be taken as excuse for us to do nothing. Could you just amplify that because we've heard a lot of folks sitting where you're sitting over the last year and a half raise the China point and usually say, well, we mustn't lose the race to China. Therefore, it would be better if Congress did little to nothing. You think that that's wrong, just explaining this to us why. I think that the competition with China is certainly a very important consideration and we should be keeping a very close eye on what they're doing and how U.S. technology compares to their technology. But I think it is used as an all-purpose excuse to not regulate and an all-purpose defense against any kind of regulation. I think that's mistaken on a few fronts. It's mistaken because of what's happening in China. They are regulating their sector pretty heavily. They are scrambling to keep up with the U.S. They are facing some serious macro headwinds in terms of economic problems, access to semiconductors after U.S. export controls. So China has its own set of issues. We shouldn't treat them as just absolutely rare to go and about to pass this at any moment. And I think it also totally belies the fact that regulation and innovation do not have to be intention. This is a technology AI that consumers don't trust. There's been recent consumer sentiment surveys showing that if they see AI in a product description, they're less likely to use the product. So if you can implement regulation that is light touch, that increases consumer trust, that helps the government be positioned to understand what is going on with the technology, you can regulate in really sensible ways without even impacting innovation at all. So it's irrelevant, if it's going to affect the race with China. Thanks very much, Senator Holly. Senator Durbin. Thank you very much, Senator Holly. Senator Durbin. Thank you. I'm going to ask some basic questions. Liberal Arts Lawyer. Forgive me. Maybe it will be lead to inspiration. I'm not sure. I'm trying to understand the mechanism of regulation in the AI venture. We look back in history to the Manhattan Project, and it was inspired by the government, funded by the government, staffed by the government, built by the government, succeeded. I think it generally succeeded. Then you fast forward a few years to the race to the moon, and the question is, was it inspired by the government, but now that we have more private sector involved in it in terms of the actual project and its success. Then you go to the world of quantum and let me tell you at this point that's as far as I can go in my expertise other than the fact that I met a man who works for DARPA, who explained to me that his job is to prove that the quantum effort of a certain company, private company, doesn't work. He's supposed to prove this over and over again. It seems all Peter, very interesting guy. But it appears that that is all private sector, and we as regulators are on the outside, getting ready to prove it doesn't work, hoping that someday we won't be able to prove it. So the question is now, where is AI? And can we, as a government, actually regulate the future of an industry, unless we have a team and technology that matches what they have, or at least is closer to it? It seems to me it's tough to regulate an entity if you don't understand it and the decisions that they have to make. Would anybody like to straighten me out? Please. Yes, thank you for the question. I think that the government has a really useful role to play here in incentivizing good work. So in my written testimony I speak to how there are very clear gaps in current AI development processes within the tech industry where there just isn't enough research and there isn't enough work and it hasn't organically emerged due to market pressures and things like that. So in particular, there isn't a really rigorous, mature science of data analysis in order to understand the relationship between inputs and outputs. We've seen in the past that there have been grants, things available through DARPA, for example, to increase the state of the art in machine translation. So now it's possible to communicate with someone speaking in a different language without knowing that language. That has been partially enabled by DARPA and grants through there. So I think that by focusing in on these sort of difficult points within the AI life cycle where there really hasn't been development and there should be, and I think we cover that in some of our written testimonies, the government has a very good role to play and helping make sure that AI continues to be developed in a way that's beneficial as opposed to overlooking a lot of the serious issues. The way you explained your background at least I hope I caught it, you've been primarily private sector. Yes. So the question I'm asking you is if the government is going to regulate you with some federal employees or contract employees, do we have the level of expertise to really interface with what you're doing in the private sector? I think it's possible to hire for the expertise if you don't already. I mean, I will speak to that as I've met with staff, I've been incredibly impressed by the intelligence of the people that I've operated with. So I do have some faith that the government is able to employ relevant people. I think part of the difficulty is the compensation, right? So big tech companies are offering million dollar packages. So that ends up being, I think, quite a difficult tension there. But this is a situation where you might have individuals in government under NDA working within the company or auditing the company in some way, you know, respecting trade secrets, IP, those kinds of things, but still being able to sort of, you know, lift the hood and see what's happening underneath and provide feedback on it. Anyone else want to come in on the government effort, Mr. Harris? Yes, thank you so much for the question, Senator Durbin. I understood two different elements from your question. One being, can we actually regulate this? And two being, do we have the right people in government to do it? To the first point, I would refer you back to the excellent Blumenthal Holly framework that has already been presented. I was hoping you'd say that. It contains the key elements that I would recommend, even if I had not read it, I would have said licensing and registration of AI systems and the companies that make them liability, clearly holding AI companies liable for the products that they make and provenance, giving people the ability to know what content is produced by AI and what content is produced by humans. Those are just a few pieces that are already in the framework and I'm excited to see legislative text with the details of that. To your question about talent, this is not the first time this issue has come up in the federal government. You might recall the healthcare.gov launch and that was a- Oh yeah. Yes, that was, I believe, one of the first major public moments when people realized it was very hard for the federal government under procurement and staffing procedures to hire the right people to launch large scale technology projects. Now there have been advances since then, there's something called cyber pay that allows agencies to pay a little bit more, but I don't think it's gone far enough. I think there's a situation now where one of the techniques to recruit is to find people who've already made a good amount of money in the private sector and can make a little bit less for a few years and then know they're going to go back. I don't actually think that's a long-term sustainable model. I think the rates of pay still need to go up, but I would like to call your attention to the AI Safety Institute, which exists within this, within the Department of Commerce, that has actually started hiring up for this task at hand. I think that there are incredible people there that need a lot more money, and I hope that you will give that to them. Thank you. Thanks, Senator Durbin. Thank you for your support and others. Your support for the framework that Senator Hawley and I have developed. I'm not going to hold you to support for the bill because the text is important. We hope it will be available very, very shortly. But your support for the principles and the basic framework is very, very important to us and encouraging us to go forward. I'm going to call on Senator Kennedy, and then he'll be followed by Senator Padilla. We have a vote ongoing. I'm going to run to vote so that I will be back and then leave Senator Hawley to chair and he'll be, we'll be tag teaming, but we'll go forward with the questioning while I'm gone. Senator Kennedy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Harris, you mentioned as one of the tenets of variation provenance. By that do you mean notice that when consumers deal with the right robot, they should be told with its robot? Thank you so much for your question, Sen. You don't need to thank me. You come to the stands, you're... There are multiple elements of provenance technologies. One is disclosure, and yes, that is saying that if a company uses AI and has AI interacting with you, that it should disclose that you are interacting with an AI system or a bot. But another element of- So that number one is notice. If I'm interfacing with a robot or with artificial intelligence, the owner of that artificial intelligence should tell me as a consumer, I'm a robot. Yes, absolutely. Okay, that's number one. Tell me what number two is. So number two is sometimes referred to as watermarking. I know that this committee heard in April testimony about this topic of watermarking. And watermarking can happen in one of two ways. It can be either a visible or direct disclosure that content, for example, an AI generated image, an AI generated audio file video, or even text, can be a direct disclosure that it's AI generated. You've seen watermarks that have- I get it. So that's another form of notice. Yeah. You could call it that. But that's direct watermarking. Then there's also another technique which is a more indirect disclosure which is hiding an invisible signal within the text of a piece of text that's generated by AI within an image, which is a hidden pattern of pixels. What good does that do in terms of a consumer? Well, the good thing about that is that it can be much more difficult to remove than simply a notice that says this was produced by AI at the top or bottom of a picture that you could just crop out and remove very easily. So watermarks have value in that sense. There's also another technology that was also discussed in April here, which is called digital fingerprinting. This technology has been used to keep track of child sexual abuse material and terrorist content circulating online. And that creates what's called a hash, a unique identifier for images, audio files, could be even done with text or videos. That's stored in a database, and that can associate a piece of content and then identify it as AI generated. All these are forms of notice. I would, some more direct than others, I would call them forms of. I'm not trying to trick you. I'm trying to understand. Are there any companies that are giving the world proper notice right now? Anybody? So, I'm happy to answer that. Sure. So according to their public statements- Yes or no, please sir. Because I got all the ground to cover. Google DeepMinds SynthID is the name of the technology. Looks good, I haven't tested it. But they're trying to give notice. Yeah. OK. Licensing. What good is licensing going to do? I mean, you go to government and say, OK, here. Give me a license. What good is I going to do? Well, anybody? I'm happy to take that one also briefly. As in, is the case in many professions, the law, medicine, you need a license to practice. And if you violate the code of that profession, you can no longer practice. And with technology, I see no reason why it should be done. So with the license, we should have a coded behavior. Yes, absolutely. OK. And what should be in that coded behavior? Again, happy to offer this to any of my co-panelists here. But I believe that ethics are critical that artificial intelligence systems should be designed in ways that they can't do damage to people, that they don't discriminate, that they don't give people advice that causes, that brings harm to them, that's incorrect, those are a few elements of the code. So basically, I'm not, and I'm trying to understand this. Yes. Because I think you're all extraordinarily bright. That's obvious. But the American people don't understand what you're talking about, okay? And frankly, many times you neither do I. So you license with a code of behavior. That would require government to set up some sort of agency to enforce that code of behavior. Is that correct? This is an area where there are actually multiple interesting proposals. There's a law professor at Fordham Law School named Chinmay Sharma who has been writing about creating a malpractice regime for engineers who develop AI. Well, that's what I'm getting to next. Liability. It is possible for the private sector to enforce through liability. Why are our current laws right now are contract laws right now not adequate? Again, go ahead. I can jump in on that. I'm sorry, yes. At present, it's very unclear how AI should be thought of and how different actors in what gets called the value chain should take responsibility for unintended outcomes. The best comparison that people turn to is issues with software, issues with cybersecurity, which I think many tort experts, which I am not one, considered to be an area of liability that has not been especially successful in allocated responsibility for harms. And so, you know, that's not an especially promising precedent, necessarily. And also, AI is very different from the kinds of software you're dealing with, and the problems and harms that AI can cause are different from cyber security issues. So, I think, you know, liability is a way, if there can be clear allocation of liability, that's a way of sort of flexibly setting incentives that depend on the specifics of any given case that could potentially be quite helpful if it were possible to provide more clarity. Thank you. Senator Copicicor. Thank you very much, Senator Holly. I think I'll start, given that Senator Kennedy was just asking questions. T and I have a bill on journalism compensation. I'd ask this of you, Dr. Mitchell. We want to make sure that this is fair for people that are producing content and that they're getting paid. And one concern is that AI developers made train their models on content from journalists and other content creators only to regurgitate that content without attribution or compensation. And that's why last week I sent a letter on this. And in your testimony you say that AI firms should conduct due diligence on the foreseeable outcomes of a technology. Before it is deployed, obviously Senator Kennedy and I and others believe that we should have some kind of agreement on what it is deployed. Obviously, Senator Kennedy and I and others believe that we should have some kind of agreement on what compensation is here. But could you talk about harms that new AI features pose in markets like journalism, which is key to the first amendment that we have functioning journalism? Go ahead. Right, yeah, thank you. And that's such an important point. So there's a couple of things here. One is that machine learning models that are trained on previous news articles are only able to speak to the past, right? So, one of the critical needs in journalism is to continue to be up to date about what's actually happening. And we lose that when we start to just rely on sort of past statements and regurgitated in a way that may be relevant for a current situation. So that's one sort of key issue. Another issue is that gendered AI technology seems to be somewhat replacing journalist jobs. At least I personally know lots of journalists who are now out of the job, and they have managers who are pushing use of this technology more and more. That's problematic because the biases of the system that's generating the content is going to then proliferate throughout the different articles that are being written. When ideally we could have lots of diverse perspectives reporting on different material. And then it also sort of waters down or makes a little bit more bland the information that's put out there and available. And there's also this additional problem of automation bias where, even if you're working with generated content, you might be more likely to accept it because it's been generated by an automated system where it might not be saying something that you otherwise would be saying. So there are a lot of issues here where I think journalists in particular should be able to because it's been generated by an automated system, where it might not be saying something that you otherwise would be saying. So there are a lot of issues here where I think journalists in particular should be protected relevant to language generation, and minimally have compensation when their work is included in the data. Okay, thank you. We obviously have a number of bills people are working on, this committee including coins and tell us inerson Blackburn and I on people's Right to their own images and the like but I thought I'd focus Just on one thing today and I have a number of bills with Senator Thune and others to make sure we have regulations at work and guard Rails in place just because I see the potential upside of this as well. And I think the only way we're going to get there is if we don't have a bunch of people ripped off in scams. And if we don't have a harm done to our democracy. So two ways that we look at this, one is to do, we have two bills that are major. One is with Senator Holly and myself on banning the deep fix where it is actually someone pretending to be the candidate. When they're not, we've seen this happen on both sides of the aisle. And we've seen other states including Texas actually take action on this. We have I think 18, 19 states have done this, including red states, blue states, purple states, where they have at least required labeling of ads. And we understand in our bill, Senator Holly and myself that you're not going to be able to cover satire and that kind of thing because the Constitution, but the labeling requirements that Senator McCousekin and I have, would get at not small ball stuff like hair color but would get at least so that people know if it is the candidate or not themselves because even with set higher I know people are confused because they've showed me stuff and said is this really them? Is that really Trump? Is that really Harris? Is that really I mean it's an unbelievable thing to do to voters when you're trying to get them to make a decision. So I just look at this as too prong and I guess I'd go with you, Mr. Harris, because you talked about this earlier. Do you agree there's a serious risk posed by the use of AI in our elections? And can you tell us how AI has the potential to turbo charge your election related disinformation? Thank you so much Senator Clobuchar for the question and for your commendable efforts on legislation producing all of the bills that you mentioned. We have gotten those two bills through the rules committee, but Senator McConnell is having an issue with them and I'm just really concerned that we are not going to be able to advance them on the floor before it's too late but continue on? Yes, absolutely. So this is a topic that I have written about extensively in part with in my work with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. I produced a guide for how election officials can prepare for AI threats along with co-authors and I think that it's very, very important that we be prepared for a variety of threats. Those threats could include deepfakes of election officials, of candidates like yourselves, and also deepfakes that resent election apparatus in them that indicate that there was tampering with physical objects associated with the election. In two bills that I mentioned earlier that I worked on in California that are currently awaiting signature, fingers crossed by Governor Newsom, Assembly Bill 2655, by Mark Burman, Assembly Bill 2839 by Gail Pellarin. Those would actually have serious consequences so that if someone posted those types of election deepfakes, they could be removed that platforms would be required to remove them. Yeah, well our bill allows for them. Many of them are actually supporting this bill because it makes it clear the platforms are that they would have to take it down but it also puts liability on the people that put those up. Yeah. Potential liability, which is a way we handles so many areas, liability for whatever male, fesant group decided to fake that it's the candidate. And I just, I, anyway, I hope that's their direction. I haven't seen those bills. I just know what they've done in other states, including, as I said, Texas, Mississippi, and many others. So I'm just sad and very concerned that our federal government isn't doing anything and moving these bills because we don't have anything really that protects federal elections, which is kind of a big deal. We'll try to use existing laws, but the state laws would remain in our bills, but it would just simply give us the protection and federal elections. So I guess that the Mitch McConnell has decided we're going to just roll the dice and see if it all is fine. But I'm already having people come up to me and say, is this really the person? I don't think this is the person. And we could stop this right now by putting these bills in place. Senator Pedilla. Thank you. Thank you to all of you for your testimony today. As you're, I'm sure, aware of the USAI Safety Institute recently announced a deal with open AI and Thropic who agreed to share their models with researchers before and after deployment for research for testing and for evaluation. My first question is for Ms. Turner and for Dr. Mitchell. What do you think about this agreement? Thank you Senator Pia. I haven't seen the details of the agreement. I think in principle it sounds excellent. I think it's a great step forward. I'm excited by the work that the AI Safety Institute is setting out to do. And I echo Mr. Harris' call for them to be as well-resourced as they possibly can be. I think the success of an arrangement like this will depend on a lot of details about timing and access and what kind of assets are allowed to be accessed in what kinds of ways. So I'm optimistic about it and I'm very pleased to see the agreement, but we'll have to see where it goes from here. Dr. Mitchell. Thank you, yeah. I echo Ms. Toner. I think that one of the reasons why this is really critical is that it can help keep companies sort of accountable for the statements they make and the kind of things that they might be misleading the public about with respect to how well the technology works, when you can have kind of independent examinations or reproducibility of the evaluation results or more rigorous evaluation, this kind of thing. I think we're in a better situation for developing AI in a way that's very well informed. My one concern, and again, this is not knowing a lot about this particular agreement, would be if research was abused. So for example, saying your researcher and then using the technology in a malicious way, I think this happened previously with Facebook. And so there's a lot of detail there about how you decide that there's a researcher that is OK to be using it. And there's a lot of potential, I think, issues there. But at a high level, I do agree that this is an incredible thing to do, and we need to have, in general, sort of these independent analyses that are able to hold a tech and check. So just as a follow-up, I think you both began to touch on it. How would you advise policymakers to view what success looks like from these agreements and arrangements. What's our Dr. Mitchell then come back? Yeah, so one thing in particular that I've been really interested in is just evaluation and rigorous evaluation and how you really quantify how well these systems work. I think that larger tech companies are sort of incentivized to report that the systems work well without really breaking down what that means, the context of use, when it can be used, when it can't. And one thing that sort of independent research might be able to do is actually do pretty rigorous analysis of how the systems might work in specific kinds of scenarios and provide just a lot more insight that would not be provided if they had more of a profit incentive. Yes, Tony. Yeah, just to add on to that, all of which I agree with, I think it'll be difficult for us from the outside to be able to evaluate, I believe, because I expect a lot of this testing and evaluation to happen behind closed doors, which I think is reasonable. And so I think the task for Congress will be to be interfacing and working closely with NIST and the AI Safety Institute to hear from them how well this is working. Do they have the, again, the sort of contractual arrangements that they need in order to carry out the kinds of testing that they think would be most valuable? Do they have the funding that they need? Do they have the staffing that they need? And so we've talked a little bit about the need for more technical talent and government. Personally, I think salaries are only one piece of the puzzle there. I know multiple people who are really interested in offering their immense talents to the US government and are just the processes, the hiring processes are impossible. And another element that I know comes up for people who do end up getting into government is their ability to use halfway up to date technologies rather than extremely old devices, extremely old systems. So I do think that the talent issues are critical and I think that the salaries are part of that, but I worry sometimes that we see the salaries as a totally intractable problem and then give up. And I think there are other ways to increase access to technical talent as well. OK, thank you. In my time remaining, I do want to touch on one other topic. And this is for you, Dr. Mitchell. In your testimony, you observed that there's currently no well-developed science that analyzes how inputs affect outputs once a model is trained. In simple terms, can you help all of us better understand why this is important for developers to consider? Sure. Yeah. So an analogy to consider might be with baking or cooking. So when you make a cake, ideally, you have a sense of what the ingredients are and what the difference ingredients might do. So if I add more egg, it'll be more puffy, these kinds of things. We don't have a similar thing with building models. And so if you think of the data as essentially ingredients and the training is cooking, and then the model is sort of the output, the thing that you've cooked. We're missing the sort of approach where we have recipes. We're missing this like deep understanding of what all the pieces are that result in this this output thing we might want to eat or not. So we've got from the animal kingdom, the bacon, but in a very effective way. Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much. Senator Padilla, all of the witnesses that we have before us today have left companies, AI companies, based on concerns about commitment to safety. You're not alone, obviously, open AI in particular is experiencing a number of high profile departures, including the head of its super alignment team, Jan Jan Wica, who left to join arrival and the topic, and upon departing he wrote on X quote, I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company's core priorities for some time until we finally reached a breaking point. He also wrote that he quote, believe much more of our bandwidth should be spent getting ready for the next generation of models on security, monitoring, preparedness, safety, adversarial, robustness, super alignment, confidentiality, social impact, and related topics. These problems are quite hard to get right, and I am concerned that we aren't on a trajectory to get there. Let me ask all of you based on your firsthand experiences. Would you agree essentially with those points? Let me begin with you, Mr. Saunders, and go to the others if you have responses. Yeah. Thank you, Senator. Dr. Jan Leica was my manager for a lot of my time at OpenAI, and I really respected his opinions and judgment. And I think what he was talking about was sort of a number of issues where OpenAI is not ready to deal with models that have some significant catastrophic risks, such as high-risk models under the preparedness framework. So things that could actually start to assist novices in creating biological weapons or the systems that could start conducting unprecedented kinds of cyber attacks. And so for those kinds of systems, we're going to, you know, first we're going to need to nail security so that we make sure that the systems aren't stolen before we figure out what they can do and used by people to cause harm. Then we're going to need to figure out how do you actually deploy some system that under some circumstances could help someone construct a biological weapon. But lots of people want to use it for a bunch of other things that are good. So every AI system today is vulnerable to something called jail breaking, where people can come up with some way to convince the system to provide advice and assistance on anything they want. No matter what the companies like, you know, have tried to do so far. And so we're going to need to have solutions to hard problems like these. And then we're going to need to, you know, have some way to deal with models that, again, might be smarter than people supervising them and might start to like autonomously cause certain kinds of risks. And so I think he was speaking to, again, just like a number of areas where the company was not being rigorous with the systems that we currently have, which, you know, again, can maybe can amplify some kinds of problems, but once we reach the point where like, you know, catastrophic risk is possible, we're really going to need to have our shut together. Um, others have comments in response to Ms. Mitchell? Yeah, I just, I agree with you on statement there and I think this also echoes some of what Ms. Toner had said about responsible AI type people being disempowered in tech companies. And so while on the one hand, it's helpful for tech companies to have responsible AI, trust and safety teams, so that they can tell senators that they have them. On the other hand, when it comes to making critical decisions about how the technology gets developed, they're usually left out of the room. So this is a serious issue. Yeah. I'm gonna interrupt my second round to yield to Senator Blackburn, who is rejoined us. Thank you so much. Yes, there are so many hearings today. It is catch-knows-running back and forth. Mr. Sanders, to the point you were just making, one of the things we've said repeatedly is, we have to have an online privacy bill that is federally preemptive before we start down the AI path because people want to be able to firewall their information and keep it out of the public domain. In last week, and Ms. Toner, I want to come to you on this because meta-announce it was going to use public content and things from Facebook and Instagram in the UK and they were going to use this to train their generative AI models. And Metta said their goal was to reflect, let's say, British culture history and idiom and that UK companies and institutions will be able to utilize the latest technology. And I think we all know what that means. I'd love to hear what concerns you have over that announcement and what limits. Should we place on companies like matter that are using this data that is shared on their platforms to train their generative AM models. Thank you, Senator Blackburn. My understanding of that announcement, which I'm only, I should admit, have seen it briefly, but not dug into in depth. Is that that was actually a practice that Meta was already very much going ahead with in the United States due to the lack of privacy protections here. And that the announcement last week was, I think they had had that privacy bill. Indeed. I think I believe other witnesses may know better. I believe that they had held off on initiating that process in the UK due to privacy protections that do exist in the UK. So to me this is actually an example of perhaps success on the UK's part if meta felt the need to be a little more thoughtful, a little more deliberate, a little more selective about the ways in which they're using British user's data because of the legal protections that existed there, which as you rightly point out, do not exist in the United States. And what others want to add to that. I'm happy to add on that. There was actually something on this same topic that really got a lot of attention at the beginning of the summer. A lot of users of Facebook and Instagram found that they could opt out of the process of having their public data used for training of AI systems. And then they posted instructions. I saw this on both TikTok and on LinkedIn. Users had posted instructions how to go to the part of your Facebook or Instagram settings where you can opt out of having your data used. I tried to do it in Facebook, I tried to do it in Instagram, and I couldn't find the button. And then I posted and said I can't find the button in the comments there, and it turned out everyone with their IP address in the United States couldn't find the button because this was a feature that I believe was only offered to people in the EU and perhaps in the UK, I heard different stories about which parts of the world. But this idea that we, Americans, are second class citizens, that we don't even have the right to object that Europeans or people in the UK have to object to our photos of ourselves, what is our families of our children being used to train AI systems. And at that AI systems that we don't even have confidence in how they work, we don't know if they will accidentally release personal information about us in the future, make images that look just like us. So I applaud you for raising this issue. And I'm excited to see bills like APRA make progress so that we have the foundations of a legal system that can address that issue. Well, we think having an online privacy, federally preemptive privacy bill that gets signed into law is something that is going to be necessary. And as Senator Blumethal said in his opening remarks and I'm paraphrasing him now. But basically, Big Tech has proven to us they are not going to take steps that are necessary to protect the information. People, I do want to ask you something else. And when we're talking about AVs that act in the world without human humans, and they're using AI, and that brings about the difference between intelligence and agency, between systems that think and systems that can act. So Ms. Toner, let me come to you on this. When you look at this difference between intel and agency, do you see these as different concepts? Do they carry different threats? Should these be approached separately? Do this play into AGI? Tell me your thoughts on that. Thank you, Senator. It's a good question. It's a timely question. We actually have a paper coming out introducing exactly this issue for policymakers in a couple of weeks. And what I would say is I think these ideas of agency or agents that can take actions autonomously is not at all separate. It is not the same thing as intelligence, but we are already seeing the ability of companies to take language models, chat bots like chat GPT and others, and add a little bit of additional software, add a little bit of additional development time, and convert them into systems that can go out and take autonomous action. Right now, the state of these systems is pretty basic, but certainly talking to researchers and engineers in the space, they are very optimistic, they are very excited about the prospects of this category of system, and it's something that is very actively under development. As far as I'm aware, all of the top AI companies with the goal being, you know, initially perhaps something like a personal assistant that could help you book a flight or a schedule of meeting. But ultimately, you know, Mustafa Salayman, formerly at Google now at Microsoft, has talked about, for example, could you have an AI that you give it, I forget the number, something like $100,000 and it comes back to you a little while later with a million dollars that it's made because it's run some business or done something more sophisticated. At the limit, certainly this is very related to ideas around AGI and Advanced AI more generally, sort of the founding idea or founding excitement of the field of AI, I think, for many people has been the idea of systems that can take very complicated actions, pursue very complicated goals in the real world. And I see a lot of, again, excitement in the field that we might be on the path in that direction. Well, in Tennessee, with our healthcare industry, our logistics industry, our advanced manufacturing, we see great promise. With my entertainers and singers and songwriters and musicians and authors. We don't want this to become a way to steal their name, image, likeness, voice. And that's why we have the No Fakes Act and I know Senator Klobuchar, who is joined me on that bill. Talked with you all about that later. I've run way over and you've been generous, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Thank you very much, Senator Blackburn. A number of you have mentioned whistleblowers and the need for protecting them. Maybe anyone who would like could expand on that point. You are all insiders who have left companies or disassociated yourself with them in one way or another. And I'd be interested in your thoughts. Mr. Saunders. Yeah. Thank you, Senator. So when I resigned from OpenAI, I sort of found that they gave to every departing employee a restrictive, not disparage of an agreement and you would lose all the equity you had in the company if you didn't sign this agreement where you had to effectively not criticize the company and not tell anybody that you'd sign this agreement. And I think this really opened my eyes to the kinds of legal situation that employees face if they want to talk about problems of the company. And I think there's a number of important things that employees want in this situation. So there's like knowing who you can talk to. It's very unclear what parts of the government would, you know, be, have expertise in, you know, specific kinds of issues. You want to know that you're going to talk to somebody who understands, you know, the issues that you have, and, you know, that has some ability to act of them. And then you also want, you know, that has some ability to act of them. And then you also want legal protections. And this is where I think it's important to define protections that don't just apply when there's a suspected violation of law, but when there's a suspected like harm or risk imposed on society. And so that's why I think legislation needs to include establishing whistleblower points of contact and these protections. Other thoughts, Ms. Mitchell? Yeah, thank you. So I think Mr. Saunders is making one of the really important points here. There isn't a lot of knowledge about one and how to whistle blow. So as part of my sort of ethics studies, I tried to familiarize myself with the situation where you would whistle blow versus whether this would be like breaking your NDA that sort of thing. This is something that I had to learn myself and ideally I would have had some sort of resource. Ideally there's you know some agency you could call and say hey theoretically if I think there's an issue now what do I do right? But essentially if you're considering whistle blowing it's you and you alone against you know a company making a ton of money with lawyers who are set up to harm you if you make the smallest move incorrectly whatever it is. And so I think that it needs to be very clear to people working internally when and how to whistleblow and it needs to be very clear at the highest levels of the company that that is supported. I could even imagine having orientations where you're required to provide information on whistle blowing, that kind of thing. But currently there's no information internally. And you're very much on your own in a situation where you might lose your job and then not have the money to pay for a lawyer to fight it. Mr. Hona. Thank you. Just to put a finer point on something that I think both Mr. Tonders and Dr. Mitchell are describing, I think a core to the problem here is that the lack of regulation on tech means that many of these concerning practices are not illegal. And so existing whistleblower protections, it's very unclear if they apply at all. And if you're a whistleblower, potential whistleblower sitting inside one of these companies, you don't really want to go out on a limb and take a guess. Well, is this enough of a financial issue that the SEC would be, you know, would cover me or do I have to go talk? If it's something that's kind of novel related to AI development or other technology development, where you have serious concerns, but there's not a clear statute on the book saying the company is breaking the law, then your options are limited. So I think the need for whistleblower protections goes hand in hand with the lack of other rules. So I think the point that you've just made is really important that the failure to develop safety and control features in a product is not illegal, perhaps, and therefore may not be covered by a strict reading of whistleblower laws, even if it is a practice which is unethical and harmful. I think that's a very important point. Let me sort of go to the other side of that question, which is the incentives, whether promotion or compensation, bonuses and other kinds of incentives that are offered by the company. Do they align with safety? For example, our employees rewarded for developing better safety features, or is it more rewards for racing to the market? Which is the dynamic that we've discussed today. Mr. Harris, or Mr. Saunders? Mr. Harris? Yeah, I could share an anecdote about that, Senator Blumethal. Early in my tenure at Facebook, I was introduced to someone, it was a friend of a friend, and I told them that I had joined the civic integrity team. This person said, oh, that work sounds so interesting, but I just never joined teams like that because you can never show impact. You can never have anything to say on your performance reviews about what you did, because the only thing you achieved was hopefully to not have something happen. And I heard different versions of that throughout my time in the tech industry, not just from inside of the companies where I worked, but I heard that across the board. It's very hard to make progress in your career when you work in an area that doesn't have clear ways to show progress. I also heard of people being asked whether they could demonstrate that work that they did reduced the number of public relations emergencies for the company. How can you possibly demonstrate that you reduced the number of public relations emergencies for a company? So again, these are structural problems with doing that work, and I applaud you for bringing up that question. Thank you. Miss Saunders. So I think there were a couple of significant goals that open AI as an organization has. So one of these is like maintaining research velocity. And so on things like security, OpenAI is reluctant to do things that will require additional work from researchers or might slow them down to use a more secure system. And then on more of the like, testing side, there's like often, you know, like release dates that are set where like the company starts, you know, like talking to a bunch of, you know, customers and saying like, oh yes, we're going to ship by the state. And then sort of like the amount of safety work is, you know, determined after like, you know, picking like how picking how quickly you want to ship and subject to office politics and these kinds of things. This is because companies just face an enormous incentive to be seen as the company that's leading in the AI space. And so this is why we need to have some kind of regulation to be doing the right thing, because otherwise, it's going against the grain. I'll give Ms. Toner an asmitial a chance to respond as well if you have any responses. Yes. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I echo my co-witnesses. We used to sort of, I previously sort of realized that it's difficult to get promoted. If you focus on safety, this kind of thing, because you're not promoted for the bad headlines that never exist, right? And so you're trying to prove something that never actually happened. And this also speaks to the role of foresight, and my foresight isn't incentivized. Because if you take these extra steps to make sure that something bad doesn't happen, you can't prove that it could have happened. So there's really, it's really quite difficult to focus on safety and ethics and these kinds of things. In general, your promotional velocity is much less compared to your peers, which also means that you are less likely to become a leader at the company in order to further set norms. So by focusing on things like safety and ethics, it's a way to sort of remain at the lower levels of a company and not be able to fundamentally shape it for the better. You know, we've seen examples already of our foreign adversaries using AI to meddle in our democracy. I think last month, open AI revealed that the Iranian government linked group had used chat GPT to create content for social media and blogs attempting to sow division and push Iran's agenda in the United States. There have been reports that China and Russia have also used AI tools deceptively to interfere in our democracy. I mentioned them earlier. I think the threat to our elections is real and we're unprepared. Mr. Harris, you worked on a California law that seeks to safeguard our democracy. Are those the kinds of protections that you think would be effective at the federal level? And is there more that you would add to the California law? Thank you so much for the question, Senator. I believe that in California, it's difficult to make a lot of types of laws that could be made at the federal level. There are a number of reasons for that. One is simply the state agency infrastructure is dramatically smaller than the federal agency infrastructure. And in California, in a situation of budget deficit, it's very hard right now to pass any legislation that has any significant cost. That I believe is one of the biggest barriers to passing the legislation that we need. And I think that you have, in front of you, in your framework, the type of legislation that California would not be able to achieve things like licensing and registration and liability. Those would be very costly at the scale of a state to enforce those. And to be honest, it would, of all the states in the country, maybe be one that costs California more than many others simply because of the location of the technology industry there. And there might be political conditions that make it harder in California to pass that type of legislation. Again, I'll entertain any points about the California law that any of you would like to make. And if not, let me follow up Mr. Harris in your experience there. What was your takeaway from the tech companies? Were they supportive, helpful? How would you characterize their reaction? Thank you so much for the question. I believe that you need to look at two different phenomena. One is the outward presentation of the tech companies about legislation. And then another is what's happening behind closed doors. I made a reference in my opening statement to the idea of shals and maize. I was surprised. I have been surprised in my work in the California legislature, by the way in which tech industry lobbyists sometimes hiding behind industry groups, sometimes from individual named companies are able to arrive at legislators doors with request removed shalz and replace them with maize to take legislative language that was very well intentioned and at the eleventh hour turn it into something that is meaningless. It concerns me greatly what I've seen in California. There are political realities that if let draft legislation that comes from a civil society group, like the one that I have been working for, the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy, if those pieces of legislation are too bold, sponsors of that legislation, organizational sponsors will be told this isn't going to work and you're going to have to weaken it. And sometimes that comes in many rounds of weakening and it can be very painful to watch. There are two studies you mentioned to study Mr. Harris, which we will put in the record along with your testimony. I want to mention two others. A Stanford Internet Observatory report this past December that found that the training data sets used by AI companies are filled with thousands of known images of child sexual abuse. Possessing that kind of material is a crime. And as you wrote Dr. Mitchell in your testimony training, AI with these kinds of abusive materials, means there's a good chance that the model will generate new abuse material. The second study is a survey released last month by the anti-exploitation group Thorn, one in 10 pre-teens and teens reported that their friends or classmates had used AI tools to generate sexual images of other kids, one in 10 pre-teens and teens, saying they'd use these tools to generate sexual images of their peers. So these new AI tools, which are trained on child sexual exploitation, are fostering sexual harassment of young people and the apps to create that abuse material are easy, they're free to find on Google and Apple AppStores right now. Possessing and creating child abuse material, clear example of the problems with this race to the market, which can easily turn into a race to the bottom. There must be steps that general AI companies can be taking to make sure their tools aren't being trained on illegal child exploitation material and aren't creating these kinds of abusive images of anyone along kids. Would you agree and what kinds of steps should these companies be taking? Yes, thanks for the question. So this speaks to a few different issues that I think I also hit on in my written testimony. So one is just how data analysis is really not a norm within AI culture generally. And so we don't really understand when we're training a model what might be in the data. And part of my work has actually tried to invent methods in order to probe data sets in order to figure out possible problematic content. And it falls on deaf ears. There really isn't an interest in it. So I think that work that can further incentivize this. I think NIST and the USAAS Safety Institute probably have a very clear role to play here in helping us understand what the contents of the data are and further providing mechanisms for people to actually do this in a lawful way in order to really understand the contents. I'll also add, this is just sort of insider knowledge that might be useful for you to know. A lot of the data that ends up being used in machine learning systems are collected via an organization called Common Crawl. I do wonder if there might be room for the government to help Common Crawl to analyze the data before it's released at all, which would stop the further proliferation right where it starts. And the last part I want to make is this is also where water marking and provenance information is really key, including invisible water marking, which is open research, but something that would be very, very helpful in order to trace back where this came from. If I could add Senator Blumenthal. Absolutely. So, yes, I agree with the statements that you made. And I think there are a few lessons that we should learn from this current situation. One is, again, voluntary self-regulation does not work. There is another public statement about this topic that was signed by a number of companies that signed on to what Thorn and All-Tech is human, another non-profit called the Safety by Design Principles. And amongst the signers to that were included, Stability AI.