City Council - Special Meeting

Lane, you want to lead off with the only issue of business habitat management plan compliance projects?

Thank you, Mayor. Aaron is here. Yeah, the purpose of This special meeting is this was at the direction of the council first to do the walkthrough of those areas to give not only the council, but a public sense of exactly what these areas are like, get a feel of it, but also to give everyone a chance to to hear from some of the experts and so we definitely appreciate um uh everyone from the services uh us fish and wildlife and and um and california department of fish and wildlife they've we've been working with them for years in this project we appreciate everyone uh coming to help us really review all the facts and information and and our goal tonight is we want direction from the council on how we can move forward with our next steps in the process one end we have our habitat resource management plan we're ready to move forward and we also have the incidental take permit and depend on the direction from council we can possibly move forward with submitting an application and with that i'll turn it over to aaron who's been working on this for four years now.

Thank you, Lane. Thank you, Aaron. Thanks to everyone from the CDFW and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the trip time, sharing time together, and also for being here tonight. It's really good that you're here.

I'm on. You can hear me okay? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Well, great. Thanks everyone for your participation today. It was a great field visit. I know it's always productive to see it with your own eyes and feel it with your own feet and understand what better context of what we're discussing. And thanks again to members of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Really appreciate all the efforts that you made to be here from your job. So thank you. Today we're going to provide an update from basically following up from our April 7th meeting, some questions that were asked of city staff. So we'll dive into it.

There's usually a lag.

Okay.

and Mark are here so we can begin.

Okay, thanks. And apologies, I'm still in my field clothes. I feel unprofessional today, but I didn't have time to go home and change. Okay, again, we're going to give you an update on the RMP resource management plan project that we've been working on, following up with the question that you had from last meeting on April 7th, and then also an update on the citywide ITP project and asked to receive input on the mitigation strategy for Monterey Gilead. So just a reminder, the city has an obligation to manage and maintain habitat within four different areas on the former Fort Ord properties that they now have ownership of. And with that is the preparation of a resource management plan. And we've been coordinating closely with the 2045 general plan update and EIR and also working to ensure consistency with our other project in contract with the city, which is the citywide incidental take permit for Monterey Gilead and other listed species now, and working with that to make sure that conceptual mitigation strategy is consistent with the resource management plan. Just a reminder of our four areas of note. We have our Marina Northwest Corner Habitat Management Plan or HMA. We have our Landfill HMA. We have the Marina Airport HMA and the Salinas River HMA. And yeah, next slide. So back in April, we were here and following up on questions that the council and members of the public had regarding the Salinas River HMA, again, at the top left of that map. And specifically asking for more information regarding public access and what allowable developments in there. And we went over that HMA as a habitat reserve there under the installation wide habitat management plan prepared by the Army. There is no new development allowed in that area. However, public access can be permitted and allowed. using existing trails and facilities that are there. But new development is not allowed. Council requested a site visit to go out and see the site. And unfortunately, right now, at this time of year, it's heavily overgrown, lots of poison oak. And as I was saying today in the field, lots of rattlesnakes up there. So we're going to figure out another time to get you guys out there. But it continues to be on our list. And as we're working with the general plan update team and their consultants and the city's consultants, we are working to prepare the administrative draft resource management plan anticipated for internal review and resource agency review, which includes. CDFW, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in summer 2026. So we're getting that over to them hopefully in the next couple months. Again, we're trying to make sure that there's consistency between the mitigation strategy for the ITP and This document, they complement each other. And so what happens in that northwest corner HMA that we talked about today matters in terms of preparing that plan. We would then turn around after comments and get a public draft out for a public meeting and comments in the fall and hopefully get to a final RMP, city council meeting, public meeting later in the winter. So that's our update with RMP. Okay. All right, so for the conceptual mitigation strategy for the ITP, Just to remind you guys how we got here, this is what we've been presenting for the last few meetings. We're proposing conceptually high level, again, looking at impacting the areas in red for future development opportunities and preserving the areas in blue for obviously conservation value. And so as we're looking at these, These areas in red were identified by council and the public as high priority areas for potential future development sites, not only for affordable housing, but recreational facilities at the equestrian center area over here at this, of Imgen and Preston, business park, the airport business park area, and of course I said affordable housing over here in Cypress Knolls. And just to reiterate from our field visit today, this red area is consistent with the proposed land use plan for the general plan update, which identifies commercial. And I'll pause right there. Lane, do you have anything you wanted to add about... future development here.

Yeah, so with the airport property out here, and we talked about on the specific plan when we were on our site visit, roughly the airport property in that red area is about 75 acres. And in the specific plan, it talks about that we can actually probably develop close to 900,000 square feet of business and manufacturing out there. And just to give you a sense of the impact of that, with Joby Aviation, We worked on a proposal with the county, and Joby's building is a 225,000-square-foot building. And the 300 employees that that building would have, that would generate $218 million a year of economic growth. output, both direct and indirect to the city of Marina, that 300 employees would generate 260 million of direct and indirect economic output to Monterey County. And so that kind of frames the importance of jobs and job creation. When the Fort Ord base closed, that was one of the main things that was a priority for the cities is they lost all these jobs. And so a big function is for job creation. If you look at it really nice job creation, this specific plan is the only area that we realistically can do that. We have retail and they'll get jobs, but this really has high paying jobs and And it really is significant impact. And those numbers from Joby are numbers that Kaiser Marsden developed. So I wanted to put that out there to understand the economic impact of that area out there at the airport. in the Cypress Knolls area. And some of the comments on our site is we talked about it being affordable housing and things like that. Cypress Knolls is not about affordable housing. The city has already met our affordable housing numbers. Cypress Knolls really is about housing for the workforce. We call it the missing middle housing. And so it's housing that we want to be able to develop So your average person, average family that has a job can afford to purchase a house or can afford to rent a house. And that really is the last area in Marina that we have the ability to do that. Marina Station that is developing right now, selling homes, their smallest entry level homes are at a million dollars right now. And that is above average. our target here and so that's the target for for the cypress knolls area and to be able to hit that target there's a lot of things that we have to do right we have to be able to develop the infrastructure right we have to be able to keep the cost down but you also have to be able to generate revenue to be able to support and pay for that infrastructure so that you can develop and sell those houses in in the say the 250 to $500, $600,000 range. And so there's a lot of constraints with Cypress Knolls, but that's a clear goal of the city is to develop that type of housing. We went through a charrette a couple years back. The California APA group came in. We had some charrettes with the community, and they kind of laid out different scenarios. And so part of it is, yes, develop the housing, but the other part is to develop the tax base that can support housing. contributing to that infrastructure so that you can actually get the housing costs down to where you need it. So that's kind of the overall for Cypress Knolls. We've talked about the ball fields and those are just critical areas for the community and I don't have much to say beyond our site visit. We're all supportive of that and And we're moving headstrong. The last area in the red is out. It's our equestrian center area. And we have our equestrian center, actual equestrian center, but we have land out of that. And the goal has always been to develop that whole equestrian center area. into other types of uses that would support National Park Service uses. And so those are the four primary development areas. We have other areas potentially in the future we could develop, but those are the priorities that the City Council set years back as we started this process.

Can you speak to the Northwest HMA a little bit?

Yes.

That's one place you didn't mention, I think.

Yeah, so initially, the city's plans in the Northwest HMA was a connector, a connector street that would take from Del Monte all the way to Second Avenue. And we had different plans with Caltrans to fix the problem. We have a weaving problem there. of the on and off ramps on del monte and on imgen and so we had a long-term plan that would fix all that and would connect um uh the core marina to the the southern part of marina but as we started going through this process uh and working with uh different agencies became very clear this northwest habitat area was prime gilia prime species area and and that was would be very difficult to do any development in that area. And so at that point is when we made the switch and we said, okay, we won't plan the road connection anymore through that area. And that then opened up the ability to start having discussions on being able to mitigate for the airport and Cypress Knolls and the other properties. Yeah, thank you. so the silliest avenue is by reservation road uh if you go way back that was that whole area was set aside as potential of park development they talked about building soccer fields and and things like that but as we started going through this process um that's a prime gilia habitat area and so um that becomes one of the areas to mitigate so that we can develop cypress knolls and the airport area and so i'm working with with fish and wildlife we identified our top priority areas and then they they looked at our areas they said okay these are the prime areas um virgilia and that we can protect and enhance that habitat and so those the areas that they've identified here are their prime areas and that's kind of how we are at this light balance right now it's we've identified our areas they've said these blue areas are prime areas and We think we have potentially a balance to move forward. Thank you, Mayor.

So at this time, let's go to public comment. I'm sorry.

I just wanted to give Lane a moment. Thanks. Sorry, Mayor. Okay. Thank you, Lane. Next slide, please. Thank you. Okay, so in April, we heard a couple of questions related to the ITP and why we're back today. So there was a request for coordination with Preston Park, Ball Field, project proponents, and as identified in the staff report, city has not reached out to them just quite yet. We're working to define the boundaries and the design, and the city is getting consultants on board for design and environmental. So we will be reaching out in the coming months. on that one okay and now to go to the del monte um extension area and the northwest corner HMA where a proposed potential future trail is proposed through that area. So we wanted to take you through some figures and to give you some background and context. Again, we discussed a lot in the field, but I know some of you weren't there, so we'll go through it. So this exhibit is showing the revised conceptual mitigation strategy since we last saw you in April. Again, we took off the Caltrans connection, which would have been an overpass connecting with on and off ramps, and that's not happening anymore. We did have a proposed restoration plan over here in the center about here. And in coordination with the resource agencies, specifically US Fish and Wildlife Service, it was recommended that we focus restoration ideas and options within the areas in the green hatch instead. So that's a different vision than what we had before. Pretty much everything else stays the same. So the blue would be the preservation area again, and the red would be the future development area. As you can see, there are a lot of resources when you get out of the blue blob, blue and red blobs, and you get to the point data, you can see here in purple, the various individuals and populations of Monterey Gilead. We also outlined, identified here, Buckwheat plants shown here in blue, which is an obligate host plant for a federally listed butterfly, the Smith's blue butterfly. One of the main reasons the service is here and coordinating with us on this. Also, Monterey Gilea is a federally listed plant as well as state listed. And there is also another federally listed plant, Eden's Piperia, which is shown down here at the bottom and somewhere up here. But I can't see that far. So, again, a lot of resources to try to weave a trail through and minimize and avoid impacts. And what it comes down to, we worked with Kimley Horn to identify a potential trail alignment to the west, a potential trail alignment to the east. We spoke a little bit about this on Friday. In April, again, this eastern side is not really feasible due to the restricted area to try to get over here, and we would need an easement from the Maury Peninsula Unified School District. The west side is pretty constrained as well. There's the coastal zone and Caltrans, but also the end result is... impacts to Monterey Gilead and Smithsville Butterfly would still occur to the extent that we would need to look for additional mitigation land and or reduce our proposed future development areas. What we're showing in red here would be the realigned Second Avenue extension that would connect to Del Monte Boulevard. It would include a Class 1 trail along with it. So just keep that in mind as we're having our discussions. Okay. Thanks. We put this figure together to try to look at alternatives as requested from CDFW and the service. Are there other ways to meet the goal of connecting Marina, that western side of Marina specifically, as the mayor mentioned, from Del Monte Boulevard over to the new Dunes Connection here, or Dunes Shopping Center here? And, of course, as I mentioned, there would be a Class 1 associated with this future roadway. There is the Monterey Bay Scenic Rec Trail, Recreational Trail, and Beach Range Road. You could take it down to 8th and cut over and access the dunes there. It is a longer route. trail to do a lot of work to get shopping, but maybe not. Some people might be up for it, but a closer connection is understood as a need. Let's see. Okay, I think we're good there. Thanks. So that takes us back to the conceptual mitigation strategy with the one amendment of the Northwest Corner HMA, as I showed earlier. As CDFW mentioned at our field visit, we're kind of at a tipping point. Things are looking good in terms of a balance of preservation and conservation. However, they can't give us anything official until we submit an ITP application. and our goal tonight is to receive input on this conceptual mitigation strategy so we can submit our application and really move this process forward and sharpen our pencils on all the things we discussed today, what long-term management would look like, what we would be doing in these areas, how much area, defining the areas, defining the restoration and enhancement opportunities in each of these areas. So We're looking for some direction on how to get our applications submitted. And with that, I will open up to questions and discussion. And I know, like I said, the service and the state are here, and it's a rare opportunity. Again, thank you so much for coming all this way. They're here and available for questions, really specific, hard questions. So put them to the test like you do with me every time. And with that, I will pause and hand it back to you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. Yes.

Okay. Let's go to public, starting with those of you present. Please come on up. You have up to three minutes, should you wish to speak, and then we'll go online. All right. Not seeing anyone rise. Let's go to Oh, sorry, Fred.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members. My name is Fred Watson. I'm going to talk about the HMP and the ITP. On the HMP, the Salinas River Habitat Management Area has the potential to be the Garland Park of the Salinas Valley. It has fabulous public ownership of both sides of the river with a cathedral of cottonwoods and willows and box elders, herons and egrets flying past, beavers, pond turtles. And there's a great opportunity for the public to see that. There's essentially no opportunity for that now, but there's a system of historic existing but overgrown trails that would facilitate a marvellous loop along the top of the bluff and then along the floodplain of the river there, potentially with public access facilitated off of Blanco Road. That's kind of a story there, but there's potential for public access there. we should pursue that. And to make sure we have the opportunity to do so, can we clarify when we're talking about the public access on existing trails in the habitat management parcel areas, that our intent is that that also includes overgrown existing trails, because some of these trails are pretty overgrown and it's pretty hard to tell there's even a trail there, but I've hiked the whole thing many times. There are trails there that's just very overgrown right now. Secondly, can we pave some of the existing trails? This might constitute new development, which could be a problem. If we can't pave them, then what would it take to be able to for example could we add a little bit of acreage um to um expand the hma a little bit in order to allow for a trail like four tag to run along the top of the bluff overlooking the salinas river with you know we couldn't see it today but it's one of the best views in the city of marina Regarding the ITP, within the conservation and restoration community, the presumption is that the first thing you would do in an area labeled preservation or restoration is remove all of the removable invasive species. And in this case, we're talking Monterey cypress, Monterey pine, Torrey pine, eucalyptus, acacia, Australian tea tree, ice plant, genista. There's a list, but they're all removable invasives. Is that the presumption here? And if so, can we record that in writing? Whenever we put out these maps saying restoration or preservation, what does that actually mean? Does it mean we're going to go and get in there and get rid of all the invasives as the first step? That should be clarified, please. On the red roads that we just saw on a map, We've heard verbally that there's going to be a class one trail next to those red roads. Please also put that in writing so that the future planners know that that was our intent. And I've run out of time. Thank you.

Anyone else? Just one line.

Hello, Mayor and City Council. I think I heard my name called out as the next speaker. Is that correct?

Yes, welcome.

Okay, thank you. First, I want to thank the Council and staff for the opportunity today. It was really an extraordinary couple of hours for me. I appreciated especially getting into the area where back in the year 2000 when I was the the planning commission and chaired the general plan update for the year 2000 we talked about a second avenue extension through that area and i especially appreciated being able to get in there and hear how critical and important that habitat is for sangilia i can remember having listened in on one of your extremely late night meetings. I may have been the only person listening in by Zoom. You council members seemed quite surprised to learn about all of the sand gillia habitat in the pristine sand gillia habitat in that Second Avenue extension. Mayor Delgado today in the field trip really spoke passionately about how important that connection is between Central Marina and South Marina, I want to share that as one who had felt that that was essential to the survival of Central Marina as South Marina began to develop, and we had updated our general plan in the year 2000, I don't feel that anymore. It's not that I think that Central Marina will survive on its own. I think that there's ways we are connecting with South and Central. I know I stay very connected with South Marina. It would be nice if we could do something as Professor Watson spoke about in one of the field trip stops that we could do some kind of less invasive and not as large of a footprint as a 20 foot wide asphalt roadway through there with the shoulders that a 20 foot wide asphalt roadway would require that we could do something more like boardwalks. But I, as a marina, long, long time marina resident who worked on the 2000 general plan, I'm not distraught to not have that Second Avenue extension. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Grace. Let's go to Nikki Nedef. Welcome, Nikki.

Thank you, Mayor Delgado. Nikki Nedef, I am here representing the Monterey Bay chapter of the California Native Plant Society. Our chapter has a very long history of striving to conserve the rare coastal resources that front Monterey Bay, including in Marina and the former Fort Ord military base. CMPS wants the council to reduce the proposed development footprint that you have identified. I know you've put a tremendous amount of time and effort into coming up with the outlines for proposed development, but you do not need to impact rare coastal resources in order to achieve both your housing and commercial development goals. With reference to the mitigation areas, Presumably, there will be California Fish and Wildlife easements over the mitigation areas that are held by a qualified land trust. CMPS requests that the easements allow for some form of limited access for organized field trips. We hope that there will be opportunities for study and scientific documentations of habitat conditions. We also encourage there to be some kind of permitting system that's developed as part of the easement language that allows for occasional organized access scientific research that will then inform future monitoring as well as potential management activities. We're thankful that the ciphers are going to be removed and encourage you to echo Dr. Watson's statement that all sorts of invasive species should be removed from both the mitigation and the preservation areas. The city has developed so much already and more is in the works in former Fort Ord lands. And again, CNPS encourages you to really think about rare coastal habitat, rare plants, rare wildlife species, and reconsider some of your proposed development areas, which you really do not need to achieve your goals. And lastly, I want to second Dr. Watson's comments about the suitability of the Salinas River site as potential parkland. Access to the Salinas River is really limited throughout the Salinas Valley, and it would be a great site for a park. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Nikki. Anyone else online wishing to speak? Please raise your hand. Okay. We'll close public comment, go through the questions. Fred had a few. We'll ignore those. No, I can't find them. I wrote them down. I can't find them. City attorney is telling me where my scribbles are. So Fred asked, Can we clarify that public use of the overgrown trails would be allowed? In addition to, I guess, some other trails that are not overgrown.

Great questions and thanks everyone for your comments. The Fort Ord Habitat Management Plan is conveniently vague, except to state no new development. And so the paved trail might be difficult. And that was the second question. But in terms of use of existing, that would be completely fine. My interpretation of existing includes overgrown trails. And I would suggest that we draft the RMP up in that manner and in that way, and work with the agencies to define those management activities, make sure it meets the intent of the HMP.

All right. Another question from Fred was, if invasive removal is presumed, whether that be in the long-term management plan or elsewhere, can it be in writing?

Great question, Marin. I just wanted to revisit the pavement question from Fred about new paved trails.

Can we pave over overrun trails?

Right. Or new ones. So again, there's no new allowable development in this HMA per the HMP. But precedent has occurred where a land swap occurred between East Garrison and Parker Flats and HMP was amended. We can have these discussions with the service and the state as we're drafting the RMP to see what what swapping, what something could happen. I just don't want to close the book on that. As long as we're meeting the intent of the HMP, I know that the service has been agreeable to, to amending certain things, both with UCM best and again, the County and others and PC.

Okay, Aaron, to expand upon Fred's question, he specifically suggested potential to expand the HMA. So, for example, if we expanded the HMA at the Salinas River management parcel to the west, up on the bluff, where currently it's city-owned land, does that help us potentially pave some existing trails? Potentially, yes. And is that what you were just talking about, adjustments in the HMA? Exactly. Okay. Back to the, can we get it in writing where there's invasive removal presumed?

Yes, that'll be part of the long-term management plan.

Okay.

All right. I don't think we had any other questions. He did ask to make sure that we put in writing that there will be a class one trail associated with the Del Monte extension now proposed on that western edge of Cypress Mills.

Yeah, I think you suggested it. So that can be part of the official written plan.

Let's document it. Right here and now, it's documented. And when that project moves forward, it's established that a Class 1 trail needs to go along with it.

Okay. Those are only questions I noted. Did anyone else note things I might have?

Just one, Mayor, that was maybe a statement, but I'll ask it in the form of a question. Nikki had said, I'm thankful the cypress will be removed and maybe some elaboration on, I guess I'll ask in the form of a question, will all the cypress be removed or what was meant by that statement?

We don't know at this time and it will be part of the long-term management plan for each of these proposed conservation areas. Thank you.

Okay, we do have the example of the Imjin Parkway Long-Term Management Plan, which was the first such document that our city has experienced or owned. How are invasive species treated in that plan, including trees?

We identified certain areas for tree removal and invasive removal and overall percentage covers as thresholds as time moves on. I don't know the specifics offhand. I apologize. I'm happy to provide more detail later. But just to clarify, it wasn't, the plan does not say remove all invasives throughout the entire 62 acres, for example.

Okay. Yeah, my recollection is that it comes down pretty hard on Torrey Pines, Genista Ice Plant, and non-native grasses, but we actually planted Monterey Pup Mill. We actually planted Monterey Cypress, and it doesn't require their removal throughout the area like it does Torrey Pine. Correct. Okay.

Thank you.

All right. So let's go back. Let's go now to Councilmember McAdams to start our council discussion.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you so much for being here. I feel like I'm having Groundhog's Day. So from the exhibits that are in here and the maps, has anything changed?

Only as I noted during the presentation that we have a revised conservation strategy for the northwest corner HMA, which is in the packet exhibit. would replace what's shown in, yeah.

Perfect. And then as far as, so I didn't find it in the packet, like what specific direction does staff need tonight? Like how do we move forward? Because I don't really understand why this keeps coming back.

Great question. The bottom line is we and DD&A and city staff need to provide, we need direction on whether the city wants to accommodate a potential future trail in the northwest corner HMA. And then we're going to have to figure out how to do that.

Okay. And that's the one that like needs an easement that the Department of Fish and Wildlife are like, no, don't do that. That's that one?

Yes. in correct I think outside that I think we're pretty close to being able to move forward with our application I think that is the one piece of introduced at the last meeting the council directed us to do some more deep dive look into it bring the services here to provide input and and tonight we're looking for final clarification on that okay so who says yes do this proposed

Path or whatever. That's the Department of Fish and Wildlife want that?

Erin can clarify.

I guess at the end of the day, a motion that describes how city council wants city staff to move forward with including the trail or not is what we want to know so that we can move forward with the ITV application.

But who wants the trail? Like where's the trail coming from? Is it coming from the city? Is it coming from the Department of Fish and Wildlife?

It's coming from the mayor that members of the city are asking for a connection. And that's kind of the only history I've known. And Fred has provided input on that as well.

Okay. But the connection is complicated and not feasible. So in order for us to move forward tonight, we need to not have this connection and listen to the outside agencies.

I think I would... revise your question slightly. It's complicated, but I don't say anything's infeasible. If the city wanted us to look at putting a trail there, we would look at opportunities, discuss it with the agencies, and get back to you with what the implications are. But the implications are that's additional cost and time delay in submitting our application. And overall, It's pretty clear that we'll need additional mitigation land and or reduce our development area, which would be at a cost of different levels for the city.

Okay, so like $20,000, $500,000? millions i don't know i mean you're talking jobs i mean if we get rid of the airport i mean it's just we don't know how it's all going to look at the end okay so for us to move forward though tonight we can accept everything how it how it is and listen to the outside agencies that are encouraging us to not go down this other path and we can move forward and we're moving on Is that what I'm hearing? Yes. Or we can gum it up and potentially make it really expensive and take a lot more time and have you keep coming back and back and back and potentially accept the same thing that's in front of us tonight.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Jenny. Council Member McCarthy?

Thank you, Mayor. I'll start with a few comments. You know, a lot of these are repeats, but because we have such an awesome audience, I feel it's worth repeating. One thing that stands out to me is Fred Watson's comments about the Salinas Valley River habitat. I mean, I have gone back there a couple of times and was just astounded at just how beautiful it is. And I hadn't heard before kind of the Garland Park of of, uh, Marina, but that resonates with me. It's just, it's stunning. And I hope that we can take that field trip when there are fewer ticks and pure rattlesnakes or whatever it is that's preventing us, um, going out there now. Um, Another thing that I'll mention just to the audience that's here that I talk about all the time is my personal love for some of the trees that aren't necessarily native, right? We know that the native landscape here is what many people might consider not appealing. And so that's something that we struggle with a lot. Monterey cypress in particular, I think are just stunning. They have a huge economic value to the city, right? And I know we're not here to really debate the merits of that, but I just kind of want to throw that out there. I do have some specific questions about the Doddwell property. So the staff report says that CDFW is recommending, recommended to Doddwell that he coordinate with the city regarding his violation. And I'm just trying to, I'm really struggling with that, how an agency would make that recommendation to a private party and kind of what that means for us. And I don't know if CDFW recommends, is willing to chime in on that or Aaron, if you're the best person, I'm just kind of trying to understand that recommendation. And as we move forward, also understanding what happens if we say no, right? I mean, I've heard everything literally, and I'm not being facetious that he gets locked up and thrown in jail to, you know, $10,000, 20,000, 10 million, whatever it is. But like from where I sit, I have no idea. Right. And so my decision or the guidance of where I think the city should go is should take into account what happens if we say no, right? And right now, I just don't know.

Great. I'll take those two in order. So the first one regarding CDFW's comment. So CDFW issued the violation to Dodd-Wall and suggested or required that they either get their own ITP to move to remedy their unauthorized take And or reach out to the city to join forces, so to speak, and try to remedy the violation as part of the citywide ITP. As we talked about in the field, we're in a weird situation, not totally conservation friendly. it's not the best conservation strategy to have these postmark, you know, postage stamp areas of conservation. Dowd-Rolls property has a very small population of Gilea and it's, surrounded by development. And so how do you remedy that? And through discussions with CDFW, it's kind of like, well, let's look at a more holistic thing. Let's put a part of the bigger picture and make it part of the remedy, part of the contiguous conservation strategy, rather than having them try to fix this one population surrounded by development. So it was kind of a conservation strategy more as, you know, Yeah, I'll leave that there.

Okay, no, that's fair. And I understand it's complicated. And I feel like I have a better understanding of some of the kind of behind the scenes workings, but it's very problematic for me to make this adaptation for one person when there could be more, and then we have to say no in the future, or maybe not, or maybe we reserve a bunch of land for future violators as well, and we can accommodate everybody. I don't know what that looks like. I'll end by saying for now that I just, Councilmember McAdams, your comments really resonate with me that we can gum this up. It's gonna be more expensive. no offense but aaron you're not cheap to be here right like every time you're here we're paying taxpayer dollars um and we'll continue to do so and that's like on the small scale of the money that we're spending on this issue like i'm ready to move forward um i don't see this issue getting any more easier um over time just more expensive more complicated policy will change that makes it more expensive for the taxpayer and uh i i hope that we can just move forward in a way that's productive tonight thank you mayor

Council Member McCarthy, about your second question, what happens if you say no? Craig Bailey's here from CDFW. He might be able to speak to what happens if they don't follow the violation. If you're interested in details, like I said, they could get fined. They could go to jail. I think they have to open up an enforcement case or a legal case if they don't do what you said. Do you want to speak to that at all, Craig?

Okay.

Appreciate it. I want you to.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And yeah, if there's any kind of. Other relevant examples that you can point to as well that are helpful.

Hi, everyone. Craig Bailey and I supervise the California endangered species act unit for the central region of the Department of fish and wildlife, which includes Monterey county. And so to clarify both your questions, we didn't direct them, or we didn't direct the city to cover or come up with a mitigation option. There were some options being discussed and someone said, hey, could they combine it with the city's mitigation for a bigger approach? And we said, we're open to that. And if the city wants to work with you. Sure. um secondly if it's an open enforcement case we don't make those decisions that's uh through our law enforcement division um our wardens etc and they were they coordinate with the da um not always frequently you know our goal is to have people get in compliance with the endangered species act we want to uh pursue enforcement actions so why i can't say hey if you mitigate this impact they won't pursue an enforcement case against you oftentimes if someone works to get back into compliance or law enforcement we'll let, you know, a case drop or something like that, because they'll say they got back into compliance. I can't make that call. That's not my decision, but that's just, and then if there's an open enforcement case, I'm not allowed to talk about it. So I know that's a really unsatisfying answer to you, but that's, that's just the way it works because our law enforcement wants to talk with attorneys, et cetera.

So no, that's fair. And I would understand if you don't want to answer this one either, but if somebody's at least trying to find a solution, are you aware of any examples where you guys throw them in jail anyway? Yeah.

I am not aware of any examples. Thank you. Thank you for asking it that way. So, yes, I'm not aware of any of them. And to answer your question about folks in the future, I do not. As we talked about in the field, I am ready. Like, I think I would speak for CDFW. We're ready to get you your IOTP, get you moving forward things. But for many citywide, what they do is they have a 3rd party provision where individual developers can sign up and add on to the citywide and get their project covered as well. And that's actually a formal process that gets written into the citywide. So, if that was something you wanted to explore in the future, we could do an amendment to provide that option. If that was something you were interested in. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Brian.

Yeah. And I can hang out if there's any other questions or.

Aaron, did you have some input? Lane, did you have input? Okay.

No, I just, a lot of the public that wasn't on the site visit, we got a lot of information from the services here. And so I don't know if the council is interested in hearing kind of overall what they told us on the path going forward, or are we okay with that?

Council, what's your prerogative here?

maybe we can go through our questions first and then.

Okay. All right.

Great.

Let's go to Council Member Biala.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I have a few specific things, but overall, let me say that we have, I feel like we're personal friends with Erin because we've seen her so many times over the past few years. So I think that, you know, what the work we've done is, is thorough and to my mind sufficient. But let me ask a few questions here. And I would not want to jeopardize, you know, the progress that we've made. I think we heard today from, I think it was Craig, that should we make any kind of further additions that, you know, that it will take us back to square one, essentially. And I just can't see that at this point. So I'm respecting that and that this is accurate information coming from the experts. And so just bear that in mind that that's kind of my overall stance. But I wanted to ask if we have... One of the comments I think from Craig was that up to now we have, it sounds like, exhausted our current mitigation areas within our city limits. Is that pretty accurate that, you know, we... And he was saying that we pretty much almost making it and he can't even guarantee that we're almost that we're exactly there. So we might have to still carve out some more mitigation areas. But I need your accurate opinion about that.

Thank you. Great question. I would say that just remind the council and public that our study area is focused on city lands on the former Fort Ord. I don't know offhand any great opportunities off of Fort Ord on city land. We can look at non-city-owned land, but that adds some complication and cost to the process. So I would say, yes, we are at our tipping point within our study area.

Okay. The Salinas Avenue Woodland, or the Reservation Road site, that's city property, correct? Correct. Okay. So it's a pretty, it feels like it's pretty vast. And I know it's public facility land or something like that. But you did, in the staff report, we did talk about possibly, this one here, to do a kind of a uh let's see this one was the Northwest Corner HMA um we we we change it from conservation into from habitat preservation to conservation and then we'd be able to use it as mitigation so that was one of the options the second option on page four of this staff report changing the land use designation of the southwest portion of the northwest corner HMA to conservation instead of existing designation of habitat preservation, other open space. And that way we would be able to use that, right, for ITP mitigation.

So unfortunately, I think adding that... You weren't at our last April 7th meeting. So that's the staff report from that meeting. And there was a question that we were responding to back in November about changing the land use designation within the Northwest Corner HMA. We recommended to council that that be part of the general plan discussion and part of the planning process for that. It doesn't affect really what we're trying to really do with the conservation strategy with the ITP. So we kind of deferred that conversation to not kind of, we defer that conversation to the general plan process.

Okay. So that's not on the table, but if we, if we take the concept, you know, a Selena, the reservation, Salinas Avenue Woodland seems so large and it seems like, could we do something like that to free that up to be more changed the designation, the land designation so that we could use it as mitigation?

So I do have to correct you in that there's the northwest corner. We were talking about the land use designation there, not the Salinas Avenue Reservation Road. Could be. Could you change it? Yes, you can do what you like. Yes.

Okay. And if we make it, if we submit our application and it is accepted, we don't need any more mitigation area, then that's fine. But what if it does, we're going to have to be searching for it. And my question is, can that be that can that land use be designated so we can use that? Yeah. We could.

Erin, isn't that already proposed?

Yes.

Oh, okay. All right. Apology. Thank you for clarifying. It's proposed preservation now. Yeah.

Oh, okay.

It is proposed. So that one sort of, you know. It's already in the mix.

Okay. But it hasn't been counted in our application. Oh, it is. Okay. So that isn't part of it. Okay. Yes. Sorry. I'm a little confused. So we'd still have to search for other mitigation areas if, in fact, we're short. Right. Correct. Okay. All right. Got it. Sorry about that. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's fine. Okay. Let's see. I answered that. Oh, and one of the things that I brought up the last time is that when you look at Exhibit K with a new configuration, if we don't touch the northwest corner for the road connection from Imjin to Patton Park. So it's the red line, right? But what my contention was that it pretty much dumps into Crescent Street, which is already highly impacted. It's the only street connecting northward from Patton Park, except California roads. Avenue, which is always impacted, but this is used by the high school. I mean, it's just completely impacted during high school hours with parents dropping kids off and stuff. And then we're going to have this new road dumping into Crescent Street, basically. I said that I thought that was really inappropriate. That cannot be

Right. We received direction from council, I believe, in the November meeting stating when we design this road, do not dump into residential streets.

Okay.

And we will work with the design.

Okay. So this is pre your work.

This is very, you know, 30,000 feet, a line on a map that we will, just like the class one trail, we will take that note and run with it when we work with the public works department and design. Okay.

Thank you. I was thinking that this is being presented as the final. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. And, you know, as I said to begin with, I think it would be really nice to have a trail going from, you know, from M Jim to Patton Parkway, but I don't think it's essential, especially if it's really only for pedestrians and bicycles. I would have loved to have a road there, but barring that I don't, I don't see the necessity of, of expending more time and effort and possibly taking us back to square one for that kind of connection. So I, I, you know, I'm, solidly for the prioritization of jobi the airport property cypress knolls and preston park baseball fields and the mec if we need to so thank you very much for your hard work okay i'm going to go next um there's a lot of new information since our april 7th meeting

The exhibits today in the staff report that was done last Friday, E, I, and J, have important new information we haven't seen before. Between these three exhibits, it is shown that that large east-west road going from basically the high school to the new Highway 1, off-ramps and on-ramps, is now eliminated. Those two on-ramp, off-ramp alignments have also been eliminated since April 7th when we last saw exhibit E in our April 7th staff report that showed a large east-west road and two alignments for an on-ramp and off-ramp to get to Highway 1 and off of Highway 1. Thirdly, Gilead is shown for the first time located west of the caltrans fence that's on the freeway side of the caltrans fence we did not see that before lastly uh there's a new first time potential restoration area shown where the proposed pedestrian cyclist trail is located they would connect central marina with fort ord marina those are all substantial new changes since april 7th the last time we were here some of that newness was because we asked for it so the 5.4 acres of potential restoration area a little bit of duplication because we talked about this somewhat on our field trip my question is what criteria were used to create this potential restoration area and todd explained it but i don't know that everyone else heard it so that's i want to ask that question here now what criteria were used to create the 5.8 5.4 acre potential restoration the reason that's important is because it to some extent negates the ability to locate a trail there So that's my question. What criteria were used to establish the 5.4 acres potential restoration area?

Great. May I ask Todd to come up? Thank you, Todd.

And Todd, I apologize for asking you this twice.

Thank you, everybody. I'm Todd LeMaine with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. So there had been a previous version of Exhibit E that had a polygon drawn on it that was a potential restoration area. And I had seen that and not understood it because my interpretation of the area was at that polygon at that time, which is not shown in any of the figures that are before you today. it was over what I would consider intact coastal scrub habitat. Not Monterey Gilead habitat, but stuff that you would say, this looks nice, this is good native habitat. It wasn't an option for restoration in my professional opinion, because while it didn't support sensitive or endangered species, it was still intact coastal scrub habitat. My understanding was that there was an intent to say, well, we should find areas that are open for, that we could use for restoration. And my definition of restoration in this case was areas that are more or less completely degraded, either through fill or complete cover of non-native species that preclude the establishment of native habitat and or threatened and endangered species. And so what the green lines that you see on this map represent is basically just tracing Monterey, Cyprus, which has an understory of ice plant. And then there is a social trail there as well and potential areas of remnant fill. And the borders that you see in exhibit E reflect nothing more than my interpretation of that from aerial photographs. And it's that is so to my mind, what that represents is areas that are potential for restoration, not necessarily restoration for Monterey Gilead, but just to restore habitat that is not currently functioning in a natural sense to habitat that could provide more intact ecological function and provide continuity between the Caltrans corridor and the Northwest parcel.

Thank you, Todd. You're welcome. The last thing that's substantial and new, first time we're seeing it today in our staff report, is Exhibit J that shows Smith's blue butterfly habitat. We haven't seen that before, and that's really important for two reasons. One, biologically, that butterfly might be there someday if it's not there already. What that really shows is a individual buckwheat plants and a buffer around them on other maps that make these blue blobs such as exhibit E. So biologically, it's important because it gives us a chance to maybe reintroduce an enlisted species in the future as part of this easement. But the other thing it does is it gives us a chance with the proposed trail to bring people close to but not in harm's way so that they can see, learn to love, learn about it. Otherwise, if we don't do anything different today than is proposed in the staff report, this entire area basically gets fenced off and it's a no human entry zone. removing the possibility that people can access this area safely for both species other than humans and for their own safety. And if you don't know about it, you can't love it. If you don't love it, you're not going to want to protect it. And it will forever be known as an area that was set aside that we can't go into because of some plant or some little bug. And so this is new information. And if you went on the field trip today, you saw that the proposed new trail, is basically proposed under Cyprus on top of ice plant. And that condition does not support Gilea. If we were to tear out the ice plant, it probably wouldn't make any difference because there are almost no natives that grow under the drip lines of Cyprus. If you were to tear out the Cyprus and the ice plant, then you're maybe halfway home to hopefully getting the seeds that are under that to express themselves as Gilead plants and possibly reproduce into a self-sustaining population. But if you leave the ice plant or you leave the cypress, that proposed restoration area is not going to succeed as far as having gillia but we heard todd say that it's not just for gillia it's for any native habitat but we know that under cypress drip lines because of their fall of their scaly leaves Almost nothing grows there except like New Zealand spinach, ice plant, but you don't get natives of our coastal scrub or maritime chaparral, surely not native rare annuals to grow in those conditions. The last thing I'll say before I turn over to Mayor Pro Tem is that one of the most common requests we hear from the public is that we need a connection between Central and Fort Ord Marina. So the plan before us today gives two-thirds of Marina, the western, I'm sorry, the eastern two-thirds of Marina, an adequate connection for automobiles, pedestrians, and cyclists. For me, it's going to be great. I can either come down California or I can take the new alignment that's proposed tonight that goes basically near Crescent Street and through California. the west of the high school and i can get to target area so i'm good but all of those in district one and district two that are in that western third of our city will not have an adequate connection for walking or cycling to fort ord and That's not a good thing. And so tonight is our last chance. We have to be aware that we will forever be foregoing a connection between the western third of our city, on bike or on foot, that is adequate to encourage people to get out of their cars and make that connection. The inadequate existing trail takes pedestrians and cyclists way to the south, and then they cross 8th Street and they got to come back north. You don't do that on foot or on a bike. You might do it in a car. This is a car plan. This is an auto plan. It's making autos have an alternative to go from Del Monte up to Crescent Street, basically, and then come around the high school and go to Target or the Dunes. That's not what people are asking for. They're not asking for a squiggly roundabout way to get from Rain Dollar and Del Monte Boulevard to Second Avenue. They can already take a 20-second trip on Highway 1 South to get from Rain Dollar to Imjin Parkway. So it's really important how we end tonight, because we'll forever not have this opportunity again, but maybe it's not worth the alternatives, and we'll talk more about them. Okay, I'll turn it over to Mayor Pritam Vishar.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Erin. And thank you, everybody, for being here and for having gone on that awesome tour. I hope that we can have more outdoor council meetings with Courtney keeping track of our time. And I think we can all agree that we live in a beautiful city and that we have beautiful nature here. And just to scare you, I don't know what to say, but I recently saved two cypress trees and one eucalyptus even. So we love our trees here. I'm not there yet to say we need to get rid of all the cypress trees. Eucalyptus maybe. Sorry, Dr. Watson. Okay. I had a question for... for our city manager, probably, and it might be that you need to address this after the meeting. I saw a letter from Mr. Datwal that he received in 2020 from DDA declaring that there's no St. Gilead on his parcel, only on the adjacent parcel, not for his project for the Home 2 Suites. So anyway, that's just something that...

steps you'd look into I think yes because something might have happened I'm happy to address that oh yeah oh can you okay yeah oh god okay gone through this history um DD&A started working with uh Dodwall in the city back in 2014 um providing input on whether um their proposed project would impact Gilea and uh the question was asked uh during the wrong time of the year, and we weren't able to provide surveys at that time. This is the first memo. And we stated that the EIR for the villages at that time stated that if that population located partly on his parcel, partly on the adjacent parcel, if that population was impacted, it would need an ITP. And so we reiterated that. And then the next time we spoke was 2019 in December, I believe. And we provided a memo. Um, we were provided project plans and the project plan showed, um, that it would not impact the population either on his property or adjacent. We said, as long as you stay inside your, you know, stay outside of that Gilead and you fence it, you have monitoring. And if you can't avoid it, you go get a permit. And great. So the 2020 memo, we actually did have an opportunity to do surveys and we went out in, I believe, May of that year and did not document any Gilead on his property, but did on the adjacent property. However, still noting, and this remains CDFW's position to date, even if they're not there due to the great annual variation, they could be there later. The seed banks there take would still occur. And our memo strongly stated that even though there's no Gilead, if you impact that area, you need an ITP. So that's my history there. Thank you.

If I were a hotel developer, I would read that letter as, okay, I'm good to go. So I think we need to be very careful what gets sent to developers. It was provided to the city as well. Okay. So anyway, I'll just keep moving on. Otherwise, Courtney has to flag me that I'm taking too long. So... So thank you, Council Member McAdams, for being so clear. I'm also ready to move on. But I appreciate that we have taken the time to really research the recommendation from Professor Watson, that we might still be able to get that pathway. Now we know with so many people in the room, it will take too long. It will delay our progress. process, our application, our permits, and I do not want to hold anything up because it will also affect the four-track trail and we need that California, those segments on California Avenue starting construction as soon as possible. I do have a question for probably Craig or maybe Aaron can answer, but it was said that if all goes well, we could have a permit within one year. My question is how soon within one year? Is it 11 and a half months or Six months.

Good luck.

Yeah.

You're on video.

Yeah, you're on video. We're writing it down.

It's really difficult for me to answer that without seeing the ITP application. So if we have a complete ITP application, we'll determine within 30 days whether it's complete or incomplete. If it's incomplete, you'll get a letter within 30 days that gives a very specific instructions on what's needed to make it complete. Uh, I think we're really optimistic. It will be complete. I mean, you know, we've been meeting informally with Aaron and and, um, you know, uh, lane and and others to try to make sure that 1, there won't be any surprises in the permit as far as mitigation requirements as well as, um. You know, it would be a complete application, or hopefully just missing a few things that maybe need to get filled in right? Big complex projects. Sometimes there's something. We, you know, much like, um, oftentimes, you know, city planners don't deal with everything with endangered species. We don't deal with everything with city planning and sometimes we don't know what questions to ask in these Pre consultation meetings. So sometimes there's something in a product application. We need to go back and say, can you clarify that? Or what does that mean? i think would be close um again when you're talking a big itp like this um i i would say um again i'm confident it's less than a year from but it would depend on what's in there what what all you're asking for um you know there have been some questions like with the imogen parkway about wanting to keep some cypress trees or plant some for the aesthetic values for the city versus just straight removing them, that might be a conversation that could delay issuance. Again, not a long time, like a couple weeks, a month. But if it's just we're going straight with the plan that's discussed, we're going straight with the project description we discussed, I mean, six to nine months. So yeah. Okay. Okay. um yeah no you can write down i mean i mean i you know i you know i will say so let me just take a step back with a big complex one most itps just go through my review and my supervisor's review before the issue with a big one like this our office of general counsel will also review it and so that is my one hesitancy on being like really definitive because they're nowhere in my chain of command and i have no authority over their like Timelines so just again full transparency.

So you guys thank you very much and I appreciate everybody being aware that we want to move forward as soon as possible.

So, 1 thing I did want to say is typically before you can actually start work from once you get your permit. You either need your mitigation land completed, meaning the easement recorded, the management plan approved, the endowment funded, or you need to put up a financial security for those things before you can start work. Once we get your ITP application, we can start working on that concurrently, even if we haven't gotten written the ITP yet. So the idea is that you don't have to wait for ITP and then start that process. But we need essentially like a trigger for that. So we can dive into that, which we would use the application for. So I just. that's probably the other thing that could take an amount of time and again that's really hard to predict because if the title reports let's say come back for all those properties and there's tons of exceptions or exemptions on them that need to be like evaluated legally That can make that process slow. But if it's a really clean title report, it can go very quickly. I've seen it done in as fast as a few months. I've seen it take as long as a few years. Again, because title exceptions, working through that legally, stuff like that, they're unknown. So that's the one thing that I don't know about timing because we haven't looked at those things yet.

Thank you so much. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for clean title reports.

Mr. May, may I ask Craig one question before you go?

It's okay. I just wanted to add for those who ask, you know, why do we want that connection? I bike, I live in the South and I bike to the Central Marina. It's just shorter. So it's nice that we have the coastal tour. We have the beach range road. We have California Avenue. I usually do a loop. I do one way going and the other way going home, but it's just, it will be nice to have a connection, but for me, it will be acceptable to have that connection. alternatives that staff provided.

So thank you. Okay. So I just wanted to ask you just ask your question and then we're going to go to Brian and then we'll come back to you.

Yeah, just I don't want him to have to sit down and stand up again. So if we submit the application as it is today, but after we get acceptance And we still maybe two years from now, three years, five years from now, we want to resurrect the trail. So how do we do that? And is that like, we've already gotten the whole city ITP finished. So,

So you're saying a trail within the northwest corner? Yes. I think this is what Mayor Delgado was alluding to. Once the permanent conservation easement is recorded, that's a permanent conservation easement. It would have a list of prohibited uses that cannot be amended. Okay, so it's a done deal. It's a done deal. So we can amend a permit, but we can't typically amend a conservation easement unless it gets approved. uh more strict and i am not an attorney so i won't go into the to the legal background of that but that's my understanding as it's been explained to me thank you very much thank you

We'll go back to, I have a question for you, Todd, but we'll go back to Brian for now.

Some comments, and then I think I'm ready to put a motion on the table, not to end debate, but just to try to start building some consensus here. But for me, it's clear the primary objective is to get this ITP done in a timely fashion. I mean, I joked about being thrown in jail earlier. I don't want us to be thrown in jail because we delay this so long. And I am being a little facetious there, but I think we have a responsibility to move this incident intake permit down the road. I really appreciate the discussion about this First Avenue Trail. I want that trail, as Councilmember Buescher said, more than anyone as well. I would probably use it maybe a little bit. but it it feels like it's not in the cards i mean we've heard the resource agencies say um that uh that a trail in this location would significantly kind of complicate and undermine this itp process um producing significant delays um the staff report says that cdfw doesn't see a feasible way forward those are pretty strong words and i don't know if something was lost in translation there but that's what the staff report says So for those reasons, I'm supporting moving forward with the conceptual mitigation strategy as presented by staff, without including the trail through the northwest corner. I understand that this proposed staff proposal kind of will evaluate some opportunities related to the Dodd-Well mitigation, but I want to be clear for the record that we're not approving any agreement. We're not agreeing that we're going to go down that road. We're just keeping our options open, and we'll have that discussion at another time. Um, So I'll go ahead and move that the City Council provide input supporting the conceptual mitigation strategy for the citywide incidental take permit as presented by staff, including proceeding without a trail through the northwest corner habitat management area. Further acknowledge that staff may continue evaluating potential mitigation opportunities associated with the Dodd-Well notice of violation, provided, however, that this action does not approve any agreement, compensation, easement, acquisition, or other commitment by the city, which will return to City Council at another time. If I can get a second, we can discuss. I'm happy to.

I'll second that.

So for discussion, the reason this is important, we envision a walkable, more bikeable city and downtown. We want to revitalize our downtown. If we can pour... thousands of new residents and university students from the Southern Fort Ord portion of Marina into downtown, because we give them a convenient route, we're gonna get more people coming into downtown. As we remodel Del Monte Boulevard, it connects to what we're talking about tonight. So there are several reasons why it's really important for the people in the Western third of our city and those in the Southern portion to be able to connect better. My solution, I see two options. One is what's on the table as a motion. The other solution, and this is what I gained from all of my discussions today in the field trip, is that if we give back plenty, then we might be able to stay near the timeline as we would just approve tonight. So here's what I'm talking about. If we sharpen our pencils, as someone said, the 15 easterly acres at the airport are parcel are pretty good Gilea habitat. That goes some distance to mitigate for the proposed trail. We talked at the field trip about exhibit F having cypress knolls, red blobs showing the Gilea is going to be taken by an undesigned project at this point. If those northeast corner Gilea habitat were not substantially removed, that is going to give us more distance to be able to achieve without a lot of delay to trail. When you get to the Northwest Habitat Management Area itself on exhibit E, there is a large southern portion to that that shows red, which means development potentially, proposed development. We don't have any plans for that. It's got Gilea occupation. If that is turned into proposed preservation, we have more distance for that trail. When you go into Preston Park ball fields and don't make any adjustment to the development area so that we get the ball fields, we get the parking, the ball fields are made whole. you have a large area that's blue with about a third to a half of it that's proposed restoration area or potential restoration area. If you included the entire portion of that blue area to show hatched yellow, so that it would be potential restoration area that gets us closer to compensating for the trail. when it comes to the trail itself, a minimization design, a boardwalk or something that's minimal, we haven't talked about that. All we've talked about is a 20-foot wide trail with setback on both sides to be constructed, which is a mammoth, almost like a road. That's what we heard today. It's almost the same impact as a road. But we haven't got into that design stage yet. That would further reduce the impact that that trail would have The motion on the table forwards includes this exhibit E potential restoration area. We've heard that its presumption is that we're going to get rid of the cypress trees. If we don't want to get rid of the cypress trees because they're beautiful, great from the highway view, then it's not going to be restored for native habitat. Just like if we didn't get rid of the ice plant, it would not be viable for any native habitat. And so we'd be able to keep the cypress trees, probably not the ice plant, and put a minimal trail down this pathway to get everyone back and forth conveniently for a walkable, bikeable, progressive downtown. And I would guess that all of those changes, and this is what I talked, I've had some side discussions today. If we give back enough, then it's kind of obvious that we've more than mitigated for the proposed trail. But if anyone has heartburn about giving up that Southern part that we have no plans for, or the 15 easternmost acres of the airport or doing more restoration south of the Preston Park bowl fields or not damaging Gilead habitat as much as we can protect it in that northwestern corner of Cypress Knolls, which most of us haven't even thought about. And if you don't mind building a small trail and you don't mind keeping the Cypress for their value, but putting the trail under them, And if you like the idea of people being able to love and learn and want to protect Gilead and the Maritime Chaparral, these are all good reasons to think a little bit out of the box and not just stamp approval because there have been a lot of changes in the last few months. And I think there's a way that we can have cake and eat it too. Let's go to Council Member McAdams.

I just would like to call the question.

So we call the question. Who would like to call the question? All in favor, please say aye.

Aye. All opposed, please say no. No. Okay. So we're going to call the question. And all in favor of the motion on the table?

May I make a suggestion?

May not. You just voted to call the question. That is the step before us now.

Oh, okay. I didn't realize that. That's what it means. Okay.

That's what it always means. Okay. All in favor of the motion on the table, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, please say no. No. Thank you, everyone. That motion passes four to one with myself dissenting. And again, thank you to Fish and Wildlife Service and California Department of Fish and Wildlife Service for all of your expertise. Thank you, Todd, for being here. All the public, thank you very much for being here. Thank you, Erin, for all your guidance. Thank you, staff.

Okay, we are adjourned.