City Council - Regular Meeting

hi natalia howdy how are y'all doing how's the weather there by the way it's a little bit rainy but a little bit humid okay okay yeah But the hotel is lovely. There were cookies in my room when I checked in.

that Karen was going to ask you.

Dana are you still

hi everyone it is 5 33 i'm going to go ahead and call the regular meeting of city council order i do not see our city manager city attorney here though i guess we'll we have our stand-ins here um all right if we could go ahead and turn off our phones and so as not to disrupt the meeting uh and then uh council members know if you could call the pledge of allegiance And Councilmember Laskin, if you could read the land acknowledgement.

uh the city of santa monica is located on the land of tovangar with great respect the city acknowledges the gabrielano tungva as the first people of this ancestral and unseated territory of korvanga a village that we know today as santa monica we honor their elders past and present and the gabrielena descendants who are part of the gabrielena tungva tribes we recognize that these peoples are still here and as settlers and kuyam or guests we recognize our responsibility and obligation to care for their land

in partnership with them the city of santa monica commits to work in partnership with gabriel and young people to uplift their voices and visibility on their ancestral land great um and then madam clerk let me do the roll call council member negrete here council member raskin council member snell council members are niskaya president mayor pro tem zwick here and mayor teroses here

And then do you want to ask about the Levine Act?

Do any council members choose to recuse themselves from any items on the agenda pursuant to the Levine Act?

I do not see any. um great and then we're going to do a little bit of agenda management we would like to hear the city manager's report mayor's highlight and special agenda items before general public comment and we have a request by staff to pull items 5c 5d and i think uh 5c 5d and what's the other item that we're pulling oh we'll get to the concerns it says five here sorry

Because since we'll get to the five, so the five C and five D are being removed from the agenda.

Right. And I believe there's a third one as well. Correct. Madam Mayor, members of the Council, I think after receiving some additional information this evening, what we're hoping the Council, what we're recommending the Council do tonight is postpone consideration of item 12A to give us two additional weeks to work through some new information that we received today and bring it back here in a couple weeks for council consideration.

Right. So, again, agenda management would be to hear the city manager's report, mayors highlight special agenda before a public comment, and then we are pulling off the agenda 5C, 5D, and 12A.

So moved.

Second.

Sorry. OK. Raskin and Snell. OK. We have to do a voice vote for this. OK. Councilmember Zonas-Gaia?

Yes.

Councilmember Snell? Yes. Councilmember Raskin? Yes. Councilmember Negrete? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Zwick?

Yes.

And Mayor De Rosas. Yes.

Great. I will defer to the City Manager for the report.

thank you madam mayor we will begin with a quick update for the council and community on a couple of items of note first things first we hope everyone had a tremendous memorial day weekend and as we dive into the next few weeks there are some exciting things happening here in santa monica first thing of note we wanted to share that this coming thursday we will be opening our new downtown police substation at Santa Monica place it's one of our cornerstone investments as part of our realignment plan to anchor a new police presence right in our downtown the heart of our downtown retail and dining district it's an important milestone that's involved a lot of work from members of the council the police department public works our partners at Santa Monica play small just appreciate everybody's involvement in helping to make this substation a reality Later tonight also, Madam Mayor, members of the Council, we will be hearing a proclamation announcing Pride Month. We're super excited about SAMO Pride Month here as we get ready to welcome June into all of our lives as we leave May behind here shortly. We have a series of Pride-related programming we're excited to share. We'll be doing some additional communications work around all of the Pride-related events that are upcoming in June. It includes Storiectomy Family Pride on June 3rd. We're going to be doing Fabulous Fables at the Pier on June 7th. We're gonna have Pride on the Promenade on June 13th and a series of additional Pride-themed events throughout the month of June. Additional details will be published here shortly. In addition, as we move into June, World Cup will be kicking off. We'll be welcoming the world here to the greater Santa Monica, Los Angeles region. And here locally, we are going to be having our Pitside Club on the pier. We're going to be having a giant kickoff celebration at Santa Monica Place in the promenade. And we'll be having six weeks of family programming that the city is producing with our partner, Rebel Republic, to celebrate all things World Cup related. We hope everyone will visit SantaMonica.gov for more information on all our Pride Month activities and World Cup happenings that'll be occurring here in Santa Monica. As we continue to move into the summer, there's gonna be a ton of exciting events as we get ready to end the current school year, move into the summer months. We're encouraging everyone to sign up for SAMO news and follow the city on social media. We've been working on developing some new communications channels and upgrades to our comms operation to keep everyone up to date on everything that's going to be happening in Santa Monica as we prepare for a series of major events this summer. And we're looking forward to experiencing all of that with the community as we move ahead. The last element that we wanted to share with everyone is our adoptable pet of the meeting. Today's adoptable pet is celebrating an anniversary that nobody wants. Did you know that Target has been at the Santa Monica Animal Shelter for a year this week? We featured Target as our adoptable pet in November. We're going to give it another try. Target has had obedience training, is leash trained. He is used to children and other dogs. He loves to explore new places and to run around and play in the yard. He's also a bit of a show off. He loves to do tricks and get all the attention. And so if you know anyone who might be interested in a sweet, fun, youthful senior dog, Please, please, please let them know about Target and contact the animal shelter if you're interested in a meet and greet. Do you all see that smile on Target's face? We hope everyone will give Target a chance and see if Target's the member that you want to bring home to your family, a new member of your family. And as always, you can visit the Santa Monica Animal Shelter Foundation website to make a donation or shop the Chewy wish list. With that, we'll turn it back to you, Madam Mayor.

Can you bring Target behind the wall here? we'd love to see a target thank you fantastic so for our mayor's highlight today we're gonna we are going to highlight the Department of Transportation and big blue bus and I believe some of them are coming into the room here so the Santa Monica Department of Transportation's big blue bus has embarked on a transformation that underscores its leadership and sustainability and innovation converting its fleet of nearly sorry I need to say hi hi of nearly 200 transit buses to 100 zero emission battery electric buses yay big blue bus has already uh already has 34 battery electric buses in service and last month dot marked a huge milestone by breaking ground on its 56 million electric bus charging infrastructure project which possessed firmly on the path to an all-electric big blue bus fleet by 2032. Construction at the Big Blue Bus Yards is already well underway, and we are pleased to recognize the outstanding dedication, motivation, and thoughtful planning of the staff behind the celebration of this milestone and the underlying project it launched. DOT's community engagement team, led by Robert McCall, and also including Danielle Lujan, Anthony Chabula, Kenesha Williams, and Titi Romley-Tanaka, planned a fantastic groundbreaking event filled with creative activations and exhibits, a great speaker lineup, including California Secretary of Transportation Toks Omishakin, an impressive illumination of DOT's partnerships across government, private sector, and community advocates. The Transit Vehicle and Facilities Maintenance Team, overseen with diligence and professionalism by David Nonho and jesus jesus ocampo helped set up the event and ensured our buses and facilities were even more sparkling than usual the infrastructure project now under construction at bbb which as secretary omishakin noted is built on a decade's worth of meticulous master planning forward thinking financial stewardship and bold innovation is being powered by d.o.t's transit maintenance team with the dedicated support and coordination of Public Works Senior Construction Manager Brian Ochoa. The project is largely funded by a $53.3 million grant from California's Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program, which DOT's outstanding transit finance and grants team was successful in obtaining, one of several grants that NE Chung-Graham has helped secure to advance BBB's fleet electrification and infrastructure with critical government relations support from David Feinberg and service enhancements planned by Alfredo Torrales and Joseph Santiago. No project of this scale can be successfully advanced without outstanding leadership. We are proud to recognize senior leadership at DOT who have overseen this project to date and will continue to steer it to successful completion in the years ahead. DOT Assistant Director Eric O'Connor brings his extensive capital project delivery expertise and rigorous attention to detail to the team, relentlessly focusing on execution and problem solving. DOT Chief Administrative Officer LaRonda Staggers-Irwin leads the team that has secured the competitive funding, advocates with state, federal, and local agency partners, and manages expenditures for this project and all transit operations to maintain BBB's sterling audit record tonight as we celebrate a landmark investment in cleaner more sustainable public transit and a leap toward a fully zero emissions big blue bus that will benefit our riders our workforce and our planet we pause to recognize the ultimate team effort being delivered by an outstanding team at the santa monica department of transportation so let's give them a round of applause And I believe I'm gonna go ahead and call up, there are several names, so if you guys could come up when we're calling you to be recognized. And apologies in advance for my horrible pronunciation of I'm sure everyone's names that I butchered. David Nonho, Transit Maintenance Administrator. Jesus Ocampo, Transit Maintenance Superintendent. Brian Ochoa, Senior Construction Manager from Public Works. Annie Chung Graham, Principal Administrative Analyst. David Feinberg, Transit Government Relations Officer. Robert McCall, Community Engagement and Customer Experience Manager. Danielle Lujan, Community Engagement Administrator. Anthony Chabula, Transportation Marketing Coordinator. Kenesha Williams, Assistant Administrative Analyst. T.T. Romley-Tanaka, Graphic Designer. Laronda Staggers-Irwin, Chief Administrative Officer. Eric O'Connor, Assistant Director of Transportation. Alfredo Torrales, Transit Planning and Performance Manager. Joseph Santiago, Transit Planner. And I know Anuj's name is not on here, but Anuj Gupta, I mean, you lead the team, so you better be coming up here. I just want to say, I think most of us attended the groundbreaking. We are so impressed with the amazing work that you do. So thank you all for your dedication. Okay, now we have a really special proclamation for Pride Month. And I'm going to go ahead and call ahead Patricia Garza to the podium. I think Miss Garza is going to speak about what's happening in the city. And then we'll call up Steve Galindo to speak about our artist who is going to read the proclamation.

yes hello welcome um welcome all my name is patricia garza i'm the culture first supervisor for the city of santa monica and i'm a very proud member of our pride planning committee and out in santa monica employee group i'm very grateful and honored to introduce this very important month for us here at a city as well as the two incredible artists who are helping celebrate um with us tonight steve galindo and rafa esparza Knowing the roots of pride traces back to the historic Stonewall Riots, where community rose up and declared that they will be seen and advocated for equality. Although the work continues, we also take June to celebrate. how far we've come and to continue the work moving forward. Being a queer person, growing up very shy and quiet and a book nerd, so shout out to libraries all, we all go on our own journeys of self-expression and self-acceptance. But each and every time June would roll around, my eyes would light up and twinkle because I finally felt seen. To see the joy in our community, to see the public way that folks can say, we are here. to see the creation of community form right in front of our eyes, it really helped me become who I am today, who I like to think a fearless advocate of LGBTQIA plus inclusion. So we have so many fun, incredibly inclusive events for the month of June for our Pride Month, including starting with the Crow's Family Pride Storiectomy, which is on June 3rd at Bergamot Station. The Fabulous Fables event with our partners at the Pier, which includes a Drag Queen Storytime on June 7th. Pride at the Promenade, which is our annual celebration with our partners DTSM on June 13th. Drag Queen Bingo, which is benefiting our trans scholarship fund at Solidarity Restaurant on June 17th. Hope to see you there. the return of pride sunset swim at the beach house on friday june 26 and many many more you all so those can all be found on our pride website smpride.com and just thank you to dtsm for managing that site for us And now, I'm just so thrilled to introduce Steve Galindo. So when we were thinking of who has the most excellent ideas of artists and creators for Pride Month, we knew exactly who to ask. We wrote Steve, and he curated a commission for us and an artwork for Pride, which I will showcase in just a moment. And Steve just carries that deep knowledge and care around our community. And for Steve, we're so grateful to collaborate with him not only as a curator in identifying our artists who did our artwork and commission, but also for him to be here today and represent the reading of the commission as Rafa was not able to join us. He's in Mexico. So a little bit about Steve. Steve Galindo is an emerging multimedia Los Angeles-based artist and curator. He has a background in entertainment, fashion, and art. They've spent the last decade learning from prominent artists, community, and foremost thought leaders, formulating an artistic philosophy really steeped in a desire to express unifying truths about the human experience. and they stand for uniting communities through the language of art in hopes of driving conversation of change for marginal communities including but not limited to BIPOC and LGBTQA plus in the United States so let's welcome Steve who will introduce Rafa our pride proclamation artist and also read the proclamation and I'll go ahead and hold up the artwork that will be coming to us and be hung in our art bank

Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. My name is Steve and I grew up in Santa Monica. So this is a very special occasion for me, especially having come here through the community corporation of Santa Monica initiative. And so within what we were talking about, uniting communities and uplifting communities, the city of Santa Monica has been that for me, not only through housing, but through support in the arts. I've received about three grants through the city to do my curation work. And each one has received press and acclamations, which have helped my career. And so in thinking of an artist that would represent the city of Santa Monica, and especially the times that we were in, Rafa Esparza immediately came to mind. Rafa Esparza is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Los Angeles. He has performed here in the city at Highways Performance Space, the Los Angeles River AIDS Project, LA, Red Cat, and the Getty Center. He has been shown at the Hammers Made in LA Biennale, at Art Basel, Mass MoCA, the Whitney Biennale, amongst other venues and events. Esparza is inspired by his relationship to queerness and colonization and the disrupted histories and kinships that it produces. Using live performance as a form of inquiry, he employs physically demanding tasks or ritualistic actions by site-specific fashion, material culture, and what he calls non-documentation as primary tools to investigate and expose ideologies and power structures. His recent projects are grounded in laboring with the land and adobe making, a skill learned from his father, Ramon Esparza. In these projects, Esparza has embraced large-scale collaborations with brown and queer cultural producers, gathering people together to build networks of support outside of traditional art spaces. The artwork is a little bit outside of the traditional. It does include adobe, which is an amazing inclusion to your collection, I hope. The proclamation is called Sanctuary by Rafa Esparza. Whereas queer spaces are built for inclusion, they are built because we have been refused safe spaces to exist in. or our full selves. Throughout history, we have carved out our spaces with our presence in beaches, public restrooms, in bushes, in cars, in bathhouses, in bars, in nightclubs, in balls, in sex clubs, in dungeons, in beaches, In classrooms, in marriage, in cruising, in queer apps, in tea parties, in house parties, in organizing, in nightlife, in chosen family, in struggle. in healthcare, in wellness, in courtrooms, in legislature, in care, in homes, in love, in jobs, in opportunity, in citizenship, in land, in community, in film, in art, in fashion, in business, in commerce, in music, in universities, in literature, in state documents, in national documents. in immigration, in survival, in humanity. Our presence has grown throughout history from establishing the most coveted clandestine corners of the world to holding seats in public offices of government. Sanctuary was never handed us. We built it. We fought for it. We sustained it. We modeled it. We fight for more of it wherever we feel unsafe. We defend it. We preserve it. Sanctuary is a luxury when other people are unsafe, are targeted, kidnapped, disappeared, and incarcerated based purely on who they are. Let us ask our city to do the work, but also continue to do the work we have always done for ourselves. Let us help and join with each other to be the cover for communities, the shelter that we at times never had from the world around us when we needed it. Let us build sanctuary for each other. Thank you.

So I think we're going to call up all the members of the Pride Committee to take a picture with the proclamation.

OK. One, two, three. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. Really appreciate you.

So, Mayor, before we continue, I wanted to, I believe we have a couple of speakers who wanted to speak on this item.

Okay, thank you for reminding, okay, so if I, are they on general public input or on?

Yes, they're under general.

Okay, are there any speakers who are here to speak specifically on the proclamation of Pride Month? Okay, just wanted to make sure we gave that opportunity for public comment. Now, per agenda management, we will move on to general public input on items not on tonight's agenda. Just as a reminder, if there's an item on tonight's agenda, we would ask that you. comment at the appropriate time if you want to comment on that. These are non-agendized items. Steven Meade, Denise Barton, Jonathan Foster, Carlo Cavania. If you hear a name, please come up to the podium and you can just state your name and start talking.

Perfect. Steven Meade, thank you. And this isn't on the agenda item, but it is actually section 4H that you guys are going to cover regarding announcing major events.

So in that case, you would want to comment then under consent calendar. So that would be under agenda item three.

Really, this is more just a general comment. It's not relevant to that. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I'm here representing what's called PLLA, the Premier League of Los Angeles and FC Santa Monica. And we're working on a project around the Santa Monica airport. And part of this is a community coalition outreach and just a notification that we started putting together a fairly robust program for the Santa Monica area, the surrounding neighborhood. And we've already met with several council members in terms of putting together a program that not only encompasses the community, but also the economic driver and value and opportunity that we think the airport property could turn into. And we're looking at it as what's called the Santa Monica Sports community city. And we're looking at turning that entire property into not only a nature reserve, a nature area, a Santa Monica stroll of a two and a half mile radius around, but also this started with a desire with a team that we have here called FC Santa Monica to actually bring a community-based MLS team to Santa Monica and the West Coast. And knowing that part of that driver is historically the need for a stadium, we have reversed engineered into the opportunity of looking at the santa monica airport as a not only an economic driver but a true beacon for the rest of the world to look at there's not a west coast property that encompasses sports and community and nature and economic driver in a way that that Santa Monica region and property is able to do. And so again, this isn't pursuant to agenda item 4-H, but it falls under that of how do you attract major events, how do you attract major property, major sponsors, but also take into effect the community and the coalition, and that's what we're doing. So this is really just an announcement for ourselves and an effort to align more of the community together as we source all of the projects to make it a success for Santa Monica. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Denise Barton.

Good evening. Again, in watching your arguments on whether or not to accept grant funding for de-escalation training for the police at the last city council meeting in April, what I saw was you putting your personal political preferences and Trump derangement syndrome, which is considered a mental illness, on display, not what's in the best interest of the city, making it seem like the safety of the city and those in it are not really one of your true priorities. THEN SINCE YOU RECENTLY RAISED WATER RATES ANOTHER 50% OVER FIVE YEARS, AND IN 2021 WATER RATES WERE ALSO RAISED 50% OVER FIVE YEARS, DO YOU NOT THINK A 100% INCREASE IN WATER RATES OVER TEN YEARS MIGHT BE SEEN AS GOUGING THE CUSTOMER? BUT YOU KEEP SIPHONING FROM THE WATER FUND FOR PAYING INCREASES FOR CITY STAFF, AND DO YOU EVER PLAN TO RETURN THE 15 MILLION OF THE WATER FUND USED TO PAY THE LOSS? THANK YOU.

Jonathan Foster? Or not? Are you Carlo?

Yes. Go ahead. I'm Carlo Cabanilla, a parent of two children attending PS1 Pluralistic School, an independent elementary school on Broadway in Euclid. I had sent a public comment email with context about the safety concerns of the PS1 parent body after the Broadway bike lane changes. I didn't get the video attached correctly, but I want to make clear the daily usage patterns of parents crossing Broadway from the southwest corner of Euclid and Broadway. With the parked cars pushed out, it's really difficult as a pedestrian to see cars coming from the west and to be seen by cars coming from the west. I have to step into the bike lane to show that I'm crossing. And I'm actually really happy with the protected lanes. I can safely bike my kids to school using the 17th Street and Broadway bike lanes. I noticed the Broadway bike lane is getting a lot of use and it's quickly becoming a high speed bike corridor. Removing the car lanes slows car traffic, but the bike lane becomes almost as dangerous for children. And I'm hoping to have a safe concrete island that bumps out the corner similar to 17th and Broadway so cars can see me. I don't have to stand in the bike lane and the crossing distance is shorter. I appreciate the vision for Broadway with the bike lanes, the new Vons and the new apartments popping up along that corridor. And I'm hoping it becomes another Santa Monica neighborhood hub like Montana and Ocean Park Boulevard. Parents have also expressed concern when parking on Broadway to drop off because the cars have not adjusted to the new traffic patterns. There's not too much space to exit your car on the driver's side and also the concern about the bike traffic on the passenger side. And the visibility when exiting the alley between Euclid and 12th has been impaired and Waymo's exiting their depot in the south side. I've been recorded crossing the middle line when turning right just to get visibility. With the narrowing of the road, I'm hoping to get a four-way stop to give parents more time to exit their vehicles and cross safely. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to ask our city manager to talk to you. No, not right now. They've been talking. Yeah, thank you for forwarding the email. Yeah, yeah. So if you have further comments, he can talk to you. Okay. Jonathan Foster and then Morgan Hunter-Gross, Zoe Montaner, Radit Gebayahu, and Christine Parra.

Hello, Jonathan Foster. You guys are like kryptonite to Superman. Of course, I'm just Jonathan Foster, the super bum. I'm a drummer on 3rd Street. I've been homeless here for 26 years. My claim to fame was somewhere around 2012. I made the council vote for the 501c3 to observe Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on 3rd Street, which they were not. And they were just trying to make money on Okay, moving on nothing to do with that 1, but I heard today is the 1st time I heard about Jeremy Ferguson and his wife, Mandy. God bless all the family. That's a tough thing. And 3rd street is a very tough place as I talked last time I was being called CJ. Oh, CJ's here. You know, that was coming from the coffee bean patio. From your perspective, from where McDonald's used to be, that would be coffee bean. And there was the hallway. And then there used to be United Benetton there, right? And as they were laughing and looking back and forth, and that was Santa Monica police officer Alvarez and police officer Perez laughing at me. I've been harassed nonstop there on 3rd Street Promenade. As if people have been trying to joust me into turning into something like what happened with Jeremy Ferguson. You know, kill somebody or kill myself. I've been told, go kill yourself, like at least over 50 times. Before 2015. With the police department over there laughing. I wish I had it on video. I had no idea I should record stuff like that. I didn't think it would go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. I had no idea. So I'll talk more about that. Ten seconds left. On the airport, you should create a financial support system for the people to move who've been making money there, and it needs to be all grass.

Okay. Mr. Hunter-Gross?

Hi, my name is Morgan Hunter-Gross. Because I have two minutes, can we play both part one and part two? I have two one-minute videos. And can we turn the music audio off? All right, we begin each meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance. It was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister, for the 400th year celebration of Columbus Day. According to John W. Baer, author of The Pledge of Allegiance, A Centennial History, Bellamy wanted to add the word equality to the pledge. At the end, liberty and equality instead of liberty and justice. For all, liberty and equality for all was a quote, mindful of, it was mindful of the social climate regarding women and minorities because basically they wanted to keep things chill after the Civil War. So now, even to this day, we struggle with the loss of the word equality in our Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America. So here we are at the edge of Santa Monica discussing the edge case that happened last week. It was amazing with 200 people here. My name is Morgan Hunter Gross. I'm a neurodivergent polymath from Santa Monica, California. And my FEC candidate ID is P80008204. That is my Federal Election Commission candidate ID, and the P stands for President. I believe in transparency, efficiency, and compassion. What I did here two weeks ago was I scanned City Hall. I created a Gaussian splat. have one or two more city council meetings in person before if plans continue i begin my second transcontinental expedition to washington dc for my summer in california the remaining thread is to follow the history of the transcontinental railroad towards the washington city i plan a three-month residency in washington sea with museums at the center and hopefully in august darpa lift challenge in ohio so degaussian splatted this room so that we can have more than 50 people in this room we can have more than 30 people in this room we could have As many as we want.

Thank you. Uh, so I went to there and then ready to be a, who. We didn't see that before that was discussed in the agenda.

It was part of the mayor's presentation, so no, it wasn't.

Okay, perfect. So I have two minutes max for a non-agenda item, correct? And two minutes for a special agenda that is... We've already done the special agenda items. Okay, perfect. Go ahead. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Zoe Montaner. As you know, for the last two meetings, I have brought to your attention the sexual harassment from my roommate and the harassment in general. He brought two transient, unhoused guests to the apartment to harass me. And the neighbors downstairs also are misogynists and have joined in. Now, I'm lucky. I ran the jackpot when it comes to my genealogy. I'm Puerto Rican, I'm Catholic, and I have a Jewish grandfather. So I was raised very well with the values of a Latina woman, the values of the Catholic faith, and the values of the Jewish tradition. Last week, Mayor Taurosis referred to me as the person, that person. Mayor Taurosis knows me very well, knows me by name. I congratulated you when you were elected. I encourage you when you were not elected for the Board of Women, that you were trying to get into public service. And I thought it was beneath the office of the mayor to speak to me the way you did. I am the public, you are the servant. Public servants. We are the public, you are the servants. You know better, you are a smart woman. You are a lawyer. You serve for the honorable Supervisor Holymature, a woman of color. I don't think she would like for you to referring to a Latina woman as that person. It was beneath you. You're a smart woman. The only thing we're sharing today is the color pink because I don't share your values. That's white privilege at its best. It was embarrassing for me to see another woman sitting in the day.

Thank you. Radit, Gabby, oh, your glasses, Ms. Montaner. Your glasses, yeah.

They're pink, too.

Great. Radit Gaviehu.

Hi, my name is Radit. I came here today as a part of our civic action project at John Adams Middle School, where we noticed the issue of homelessness at our local park, Virginia Avenue Park. Our goal is to create a safer park for the families and students visiting Virginia Avenue Park, while also making sure that people need are provided with resources and shelter as needed. After doing research, we saw that there is a policy that prohibits people from camping in public parks in Santa Monica, including Virginia Avenue Park, stated in the Santa Monica Municipal Code. We believe this policy is needed to create a safe environment for the people who go to the park, but also believe it's important to consider the people in need. After looking at the website titled Addressing Homelessness in Santa Monica by the, I think the former city manager, David White, We learned about the Grants Pass v. Johnson case, where the Supreme Court added sleeping bags and bed rolls into the definition of camping facility. According to the website, the Supreme Court At wait, Supreme Court also made it clear that the city should offer services and alternatives for those camping in public spaces. We want to be able to enforce a policy where officers are required to offer services and alternatives to homeless people before kicking them out of parks. We did realize that this is something that a lot of officers in Santa Monica do. So we just wanted to. Make sure that it was being enforced and maybe for it to become like a legal law. That's for all officers to. Are required to do and in order for officers to offer services, there has to be helpful programs for people experiencing homelessness to go to. So, after talking to the city council member, we learned about a program where people campaign prohibited public places could be sent to called Sam or bridge. And it's a program that works with the Santa Monica Police Department to connect with people. And we just wanted to ask to continue funding for it because I think I have no more.

Wonderful. Thank you. In the future, if you're a minor, you can sign up and we can make sure that you talk first.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Thanks for being here. Christine Parra and then Allison Jordan, former Councilmember Christine Parra.

All right.

Good evening. My name is Christine Parra, Pico neighborhood resident. This week, the city council voted to establish a restorative justice commission dedicating 3.5 million towards repairing harms perpetuated by our own city. I applaud that. Words matter. Symbols matter. But tonight, I'm here to talk about what restorative justice actually looks like on the ground. Because right now, in the Pico neighborhood, harm is actually being done. When I sat on this dais, I warned the council repeatedly that Sacramento's housing policies would weaponize against our most vulnerable neighborhoods. I fought for overlay zones or protection around the Pico neighborhood, which already carries the heaviest burden of affordable housing in this entire city, precisely because I knew what would happen if this Council failed to act. I was right. A developer with alleged ties to Councilmember Hall's fundraising is allegedly picking off single-family homes in the neighborhood, in the Pico neighborhood, one by one. at 2958 at delaware avenue demolition allegedly occurred without proper permits and the specials report was allegedly submitted months after demolition after the fact to obtain permits that had not been properly reviewed by staff before they were issued this allegedly happened directly across the street from untitled number one preschool children toddlers breathing potentially contaminated air while a developer allegedly cut corners on permits and environmental review you cannot stand up restorative justice commission and simultaneously look the other way while the pico neighborhood home to generations of black latino and low-income families is picked apart by speculative development with alleged political cover i'm asking this council to investigate what happened at 2958 Delaware Avenue, look at the permits, look at the asbestos report, and look at who benefited. These residents deserve protection, accountability, and a council that means what it says about restorative justice. And this developer has another property.

Thank you, Councillor Impara. Alison Jordan.

Good evening, my name is Allison Jordan, and I am a Santa Monica resident. I am also a parent at PS1. I'd like to read a statement by Stacy Freeman. She is a PS1 parent as well, and she had a very personal experience, so I'd like to read that now. My name is Stacy Freeman, and my children attend school at PS1 on Broadway and Euclid. My husband, Sam, does the school commute both to and from, most exclusively by cargo bike. I want to share a personal experience that gives me great concern about the new divided bike lane implemented on Broadway. On April 11th, I was hit by a car while bicycling home from the market on Venice Boulevard. I was cycling west in Venice Boulevard's dedicated bike lane, which like Broadway, positions a row of parked cars between moving traffic and the bike lane. and minivan turned right off Venice Boulevard on a small side street just as I approached the same intersection while I was continuing straight on Venice. I braked hard once I saw the car start to turn, but I was too close to stop in time and I slammed into the car's rear passenger door. After the accident, the car driver alleged that she could not see me in the bike lane through the line of parked cars before making her turn. I got really lucky, bad bruising and nothing broken. I'm so glad it wasn't my children that were with me at the time. In light of this experience, I'm very concerned about my family's daily bike commute to and from through a similar bike lane obscured from moving traffic by a lane of parked cars. When the interstitial parking spots are filled, drivers cannot see the bike lane when turning onto side streets. At minimum, barriers buttressing side streets adjacent parking are essential to increase visibility between moving traffic and the separated bike lane. The separated lane imparts a false sense of safety at each side street intersection. I would hate for you or any of your loved ones to be hit like I was due to poor visibility between the bike lane and moving traffic. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And similarly, if you want to talk to our city manager about the Broadway bike lanes, I think they're organizing feedback. Okay, we will now move on to public input on items under the consent calendar and closed session only. And we have a total of six speakers. Denise Barton. I do see Morgan Hunter-Gross in here twice. Okay, Ashley Olson, Jonathan Foster and Zoe Montaner.

And good evening, I'm for a regarding the People Concerns Own Retention Program. I have to ask if Legal Aid provides eviction protection services, isn't this paying for the same service twice? But I realize Legal Aid has been really busy helping illegal immigrants to evade ICE. Resulting in affordable housing tenants have to wait up to two weeks for an appointment, showing who's being prioritized by legal aid, and it's not affordable housing tenants, showing who you're prioritizing as well. And since the program was supposedly started to assist those who lost their homes in the fires, I again have to ask why the city finds it necessary to fund this program. Here, please do note the people concerned took fire rate funds, which can only be for this program. The first year, the city gave them $200,000, and there was tens of thousands of dollars unaccounted for. Then right last year, did you give them $300,000, again, only to have tens of thousands of dollars unaccounted for. You can see for yourself on the Human Services Grant Program Reports page. But when you look at the pages, I experienced a page comes up for a couple of minutes and then closes unlike other. Other program reports, so why would they, why would that be unless the city is hiding something like, when the people concerned couldn't account for 1.4Million dollars of city grant funding previously, but now you want to triple the programs. um retention program to 1.2 million dollars which would really make it make one wonder if the unaccounted funds are finding their way into those of you up there sitting up there's pockets or campaign contributions thank you thank you mr hunter gross

Hi, my name is Morgan . I'm talking about for Bravo, which is recycling, for Echo, Cross Rocks, for Hotel, which is the major events, and for India, which is the Coastal Commission. I'd like to talk about recycling first. I think we're not educating the basics. We're talking about a lot of recycling. I remember the trailers that used to come around with three recycling cans.

Anybody remember the trailers in Santa Monica for trash and recycling?

I don't know how many people are from Santa Monica here. I think we need to discuss reduce, reuse, and recycle. as the basic one, two, and three. There's also not much of a discussion I've read on the website about what to do with used lithium ion batteries. There's the e-waste, but there's very little incentive for these tons of devices that have lithium ion batteries that then go into the dumps, and then they have dump fires with the lithium ion batteries. So it would be great if we can come up with an incentive and an easy way for environmental, because we have tons of devices now with lithium ions, Okay, now we're gonna move on to the events with Camera Obscura. What happens after these big events? I've never seen Camera Obscura actually work in its proper function. As a filmmaker and a photographer, the idea of what they did in the optics to make it work the way it does and it's not upside down seems incredible to me. I'd really love to see that because I sit on the Charlie Chaplin post outside, which is super cool because I used to work in his old train car office in Hollywood in Sunset Gower Studios. There's such a difference that there's less than 200 people here today. Okay, crosswalks. Before I go, my great-aunt, she was blind and deaf. I'm talking about vibrotactile buttons here and target beeps. We used to have the beep, beep, beep, beep to cross the streets in Santa Monica, different directions. Anybody remember that? Yeah, I remember, yeah. Okay, so we're missing the target sounds. Also, currently, when I press the button, it makes the same sound whether it's walk or non-walk. When I mean vibrotactile, I mean it doesn't, it should vibrate, so if I'm blind and deaf, I know. It doesn't say the name of the streets. When I did my travels in California, I noticed a lot of the red cities had a lot more significantly better disability access. So we saw the map on the, we're now in For India, the Coastal Commission. We saw the map two weeks ago about the Fourth Street and then the Lincoln Cut-Off. That is fascinating. And that also reminds me of the CAL FIRE map, which just got released too, separate, talking about Coastal Commission. What's happening past the Fourth Street is fascinating. I don't know how to describe what's happening, what we're seeing, the numerous proposals on 5th Street, the numerous, the 6th Street, 7th and 8th Street. It's like we've created this developmental wall and that's fascinating because we have the history of those big buildings that were built in the 70s. I got to fly on the building with that guy who built the big white building on Wilshire. I was a trip. He taught me about the ways my cell phones don't work on the interconnected. Okay. Oh, so I overall would like to think about the height that we're going with in Santa Monica what we want. And overall, when we're talking in the third dimension, its relationship with Santa Monica airport.

But I'll stay away from that on this topic.

I want to thank you all city council. I get to come here and hang out to the last meetings. I'm one of the last people here. I get to walk some of you guys out. I mean, when I walked out with Mayor Lana Negrete and the maintenance man who had to deal with all of the chairs from last session, he opened the door for Lana and said, Mayor. And that respect was very important. Thank you all.

Thank you, Ashley Olson. And then we have Jonathan Foster and Zoe Mentiner.

hello good evening i'm speaking on 4i i believe which is the mou for the lcp i'm really so thrilled to see the the progress that's been made if the lcp is exactly what we need and i would just like to ask that we now reconsider co-sponsoring ab1740 thank you thank you so much jonathan foster zoe montaner

Hello, Jonathan foster person with not a lot of power here and it's going to talk on for E4F and. Just randomly also want to throw in, I had spent an afternoon in an evening in Laguna Beach and another evening in Hermosa Beach, and it kind of seemed like what Santa Monica used to be like. So, um, highway safety improvements. You know, I can only kind of go off what was already kind of said this morning about earlier not this morning, but earlier in the meeting about Broadway and 17th and it's, it's to me, it's overkill. I've been up and down Broadway for years and now I'm having a hard time going down the street. It takes forever to get to the next block, even at Lincoln and Broadway. I'm waiting to make a right turn. Um, people blowing the horns at me as I wait for the pedestrian in the crosswalk, because I just about always wait until their foot touches the curb before I enter the crosswalk and people don't like that. And I'm like, well, what if that was my girlfriend? You know, it's like, I wouldn't want to run her over. It was that my mom was that my uncle. or something you know how about some dude i haven't met who could be real cool i wouldn't want to piss them off you know but they're you know it's like you know i i like to try to give the kindness in santa monica that it's supposed to be known for but it's a little overkill to be and At 17th and Broadway with those, the other person was talking about having those curbs all out there. I mean, I have bumped the back tires in my car trying to get over there even turning into 17th street. I have a hard time not hitting the car that's in the oncoming lane. It's just too. it's too tight really really is too tight on broadway and i hope that that doesn't keep going on like this highway improvement thing wherever street corners you put this on that just keeps jamming the actual vehicles into problems that think that's what's happening thank you

Thank you. Hi. I believe that in the times that we're living, and God knows I've been on this side of needing to make ends meet and with my rent specifically. So the renter aid program to provide financial assistance and case management for qualifying household is something that I fully support. However, It concerns me that it's being administered by the people concerned. If you do a quick search, the Google review summary gives them 3.8 on a review summary. And indeed, the people that work there gave them a 3.5 overall rating. from people who work there and claim inconsistency and chaos. If you're going to give money to the people concerned to administer a program for households that are vulnerable, I think you should pick another agency to do that because in this chamber, we've listened to many unhoused individuals being abused and harassed by staff from the people concerned, me included. So the ratings are not mine. The ratings are from other people. It's data, and I love good data, and you should make decisions based on data. And I think it is important and relevant to really have compassion for vulnerable populations and people that are seeking help for financial assistance when they don't know if they can make the rent. Thank you.

Thank you. Ms. Anderson-Warren, I believe, yeah.

We have a phone caller that unfortunately we went past for general public comment. It's David Wadley. David, can you go ahead and bring the caller in?

Okay, David Wally, you are now in the meeting. Press star six to unmute yourself.

Same city of Santa Monica. My name is David Watley. can you hear me okay city clerk yes i hear you go ahead city clerk can can you hear me city clerk yes go ahead david we hear you good evening city of santa monica my name is david whatley and i am an alumnus of the university of california los angeles ucla Political Science Department with a concentration in American politics, class of 2007. Now, I'm calling this evening because I would like to get a hold of UCLA Senior Campus Counsel for fiscal year 2015 to 2016, Ms. Lane-Harris. DILG, U.S. Attorney, is she available? City Attorney, is she available? City Clerk, is Lane DILG available? City Manager, is Lane Gilg available? She's a former U.S. attorney, and I talked to her on the phone. She was at the White House. No, I'm sorry. She was Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of Energy under the Biden-Harris administration. Now, I worked on Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign for president in 2024, and I also worked on her...

Thank you, David. Your time is up.

Okay, great. That's it.

That's all.

Now we are moving on to the consent calendar. All of these items are going to be approved in one motion unless we pull some items. And my understanding is that Council or Mayor Pro Tem, yes.

I just, I'm going to have to recuse from one item, so perhaps we can bifurcate that.

sure which item is that because there are some that were pulled okay um this is pull it up here so 4a is being pulled this is 4i 4i has been pulled okay well then i'll just for keys at that time right and then 4h has been pulled and i don't believe there are any other polls okay a h and i so

is there a motion to approve the rest before we do that i wanted to sorry sorry i need to read something into the record great um so this is just a correction on the minutes from april 28th it's on item 5c council members are niskaya and mayor for tim zwick recused themselves from the item correction in the record is that they both recuse themselves due to a possible conflict of interest under government code section 87 100 so I just want to make you guys aware of that okay and I'd like that to be included in the motion thank you so is there a motion to approve

I'll approve the agenda items recorded, except for, is it A?

A, H and I. H and I. With the change to, you said it was 5C.

And with the change of 5C for April.

Amendment to 4J.

I'll second.

Great. Council Member Zonaskaya.

Sorry, quick question. Were there some... Were there some additional edits to certain of the minutes, or is that going to be read in at a different time?

No, those were just typos, so they were just corrected. They were just misspelled words.

Got it. Thank you. All right. Yes.

Councilmember Snell?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Swick?

Yes.

Councilmember Raskin? Yes. Councilmember Negrete? Yes. And Mayor Tarosas?

Yes.

So let me read the first item that was pulled is, or did you, is item 4A? 4A, let's go ahead. It's award of RFP 470 to the people's concern for administration of Santa Monica renters aid program to provide financial assistance, case management to the qualifying households.

And I pulled it because I think it's significant that we discussed this. This is kind of the first time that we're doing something on the record publicly about this. So I was wondering if you would be able to give us a quick report as to what this is for the general public that's listening.

Of course. Great. There is a presentation that was somebody got it. Cool. Great.

I guess while you're pulling it up. Oh, there it is.

Nevermind. Go ahead.

Great.

Good evening, council. My name is T Martin. I am a senior analyst with our homelessness prevention and intervention division here with the city. And I'm here to give a update on the implementation of our Santa Monica venture aid program here in the city. So, I'll just start with a bit of background. So, in March of 2025, city council approved the renters protection program, which included the implementation of a measure funded, flexible financial assistance program designed to get financial assistance and case management to Santa Monica mentors to prevent homelessness. The approved program design was meant to really ensure that we're providing upstream assistance to vulnerable households in Santa Monica and providing them with financial assistance that's based on household need for stabilization. and housing-focused case management to provide linkages to services like our Right to Counsel program and really ensure that these renters are connected to our broader system of homelessness prevention services. These services are also targeted to Santa Monica households that are renters and who are up to 120% AMI. That's about $126,000 per year for a one person household. And there will be consideration of prioritizing households who are at the greatest risk of homelessness. And this program was approved to be funded completely by Measure GS funds for $6 million over the course of five years. The contract that is being put forth in this RFP award is for two years with three options to extend annually after that. So, in January of 2026, the Housing and Human Services Department staff released an RFP seeking an experienced homeless services provider to administer this program. The RFP evaluation criteria really focused on the organization having the capacity to administer large-scale financial assistance. And to be able to provide a program model that is specific to Santa Monica, as well as strong fiscal agency performance. The people concerned receive the highest overall evaluation score after going through our competitive procurement process, which consisted of a review panel with interdepartmental and external reviewers, including a member of the measure GS oversight committee. With the approval of this RFP award, City staff will move into the implementation phase of this program, now named Santa Monica Renter Aid. The program is anticipated to launch in summer of 2026, which is basically now, which is very exciting. And given the significant impact this investment is going to have for vulnerable Santa Monica households, we know that outreach and community engagement is crucial. So outreach will be multilingual, including Spanish throughout the community. There will be an online application via a city web page, as well as paper application options when requested. And there will be in person program office hours in Virginia Avenue park in the Pico neighborhood as well as other city sites, including libraries. And we plan to promote the program through all city channels available, including seascape, the digital kiosk, downtown, big blue bus and more. The program is initially expected to serve 150 at risk households annually and outcomes such as this and others and feedback surveys from participants will be regularly monitored by homelessness prevention and intervention staff. This program really is intended to strengthen the Santa Monica community by ensuring that there is accessible and accountable homelessness prevention programming that can get assistance to those households as efficiently as possible. And we look forward to continuing to partner with Council and our community partners as well as residents to ensure a successful rollout of this program. And with that, I'll take any questions.

Great. Council Member Snell.

Thank you. Thank you so much. With the recruitment application process, how many businesses applied for the program?

Yeah, as a part of the procurement process, there were three nonprofit agencies that applied.

Thank you.

Um, so I have a couple of questions just. So that people understand exactly, um, because there's a lot of transparency issues around the broader conversation around these programs. Um, and a few of them are just, um. how quickly is the assistance reaching people? So as an example applies, they're coming up upon a second missed rent or whatever the case may be. How long is this application process and how long does it take to get the funds into the hands? And does it go directly to the recipient or does the funds for rent assistant go to the landlord?

The assistance will definitely always be predicated on. The timelines that you're talking about, right? So, taking into account the fact households who may have authority to notice. So that will always be taken into consider consideration when applications are prioritized and expedited. Um, that being said, um, our, our rough timelines so far from time of application being processed to assistance would be between. 2 to 3 weeks on average, but again. that allows for expedited processes when needed. Also, for households that have immediate needs, for example, like an unlawful detainer, those are folks that would be referred to Legal Aid Foundation for legal services. So for those folks that have those specific legal timelines, that would be where LAFLA would step in in those situations. And this program really is designed to get ahead of crises, is its intention. There was one last question at the end.

I was asking if it goes directly to the, yeah, as an answer.

Yeah, so in order to ensure that the program, you know, that the assistance is delivered to its intended target, which is, for example, rent, although this program also will allow for other forms of assistance. The phones will always be dispersed to a vendor as opposed to the resident themselves whenever possible. That being said, we are designing a program with flexibility in mind. We know that each situation that comes up is unique. So there will always be that consideration.

Um, like, overall, do we know what percentage is going directly to the residents who need to help and what percentage is going to administration and overhead?

Yeah, so for the 1st year of the contract, it's, um, well, 1.2Million dollars and, um, 75% of that is direct financial assistance. The remainder is actually going to primarily staffing case managers. So obviously the financial assistance is a huge component of this program, but we really have seen in our own experience and in models, regional and nationwide, that that case management portion is very important. So that's why the rest of the funds are primarily going towards staffing for case managers.

So, 25% of the funds of that overall 6,000,006,000,000 is going towards case management. And just to be clear, there's an up to amount for families. Correct? So it's as needed obviously.

Yeah, it'll always be scaled to to household need and assistance will always be also delivered with sustainability in mind. So. The intention is always to provide the intervention that will ensure that that household is not back in the same position again, you know, 2 months later.

Okay. Do we have a forward facing like benchmarks for success that the community can see that the obviously the city internally, I'm assuming set some benchmarks, but is there something, um, since it's community funds that we can all see public facing and have some benchmarks that maybe is on a website or whatnot to see if it's actually providing homelessness for one that would take longer. Um, but just to also see how the money is being used as it's being used.

Yes, there's definitely a number of metrics that we'll be measuring, including, you know, at the end of the program is the household still is the household still housed or 6 months after the program? What indicators do we have that? They're still housed in terms of those metrics being publicly available. I think that's something we still have to identify, you know, which ones and what forum. But I know there are multiple city scorecards and the Homelessness Strategic Plan is another project from our division that includes a data dashboard. So this program will definitely be integrated into those public facing settings.

Yeah, and I don't mean putting people's names or anything like that sensitive information, but just so people can track 30 families helped in the last 120 days and this much money went towards rental assistance or whatnot. Um. What housing retention metrics are going to be tracked after the assistance? I mean, you're going to obviously like, it would be nice to understand if someone is a repeat user. At what point do you say, okay, this model is not helping you and it's not sustainable because it's drawing from other folks. I guess that's where case management comes in.

Exactly. That's where I was gonna go. So one thing that's beneficial is, you know, all of the homelessness prevention programs that we partner with, they, they talk with each other, right? You know, they're able to see, you know, folks who are in different programs. So they're able to have those kinds of conversations to recognize, oh, this household, you know, has repeatedly struggled. And so what intervention do we need to come up with in case management? To ensure that they don't end up in the same place again.

Did the staff evaluate if any portion of this could be handled in house or is that just too. Too much too inexpensive. Okay. I understand that. Um, are there renewal standards with this contract? For example, performance standards, like. A successful rate of X amount.

Yeah, that is specifically why we designed the contract to be 2 years initially, and then have 3 options to renew beyond there 2 years to essentially. Get the program running into evaluate its impact and then be able to evaluate the performance metrics we've set up to ensure that it is still serving Santa Monica.

Will counsel be getting regular updates on this? Yeah. And I guess my question is, since you said that out of the folks that applied, this is the only organization that can carry this load of work, I guess my concern is what happens then if it's not successful and it seems like there's nobody else that can do this work? I guess that's to be continued. We'll see, cross that bridge when we get to it.

I'll jump in and say, I wouldn't say that this that TPC is the only organization that can do the work. They rated highest out of those that applied. So, for whatever reason, after that 2 year period, if we need to pivot, there are other opportunities. There could be a wider net cast for other agencies. Elsewhere in La also city of La or county has started a similar program. So we can also look at what agencies are implementing that program and see if they might come to Santa Monica.

And I promise this is my last question, but is it, I just, I wonder, is it, is there a rule around providing I'm sort of looking at the City Manager, City Attorney in certain circumstances when there's public funds being used to address one of the most major issues and where there's currently a lot of transparency issues or trust issues around whether or not the money's being spent well, if it's effective. Is there the possibility of sharing what the rating was and where with those that applied or is that something that's not allowed just publicly like who applied and.

We can who applied is certainly a matter of public record, so I think there were three organizations that applied, one of which was the people concerned, do we.

St Joseph Center and haven neighborhood services.

And so through the ratings process, that information certainly is available for review that we can provide for the Council to see why people concerned was rated based on the assessment conducted through the procurement process.

But it's not available to the public. It's just something that was shared with Council?

I believe that information, once the procurement's finished, all of those documents become subject to the public records?

I'm only asking because people often say when there's one organization garnering the lion's share of programs, right, people start to ask more questions as to why. And I do want, maybe you can clarify, that the People Concern has multiple programs that are very different. Like this is not the access center, this is not the shelter. There's multiple programs that they run throughout the county and in Santa Monica included. There's multiple programs that they run here. And this is just an administrative program that's much different from the programs that they run here currently.

Yeah, I do think that's a great distinction to make also say, just for additional context, our department housing, human services has contracted with Baker Tilly to do independent auditing of all of our grantee organizations, including TPC. on fiscal performance specifically. But yes, TPC operates a number of programs region-wide and in Santa Monica. And these homelessness prevention programs, you know, which really, like mentioned, consist of case management and financial assistance, are substantively separate, essentially, from, you know, some of the other programs that TPC administers that, you know, folks in the community might be more familiar with. okay thank you so much so I pulled the item I just I wanted to know where can people access the application for the assistance because that was not in the presentation yeah so that will be in the implementation phase so once this are the RFP award is approved We'll be engaging with our comms team on setting up the webpage on the city website. That'll be available in multiple languages and there will be paper options as well for folks who need that.

Okay. And I understand that the program is going to have $5,000 in one time emergency assistance per household per year. 10,000 in ongoing monthly assistance for housing stability and 20,000 for households in unlawful detainer proceedings. Is that correct?

Those are, those are caps and need will always be based on, you know, what is going to ensure that the household remains stably housed. But yeah, those are the different categories of assistance and in the caps with each category.

So I would just argue to Council Member Negrete's earlier points, especially for the one time emergency assistance, if there's any way of doing it in a little bit more of a, it sounds like you're doing it in like a reimbursement model. and some of these programs countywide have operated with debit cards, et cetera, where there's direct cash assistance going to the renter in a very expedited manner because these, I think the whole purpose of what we established when we established the Right to Counsel program and the flexible financial assistance was that this money would be available immediately for folks so that we would head off any additional legal action at the pass because as your numbers here recognize, once you've had a UD filed against you, it's exponentially more expensive to handle that. So if we could prevent the UD in the first place, I think that that would be very helpful. So if there's any way that we can get a little bit more flexibility on the direct cash payments, I didn't really get a clear answer. It sounds like you're giving the money to the landlords. Is that correct?

Yes, that will be our approach in all the situations in which that is possible and will be the quickest solution.

I would just say we need to trust tenants and we need to trust people to do what they need with their money. And so if there's any way to do this a little bit more flexibly, I think that that would be helpful. And then additionally, is it correct to say that we've estimated that there's about 472 unlawful detainer filings annually in Santa Monica?

Yes, correct.

That's a lot. I mean, that's basically commensurate with our homeless population. Well, that's lower. But the thing is, is that, again, I would like to see that number decrease. I think that that's the whole point of why we're doing this. So I think that would be a major metric for us to be tracking. And with that being said, I see Council Member Negrete is back in the queue.

I'm just going to dovetail on the payment. I guess my, actually, so my concern is like, so if you're giving it to someone, it's to be used for rent. And so to the extent that there's a tracking that if you're giving it to a landlord, that there's a notice that immediately goes to the tenant that says your landlord has received here's a copy of the payment obviously I mean these might be obvious things I don't know because we're not administering it a third party is I hope that that's what's happening and that it doesn't become my only concern is that oftentimes when you're struggling you're in the hole for many reasons and right could be one of them and while we want to trust people I've been in a position where You know, sometimes you're struggling and some of that money could be used for emergency things in the house, but that's not what the funds were intended for. And now you've got a double problem because you're now in the whole even more. So I would just actually suggest that it go to the, the landlord as a vendor or whatever you're calling it. But that the receipt of it is simultaneously sent to the tenant so that they understand that their rent has been paid because unless I'm mistaken, that's what it's for. Right? It's not for other household bills or anything or is that also is it also for other households like electricity and things like that?

Yeah, so the assistance definitely will be primarily targeted at rental assistance, but there is flexibility for other needs that are leading to instability in the household. So utilities are an example of that. And I think the feedback about ensuring that there's confirmation and clear understanding on the tenant side. that the assistance has been delivered is really well received. And I think that's something that we can ensure is embedded in the program.

I mean, I think this is an amazing program. I don't know what other cities do it. It's like a state federal type of program that should be funded at that level. And we're taking care of residents preserve our diversity takes care of our seniors. This is filling this gap. I met during office hours a gentleman who was looking for this information. I didn't realize that the pod was only for seniors myself. So. I'm glad to hear that it's coming, but I do want to point out that as much as we trust. People I would hate for those that, you know, may. not intending to take advantage of it, end up using the funds for something it's not intended for and taking from someone who desperately needs to stay in their place. And so for me, I think that's my biggest concern when I was referring to how quickly it gets sent to obviously prevent from an unlawful detainer or any additional fees and things like that. But also to make sure that it's very clear that there's a set you know, allowance that it's allowed to be used for certain things so that we can make sure that the most amount of people are getting those very necessary things of a roof over their head, electricity, heat, all that kind of stuff. Thank you.

Great. Councillor, I cannot no longer see Council on Resurgence, guys. So I just asked her. I don't love that. Okay, no questions. Great. Okay, I'm very excited about this. I think we're doing groundbreaking work here for a city of our size. Really appreciate all the work that you guys have put into this. And I think we want to see the number of UDs decrease and hopefully keeping more people housed because it's cheaper to keep people housed than it is to get them housing. I'll make a motion to approve this item. Great. Second.

And I just add quickly that this was a priority for many of us going to council. And I'm so excited to see this work come to fruition. It's proven in other cities that this is the primary means of addressing and preventing people going from being housed to being unhoused. So really excited.

Are we ready to close? Yes. Council Member Negrete?

Yes.

Council Member Raskin? Yes. Mayor Patem-Swick? Yes. Council Member Snell? Yes. Council Member Zarniskaya?

Yes.

And Mayor Tarosas?

Yes. Great, that carries. Congratulations, team.

Next we have 4H, which is Advancing Major Events Authorization to Negotiate and Enter into License Agreements Upon Upcoming Major Events, Including the Licensing Agreement for the use of the Camera Obscura building for the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs during the L.A. 28 Summer Olympic Games? And, I'm sorry, Mayor Taurosis, I believe you pulled this item.

Yeah. I just wanted to get some clarification. This is great. I think these are all really exciting things. We have, you know, Swiss House Club France, ESPN. I think all of these items obviously require us to be able to do events in our coastal zone. So we'll be talking about that later. But I wanted to get clarification on exactly how Camera Obscura is being renovated because I was a little bit unclear in the staff report.

Great. Thank you for that question. We're very excited about the future for Camera Obscura. So it's been closed for quite some time. The city has been, you know, through RAD has been running some art programs, artists in residence, but it really hasn't been open to the public for quite some time in a robust way. So we're using the partnership with the Swiss Federation to build out an actual park concession so that hopefully maybe even next year we could open it as a park concession so people can get a drink or a quick bite to eat. We're used to seeing this more so throughout Europe, and we want to make sure that we're providing moments of respite in our parks along with all the recreation opportunities we have. And it would be operated by the Swiss during the Games, both the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028. And then it would operate in perpetuity as an actual park concession in Palisades Park. The partnership that we're working with the Swiss on would be to restore the building, the building systems, the roof, it's had mold issues, it's suffered from a lot of deferred maintenance over the years. So that's the city's contribution to the upgrades at Camera Obscura. And then the Swiss are coming in on a design partnership so that as a part of their legacy during the games, you'll have that Swiss vibe when you enter camera obscura. So it'll be this, you know, quintessential mid century building that, you know, you can only find in California. But when you walk inside, you'll have that kind of like, oh, this, this is like Swiss design, and some of the menu items will continue from Swiss cuisine. So it'll be a part of the legacy from the games.

Okay. Great. Love the legacy. Love the improvements. I just want to be clear. So they are paying for the upgrades or we're paying for the upgrades?

We're paying for the system upgrades. You'll hear later in the presentation on the CIP. So the building systems, like the new roof, the HVAC, the housing, sorry, just talking about housing, heating and ventilation. Right. um some of the windows you know the basics uh on the the bones of the building and then their partnership is on the design so furniture lighting that things of that nature got it i just want to make sure that we're keeping the mid-century modern look and feel because when i read swiss design i was a little bit confused i'm just going to be honest yeah it'll definitely maintain the the modernist design yeah

Great.

And then it'll be in partnership with just to reinforce that it'll be in partnership with our architecture team.

Okay.

So the architecture division is leading the design for both the remodel as well as the aesthetics.

And you're thinking that this could open before the games, despite the fact that they're coming here for the games so that we can use the concessionaire in advance of that, which I love the idea of activating our parks with more concessions. Yeah.

Okay, our hope is to to open something in 2020, the summer of 2027.

Fantastic. Uh, very, very exciting news. Um, anyone else have questions about this?

I'd like to move this item.

Great 2nd. Oh.

Are you guys ready to vote council members? Yes. Councilmember Snell? Yes. Mayor Pro Temswick? Yes. Councilmember Raskin? Yes. Councilmember Negrete? Yes. Mayor Tarosas?

Yes. Great.

Okay.

And then Councilmember Zwick will recuse himself now.

Yeah, let me just read for the record that I'll be recusing myself from item 4i, the proposed MOU with the Coastal Commission due to my employment with the Housing Action Coalition, which advocates for housing production. Although the MOU does not directly address housing production, the LCP update will address housing production in the coastal zone. And thus, in order to avoid any potential conflicts or the appearance of impropriety, I will be recusing myself from this item.

Thank you. Is there a staff report or should we just launch into questions?

We have a brief staff report before we get into questions about this very exciting item. I see Jing coming up.

Great. Very exciting.

Oh, but hold on. Jessie's leaving.

it's not i can go ahead i'll plug it in Good evening, Council. I just have a brief staff report just to kind of go over what is in this. This is a follow-on from Council's direction from your May 12th meeting where you gave us direction on issues to be considered in our discussions with Coastal Commission staff. What's before you tonight is basically a framework in the form of an MOU that memorializes that shared understanding between the City and Coastal Commission staff on a path towards LCP certifications, that's a local coastal program. I think it's important to note that an MOU is not binding. It doesn't guarantee an outcome, but what it does, it is a commitment and a statement of intent about how we move forward through this process. What you'll see here is some timelines, so a commitment to renew this process with a kickoff in July 2026 with a goal. to have a fully certified LCP by the end of 2027. What that means is it's both the LUP and the IP, so the land use plan and the coastal zoning ordinance. It's not a small endeavor, but it's one that we both have a shared goal to achieve. Helpful here just to review again, what is the local coastal program? So it's a requirement of the California Coastal Act. It's a planning tool. It's really a statement of the City's plan to protect coastal resources. It's important to note the Coastal Commission has to certify that LCP in order to transfer that permitting authority to the City, so the City can issue those CDPs. You can see how that works together. Again, the Local Coastal Program consists of the LUP and the IP. Both of those make up the whole LCP and the thing needs to be certified for the City to issue its own CDPs. I think what's important to note here also is that this is not a re-legislation of all City adopted policies. It's really about carrying forward that existing framework and then layering on consistency with the Coastal Act into that. So, what are some of the key elements of the, as I indicated, it's a statement of how we coordinate and communicate between city and coastal staff through this process. There's a number of foundational guiding principles. Most importantly is really this is a statement of a good faith cooperation to find a path forward using creative means necessary with a shared goal of protecting coastal resources and public access to the coast. There's a commitment to use the 2018 draft LUP that was previously adopted by this council as a foundation. So we're not starting from square one. That's a publicly available draft that went through a pretty extensive public process, but that would be updated to account for change circumstances. For example, there's been changes in science for sea level rise. Coastal Commission adopted a new environmental justice policy, the city's own realignment plan. You know, just things that have changed over time over the last 10 years. And we're also in corporate language from the city's existing land use framework. You know, these are, this is our land use policy, our framework and, you know, really in any number of issues, not just land use, but also how we manage mobility in the city and things like that. You know, to use that framework to the maximum extent feasible, consistent with the coastal act, but again, acknowledging city regulation. So, you know, the legal standard is consistency with the coastal act, but we had discussions. That's important to acknowledge that the city needs to the ability to manage its own affairs. We're not looking to fully undermine or overturn these frameworks that have existed and people make both big and small decisions based on that. And then finally, just a key piece, just not getting into huge detail, but again, a commitment to explore policies and processes to streamline permitting, provide for programmatic management, really to the goal of facilitating sustainable and economically vibrant development in the coastal zone. And you can see the list of topic areas that there's a commitment to go through. I heard the Mayor just talk about temporary events. There has been a discussion of how do we move that as the nearest term priority towards some sort of programmatic You know, solution for all the upcoming events generally, you know, there's, there's a desire to solve for that and all the, you know, the different kinds of activities, you know, like, outdoor dining, commercial 10 improvements to home share and vacation rental ordinance. These are things that happen on a day to day basis, and there needs to be some predictability, right? In that process, residential development, transportation improvements, managing parking, and also public safety issues. So there's not a solution literally for us to share with you right now, but this is just a communication description of the topic areas that there's a commitment to talk through. That's really a summary of what's in this. Happy to answer your questions.

Amazing. Councillor Raskin.

Yeah, thank you. I've got a few questions for the purposes of the community. But before that, I want to I want to extend a huge thanks to you and Roxanne for the work you put in to make this happen. I know last time we were here was just about a month ago, when I called up some friends at the Coastal Commission, put them in touch with our city team, and now only a few weeks later we've gotten to this point. And it's really, really remarkable. So really applaud the efforts of you and the entire team to get us here. I've been hearing a lot of chatter in the community asking questions about what the permitting process would look like after we have a certified LCP. And I'm hoping you can just talk about the level of scrutiny and discretion that the city might have in processing local CDPs for projects that are consistent with objective standards in the LCP.

Yeah, so what that looks like is the city would be responsible for issuing the CDP. So this two-step process that applicants are experiencing right now wouldn't be the case going forward. How we do that is still to be worked out. That's the kind of thing that would be the EIP in terms of process and regulations. But there are kind of different models of doing that. But really, I think what it results in is something Pretty, like, basically your process would start and end with the city, if you will. I think, as we talked about last time, there are areas of original jurisdiction that are always going to be subject to appeal to the coastal commission. But much like, you know, what some applicants may experience at the local level right now, right? Where it's a. Decision made, you know, on a permit on objective standards. Um, and this, this process of developing the IP will provide that clarity right about what that process looks like.

Right.

Yeah. And so just to be clear. The LCP would go before, well, really the IP would, and I suppose any amendments to the LUP would go before the City Council before going to the Coastal Commission.

Yes, exactly. Right. So both actually would. They'd actually have to go to the Planning Commission because this is a land use plan. It's also an ordinance, right? So there'd have to be a recommendation, formal recommendation from the Planning Commission to the City Council. The City Council has to adopt it and it goes on to the Coastal Commission for that formal certification.

And so one of the key points here is that the work that's already happened with the 2018 LUP is going to serve as the baseline or a basis for work going forward. And another question I've heard from folks is that, well, are you just going to...

know open up the development standards uh from scratch and i don't think that's the case right no that's not what this is um you know there's been a lot of you know well-worn you know debate over those sorts of things um the city has developed you know especially when it comes to housing you know an entire framework consistent compliant with its certified housing element we certainly wouldn't want to do anything to jeopardize that. You know, and our loose is what it is, you know, at the moment, we have adopted plans and policies. And that's just on the land use piece, there are many, many other adopted policies that the city has. So this is not revisiting, you know, all of those things, foundationally, I think those will be part of As I said, that forms the foundation and you see that the language in the MOU kind of talking about that commitment of like, this is a baseline. The Coastal Commission can't say like, yes, we just accept that wholesale. That's not how this works. It would have to marry it with the Coastal Act. And that's really going to be part of that conversation of how can we do this to make sure that we respect the city's agency, but also the spirit and intent of the Coastal Act.

Okay, so then just two final questions. I mean, to put a finer point on this, so once we have the certified LCP, projects will go through the local CDB process. Yes, that's right. Including housing projects. Yes. And last point on this, projects will have to comply with the development standards in the LCP. Yes. Unless they want to go through some sort of zone change or something like that.

Mm-hmm, yep.

Perfect, thank you.

Councillor Negrete.

Okay, so what are the concrete timelines that are attached to this framework? Because I've been hearing it takes a minimum of a year to get a local coastal program. It's generally around 18 months or more. Clearly, we did this in 2018. And I do think that between the public and various council members' efforts, that obviously now we're in a different space to maybe do things quicker. But realistically, what are we looking at?

Yeah, so in the MOU is what I would call a commitment and intent to try and finish out this process. It's an aggressive timeline for sure. But I think, like I said, we're not starting from nothing, right? We have a 2018 base. City staff actually has been engaged with coastal commission staff since 2023 on exchanging policies on some of the sea level rise and environmental justice stuff and kind of updating it. So I feel like we have been making momentum. This is really speeding. It up not to say it is for sure an aggressive timeline, but I think that's very positive in some ways to try and do the land use plan and the crystal zoning ordinance together. So you have policy and there's no interpretation or anyone forgetting about what we meant. And I think that's what we want to try and do is to move forward policy and implementation together. So it's very clear. Like, it's not just some vague. Goal, right? It's some clarity on like, what does that actually mean? What does that look like? We want to try to do that now. I'm going to be very honest, right? You might not get there on everything, but on some of those key issues that we've committed to work through, I think it's really important. We've talked about an idea of like concepts, conceptual framework, something like that, if not literal code language, at least a clear understanding of what we mean. So when you go to draft code, you know, it's possible to understand that. So the timeline is a July kickoff with a goal to finish by December 31st, 2027, both the LUP and the IP.

So like a year and a half.

A year and a half. Yep.

And I mean, I need to point out the obvious that's really tightly tied to AB 1740's newly amended Um, I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about that during this, but, and maybe you can't comment because it's more of a political what if, but it sounds like that's being used as a tool to inspire both the coastal commission and the city to work quickly. Otherwise that will go in. If we don't have that done before AB 1740, then that goes in 1st, obviously.

I honestly can't comment on the bill I can just honestly say the conversations did not involve discussions of that it was actually just about the realities because like what extent of the timeline is actually the public outreach that's necessary so in 2016 we actually went through you know a pretty extensive process we confirmed like we can we can do a refresh on that that that's that stuff just takes like four to six months you know just to make sure that we're kind of reintroducing educating folks and that's what Let's like, huh? You know, we need to account for that piece. Even if we had a back and forth, that's how we like, mutually landed on December 31st. I. I very honestly can't speak to whatever's in the bill wasn't part of the discussion.

So, and just to be clear on the housing front, I know you said some of it, but I just want to make it as plain language as possible and not use acronyms or anything just to be very clear. When it comes to residential development, um, for example, large projects in the coastal zone, 20 plus story buildings. I think that's the fear that people are concerned that it leaves it up to 4 votes on a Tuesday. So, depending on the makeup of a council, potentially that we would see more development. THE REALITY IS THERE IS ALREADY ZONING THAT WE HAVE TO ADHERE TO AND A LOCAL COASTAL PROGRAM WOULD OBVIOUSLY HAVE BEEN CREATED WITH THE COASTAL COMMISSION WHERE THEY'RE SAYING THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW. SO THERE'S A FRAMEWORK THAT WILL BE IN PLACE THAT THE COASTAL COMMISSION HAS PUT A STAMP OF APPROVAL ON THAT WE HAVE TO FOLLOW, CORRECT? YEAH.

AND NONE OF THIS, IT'S NOT GOING TO CHANGE THE BASE ZONING. WE HAVE ZONING ALL THROUGHOUT The coastal zone, we have land use designations. These are a statement of the community's values, right? And this is again, harmonizing it, layering the coastal act. you know, on top of that. So absolutely, you would still have to be compliant with zoning, you know, as it stands.

And what if state density bonus laws come in overhead and remove some of those things statewide? What would happen then?

Yeah, so you still have to comply with both, right? Neither law trumps the other. State density, applicants have access to state density bonus law. They have every right to apply for it. But through this, they would also have to comply with the standards that come out of the implementation of the Coastal Act. So that's kind of what I was explaining is like the purpose of this whole process is really how do you harmonize those two requirements? You could not say that one takes primacy over the other. There are two state laws that they have equal footing. Until the legislature says otherwise, that's the law as it stands today.

Okay, and then are there any issues that remain? Like, I mean, obviously there's lots of issues that remain unresolved, but are there things that you think obviously we've gotten to a halt? It's. Over the years, is there anything that you feel is going to take as well beyond December 2027?

It's, you know, I think it's important to have a shared commitment and a goal to work towards that. And I can say that the, you know, as much as we've worked, you know, that they've been very positive and productive discussions. With coastal commission staff, you know, they're committed to completing it as well. It's hard to say. I mean, you know, I've, I've done these like, it's. Some issues may come up, we might get stuck on it, but I think the point of this is kind of set for the process of how do we solve problems together? How do we unstick those problems? There's an escalation section that allows the city manager and the executive director to then talk through, you know, if there's some issue. So, I think we're trying to establish a protocol, you know, and how we communicate and coordinate through this process. And, you know, you could, we could get stuck on any number of things, you know, as you work through, you know, I like to think like the doubles in the details, you know, as we work through sort of that stuff. Right. And that's that's really what occurred before is. There were just fundamental disagreements policy disagreements, but this is a framework on how to work through it. And the commitment is there to try and get there. It might plus or minus a few, you know, and this is this is non binding doesn't guarantee an outcome, but. It is an important step forward to have a shared understanding of how we want to proceed through this process and where we want to be updating the Council.

If you come into a roadblock, you mentioned community outreach. Does that process also happen during this?

It does. It does. So I think we anticipate kind of like what we did with the 2018 1, where it was just. And I can fully appreciate their community members who either maybe weren't here weren't engaged in that process. So. You know, kind of reintroducing people right to what the call select is what this whole process is what we go through. We anticipate doing, you know, that kind of outreach, you know, as, as we move forward into as kind of a reintroduction. But, like I said, we reserve probably about 4 to 6 months, you know, just for that alone. It doesn't mean that other things couldn't run concurrent to that. So.

Hopefully we use every now new publication, neighborhood group. I don't know, maybe even when the folks show up for the Academy opportunity to just leave information and make it available. I know myself, I learned more about the Coastal Commission than I ever had known being on City Council and even just more in the last year. So I hope that we do a really good job at that public engagement piece because I think Understanding that we, the leverage we gain is certainty to a certain extent. And so, and a framework that we can understand, as opposed to sort of. We don't know if something's going to be able to not only pencil out, but whether or not it can happen, including concerts on the beach. So I'm looking forward to the public engagement part. So, thank you.

I also want to thank staff for bringing this forward so quickly. And when you think about the timeframe with respect to your engagement with the Coastal Commission, starting in 2018, 2023, and now here we are in 2026, and Councilman Negrete and Councilman Raskin have answered most of my questions, but I just want to ask the question, you know, I pretty much know the answer. This does encompass the entire map that we talked about with the Coastal Commission at our last council meeting with the memorandum. And Councilman Negrete stated there will be time for the community to engage in the process in discussing this, because I know that There was some concern about the memorandum memorandum of understanding, but I, but I believe that it's an excellent time with the things that we're doing. And I'm just glad to hear that staff and also the coastal commission is willing to really take this up and discuss it. So I'm looking forward to seeing what the outcome is.

Sorry, sorry, council. Go ahead.

No worries. Thank you. So I saw in the memorandum of understanding draft that was included with the staff report under the guiding principles, some of the specific policies and processes that were called out were things like multimodal transportation facilities, roadway improvements, tools for preferential parking zones, tools for city management of public safety issues on the beach, and I believe there was tools for city management of on-street and off-street parking resources, including pricing, establishing, altering, eliminating, or otherwise managing regulations and requirements. And I didn't see something about this, but I just wanted to clarify to make sure I'm understanding. Is this around employing a more holistic view of public access to the coast and to Santa Monica beaches when we're considering public access? Because as a city that has invested so much in multimodal transportation, including having our train that has a terminus four blocks from the beach, having really high quality bike lanes that are, I think, the envy of many other cities, are we ensuring that we are considering public access to the coast? in more than just for more than just folks who will be accessing it via auto automobiles because i i also know that we've got the antelope valley summer beach bus that's going to be starting to to bring folks uh back to santa monica during the summer from antelope valley so i just wanted to make sure i'm understanding that correctly yes absolutely okay perfect thank you That was my only question. I really appreciate all of the work that has gone in on this and the speed with which this has come back to us. So thank you so much to you, Jing, and to Roxanne and all the staff on your team for getting this back to us so quickly. Appreciate it.

Okay, really quick question for me and then we can move the item. Just for the public and for my understanding, Jane, can you just explain currently without an LCP in place, a small business owner, a single family homeowner, et cetera, who wants to do any sort of development in the coastal zone has to submit for a permit through the City and then the Coastal Commission, correct?

Correct.

And how long does that process usually take?

Yeah, I mean, it can be up to four to six months.

To get a permit issued through the Coastal Commission? Yeah. Okay. And are there any circumstances where it's taken longer than that?

Probably. You know, I can't think of one to mind, but it's, yeah, that's probably, there probably have been instances. I think I would say it's potentially more common that people just don't actually move forward with it. Um, because I think once they get a sense of that timeframe, it's just more than, you know, folks want to bear in terms of the risk. Um, you know, a lot of these are just small businesses, they're putting in their life savings and they're like, you know what? I'll just go look somewhere else.

So, so if we're trying to do a change in use on the promenade, for example. It's a two-step process. It's a two-step process. Correct. And this would potentially, us having an adopted LCP would potentially make it a one-step process with more certainty as to a timeline. Is that correct?

Right. Yeah. And that's actually one of the core pieces of this is we need to find a way to solve for that day-to-day issue. You know, work that we see tenant improvements are about a 3rd of the plan checks we see. So it's not a small amount right? Business is trying to open, you know, both within the coastal zone, you know, 3rd street promenade is in the coastal zone half the downtown is right. So this is really important to to the city that we, that level of predictability and certainty can be provided to to these to these local business owners.

Right. And so when we're talking about economic recovery, we're talking about a realignment plan, and we're talking about allowing for new uses to be able to come in in our downtown coastal zone, especially on the promenade. Something like this is pretty essential. Yeah. And then I know there's been a lot of concern, rightly so, and I absolutely understand, around housing. Is an LCP going to all of a sudden allow us to have some sort of densified development on the coast?

No, I mean, it's really what you'd see today is what is allowed, you know, we anticipate would be allowed going forward. Right. It's not, I think we've emphasized this is not a revisiting, re-legislating of already adopted zoning code policies, you know, all of that would continue.

Right. But us having our own local control, for lack of a better term, with an LCP would not all of a sudden allow us to turn around and then adopt different development standards that would densify the coast, for example.

No, that's not.

No. Yeah. Just wanted to clarify that. Okay, great. Well, I have to say, I have some colleagues from from law school who actually work at the Coastal Commission who are just like, we have never seen the speed at which your staff has moved, our staff has moved, everyone has come together. And I just want to say, I hope people understand how incredibly difficult this has been and how incredibly unusual it is that we're at this point so quickly. So I just want to thank you all your entire team and move this. Yeah, great. Second.

Okay, let's vote. Councilmember Negrete? Yes. Councilmember Raskin? Yes. Councilmember Snell? Yes. Councilmember Zarniskaya?

Yes.

Mayor DeRosa?

Yes.

That passes.

Thank you. I guess you'll read the closed session items.

yes so we have two closed session items one is a conference it's an existing litigation it's with a bunch of John does and then the second one is the city I'm sorry and then the second one is an existing litigation city versus I see SOP the attorney we can estimate a return in 45 minutes

so we'll be back by let's just say no earlier than 8 15. thanks i'll see you all in the closed session teams

Thank you.

okay the time is 8 18 we said we'd be back at 8 15 so we're going to go ahead and get started um is council members are at sky able to be brought back into the meeting okay well we do have five so there is a quorum and hopefully council members are at sky will be coming uh imminently uh madam city attorney do we have a report out of closed session items five a and five b were heard with no reportable action taken great um so we will now move on to the public input on the remaining agenda items just for everyone's uh who's following along 12 a the public hearing was removed from the agenda so we are going to be hearing public comments on the remainder of the agenda And we have, it looks like, 15 speakers. So everyone will have two minutes. Denise, tell me if that's incorrect. That's correct. Okay, great. So I'll just go ahead and call up names. And then if you can come up and just restate your name for us at the mic when we call you, that'd be great. Denise Barton, Kiana Achoy, Diana Flores, Brittany de Guzman, Steven Johnson. So if you just want to make your way up, and then I'll call some more names in a second. Thanks.

Good evening. On item 7A, let's go back to the human services grant, especially for the people concerned to continue to have unaccounted for grant funding. And since there's no notation of the city calling back unaccounted for grant funding, And again, it's worth mentioning that the people concerned is not the only program that has been accounted for grant funding. It would appear that the city receives stamps approved and files these documents with no oversight or accountability. Kind of like when I was being overcharged for rent for my apartment for my affordable housing unit for years. My rent was briefly corrected at the beginning of the year, but in April it was increased INCREASED ANOTHER $17. ISN'T YOUR RENT ONLY SUPPOSED TO GO UP ONCE A YEAR? NOT TO MENTION THE FOUR MONTHS OF MY AFFORDABLE HOUSING BEING THREATENED BY KELLY PHILLIPS, EVEN THOUGH MY RECERTIFICATION WAS SENT AND RECEIVED AT LEAST FIVE TIMES AND THERE IS A RECORD OF THAT. ALONG WITH BEING TOLD NOT TO PAY RENT AND THEN TO PAY IT ALL AT ONE TIME, WHICH I BELIEVE IS ILLEGAL. Next, on to the cost to city employees' salaries and benefits of over $320 million, and the cost of overhead to run the city, which is almost half a billion dollars. That leaves little for additional actual services from the city for residents. And if the city can't afford its pensions now, How does adding more and more city staff help that problem, besides increasing costs? As well as City Hall not being open to the public, besides developers kind of hypocritical to the public service claim. Again, making City Hall a private club that the residents are invited to. This city reeks of fraud, waste, and abuse. Thank you. Thank you.

Kenna?

Good evening, my name is Keona. I first want to take a moment and kindly ask everybody that is in support of Virginia Avenue 16E to please stand up. Out of respect for your time, I want to take a moment and just acknowledge everybody that's currently standing. We want to make it short, and we just want to be heard. Throughout this entire process, we've just been asking for financial transparency and just accountability, to be honest. And yet it just seems like we're always overheard, and it just takes drastic measures to finally be understood. After six years of planning, they are now asking for an additional $3 million. So my question is, what happened to the $38 million? How many more months is it gonna be until they ask for more? What's going to happen then? We're not just asking for basic, we're asking for basic human decency, transparency. Where is the money being allocated? Why are we not seeing all of the funding? Alongside that, it's frustrating because there's lack of accountability. There is a lack of transparency and it just seems that there's a lot of updates that are changing without our knowledge. And throughout this process, this community has faced frustration and words that I can't even express, that it has been six years through. And it's just, the public deserves honest answers before additional funds are provided, honestly. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Diana Flores? And sorry, before you start, Diana, Stephen Johnson, Ashley Olsen, Christine Parra, Alan Mont are next after.

My name is Diana Flores. I'm a resident at Virginia Avenue, and I had a whole speech prepared for tonight that just got thrown out the window. You all know why we're supporting 16B. Everything in it, we need. We need full transparency and accountability. We need to see the finances. Everything changed for me tonight because Tara from CCSM came and approached us outside before the meeting. she's willing to give us everything she agrees that everything on item 16 b should be given full access to the finances which i know was a concern for you guys so if she's on board with it now then i would assume that all of you should be on board with it there should be no questions how how any company is spending their money that is using public funds. They are non-profit. Their funds should be looked in. If they went to a bank for a loan, they'd have to look at all those funds too. So I don't see where City Council didn't right away back up Lana on this item to help protect us and give us the You're supposed to be building trust with the people and we don't trust anything that we're seeing because you say you care about people, but nothing that you're passing or doing here shows that just giving someone money and trusting that they're going to do right. We ask for accountability and transparency every time we came up here asking for that loan. And the fact that we still have to ask once we're this far into the project is ridiculous. You know how deeply affected us residents have been by this process. This would never happen to an all white group. It would never happen. This would never happen north of Montana. Six years, you guys, and we can't get this right. Tara's here tonight, she stands with it. we couldn't get that answer though on our own no responses from project managers we were apparently supposed to reach out to Tara we're being told no one reaches out to the head but Lana finally steps in and does something about it and now all of a sudden like she's the bad guy for Stephen Johnson oh sorry Brittany to Guzman I'm so sorry I'm so sorry

Hi, good evening. I'm Brittany Deguzman talking here on 16B. Good evening, Council Members. I want to start by thanking Council Member Lana Negrete. Without her advocacy, many of us would not have had the chance to stand here tonight and speak for our neighbors, our families, and our homes. So for that, we are all truly grateful. I have a whole thing prepared a whole speech and everything and it's. I mean, I'm just going to go forward and read it tonight. I'm asking this council for transparency and accountability from under the direction of the city of Santa Monica. We asked for that before instead what we are seeing now is a request for more money without the openness communication or trust that should come first. The Virginia Avenue project impacts more than 100 Santa Monica residents, many of whom have lived here for over 40 years, and it involves approximately 38Million in taxpayer funding. This is not a small issue, and it should not be treated like one. Decisions involving people's homes, health, and millions of taxpayer dollars should be discussed openly and not behind closed doors. When I stood before you last year, I asked for transparency and for decisions about our building to not be made behind closed doors. And since then, residents have continued to ask for communication, advocacy and the opportunity to address our concerns. And too often we have been met with silence. When we asked for help for getting these issues on an agenda and requested meetings to discuss them, those requests were delayed until after tonight's meetings or ignored altogether. Many of us still feel like we are treated as a backdoor agenda item when this project should be fully visible to the public and to every person responsible for overseeing it. We're not asking for special treatment.

Thank you. Okay, now Steven Johnson, then Ashley Olsen. Yeah.

Thank you. Good evening. Steven Johnson, Chair of the Recreation and Parks Commission. Mayor DeRosa, esteemed council members. The Recreation and Parks Commission met last Thursday and was given a preview presentation by Director Chris Dishlip of the parks-related CIP budget priorities you'll see tonight. The Commission strongly and unanimously supports staff recommendations, especially noting funding for, of course, the parks maintenance like Virginia Avenue Park playground replacement, Tongva, Gandara, Cloverfield. As you heard earlier, Camera Obscura is part of that CIP budget. But two things that we want to highlight in particular are Memorial Park expansion, and the airport park sports field replacement i highlight those because uh memorial park expansion is more than 20 years in the making in 2004 that's when the city bought fisher lumber company and we have been trying to get this expansion plan done ever since staff have a great plan that includes water sustainability project It includes funding from a variety of sources, including our partners at SMC, SMMUSD. It includes Measure A funds, but it also includes some general funds. So, Memorial Park expansion is the closest we've ever come to an achievable and workable plan. And we're really excited that staff has put that forward here tonight. We also want to emphasize Air Park Park. Sports field replacement not airport park the conversion, but the the soccer field that's there right now It was built and commissioned in 2000 is the same surface as it has been that surface has been dangerous for since at least 2019 it needs to be replaced it is overdue and they have a plan for that as well and we're looking forward to supporting that so those are the main things that we support on the CIP budget the last thing I'll call your attention to is Uh, 1 of the linchpins of our balanced budget is the expiration of a joint use agreement with the school district. I think I might have. I just said that at the beginning, but thank you. And I'll be short. That expiration seems to be the linchpin of our balanced budget. It's $12 million that goes off our books. The school district has said they want to support joint use without strings attached. We would like to agree with them. What our commission has proposed is now is the time to renegotiate this. January 27th, you guys renewed the YYGS agreement, which is a master facilities agreement that includes Samoa High and Los Amigos. That would be a perfect place to attach the existing and expiring supplemental agreements on JAMS, Lincoln, the elementary schools, CRAS, after school programs, attach those supplemental agreements to this newly renewed 10 year master facilities use agreement. You can do that now. We don't have to wait. the January 27th measure was two and a half years ahead of schedule. This would be about a year ahead of schedule. It would be great to see that secured so that we can all focus on the partial tax supporting schools for the sake of supporting the schools. So thank you very much. Good night.

Thank you so much. Ashley Olsen and then Christine Parra and then we have Alan Mont, Freddie Luis, Zoe Montaner.

Hi, good evening. I am here to support Lana's 16 or council member to Grady's 16 item from my perspective. I want to share what I've learned as I've gotten to know many of these residents for the last 2 years. I've been volunteering in a small community garden. That's in the middle of their buildings on Virgin Avenue and. What these residents have been put through and who they are in our community. They're the. Exact people that we always say we want to help and everything that we say when we're talking about housing and making sure it's affordable and making sure our residents are taken care of and. Black and brown communities, these are the residents who are contributing members of our community who are so kind and impressive. They're so well organized, knowledgeable. They try to be respectful because they just want to go home. And this has been going on for so long. And I've watched over the last year and a half, two years of this conversation and It breaks my heart what i'm seeing happen and they just want to go home and they're tired and they deserve it and their strength is each other. There are like a micro community in a community in a neighborhood. They all work together to help each other out when somebody needs something. They're the 1st person it's it's incredible. I wish I had that kind of support around me. And so. I just want to recognize that I'm so impressed by what they've put together in the research that they've done and how they've stuck together. Now they're displaced. They're all over and they come together to make sure that they know there's still a community and they want to go home. And I just hope that everybody really hears them tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh, Christine council member.

Thank you. Good evening. I'm also a Pico resident. I'm here in solidarity with my neighbors. I'm here in strong support of Council Member Negrete's request regarding the Virginia Avenue apartments. The Virginia Avenue families have been through years of uncertainty, first fighting to stay in their homes and now navigating a major rehabilitation project while dealing with Okay, concerns, construction, disruptions and a 3Million dollar budget overrun. They deserve answers. This request is that is exactly what good governance looks like. Transparency accountability and making sure that when the city commits over 35Million in public funds, residents and taxpayers can see how that money is being spent. I also want to thank Council Member Negrete for being a champion for these neighbors. It means everything to these families to have someone at the dais who sees them, hears them, and fights for them. I strongly support directing staff to engage CCSM, report back to Council, and establish a public dashboard so residents have a real-time access to project information. These are multi-generational Santa Monica families. They've earned that transparency. Thank you.

Thank you. Alan Mont, is Alan Mont here? Then Freddy Luis.

Good evening, Council Members, Mayor. Here we are again. It's good to see you, but this last year having to come up here and speak and everything we've gone through, I feel like I've aged 10 years. Um, but I want to thank council member for introducing 16 B, and it's just accountability is a word that we hear thrown around in politics all the time. We hear it at work. We hear it everywhere. Now, we have a chance to make it. Happen the proposal is simple, be transparent, be accountable for. 35 plus 1M dollars. And that's just an insane amount of money that most of us are never going to see a quarter of that in our lifetime. It wouldn't make sense to vote against this initiative if you want to show the people that voted for you that you stand for accountability and transparency. Voting no would mean that you don't want to hold CCSM to a standard that you would hold any one of us to. You were most of you were okay with holding neighborhood associations accountable for $8,000. Now you don't want to do it for 35 plus million dollars. That makes zero sense. So, to me, a vote for 16 B is a vote for accountability and transparency. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh, so, and then, uh, Samantha, Tara, Ralph, Karen, and Eve Lopez.

Good evening, Council. Thank you so much for listening to the public. As I said earlier in the meeting, your public servants We are the public. You are the servants. So in that spirit, I want to recognize former Mayor Lana Negrete, who, as an example of public servant, put this on the agenda. I also want to announce that I'm doing a ballot measure for the November election for tenant harassment because this is a form of tenant harassment. Tenant harassment has a big umbrella and we don't have STRONG ENOUGH AND COMMITMENT ENOUGH FROM THE CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE TO REALLY PROSECUTE AND GO AFTER THE TENANT HARASSMENT. THE WORDS THAT THE FIRST SPEAKER WAS LOOKING FOR IS ABUSE. WE ARE EXPERIENCING GASLIGHTING, NARCISSISTIC ABUSE, AND THAT IS WHAT IS GOING ON. AND IN A CITY THAT PRIDES ITSELF OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION AND ALL THIS, buzzwords that make you look good in the eyes of the community, we need to do better. We need to really have action that supports what you say and what you put on social media and all these beautiful campaigns that you do. otherwise we are doing transactional politics that is obscene it has no place in this city with the history that we have we know better and we have to do better so i encourage you to really vote for this and i encourage you to support the ballot measure that is coming your way in november 2026. thank you so much and good night thank you samantha mata

Hello, community members, city staff, and city council. Thank you for being here tonight. I'm congressional candidate Samantha Mota running to represent CA 37, and I'm here to support agenda item 16B, the Virginia Avenue residents and council member Lana Negrete. her call for transparency, oversight, accountability regarding the CCSM Virginia Avenue project. I urge City Council to follow Negrete's call for stronger protections for taxpayers and the Virginia Avenue residents and more. As a former lifelong CCSM Santa Monica resident, many lifelong tenants and buildings go underserved and neglected. I'd like to say it's a shame council member Negrete is the only member demanding answers and respect for the Virginia Avenue residents and your constituents. So who do you serve and represent? Because it doesn't seem like it's a community. Many of you are from here, many of you aren't. Yet you run them and shun everyone out, especially locals. Now I ask the community, do you really want to elect people who can't even stand next to the one council member speaking for the community? And with that being said, I hope all of you back the Virginia Avenue residents and council members to get at this call for accountability, oversight, transparency, and some damn respect. And thank you, Tara, for being here tonight. I understand a lot of the frustration that the locals have, and I know you're trying your best and you've always been there for me. So thank you for being here and for the residents. Thank you.

Tara Baraskas. Good evening, Mayor Tarosas and Council Members. I'm Tara Baraskas, the Executive Director of Community Corp of Santa Monica. So I'm here because I want to clarify some things. First of all, obviously, we're a longstanding partner of the City's. We've been here over four decades building affordable housing, and I'll say we're not perfect. Sometimes we do things that could be improved upon. And today, before the meeting tonight, actually, I had a chance to sit and talk with some of our residents at 2033 Virginia. And I do understand some of the concerns. And I'm the first one to say, let's be more transparent. If you have questions, ask me. I think what I'm more frustrated about here is that nobody asked me and part of it is I'll take the blame that my project manager did receive some concerns and they didn't get passed along. So that's something we have to improve on is making sure that when there are concerns that they Go up the food chain and because I want to be accountable, because I care about our residents and the work we're doing, I believe in it and I want to make sure we address the concerns. So I will say that I don't think we needed a 16 item necessarily to to have that conversation. Now that I know what the concerns are, I'm going to work with the residents and make sure we address the concerns. So I've offered to have a meeting with them next week. We've also offered to do a walkthrough of the buildings. If there's a few people who actually want to look at some of the units, see the work that's been done. So I'm all for transparency. And I actually think this is a great opportunity to build that together. What does this look like for all of our affordable housing projects, right? Not just Virginia Avenue, but every project. Let's make sure we figure out what is the information that we should be sharing and let's share it together. I'll also just say a couple things just by way of update on the project right now the project did experience some cost overruns and that's because it's rehab so you open up the walls you find things what I will say is that we're remediating all of it and that's why the costs have gone up so we did not ask the city for more sure finish the sentence We'll continue to work together to provide updates to the residents and to you, and we look forward to creating this process for City of Santa Monica.

Thank you.

Ralph Mescher.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm here tonight as a member of the board of Community Corporation. It's unfortunate that we have to have this item here to resolve some critical issues. It's unfortunate the residents have spent really six years, it's hard to believe, going through a process where they really don't know what their future is. Our intention is to make their future bright and beautiful, warm and comfortable, and we're in the middle of that process. Some of this stuff that's being asked for, though, I think you already have, you already do. There's a weekly meeting on this job, and I assume there is on every job that you fund. When I have, as a professional architect, have worked with the city and with community corporation, it's always been the case. There's a weekly meeting. A contractor, the developer, the city is often there and the city is definitely there every month when there's a draw meeting, a meeting to look at the work that's been completed and how much money is due to the contractor for that work up to that point. In this case, it's the city's money, so the money doesn't get issued to Community Corp to pay the contractor until you, your staff, have approved it. So there is a process that has been used for a long time. I think it's fine to take a look at it and see if it's getting everything you need. And we will take care of opening up communications better with all the residents so that they understand what's going on. And when they are able to move back in, I walked through today, I was really excited about what I saw. Any of you who want to set up a time to come and walk through and see how our community's funds are being spent to preserve old buildings and keep our tenants in place, just give Tara a call and we'll set it up. Thank you.

Thank you. Karen Millick.

Good evening. I'm Karen Mielek, the Vice Chair of the Recs and Parks Commission. I'm here speaking on behalf of SCAC, an adult swim program with over 200 Santa Monica residents that started here 47 years ago, and I've been swimming with them for 38 years, and Swim With Heart, a group that services special needs youth and adults, and LA Tri Club. i'm here to ask you to not approve the proposed increase for the adult aquatics permit fees it's good to see that the fee increases for community recreation are modest the city's aquatics programs have no fee increases but there's no explanation as to why the aquatics permit group fees are being raised by the highest percentage the cost recovery rate for the city's aquatics program is 28 percent smc is 32 percent and the aquatic permit groups is 76 percent which is a combined rate between the youth and adult permit groups since the youth fees are half of the adult fees something other comparable cities don't have for permit groups the adult permit groups are paying a recovery rate of around a hundred percent In the fee comparison part of the study, it shows that Culver City charges $6 to $9 per lane per hour. West Hollywood charges $8 to $14, while Santa Monica's current rate is $11 to $46, 83% and 38% higher than the lowest rate. Since 2013, the aquatics fees have been increased by 38 to 100%, yet revenues have not significantly increased. Because raising high prices does not create revenue, it decreases usage. Please do not increase the adult aquatics permit fees. Thank you. Thank you. And Eve Lopez.

Good evening, speaking on item seven at the forefront of the city's revitalization project is public safety. But if public safety is truly the priority, then the budget should reflect the priority, not only in day to day services, but also in meaningful investments in disaster preparedness and emergency readiness for the community. earlier this evening the council discussed protecting our coast without once acknowledging that the coast sits directly in a tsunami indemnization zone yet there is no capital improvement project in this budget to install tsunami sign warning sirens along our beaches the revitalization plan hinges on tens of thousands of residents tourists and workers visiting our coastline yet we have taken no action to invest in an audible warning system At the same time, there's still no funding allocated for the state-mandated emergency evacuation route capacity that I've talked to several of you about, Mr. Chee, that is mandated by AB 747. The city has continued approving density and planning policies while failing to complete the very evacuation capacity analysis required by state law to determine whether our roadways can timely handle emergency evacuation. The recent Palisades fire made one thing painfully clear. Investing in our evacuation infrastructure matters. Response time matters. Capacity matters. Public safety cannot simply mean putting in a substation at Santa Monica Place or more ambassadors or more kiosks downtown. If revitalization is truly about making people feel safe coming back to Santa Monica, then protecting people during earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, and regional disasters should be part of that vision. Public safety is not just about what happens on a normal day. It is about whether the city is prepared for the worst day, and we are not. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lopez. Okay, that concludes the public comment on these items, so we will now move on to our study session. And Mr. Chee, are you presenting this or?

Actually, our terrific finance staff and public works team will be presenting the current study session item related to our biannual budget process. The council may recall we operate on a two-year budget cycle where an odd number of years we bring the operating plan to the Council. In even number years like this one, we bring the capital improvement budget for adoption of the first and second year. Tonight, I see Oscar up here. He's going to run through the current fiscal situation. I see Chris also will run through the capital update with that. Oscar, we'll turn it over to you.

Thank you. We're going to tag team this one.

Great. Sorry, of course Oscar would be leading it. My bad.

So good evening, Mayor and Council. Tonight's study session brings forward two major components of our annual fiscal cycle. The first one is the fiscal year 26-27 proposed operating budget, which is the second year of our biannual budget. The fiscal year 26-27 budget was originally approved by council in June of 2025. The budget now incorporates the realignment plan changes, as well as some other minor exception-based revisions that we're asking you to consider tonight. The second component is the fiscal year 2026-28 proposed biannual capital improvement program budget, which you'll hear more about in detail from Chris. The CIP is the centerpiece of tonight's study session as it represents a defining transition for the city's capital program. As a reminder, Santa Monica prepares its budgets on a two-year cycle, a best practice that supports stability and long-range planning. This is a familiar slide showing you where we are in the budget process. In June of 2025, Council adopted the first year of the operating budget and approved the second year of the operating budget plan, which is the second year of our biannual budget. And this is what we're presenting tonight for the operating budget. So adjustments have taken place throughout the year that revised the operating budget plan as originally approved, including the realignment plan changes previously approved by you in October of 2025 and March of this year. Tonight we are presenting the proposed operating bi-annual CIP budget for your consideration and we'll be back in June for adoption of the budget. The city's fiscal position has strengthened over the year. over the past year, driven by the realignment plan, which is an overarching fiscal strategy that instituted new internal expenditure controls, secured new programmatic revenues, and accounted for the unscheduled expiration of the joint use agreement with the Santa Monica School District in June of 2027. Taken together, these measures produced a fiscal model under which the general fund is projected to be structurally balanced by the end of 26-27. After incorporating the realignment plan budgetary adjustments, which include the planned and approved use of reserves this year, the fiscal year 25-26 general fund operating budget is tracking to achieve year-end surplus of $8.95 million. With $3 million of that already being set aside for the economic recovery reserve, which was approved by you in March, the resulting net surplus that we would carry forward to 26-27 is $5.95 million. This is a meaningful milestone. If you recall, when the realignment plan was first originally adopted, we were facing a projected deficit of 29.6M in 26-27. Today, the general fund is structurally balanced and we remain on track to maintain that balance into the next biennial budget. So, I want to spend a couple of minutes here discussing the Santa Monica joint use agreement. So, in our city's forecast, we incorporate the schedule exploration in 2027 of the joint use agreement with the school district under which the city currently provides approximately 12Million annually for community access to district facilities. Consistent with the terms established in April of 2022, under the first modification of agreement, this application will sunset in 2027, removing roughly 12 million in annual general fund costs. Just to note a separate citizens initiative is being advanced that if it qualifies on the ballot, it is approved by the voters will establish a parcel tax, creating a new revenue stream for the city. So that occur and subject to council direction staff anticipates returning with the proposed extension of the joint use agreement aligned to that new funding framework. Conversely, if the measure does not qualify or is not approved, any council direct extension of the agreement beyond 2027 will require continued general fund support, necessitating identification of operational cost savings and potential service level reductions to sustain that level of funding. And now the citywide budget. This slide summarizes the fiscal year 26-27 citywide proposed budget. Tonight we are asking Council to affirm the operating budget as revised, incorporating the realignment plan changes adopted in October of 2025, the operational updates to the realignment plan approved in March of 2026, and a set of cleanup adjustments aligning staffing and program costs with current operations. So as the City prepares to adopt the second year of the biannual operating budget and the first year of the new biannual CIP budget, That fiscal plan is being advanced against the backdrop of uneven broader economic environment. We continue to operate in a mixed economic environment. National economic growth has moderated. California's recovery is uneven, and interest rates remain elevated. But Santa Monica has shown encouraging signs of renewed activity. So Santa Monica visitor counts, hotel occupancy, and hotel average daily rates are all trending upward. For example, hotel occupancy rose from 62.5% in December of 2025 to 79.5% in April of 2026, with ADR increasing to $376. On the revenue front, property tax and transfer tax, property tax remains stable with a sales valuation of close to 4% in the most recent cycle. Transfer tax remains more variable, but has averaged about 10 million annually. Sales tax is projected to grow 2.1% this year and 3.6% next year, supported by major events and continued consumer spending. Transit occupancy tax or hotel tax is projected to grow by 6% this year and 9% next year. Parking revenues with the rate restructuring now fully implemented, these revenues are projected to increase from 33.3 million to 40.6 million or a 22% increase next year. We're also seeing strong performance from realignment initiatives. The digital signage, we originally anticipated that the new signs would be installed in quarter one of 2027. Based on more recent developments, the new signage is now targeted for installation by the end of quarter three of 26 and the start of quarter four 26. This is projected to generate 4.5 million annually once it's stabilized. The Ambulance Operator Program, it fully launched in February of 2026, and it has been performing as expected, with around 650 ambulance transports per month. As the revenue collection efforts ramp up, we're projecting $5.5 million in revenues in 2026-2027, with revenue collection efforts projected to stabilize by the end of the fiscal year to create an ongoing $7 million per year revenue stream. AND A PARTICULAR NOTE IS THAT THE FISCAL YEAR 26-27 SPENDING PLAN DOES NOT ACCOUNT FOR THE REVENUES FROM THE MAJOR EVENT AND ISSUING AGREEMENTS. THE RECENTLY FINALIZED AGREEMENTS ARE RESPECTED TO GENERATE APPROXIMATELY 6.8 MILLION IN DIRECT REVENUE. So building on these indicators of renewed activity, Santa Monica is also positioned to benefit from an unprecedented wave of regional and global events over the next several years, as well as simultaneously launching a new annual beachfront music festival with numerous cultural programming and visitor-focused activations planned over the next few years. So now the cleanup changes. In the general fund, a set of cleanup adjustments are included to align staffing program costs with current operations and revenues with current trends and new information. On the revenue side, the cleanup adjustments include modestly adjusting the revenues downward from original projection of 0.4% to 1.9 million. The adjustment probably reflects lower than anticipated parking revenues, primarily attributed to downtown parking rate restructuring and operational challenges as well as the economy. The decrease is partially offset by new revenues from a recently completed fee study and by greater than projected business license tax and investment earnings. On the expenditure side, the proposed general fund expenditure adjustments resulted in a net staffing increase of seven FTEs, supporting housing, human services, communications, HR, and transportation planning functions. To fund these adjustments, we completed a full reassessment of the project costs associated with the realignment plan. We incorporated updated operational needs, current year spending trends, as well as refined cost estimates. And so based on this analysis, we were able to fund the adjustments, resulting in a nominal impact to the general fund of approximately $9,000. Apart from those changes, we are also proposing a limited one-time use of $4.7 million of carry-forward balance and reserves, all tied to non-recurring needs that have been deferred for years, including the camera of scare redesign implementation, which is reflected in our CIP budget, and the replacement of the fire department breathing apparatus, and the removal and disposal of legacy firefighting foam, both of which are included in our operating budget. Outside of these one-time items, the operating budget remains balanced. Adjustments across the other funds reflect a targeted realignment of both revenues and expenditures to match updated project timelines, revise regional estimates, and refine operational needs. On the revenue side, the other funds show a net increase of approximately $38.3 million, driven largely by project-related reimbursements and updated funding marks. On the expenditure side of the other funds, the most significant changes stem from aligning capital-related drawdowns, updating grant-funded program costs, and adjusted internal service contributions. One important thing that's been allocated is the Measure GS allocation, which continues to be programmed consistent with voter intent. This year, the allocation is funding Santa Monica REN-8 program and additional support for housing services and homeless prevention. Collectively, these adjustments ensure that spending levels accurately reflect current year operational and capital delivery expectations. In closing, the fiscal year 26-27 operating budget reflects a city that has moved from stabilization to structural balance, supported by disciplined management, renewed economic activity, and a modernized fiscal framework. Together with the CIP, this budget positions Santa Monica to sustain enhanced service levels, maintain fiscal stability, and continue advancing the realignment plan's goals of safer, cleaner, more vibrant, and financially resilient community. And with this, this is the end of my operating budget presentation, and I'll hand it over to Chris to talk about the CIP.

Thank you, Oscar. Good evening Council. Chris Lischoff from Public Works. I'm pleased to present our proposed Capital Improvement Program budget for fiscal year 26-28. As Oscar mentioned, every two years the City develops a new five-year CIP budget. The first year is adopted and appropriated as part of this budget process while the second year is approved and staff return for the adoption next year. Years three through five are really planning projections that help us identify long term capital needs. And these projects are reviewed and updated every two years to match available funding and just make sure we're still in alignment with current city and council priorities. Now, similar to the realignment processes that have gone on through the operating budget over the last year, we view the CIP budget as the opportunity to reimagine where and how we invest in our community. Prior to the pandemic, Santa Monica designed and delivered remarkable infrastructure projects that reshaped mobility, public space, sustainability, and civic identity. You know, I'm incredibly proud of the national leader we've been over my 17 years here in Public Works. We've shown that we can do hard things and we did them incredibly well. Now, with the uncertainty of the last five years, the City understandably shifted into our preservation and stabilization mode and the CIP budget transitioned to focus on ongoing maintenance and upkeep. That work still remains very important, but much of it is better supported through a properly funded operating budget. So the proposed budget in front of you is the product of this shift in mindset from reactive maintenance back to strategic capital investment. It restores the CIP to its intended role and creates a clear focus on delivering projects on time and on budget. The result is a new budgetary foundation for capital reinvestment in Santa Monica consisting of 77 projects spread across 17 different funds. The total proposed budget is 109.8 million in fiscal year 26-27 and 116.6 million in 27-28. The 26-27 figure represents an increase of less than 1% compared to what the 25-26 adopted budget of 109.2 million was. Now, while the dollar value remains aligned with the previous capital budget, the work included in this is far more ambitious. These projects will repair the aging infrastructure, improve resilience and sustainability, increase event readiness and operational flexibility, create welcoming public spaces, boost tourism and economic activity, and position Santa Monica as a premier international coastal destination. These signature investments are organized around four different priorities. So the first being preparing for major events in 2028 Olympic Games. Santa Monica will be in the global spotlight during the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, as well as other major events like the World Cup and the Super Bowl. This CIP prioritizes infrastructure that can support these large crowds, events, transit access, and public safety. Some of the highlights include the new major event electrical infrastructure along the beach, a lot of peer infrastructure improvements, camera obscura restoration, as well as Tongva Park improvements. And those two really overlap with the second priority, which is reinvesting in parks and open space. Everyone knows Santa Monica's parks are some of the city's most valued public spaces. They support recreation, health, youth programs, environmental resilience, and neighborhood connections for residents of all ages. The return of the Memorial Park redevelopment project is a major milestone, more than 20 years in the making. After being paused previously, its return shows the city's renewed commitment to important recreational enhancements. Additional park investments include the airport park sports field and the Virginia Avenue Park playground replacement. I know I saw a lot of you all at the Douglas Park playground opening. We're excited that Virginia Avenue Park is the next on the list. So next we have citywide infrastructure and recovery initiative. So after these years of constrained capital spending that we discussed earlier, it has created a growing list of maintenance obligations across transportation, utilities, civic facilities, and public spaces. The CIP therefore proposes a series of citywide infrastructure recovery projects. that are really highlighted by the main library renovations as it celebrates its 20-year anniversary in the community, a facility renewal program to replace major building systems at the end of their useful life, and streetlight projects that don't just modernize aging infrastructure, but also enhance safety and placemaking. Together, these investments recognize that maintaining quality infrastructure is foundational to resident trust, visitor experience, and long-term fiscal sustainability. And finally, we have modernizing transportation and mobility. This Council's transportation investments continue to evolve from vehicle-centered infrastructure towards multimodal access and high-quality public realm design that advance a Vision Zero future. The CIP program prioritizes smart card management programs, Vision Zero and street safety improvements, the annual paving and sidewalk repair, which will specifically include the Santa Monica Boulevard Phase 1 and Chelsea intersection improvements that we discussed at Council last month, as well as the 14th Street bike and pedestrian improvements. The community feedback continues to support these safer streets and expanded protected mobility infrastructure. So when you take all of this together, the Capital Improvement Program represents an important step in Santa Monica's continued reinvestment and renewal. While there are still many civic needs beyond this year's plan, this budget begins addressing a backlog of deferred maintenance while also creating a vibrant, high quality public spaces. These investments support the city's broader realignment efforts and help move Santa Monica towards its next chapter of economic vitality, environmental resilience, and civic excellence. And with that, I'll hand it back over to Oscar to review the fee study.

So another component included in today's packet is the citywide fee study that we conducted. The fee study calculates the true and full cost to deliver fee-for-service activities. Fee studies ensure fees are current, fair, defensible, and aligned with cost recovery goals. This year's citywide fee study, the first comprehensive update in several years, reviewed roughly 800 fees across multiple departments. UPON COMPLETION OF THE FEE STUDY, STAFF IS RECOMMENDING THAT WE INCREASE 311 FEES, DECREASE 180 FEES, ESTABLISH 71 NEW FEES, AND DELETE 29 OUTDATED FEES. IMPLEMENTING THESE RECOMMENDATIONS IS PROJECTED TO GENERATE 2.1 MILLION IN ADDITIONAL REVENUE CITYWIDE, ALL THE FUNDS, INCLUDING 1.5 MILLION IN THE GENERAL FUND. ALONG WITH THE FEE STUDY, THE FIRE DEPARTMENT ALSO CONDUCTED AN EMS FEE STUDY WHICH RECOMMENDS ALIGNING TRANSPORT RATES WITH THE L.A. COUNTY SCHEDULE AND ADDING NEW FEES FOR TREAT NO TRANSPORT MOTOR VEHICLE ANCIDENT RESPONSE AND INSPECTIONS IN THE NEWLY DESIGNATED VERY HIGH FIRE HAZARD SEVERITY ZONE. THE CEMETERY OPERATIONS ALSO REVISED SOME FEES TO ALIGN WITH PRICING COMPARABLE ITEMS, CORRECT AND CONSISTENCIES, AND TO ACCOUNT FOR INCREASED VENDOR COSTS. These updates ensure that our fees accurately reflect the cost of service while maintaining access where Council has established policy priorities. The final item in your packet is approval of changes to the fiscal policies. We are incorporating our procurement policy into our fiscal policies to be reviewed and adopted with our budget annually by Council. So tonight's updates include the procurement policy following the Council's adoption of the updated purchasing system ordinance in March. This modernization of the procurement process centralizes procurement, updates thresholds to reflect inflation and market conditions, clarifies competitive bidding and source selection requirements, and establishes consistent standards for cooperative purchasing, emergency procurement, and alternative delivery methods. And this is a major step towards more efficient, transparent, and modern procurement practice system that really will help drive some of our projects faster. And that is the end of our presentation. Here are tonight's recommended actions. And the next steps will be coming to you on June 23rd with final changes, if anything changes this evening, and also to adopt the resolutions and adopt the budget. And we're here for questions. Colleagues, do you have questions?

I cannot see Council Member Zernitzkaya, so if she has questions, she needs to text me. Council Member Snell.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank Oscar and the entire staff on this financial budget. It's impressive and very exciting with the way that we've done it. Can you briefly, for the public's understanding as to what, in some ways, what the effect of the shift was with respect to the THE FINANCIAL BUDGET COMPARED TO OUR YEARS IN 2025 AND 26, JUST SO THE PUBLIC WOULD UNDERSTAND.

NEW REVENUE SOURCES AND ALSO EXPENDITURE CONTROL SYSTEMS THAT WE SET IN PLACE. WE HAVE THE AMBULANCE PROGRAM, WHICH IS GOING TO GENERATE 7 MILLION. The digital signage is 4.5Million. We have the parking rate increases. I believe it's supposed to generate 8.5Million in new revenues. We also, like I mentioned to you, accounted for the expiration of the Santa Monica school district agreement. So all that was factored into us coming with a balanced budget. And I think a lot of it has to do also with a lot of expenditure control and really aligning our expenditures where we need it to reactivate Santa Monica.

In aligning our expenditures, And for, because it's very technical for the public to understand aligning our expenditures, what was different than what we did and what we did now that we didn't do and what we did differently in the prior years.

I just think, you know, with Oliver, with the rail line plan, Oliver really looked at where we needed to ramp up operations, stabilize and bring our enhanced services back to where it used to be so that we can attract public IN TERMS OF EXPENDITURES AS WELL, AGAIN, THE SANTA MONICA SCHOOL DISTRICT AGREEMENT, WE ACCOUNTED FOR THE EXPIRATION OF IT, AND THAT'S ONE OF THE THINGS THAT'S HELPING. WE ALSO INCREASED OUR EXPENDITURE CONTROL SAVINGS IN OUR VACANCY SAVINGS IN OUR STAFFING COSTS FROM 1.5% TO 3%, WHICH ACTUALLY GENERATED A SIGNIFICANT SAVINGS. SO NOW WHILE THEY REDUCED OUR BUDGET, IT ALSO FORCES US TO REALLY WATCH HOW WE'RE SPENDING OUR MONEY.

Thank you for this. A lot of exciting plans in here. It may come to no surprise that I was looking with special interest at some of the public works and mobility and transportation capital plans, so I guess that's where I'll start. I'm curious about a couple of these, starting with the – there's both the Santa Monica Neighborhood Greenways Project CIP item, and then there's also a separate one for Michigan Avenue, Bergamot Connector. So is this Michigan Avenue, which is also part of the Santa Monica Neighborhood Greenways, is that just the final section to the east that that part is addressing?

Correct, from 21st to Bergamot. As opposed to the Greenway project, which is Michigan and Washington on the western end from...

I think it's going from Lincoln to 11th on Michigan.

Okay, because yeah, when I was looking at the Bergamot one, it says there's like a little picture in the corner, it says draft improvements map, and there's a lot of things there. Are those like things that have already happened, or all things that are proposed? Because a lot of them seem like things that are already there. Sorry, this is on the breakout of all these, what page is it? It's 55.

Yeah, I think we may have just used... That's like an old...

Right, an image from... Okay, got it, got it, okay. So going back to the neighborhood greenways, I'm happy to see this. It's a long time coming. These greenways were initially envisioned in our 2011 bike action plan. And one of the main sort of ways that one qualifies as a greenway has to do with your amount of traffic volume on a given street. Um, and by that definition, none of our green ways, you know, 15 years later qualify as green ways, because we have excessive traffic volumes on these streets. So I'm curious specifically, like, what. You know, the plan is both on Michigan and Washington to manage traffic volumes and, uh. Basically, are there specific plans to manage traffic volumes on these two streets?

Right. So, first, a couple of clarifications on the draft here that we caught in reviewing your questions previously. So, 1, being the target completion date for for the greenways project should not be 2029. It should be 2728 and we will move. The funding from 2728 up into 2627. Now, this particular project was a SCAD grant, right, using ATP federal funds. It's an interesting sort of collaboration and partnership. Right if you recall where the entire grant is for 875,000, but the city's portion of it is only half of that. And our obligation is to do the implementation, the construction while staff are actually the ones doing the community outreach and design efforts that are aligned and finally ready to start now. Um, but we are not responsible for obviously, we're working collaboratively in partnership, but they will be the ones managing that portion of the grant and they will be the ones tracking the effectiveness of these after our implementation.

And. Do we have a say over those designs, and do they include traffic volume management like diverters?

They absolutely do. And again, we will work in collaboration with our partners on this grant. But we do have less control than we otherwise would if this was strictly a city project or not a grant project, right?

Okay. But you're saying, you did mention that these numbers should be moved up so that it'll be 26, 27 will be the first year that we...

The funding, right, my understanding is they are now ready to begin the community outreach and the design effort right now. That's a six to eight month community process. And then we will immediately jump into bidding an award of construction and implementation. And so we are now targeting 2728 in terms of completion.

Okay. Yeah, because so it seems like on some level, this grant, which is great, because it's money that we've been awarded is also hamstrings our ability to just maybe implement some of these things.

It absolutely does. Right. And again, if we were having this conversation a couple of years ago, right, maybe we would have evaluated that trade off differently. Right. In terms of do we just find our own money and then we can work at our pace right with our rules. um now just to highlight uh some of the similar types of work right that are going along in parallel with this that we'll be bringing back to council in august or september right as part of the study session for the 16 item right we've got the neighborhood traffic calming toolkit which will have a lot of these same tools for implementation, as well as we'll be daylighting a diversion pilot project that will move in advance of that so that we can start to really quick build and test some of these things and monitor effectiveness so that as we set up our processes for moving forward, how the community can request these sorts of treatments, we'll have real data behind it.

Cool. You mentioned if we'd thought of this a couple of years ago, and it's funny because I've been talking about it for a couple of years. It's definitely been a passion of mine to get this going. And when I was looking for examples, just if you'll indulge me for a moment, City Clerk, would you mind pulling up these photos? I was trying to look for an example of like a really cheap way of doing this, that this thing that would enable us to do this thing that I've been asking for for years. And I stumbled upon something that we did in 2014 on Michigan Avenue, which were these quick build improvements. Is there a way to pull that up? I'm so sorry. It's there. Up here. OK. I found that we did, if you go scroll down a little bit, that's a chicane above and then that's a traffic diverter below that we put in place. It looks like some rolled up sod and a few cones and that's sort of just that in itself would be all we need to make our greenways greenways. Right. And I guess it's still, I have no more questions except for the fact that how much do you think that costs?

Right. Again, we can move quickly on a lot of these things. Again, pending council direction, to reprioritize in whichever direction you have. That's just not what is in the specific grant that we have right now.

Okay. Just a quick few other things. The smart curbside management solution, there's a CIP for that. I'm just curious, this is another thing that I've been interested in for a long time around more effective management of our loading zones and curbs. I know we've had a pilot on 2nd street for a long time. That's had a lot of monitoring of the traffic, but there's been no real, like, enforcement and there was a 16 item a year ago from myself and some other council members around engaging with new technology to do sort of more effective management of our loading zones. One that might charge for curb use or other things. What is being contemplated? I couldn't really tell from the broad description by this of this item.

Yeah, so obviously I'm not as fluent in the history as otherwise would be having just taken on mobility. But my understanding is, right, they did some experiments and things. They did an RFI in order to collect information on types of things. There's actually an RFP for the permanent solution that is out right now for bidding. So we are actively working on moving this forward. We're focusing first on 2nd and 4th Street, but the intention would be to expand this into the rest of the downtown. Right. And so we'd be talking about, you know, the things you were talking about, you know, the cameras, the technology, the sensors, all of that. Okay. So there's, yeah, if you pull up the RFP from the bidding documents, you'll be able to see it.

Okay, my only question is, it seemed like at least the, you know, I know there's many ways to probably approach this, but my understanding was there were a lot of perhaps opportunities for public private partnerships, excuse me, that would You know, enable the city to potentially partner with a technology company and collect fees for use of curve space and potentially not have to outlay any money in capital. So I'm just trying to understand. Are we just doing more monitoring or do we plan to invoice for use of the curve space?

And honestly, right? I mean, some of it may come back to, like, what the proposals we receive back are. Um, but I would rather have. Sure, right. The money versus counting on something again, if it doesn't align exactly with with council's vision, and we need to go. Our own right or at our own speed or pace that accelerates it at least this way we're accounted for.

Yeah, my only concern is that, you know. I know, like, on 2nd street for several years, we've been monitoring, like, some of these clean vehicle zones and things like that, but we've never really enforced it in any way. And I just, I would just hate to spend 3 more years shelling out half a 1Million dollars to monitor.

I don't think that's our intention whatsoever. Okay. I just unfortunately, I'm not familiar with.

What we've done for the last 2 years as part of the, um. As part of the updated transfer, a suite of transportation related mobility related improvements, they'll be bringing back in August. We've aligned, I believe the RFP process to be concluded prior to that August decision. So that it all comes back as 1 comprehensive package for council review. And we'll have some smart curbside management solutions to present at that time.

Cool.

Um. Quickly, the link streetscape. I know this was a huge project that was delayed for due to covet and budgetary reasons. Yeah, there's like a very small allocation. I, I don't remember.

That was just a, a very small federal, uh, allocation that we received, um, separate from any sort of. grant process. So what do we do with it? A crosswalk? Yeah, I think this is Alex.

I work with Chris. We're looking at doing some curb ramps and things of that nature just kind of throughout the corridor, bring it up to ADA. Cool.

And we are submitting a grant application for... Right. So we are submitting or have submitted this week basically a grant application to again, I believe it's about 2025 million to do the complete vision of what's remaining. And so we are still pursuing every venue we have to do that. But in the meantime, we just we received a small allocation and Anything's better than nothing.

Lastly, just on that Vision Zero and Safe Streets, I guess, separate CIP item, which is sort of a catch-all, it looks like, for a number of things. How does it relate to the level of, I think, kind of infrastructure funds that were allocated through Measure K for quick build interventions? Are these totally separate pots of money, or is that reflecting some of that?

They are not. This is incorporating Measure K into the capital budget moving forward.

Okay, got it. And that also is sort of waiting till 2728 currently in this.

So that is just because right in bringing mobility over right? We've been evaluating the budget and the amount of. Funds that we have that are sitting ready and available to go. Um, and so we need to, I'm just prioritizing basically. The backlog and spending all of the resources that we already have, because there's there's considerable amount of money that we think we can definitely get through this upcoming fiscal year and then align it with new funding coming.

There's money being spent this year. It's just 100 projects that are already backlogs. Correct. Correct. And someone mentioned Wilshire phase 2. It's not listed here. Is that because it's already in the works?

It's already funded and approved. Right? We, we received, uh. The grant, and it is out to bid right now for construction. We anticipate being back in front of you for approval. 2 or 3 months.

Okay. Thank you so much, Chris. Someone just mentioned, I don't know if this is for you or not. This is about the aquatics permit fee that was mentioned in public comment. Does anyone have a question or an answer for me? Just curious if there's any, you know, I hadn't studied the issue, but, you know, it seems like the recovery is much higher from our other quatics fees. And just curious what the justification or rationale is.

So we just, we calculate the cost of delivering the service and cleaning permits. And I think, I believe the fee is increasing by 1% only. It's nominal. Yeah, it's nominal.

That's what it is already?

It's a little bit more. Right now it's 8% cost recovery, and we can... So, from 28% to 29%, the cost recovery.

Okay. That's a different figure than I heard, but maybe we can all put our heads together and reconcile. This is the adult aquatics permit fee you're talking about. Okay.

That's for the regular programs, not the adult permits.

Okay. Well, maybe we'll just talk about it more offline. For sure.

One other. Definitely look into that fee a little bit more and get a sense.

The final question I had was just on the There were some fees listed again, related to mobility stuff, parking sign, installation, traffic engineer. I'm just curious who's paying those fees for installing a traffic like a, like a, like a parking. Sorry. Like, a stop sign or, like, paying for a traffic engineer's time. I'm curious about who pays those fees here.

Let me look at the volume. They might be just very minimal, but it's kind of like, if it's through like an offsite improvement, if the developer requested, but let me take a look at the numbers. There might not be that many. Okay.

So it's not when we're doing that work someone, I mean, we're, I assume we're paying for it normally. It's just like, in special instances where these fees are tight to staff time.

Right? So if the fee, like, if our staff are working on it, it's kind of like a cost recovery to get the money back. If they're asking us to do something.

You mean in the case of a developer agreement or something like that? Because in most cases, if we're installing a stop sign, I assume we're the ones choosing to do that.

Yeah, but sometimes we have to do it if they can't do it or something comes up. So we like to do it in-house. Okay. Thank you.

Great. I just want to flag that Council Member Zernitz-Guys had her hand up for a while, so I'm going to go to her and then Council Member Negrete and then Raskin.

Thank you, Mayor. I sent a whole list of questions ahead of time, so I'll try to keep this brief to just kind of the most, what I think the most relevant ones are. So I noticed that there were some proposed fee increases that would likely impact small businesses more so than maybe other groups. And in a time, I'm sorry, this is my preamble to it. in a time where we're trying to encourage and support small businesses, what options do we have rather than potentially raising fees on things like pedicabs or, and I think there was another kind of piece of this about the, where is it? Sorry, let me find the thing. Not that one. apologies that wasn't it of course i'm looking sorry i have one screen for 17 different things um this fee for outdoor commercial uses on private property could you just could someone please clarify um If that fee is actually being proposed for increase and how, what, how is it different than the current fee?

Yeah, Jen is coming. She'll respond to that 1 regarding the. Just in general, with any fees where we don't capture full cost recovery, that's really a subsidy from the general fund. And we try to not do that too often because we are trying to recover the general fund revenues. But that's to answer your question. And Jing is here to answer the other question.

So, Council Member, I think you're talking about the outdoor commercial uses on private property. So that's not a new fee. That's an existing fee in the fee schedule. And there may have just been an oversight on that one. We're not proposing to increase that fee. That would just be the CPI increase. So that fee would remain roughly around like $430 to, again, support our local businesses.

Okay. And, Jane, since you're up there, I have another question about two other fees that are listed because I don't think I'm fully understanding. There is a small lot subdivision and development conformance review fee, and there's also a duplexes and lot splits conformance review fee. Could you just clarify kind of what the difference is and why we need both?

Yeah, they, they represent the implementation of 2 separate state laws. So that's why we actually have applications that are related to those fees. It's important for clarity with our applicants that it matches up with the application forms are filling out.

Could you just clarify for maybe my edification which is tied to which state law?

Yeah, so the smaller subdivision one, that's the SB 1123 implementation and then the other one, duplexes and lot splits is our SB 9 implementation.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate the clarification on that. And I see that there were also some recommendations for increased recovery charges for investigations on code enforcement. Could you please just clarify who would be responsible for paying those charges?

for oh for code enforcement that that would fall on enforcement yeah so um if that's related to a violation um you know then that would be whoever the person is who received that notice of violation i unless you're talking about the vacant property registry no i'm specifically talking about the investigations for code enforcement so if somebody reports a code enforcement a potential code enforcement violation and

there needs to be investigation to confirm it, then that would go to whoever or whatever party is responsible for it.

That is correct. That would be charged to the responsible party.

Okay, thank you. And could you also just clarify this urban runoff mitigation inspection fee and kind of what that is and what the triggers for it are?

Sure, this is Alex again. So the urban rough mitigation fees, the triggers are. Let me pull this up. So if you're developing more than 1550% of the existing square footage, or if you're like, you know, doing more than 500 square feet, it would trigger that. And then if you're if you have a lot, and then you're kind of replacing at least 5000 square feet of imperable surfaces. that would trigger the in lieu fee or you could elect to do improvements which would capture the runoff and put in the ground.

So is the intent to help incentivize or is part of the intent to help incentivize more permeable landscaping, I guess?

Correct, yeah. The intent is to capture the water so it doesn't run off the site exactly.

Got it. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. You're welcome. And then sorry two more okay three more questions um so I noticed that there was something in the in the update in the CIP budget about replacement of the turf field at the airport Park could you just clarify kind of what is going what the anticipated replacement is going to be and where staff is in implementing prior council direction on exploring non-turf alternatives for replacement of existing turf fields? Absolutely. Yeah, thank you. I can't see the council chambers on my screen on my computer, so I have to have it on my phone.

No problem. This is Chris. Um, so, uh, per council direction right before staff move forward with. Any sort of decision 1 way or the other on this project, we would complete our own feasibility analysis based on our current information of where we're at right now. and whether or not we feel like we've met the criteria that Council laid out. And then parallel to that, there is the longer term process that is just starting of doing a full Resilience sports field study so that we can position the city successfully to expand natural gas fields long term and what it will take to convert. So there are parallel paths of action that are proceeding forward. Does that make sense?

Yes, thank you. I appreciate it because I just wanted to check in because I know it's been something that's been important to our community and then 2 final questions. The budget includes something along around street modernization and I know I've heard from some community members concerns about street lights being out and things like that. So, could you just please clarify? what that means and what it's going to look like for our city.

Absolutely. Chris again. So this is a considerable investment in citywide infrastructure. And so the annual streetlight modernization program is the process through which we are converting all remaining high voltage series streetlight circuits to modern 120 LED fixtures. So the proposed CIP budget would fund design and construction for this project broken into phases, which is why you see it broken over multiple years of funding. So in total, the city owns and maintains over 8,000 streetlights, poles, and fixtures. So there were 5 separate packages that we broke this into packages. 1 and 3 have been completed package 2, which covers ocean park. Association neighborhood is in the final stages of design and would be constructed in the upcoming fiscal year. 2627. Package four includes segments of the Northeast, Wilmot and Mid-City areas, including Montana Avenue between 7th and 17th Street. And that would be expanded to include additional pedestrian scale lighting with provisions for placemaking or holiday light decorations along Montana Avenue while we're in there investing in the infrastructure anyways. Package 4 is anticipated to take place in 2728 and then package 5 would cover north of Montana between 17th street and 26th street and design would commence in 2627 with construction anticipated to take place in 2930.

Okay, awesome. Thank you so much, Chris. Okay. The final question I think is probably for Jing. In the staff report, it noted that the digital signage on the 3rd Street Promenade, we're expecting to start receiving revenues from that earlier than anticipated. Would you mind just giving us a brief update on where that's at? Yeah, sure.

Thank you so much, Chris. Sure, yeah, so this, this is Jane. Um, so, uh, the 2 digital digital signage proposals at 1202 3rd street promenade and 301 Arizona, those permit building permit applications were submitted about 5 days ago. Um, our understanding is those are probably going to come online roughly September 2026. So those 2 are earlier than expected. Um, the other 4 that got their coastal approval were at Santa Monica place. And our understanding is the applicant intends to submit a permanent application and potentially the next couple of months. We don't have any information about when those might come online.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. And I'll yield to whoever is next to the queue. That would be Councillor Negrete.

Okay, I have a couple of questions that are maybe for Oliver, because they're just more how we're reflecting back the money that we're investing in the community and how we're seeing that. I'm super excited about the scorecard and I hope that As we launch that we are able to inform ourselves, I presume with that scorecard as we continue to invest. But 1 of my questions is, as it pertains to, like, all the money we're spending on homelessness, which is 1 of the key factors that I think impacts economic recovery. Some of these projects that we're seeing success around now, for example, Samuel bridge are with short term funds, 1 time funds, whatever you want to call them. How are we does this budget reflect looking at what's funded with short term funds? That's that we're sort of dependent upon now and how in the future we're going to kind of address that and where those funds are going to come with. Because I'm afraid that if programs like that go away, which have been successful at removing folks off the streets and getting them into. Um, whether it's permanent housing or. Addiction crisis help, where are we going to get the money to fund something like that?

Yeah, certainly. That's a great question. Samwell Bridge is currently funded via state grant. We're still in the first year of a three-year grant approval, so there's an additional three years of funding attached to continuing the operation. We will at some point need to find a more permanent location for Samwell Bridge, but for at least the next couple of years, that program is fully funded. We also have built into the overall budget for the Council's consideration, we're going to be coming back in June Our second meeting in June right now is the targeted deadline where our HHS team will be presenting some feedback that we've collected from our housing focused system of care, the transition that we've been working on to have more resources and assets to And really address the homeless related issue and the model we're going to be transitioning to that overall program. If the council chooses to move forward, um, using funding is included in the budget, um, from non general fund housing related resources that we have all that is built into the operating budget as we move ahead.

Okay, so it sounds like we've we have identified. We don't have to list them here. The 1 time funded programs and which ones we might need to consider continuously looking at. And then when it comes to vacancies, um. In terms of, uh, employee vacancies. Are some of these that are sitting vacant for, I don't know what the period of time may be, six months or whatnot, are we reconsidering whether or not those positions are necessary so that that will permanently impact the budget long term?

Yeah, certainly. I think every time we have a vacancy, it's a chance to reassess how are we organizing the work? Is there a more efficient way to coordinate that work? That assessment is happening by each department head within each operating department. And as those processes continue this year, that's certainly and completely built into the conversations we're having with the executive team.

Um, okay, so we are also there was a mention, maybe this is, I don't know if it's for Oscar or not, but, um, the budget looking, um, healthier, um, once the joint use agreement sunsets and I just wanted to, like. you know, be clear about that, because I think it's a little confusing in reference. I know the parcel tax doesn't have anything to do with this, but I just want to note that when we talk about the health of that, that would mean not giving, being very clear that that would also mean that's not giving 12 million to the schools anymore.

Correct. Right. If you recall, Council Member Negrete, earlier this year, In January, the Council approved an extension to measure YYGS, the funding stream where we allocate $18.3 million a year to the school district that's locked in. There's an additional $12 million a year to the joint use agreement. That agreement was modified in 2022 by both the school district and the city such that the agreement and that funding allocation expires in 2027. So we have projected in 27 that expense comes off the books and that is obviously a significant financial cost to the city right now. That helps us achieve our balanced budget as Oscar mentioned in his presentation. Um, there is a citizens initiative currently being advanced and if it qualifies in, it is approved. Um, we certainly would anticipate bringing back for council review, um, a potential extension of the joint use agreement. If it isn't, and the Council wants to continue to extend the Joint Use Agreement, there would have to be an adjustment to the operating budget to account for that continued cost beyond $27 million. So that's an issue, again, as we move through this next budget cycle that will certainly be back before the Council for consideration and review.

Okay, I just wanted to make that really clear because I think in the community, there's some confusion around the health of the budget and and sort of not identifying that. And then, um. Council member, I kind of asked a couple of the questions pertaining to. the businesses i know wastewater fees have increased we've done some stuff around economic recovery but i do hope wherever we can as we are investing in our small business community and where the opportunity lies to maybe halt on increases of fees that impact those businesses that we can do that but everything else has been answered so thank you certainly councilman for asking

Thank you. I've just got two questions. I guess I'll ask this one first. So with respect to things like sports fees or application fees or anything, if we wanted to go back at some point in the future or the next year to make minor adjustments to those, can you just let the public know what the process would be if, say, for example, we wanted to change the landmark application fee or something like that?

Yes, you would notify us what fee you want us to evaluate and then we would engage our consultant again to look at the cost and then come up with a recovery and the subsidy that would be funded through the general fund and come to you with just a recommendation or the number so you can make a decision.

Okay, cool. And second of two questions. So really exciting that Urban Forestry is moving to City Yards, I remember in 2017, we were talking about moving them down to, I think it was the airport. So just, I guess this is more just like a conceptual question for our understanding of the public's understanding. At what point do we start thinking about the need to incorporating additional either capital outlays or thinking about strategic planning for space limitations in City Yards and other needs for space like that?

I think Chris can chime in with the gory details, but we're doing that now, actually. The capital budget contemplates an allocation of dollars to coordinate an interim expansion to facilitate public landscape moving from Memorial Park over to the corporate yards. We are at capacity for space, and so as part of the assessment right now, we're thinking through what makes the most sense. Does it make sense to continue to maintain the fire operations at the corporate yard? Does it make sense to move that operation? Or is there another piece of the operation that should be shifted? So that assessment's happening and underway currently. But this next year, in order to get Memorial Park up and running and start that capital project, we have to get PLD moved. And so that is a cost factor that's in the capital budget to facilitate the move.

Exactly. I guess the final rhetorical part of that question is, you know, I guess I suppose we should be thinking about space limitations, right? Absolutely.

Yes, absolutely. We've even thought through the public safety facility right now. You know, the Fire Administration has a very small footprint. But it makes sense, again, as part of any larger move, how do we think through the PD is scrunched for space? How do we think about space planning across all of our facilities and all of our operations? All of that thinking is happening now.

I just have one question. So I want to be clear that the staffing that we have in this budget is still at 7% below pre-pandemic levels. Is that correct? Okay, so all of her saying, yes, so, and this is the 1st time that we've actually brought forward a capital improvement program since the pandemic. Is that correct?

Because previously we were just doing this is the 1st time that we've expanded on our capital program. We actually reduced it and we haven't gone back to the level that we're funding now. So the relocation, our funding is how we were able to fund the capital program.

So all that to say is we've dedicated money toward the realignment plan. We've managed to cut the impact to our reserves in terms of the revenue that we're bringing in. And we're still at what I presumed to be from reading this 7% below pre-pandemic staffing levels, correct? Let me verify that. I'll verify it. Okay. But we're still below pandemic levels. Yeah. I mean, I would just say I'm very impressed with what you all have managed to do with less resources than, still less resources than we've been accustomed to. And we're making You know, big moves here on on moving forward to some of the capital projects that were deferred. So I just want to thank you on that. I do want to come back and hear more about the swimming fees because. I'm a little concerned if it's much higher than other jurisdictions. So hopefully we can come back with more information on that. And then just on the 12Million dollars to the schools. I think, thanks Council Member Negrete for raising those questions. I had them. Can I also ask City Manager Chia, are we planning, you know, if for some reason we don't renew this agreement to ever not allow the schools to access our fields, parks, and sports facilities?

Our intention isn't to restrict our investment into the school facilities. I think moving forward, the ability for the general public to utilize school facilities, that's a conversation we've been having with the school district and we're hoping to be able to to maintain that moving forward. Okay, great.

But it still would rely on, I mean, we're relying on a $12 million gap that we currently don't have right now. Correct. It's not built into the operating budget. Okay. And we want to, I mean, obviously, I care, and I think everyone here cares about having our excellent public schools. So, you know, we're, I'm committed to that. Okay, I don't have any other questions. Do people have comments? Are we ready to take a vote? Great.

I'll move this item.

Second.

Great.

I was eating a chocolate.

Can I just make one comment? Go ahead. I think that there are some fees, like sports fees, landmark applications fees, that I think we do want to come back on, to the extent that we do have to get formal direction to do that. I think, are we all just on board with the idea that we can come back and take a look at this? I'm fine with that.

Yeah, I'm fine with that. It sounds like we don't need to give formal direction for that. Okay, great.

Yeah.

No, I just, they should be fair.

Okay, are we ready to vote? Council Member Negrete? Yes. Council Member Raskin? Yes. Mayor Pro Temswick?

Yes.

Council Member Snell? Yes. Council Member Zarniskaya?

Yes.

And Mayor DeRozas?

Yes. And I just want to clarify that our motion was inclusive of items, recommendations one through five, including the CEQA determination. Great. Thanks.

Okay.

Great. Moving on. Thank you, staff, so much. Great job. Very exciting.

So next we're on to the 16 items. And before we do this, I forgot to ask, does anyone have anything to report on travel since the last meeting?

Thank you for asking. I do not. Does anyone, Council Member Zernitzkaya, travel?

Nope, I don't think so. Okay, no.

Sounds like no.

Okay, all right. Thank you. Okay, so next we have item 16A is Council Members Arnazkaya and Negrete to approve the expenditure of up to $5,000 of Council discretionary funds to support the Route 66 Centennial Celebration on the Santa Monica Pier on June 4th, 2026. Did either one of you want to say anything?

Council Members Arnazkaya, do you want to introduce it?

Sure. So as we know, it is the centennial celebration of Route 66, and we've got some great celebrations going on, including this one coming up on the pier on June 4th. And Council Member Negrete and I really wanted to help support the celebration and help elevate kind of Santa Monica's role in Route 66 Centennial Celebration and what Route 66 has done for Santa Monica. Ditto. Great. Unless there's any discussion, I'm happy to move the item or Council Member DeGrazia can move the item and I can second.

I'll second your movement.

Thank you.

Okay. Council Members Arniskaya? Yes. Council Member Snell? Yes. Mayor Pro Temswick? Yes. Council Member Raskin? Yes. Council Member, sorry, Council Member Negrete? Yes. And Mayor Tarosas? Yes.

And that passes.

And then we have item 16B is a request from Councilmember Migrete that the City Council consider directing the City Manager to engage with CCSM regarding the rehabilitation project at the Virginia Avenue Apartments as outlined in Attachment A.

So, I don't know if you want to, I don't know if attachment is able to be put up there. You have all read it instead of reading the attachment. We've, we heard the residents speak. I'll just say that I want to be clear that this isn't about targeting community corporate Santa Monica. Who's been a nonprofit provider? I've been a long standing support of theirs. My family lives in a rehabilitated community court building. And has also figured that oftentimes, like the residents here retaliation, if you speak up or just ask questions, and I think that shouldn't be the case. So, but I do believe that when public dollars are involved, especially grant dollars, housing, trust funds, or taxpayer backed subsidies, the public has a right. to understand how these funds are being spent. And transparency shouldn't be viewed as an attack. Accountability shouldn't be viewed as hostility. I think it's the responsibility of elected officials. If a project is receiving millions in public support, I think asking for financial clarity project, cost breakdowns, change orders, timelines, all of those things, consultant costs, relocation expenses and overall use of funds is reasonable oversight. In fact, I would argue it's our obligation. We were in these discussions. Some of us have been hearing about this project the entire time. We've been on city council. For those of you who just got here in the last year or two, maybe this is newer to you, but these residents were living in an unhabitable situation. So this is a long standing issue. Affordable housing projects become really expensive and The residents deserve the confidence that every public dollar is being used correctly. And that's what this item is about. My concern is not about the mission or whether or not there were attempts made. My concern is about making sure the process is transparent enough that residents displaced families and taxpayers can trust the process. And frankly, I think if we normalize the idea that asking questions about public spending is somehow inappropriate or too far, then we're weakening public trust in government at a time when trust is already so fragile. Especially with vulnerable populations who often fear coming to council or bringing up these issues because they feel their living situation is extremely fragile. I think it's our At least for me, I feel like it's my duty to stand up for people. I took this role. It's uncomfortable to bring an item like this forward. Yes, but that's the uncomfortable work that we do up here. And I think a gentleman mentioned the neighborhood organizations, and it was a perfect example. In terms of how we're holding people accountable in certain groups and not others. Good organizations should welcome transparency because it strengthens credibility. It strengthens public confidence and ultimately protects the long term future of affordable housing investment itself. We can't say we support transparency only when it's politically comfortable public money requires public accountability. And I just want to note, because there was some discussion about whether or not there was outreach. The outreach actually started in October of 2025. The residents sent emails to Tara. I have a. Copy of it, I sent emails with our city manager copied following up for the residents. It started from the moving. So, those are where the communication breakdown started from project managers, multiple project managers. There's been 3 since the beginning and that's. Apparently part of the issue, but there was also in emails about these issues to Tara on March 13th. And there was a response on March 14th, the neighbors I've met with them multiple times in person. And so we did try the behind the scenes back door, trying to get people to talk. Unfortunately, the updates that they're getting are copy and paste the same information every week. And it's not saying anything new. And I'm sorry, but I don't understand what is wrong with asking for us to just simply say these people want to know what is going on. They're driving by and they're seeing, you know, they know that there was mold. There was months of more reports. They know that there's wood rot and they're seeing drywall going up and maybe all the right things are being done. But when they're not being told, how do they know that? So, I think this is a great opportunity for us to evaluate how we use it when we're using, whether it's 10 cents or 40Million dollars, how we're accounting for that money to the public. And the fact that this is all of a sudden created so much backlash and outrage about bringing it forward actually concerns me even more to be honest with you. But I'm open to questions and dialogue around this. I just hope we can all support tonight. It sounds like they have this information on all the updates. By the way, there is a June 18th meeting. That was requested by me, maybe a month ago to the city manager's office to engage with housing human services team. They got involved with there was a while for them to respond. And then about a month ago, they sent the date to do this update with the neighbors June 18th. So, again, they wanted to wait 6 weeks to give them an update and I'm sorry, I love community court for the project that they've done to my where I was born. I love the projects that they've done in the past. This is not a personal attack, but this is just a moment of what is going on. Not only do the residents need to know we need to know, and the public needs to know. So open to your guys questions or dialogue around it.

Council Member Stone.

So when this item came before us some months back to establish funding for this project that's been going on a long time before I came on council, I remember my council members being overwhelming to support this project. I myself actually met with the residents prior to that and told them I was committed to seeing this project go forward and to stay on top of making their home life presentable. It was, as Councilman Negrete said, was a horrible condition. Quite frankly, I was quite surprised on Friday, on Thursday, when I saw the 16 agenda item, because for me, and I had met with the residents several times, I had never gotten any kind of email or any direction from the residents regarding this item. So I was quite surprised and I was actually quite surprised to see only one council member bringing this item forward. I think the recommendations in the memo are Very important and those that I think I can really stand for, but I don't think it should be just for this particular project. I think this is something that should go forward with any project that goes forward with us. So, so my recommendation is going to be that we bring this back. And allow staff to establish some kind of policies that we can go forward that not only with this particular project, but any project going forward, having these kind of transparent items in place as going forward with this project and to the residents of. I WANT TO SPEAK DIRECTLY TO YOU. YOU KNOW I'M COMMITTED TO SEEING THIS PROJECT SUCCESSFUL, AND I WAS TAKEN BACK THIS EVENING. I ACTUALLY THOUGHT THAT, AND I HEARD FROM THE RESIDENTS, WE HEARD FROM THE RESIDENTS THAT THE COMMUNICATIONS THAT THEY HEARD FROM the manager of CCM, gave them hope that the communication would establish. So it appears to me that the lack of communication where it fell before was something that could have been resolved and not had to come forward on the 16 item, but could have come forward with just some kind of communication between all the parties. So I was definitely taken aback. I was quite surprised. I'm committed to this project, but I do want to make the residents understand that in the future, and I don't know if they went to any other council members, but going to one council member with respect to this project without talking to all of us, I think that we could have resolved this without having to come forward in a public session to get this mission moved. So my recommendation, and I'll listen from other council members, that we don't take these items that were in Councilman Negrete's memo, but ask staff to come back with some kind of policies that we can support for any kind of project in this manner. So I'd like to hear from some Council Members as to that recommendation.

Okay. Council Member Raskin.

Can I just, as a point of, just, that was the point of the whole memo, just so you know. Okay. It's to establish this for all projects, but I'll respond to the rest of it after.

Okay. Council Member Raskin, and then Council Member Zernitz-Gay, I had her hand up, and then Council Member Zoek.

Yeah. I mean, first of all, thanks for, you know, your work on this line. And just for context, you know, I live a lot a block away from this, this building and some other folks here live about a block or so away from this place to I walk by it pretty much every day. I've seen the street being torn up over the last month or so. I've been seeing, I've been talking to folks in the community about what's been going on. Just to add a little bit more context here, you did invite me and Natalia to participate in the 16 item and ultimately We had some different perspectives on how to approach this, and ultimately you ended up bringing it forward yourself. I had some productive conversations today with Diana Flores and some other folks from the community, and also with Tara and others from the community core, and I'll get that in a sec. But it, it sounds like there's some there's some fundamental I I think something being lost in translation here because everybody I've heard from from the Community core side said that there was no that nobody from either the city or city council had had asked them to work on this specifically You know, Well, I don't know. Something is getting lost in translation. I don't know what it is, but it sounds like there is going to be a productive pathway forward. I talked to Tara earlier, and she said that she is interested in working with the residents to deal with these concerns. I understand that she spoke with them for about a half hour or so outside earlier. The concern that I heard from Diana Flores specifically was that she wanted to have an opportunity, or she and others of the residents wanted to have an opportunity to work with Tara and the project manager and others before June 18th to have input on this. I understand from Tara that she's amenable to that and that she's open to doing it. So I have some ideas about how we can structure that and how to get there successfully. You know, for me, the point that sticks in my mind is that, you know, this is city money that's being spent here, and we absolutely need to make sure that there's transparency and accountability. I think we're all in support of that, but it's a CCSN project, and, you know, we've got to work with them as the partner in this, and we can't force them to open up, you know, their books any more so than, you know, anyone else in the community. So I have some ideas as to how to approach this. I know some of my colleagues here have some further comments, but I think where I'm landing here is that it sounds like Tara and folks are kind of on board with the idea of having a community meeting sooner than June 18th and getting this addressed. And I think that I have some ideas about how to put that into motion, but let's keep discussing.

Thank you. Thank you very much to Council Member Negrete for bringing this forward and for inviting Council Member Raskin and myself to join you. I do want to say just I appreciate the collaborative process and you being open to some of our uh suggested edits even though we didn't ultimately end up joining you on this particular item just from my part it was primarily just because of timing um I did want to get some clarification from the city attorney because I understand we're the lender in this so what kind of is within our scope of what we are able to do under our loan agreement. And I also just wanted to ask about what is our city process for inspections of these types of rehabilitation projects, regardless of kind of the, like whose project it is, like who the developer or who the property owner is and what that looks like to ensure that homes are safe for folks to live in.

Sure, so I can speak in broad strokes and then the Assistant City Attorney or the Department Director for HHS may want to hop in. But, you know, generally as the lender, the City is not in control of the construction itself. That is something that CCSM would be handling. The City does, however, from a regulatory perspective, conduct regular building inspections, building and safety inspections like it would for any other project. So I think that's kind of broad strokes the city's involvement unless Ms. Reynolds has something to add.

Yeah, I'll just add that our HHS senior development analyst does go out around once a month to verify the draws that are being requested. So if money is being requested to draw down from the loan, they said they did X, Y, and Z work, we're going out and confirming that work was done. Now, to be clear, though, that staff are not building inspectors, that's separate, but we're verifying the work before approving a draw.

And the only other thing I'd add in terms of inspections or building and safety team does do regular inspections of the work as you would on any type of construction project.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

Okay. Council Member Zwick.

I guess I'm arriving a little late to this. I read the motion. It seems like it's broadly asking for some updates and some transparency on the state of the project, how funds are being approved. I don't know what's radical about it or who would oppose it. Are people telling you that we are people are people indicating that we can't have information? I'm just confused because there are a lot of people that came up and yelled at the council for Fighting against transparency, and I don't know when I did that.

So I'm just trying to thank you actually for clarifying that because that does provide context. Well, 1st of all, because council members now indicated, or you sort of made the assumption that I didn't ask anyone. I'm on it alone because I did ask two council members, council member Raskin and Zernitzkaya. It was actually modified before its version based on council members Zernitzkaya and Raskin's suggestion. So I want to make that clear. Second of all, in terms of people saying they spoke to people in the community, I'm using air quotes because they were all here. I've spoke to every single family member multiple times. They don't say that they've spoke to you. So I'm just telling you, I don't know who you're talking to. If you're talking to their next door neighbor, that's not the same thing. So there's emails and I've forwarded to Denise if you want to put them up to see the back and forth communications. Okay. So we're all clear that there's communications that have been coming forward and asking for clarification. It's been going on for months. So council members like the. Issue bubbled up because they're supposed to be a project manager. All this talk around like, oh, well, we're checking to see if it's being done. That is not the question as the lender. And I want to be clear. We are using the word loan. The reality is, we're not getting that money back. So that money is being given. No, it's saying that the work isn't being done and I think that's the problem here. It's the fact that great. I'm sure there's weekly meetings, but it is not the city's job as I was told by folks from the board, because once this got put on all of a sudden, there was a big upheaval. I received multiple texts, multiple phone calls from. Political organizations to board members to just being talked to in person from Tara Tara went and spoke to someone downstairs. Now, that's tonight Tuesday. Okay, there was months to have this conversation. So this idea that this just bubbled up over the weekend is offensive and ridiculous and quite annoying because there's a track record of a long dialogue back and forth between. Hhs between city manager between community court between these changing project managers that are just rinse and repeat giving a standard responses. I said, I didn't even get involved. I was like, can you guys go see if they can go talk to the residents? Okay. And that didn't happen. What happened was they said, sure, we'll talk to them on June eighteenth. So they were like, listen, this is frustrating. We are driving by. And by the way, living in a neighborhood and being in the same zip code or block doesn't. I mean, okay, great. I walk past it all the time. It's showing up and speaking to them when they're asking for help and responding and going to the meeting on a Sunday and sitting for two and a half hours and hearing everybody out and then trends bringing that over and saying, okay, let me translate this to the city manager's office and say, this is what's happening. This has been ongoing. And all of a sudden, everyone got excited about responding because they said this is making community corp look like a bad partner. This is making us look bad. It is politically uncomfortable and not a good move on my site with an upcoming election. I'll be honest to be poking at a highly visible group. That is also has sitting board members who endorse people. I'm just going to say it right here right now. But you know what? It's okay, because I'm standing up for these residents who have been asking for help. I've been asking about communication since October 9th of 2025. I want everyone to hear that it's in you're welcome to look at it and some of you guys are on there. So I don't know who's I get it. We all get thousands of emails. I'm not blaming anyone, but I did bring people in. Because you live there, that was why I selected to be honest. I probably would have worked with the mayor because of her background and tenant protections and whatnot. But I figured because you guys are in neighborhood and you said that you spoke to people. That's why I asked people to come on and it's okay. You had some concerns about the item. I think you ultimately wanted to support the residents. I get that. But at the end of the day, everyone got really funny about why are we making this public? It's an attack on CCSM. And this is not an attack on Community Corp of Santa Monica. My own family fears retaliation because I'm bringing this forward. These families fear it. I appreciate their work, but I do believe that at the very bare minimum, if there are these weekly meetings, as the board member suggested, if there's monthly meetings, it should be transcribed and given to the residents as it was promised. As we've all mentioned, we can say these big, fluffy, nice things. Oh, this is their home. They want to be back and I love this project and I want to rehabilitate. Great. Let's come up with the standard procedure of which this was the original motion for any project we do. And let's use this as the boilerplate template to look back and learn from our mistakes and ask ourselves, maybe these rehabilitation projects you know, don't always work out the best way. There was other options that we had, but we chose for this rehabilitation. And now we're looking at it and seeing between the lack of communication, the overruns on the project, even knowing that there was gonna be mold and wood rot, we are now in a situation where going forward, we might look at things differently. But to the extent that we're using public dollars and we just need to show people, it's not about a gotcha. It's like, what is the big deal? I mean, if you're giving these updates internally, somehow are missing the mark on sharing it with the residents now I'm asking we should also be sharing it with everyone to hold everyone accountable they all have jobs some of them have health concerns and parents that are in the hospital they don't need to be rallying meetings they are so impressively organized I'm thoroughly impressed with the residents there and they have spent a lot of time coming out so anyways it became a big deal yeah I'm not privy as I mentioned

conversations but my only point is I will support this I just was confused because I was never opposing it I was surprised to know you weren't I just there was just seems like there's an impression that some people really care about transparency and others are trying to hide important information from the people who most need it. And I'm just baffled.

Well, I agree. And thank you for supporting. I think the idea was that they knew I was going to work with other council members and felt that when I couldn't do that, I worked with two, there's a Brown Act. So when that fails, I can't go to the next person.

I totally agree with you. There's a Brown Act and I don't expect the redness.

Sorry, just to be taking control back in the meeting here. So, Council Member Zwick was in the queue. Then, are you done, Council Member Zwick? Council Member Negrete was then in the queue. Okay, now we have Council Member Snell in the queue, and then we will have Council Member Zernitzka and then we'll have Council Member Raskin, and I would love to comment at some point.

I think we all heard tonight from the residents their concern. My surprise is that one and you said that you spoke with the residents on numerous occasions and obviously because of Brown Act you can't speak to all of us but did you when you spoke with them to say reach out to all the other council members?

They did, they showed up at a council meeting and they lined up.

No, I'm talking about prior to tonight.

Yes. I've always told them that they know that they've because.

You know, I care very much about these residents in the project, but as I said, Friday was the 1st time I heard. The extent of this, based on what you have just said, and it appears to me that it looks like, I mean, you know, they came in while Ryan Councilman, when I think I'm hearing from all of our Council members that we're all concerned about it. And the items that you put up there in the memo section are things that are very important that we can support. I just think that there could have been another way of doing it, particularly if. if our partners weren't handling it properly that we could resolve this issue with how without having to come before council to be able to handle it and that's that's my concern and and it wasn't a mistake it wasn't a mistake on our part it wasn't a mistake on our part but what i'm concerned about is that these residents who knows very well who have who have met we've met with them initially came tonight and they gave you your glory but the reality of it is is that this is something that we all feel important about and the residents if they didn't want to come to us i question that because i for one very much are concerned about the project and i'm very concerned about them and so you said this is not a political issue but on the other hand um You're the only council member that brought this forward and I believe, I'm just saying from my standpoint, I would have handled it differently to be able to handle this so it wouldn't have come before council and we would have been able to resolve it. And so I'm really concerned about the, genesis as to why this came forward when we all agree that this is something that's very important to us. And that's all I have to say.

Can I respond to that, Mayor? Sure. So I just laid out why, and I don't know if I need to repeat it, but maybe, Ms. Warren, if you could place the email so you can read them and everyone can see at home. there were emails sent. And in terms of why penalizing the neighbors for selecting a council member that is responding to them, I don't want to do that to them. I want them to feel comfortable.

I'm not penalizing, but those emails could have came to Oliver. They could have came to Oliver. You could have asked him. But we already did.

They did go to the city manager. So we were addressing it. I think that's the whole point you're missing. So let me reiterate. They sent emails complaining. I copied in the city manager's office and the HHS team. They contacted CCSM. There was communication back and forth. Oh, we're going to handle it. We're going to talk to them, but it didn't happen. And it didn't happen and it didn't happen. And they know that they can, I don't control who they speak to. I'm not saying, oh, only tell me because the fact that you're insinuating that I would stand up for an entire community because it's. Because I want them to sing. My glory is ridiculous. They would have been singing the glory of whoever else wanted to sign on. I guess you could say, and it wouldn't even have been about that. It would have been. They realized at the end that I was getting pushback that people were calling them. People were calling me to take the item off. So, back to council members question. I was asked to remove this item from the agenda on multiple occasions. and asked, why can't we do this another way? Well, this shows you why, because I tried getting someone to respond to them. They tried to get a response and they couldn't. And all of a sudden, now there's a response at the umpteenth hour on the council meeting. So that's why we're here.

Thank you. Council Member Zernizkaya.

Thank you. And as I noted, thank you, Council Member Negrete, for inviting Council Member Raskin and myself to join you on this item. I do just want to clarify that I was not aware prior to kind of this bubbling up last week and the background information that you've shared about the communication between the residents and the city and yourself and CCSM. I was not aware of that previously. I had asked to delay putting on the item because I wanted to be able to reach out and learn what had happened along the way and where things went wrong to be able to craft something that really helped address the underlying issues. I think that what we've done today is heard where a lot of those issues came, how they came about, and hopefully this will help us resolve them, and hopefully this will help us all work together for the best possible resolution for the residents because i think as as you and other council members have noted that's that's who we're here for so um just wanted to make that clear thank you council and raskin and then i just want to say something else

No, I would just say, of course, I support this item. Of course, I support transparency. Of course, we want to get answers. We're here now. Let's move forward. I would just say, I just looked through my emails. I don't have any emails from any of the Virginia Avenue folks since August. So in the spirit of working together and going forward, I would love Uh, to be an additional resource for all of you. If there are issues, um, people email me, uh, all day every day about important issues in the community that I try that. I think all of us try to get resolved as quickly as possible. Um, and then, of course, you know, is managing the project and so. Um, I think it's our responsibility as council members to then, of course, communicate with and make sure that everything is being, uh, I mean, I, I did get forwarded these, these monthly or I think weekly email reports that are being sent. I mean, I'm happy to, you know. They say that sunlight is the greatest form of disinfectant, right? Like, we're happy to be here and shed as much information as possible. I would just say happy to be communicated with and so we can make sure that there aren't any of these miscommunications going forward. because we do care about naturally occurring affordable housing, deed restricted housing, rent control and preservation of existing housing. I don't think we would have allocated money toward a renter aid program tonight if we didn't care deeply about that. So I hope we can all agree that we want to work together on this and move forward. And Councilor Raskin, I don't know if you wanted to say anything.

Yeah, I think we're mostly on the same page here, or at least the same team. I never got an invite to the community meeting. I wish I had. It sounds like it could have been a great opportunity to connect with people. Be that as it may, it sounds for me like Tara and the CCSM team are open to coordinating meetings that are sooner than June 18th. The key point of, I think, difference of opinion as an approach in this item that we had earlier was just about asking CCSM to turn over their books and explain all the various factors for the cost of overruns. I mean, we can ask them, but I don't know if we can, I don't think we can force them. to turn that over.

But I think that Tara has said she's happy to provide that information.

Yeah, so I mean, we could we could ask them, but I think we just, I mean, kind of just set expectations that, you know, this is a ball. And unless there's some legal mechanism, I'm not I'm not understanding.

I think, you know, we can, you know, I think that's with anything you hope people are providing.

Sure. Yeah.

I mean, I would assume for the lender, we have to get some Yeah.

Okay. All right. So, okay. I mean, just to kind of coalesce this into direction here. So, it sounds like, you know, Tara and the CCSM team are on board with us working with them to coordinate and facilitate meetings sooner than on June 18th. I've heard that they're open to bringing people onto the site in coordination with the project manager to look at apartment-specific and site-specific issues. To the extent that there are public records we can provide explaining both process and actual capital outlays from the city side, I think that's fine.

What are the issues that we can get to? Because it sounds like you're just agreeing with it. Or do you have something you want to take out of them? Because I'd like to propose that it sounds like Council Member Snell also agrees that this is how we should be handling future projects. It sounds like we have support. If you're modifying it, I just want to be clear.

Well, I'm thinking out loud about this, but I want to modify it to incorporate what Tara said that she would be willing to do. Like having those meetings sooner than June, like point one says engage with CCFSM and provide presentation in June slash July. Maybe we could ask them to engage with residents based upon the schedule proposed by the residents and to report back after that happens.

Sure, that's what it's saying. I just don't want to, we already modified the other two points when you were originally on it. So I don't want to take away from what it's asking. If the language at this point now says to come back in June, July, we're ultimately just asking for whatever update that they give that it is also shared with Council so we can have a broader public update.

Okay. I'll be honest, I'm uncomfortable asking CCSM to just kind of open up their financials.

As a 501c3, we were supposed to be... Can I get in?

That's why I'm recommending, I don't want to make this about CCM. I think, as I said, Councilman Greddy's items pertain to CCM, but I think on the broader case, I would like staff maybe to come back. Take a look at what processes and procedures we could possibly we are the lender in this particular case. So you're right. Councilman asking that there are there are things that we may be precluded to ask about. But I think if we brought this back and allow staff to give us some kind of options with how to approach a situation like this. I think it would give us more credibility. What Councilman Negrete is asking for, I support in the general sense. My concern is supporting it directly to one particular nonprofit or business. That's my concern.

I want to be clear since it's my item originally, and I spoke to, maybe you're talking about board member Ralph metro might have repeated what our conversation. It sounds like to you where I said, this is about processes going forward. However. I'm pertaining it to this because this is a project that's using over 37Million dollars of. Housing trust funds, and we're currently in this predicament. So they're the largest provider of most of the affordable development that we do and rehab. So that's great. So whether or not it pertains to everybody in the future or not doesn't change the fact that all I'm asking for is the things we're asking for whatever they don't have to legally provide or don't want to is up to them. No one's. We're asking for it, and I think it would be, it sounds like Tara's saying, yes, absolutely. So I don't know what you can you be drill down and be specific about which because this had 2 more items.

My concern is, is that if an item like this comes before us again. We don't have that. We don't have a framework.

Well, this is what this is to set this framework broadly.

Well, that's why I'm thinking a broader framework that we allow staff, take your items, take it back.

It was broader, but it got dwindled down.

Okay. Bring it back for us to be able to really have a process going forward that would be much more broader than just this particular instance.

That's fine, but it doesn't change this. It would just mean that this would apply to everybody who's ever doing a project. I had two other items, Council Member Snell, that said exactly that, but they were modified and taken off for tonight's meeting. But it still wouldn't change Having to provide those items. I don't know if mayor has a comment.

Yeah. Can I make a suggestion? I mean, I think. What what what I hear people asking for irrespective of getting this information I'm hearing. Maybe staff to return back with a framework with a community benefits framework on, um, affordable housing on projects using housing trust fund dollars. it also sounds like per our direction on the Santa Monica scorecard and housing stability was one of the components on the Santa Monica scorecard that there be a tracking and accounting um through that mechanism which I know uh City Manager Chi has released like the first iteration for the realignment plan but we're hoping that there can be a more dynamic better looking scorecard that people can just go and reference um so that all the public can see what's happening and I think you know I don't know what you want to call this community benefits policy or like housing benefit whatever benefit policy that we have that we have to track all these things on a going forward basis period now it does seem as though these item one is specific to CCSM I think item two could be like part of this tracking thing on a going forward basis um three does seem specific to CCSM I mean, and so then I guess the question is in this community benefits policy, which I mean, I've seen some from other jurisdictions. Do you mandate a certain amount of like community meetings or communication with impacted residents, et cetera? Because some of that is addressed in this item as well. How does that sound to people?

Yeah, I agree. I would just say that obviously this is a very unique. I don't know that we're ever going to see a rehabilitation project like this ever again. It's phenomenal that we're preserving 40 units. So that's why it's very specific for 1. For 2, as I keep reiterating this. Item intended to have 2 additional items that were since modified. At the request of council member that said, I would like to use this as the framework to provide this for any project, whether we're giving 10 cents or 10Million dollars or 37Million dollars. I think we should be accounting for what we're doing and the public should feel good about it. So that we don't have the rumor of hills or the chatter and also so people can see that the investments we make keep 40. generational families in our city. And that's the balance between gentrification and preservation of our deed-restricted units and the diversity of our community. So however we want to wordsmith it, I feel like it says it all in there. And we can just add back the line that says provide the, what did you call it, the community benefit framework in a public-facing format. Maybe it's tied in with the scorecard.

Do you have a comment on that? And then Councilmember Zernitz-Gaye has her hand up as well.

Yeah, just to generally say is in support of building out some framework around how we are transparent about how our funds are used. I think. The requests about this project specifically, and because this project is unique. Maybe go a bit deeper than what we would do be able to do quickly for all other projects. So we're happy to come back with the specifics on this project. And then with that a. Suggestion about how we would.

take the highlights from that and use it on other projects if that is and that's exactly what i was trying to obtain i didn't want to get away from what we're trying to get here but then also to create the future for how we do projects going forward i think that's great council members yeah um i just wanted to clarify because because council members know had brought up uh and and the original draft of this was much broader uh i had suggested making it smaller in scope to really be more specific to address the specific concerns and issues that are being experienced by the residents at the Virginia Avenue or regarding the Virginia Avenue apartments because these are their homes. They're more than units. These are people's homes. And if, you know, if the council wants to create a broader framework for other projects moving forward or other uses of our city funds. I think that's great. I think this is a very, very unique situation. I'm not aware of any other situation where the city has lent over $38 million for a rehabilitation project of this type. So I think that this deserved a more uh more specific framework to address these concerns so just wanted to to make that clear thank you thank you okay so am i hearing um consensus yeah does anyone want to make a motion

I'd like to move this item as is. With the additional directive to use this as the basis for a framework on a going forward basis that would track and report out our impact and outcomes on projects that use affordable housing trust fund dollars.

Understanding that that would be more broadly and not as specific maybe as this is.

Sorry, I know it's late. Forgive me. Is the idea to bring bring back that framework at a future time for further discussion?

Well, that was, I guess sounds like it's pretty, that's what I'm fairly easy. Is it going to be difficult to bring that back?

It sounds like you're already on track with Oh, yeah, we can commit to bringing back a suggested framework in a few meetings. It's simultaneous to the Virginia Avenue updates.

90 days, sure. Is it possible to do it quicker than that? Are you talking about both things for 90 days? Or this should be...

I'm saying we can do both at the same time.

Yeah, I think both at the same time.

Because it will inform the...

Right, one will inform the other, but that won't impact the residents getting their updates with everything.

I was already said that she would do that. No, I understand.

That's why I was just wondering how long it would take for us if we're already going to be provided. Yes, of course. Yeah.

And then maybe you can also just update council email correspondence when engagement.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

If I could say one more thing, speaking to the motion. I fully support this. These folks deserve to be back in their homes. They deserve transparency. I just want to be very upfront that what we're asking CACs to do here, as far as I understand it, is to provide some things voluntarily. You know, I understand that our city team is looking at, you know, expenditures very carefully before releasing funds. And, you know, to the extent that those are public records we can provide, I think we should. But I just want to be very clear to the community that we're asking our partner here to work with us voluntarily. It sounds like they will.

Yeah, just like we ask the neighborhood organizations.

Yeah, I just want to set expectations, sir.

Great.

So I have a question. Was it Mayor Pro Tem Zwick that made the motion?

I made the motion. Zwick seconded. Okay.

Thank you. Okay.

Councilmember Czerniskaya? Yes. Council Member Snell? Yes. Mayor Pochettino-Swick? Yes. Council Member Raskin? Yes. Council Member Noguete? Yes. And Mayor Taroso?

Yes. Thank you. That carries. We do have one adjournment, which I believe Council Member Raskin is going to read for us. Thank you all. Thanks, Aileen.

Council, before we adjourn tonight, I would like to share that Marvin Zeidler, legendary Los Angeles restaurateur, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and longtime friend of the Santa Monica community, passed away on May 7th, 2026 at the age of 98. Marvin Zeidler helped shape Southern California's culinary and cultural landscape for generations. In addition to co-founding the influential Zeidler & Zeidler Fashion Stores and opening the nationally-famed Citrus Restaurant with chef Michael Richard, Marvin also left his mark here in Santa Monica through the beloved Broadway Deli and his long-standing ties to the Westside dining and arts community. Marvin was also a member of the Bayside District Corporation, now known as Downtown Santa Monica Inc., helping support the vitality and continued evolution of Downtown Santa Monica. Beyond the restaurant world, Marvin was a founder and supporter of major cultural institutions, including the Skirball Cultural Center, LACMA, and MOCA, and helped champion affordable artist housing throughout the Santa Fe art colony. Known for his warmth, generosity, and passion for bringing people together around the table, Marvin leaves behind an extraordinary legacy across Santa Monica and Los Angeles. The City Council extends its heartfelt condolences to his children, grandchildren, extended family, friends, and all those whose lives he touched and moved that we adjourn tonight's meeting in his memory.

Thank you, and we will see everyone in June.

Thank you. Have a good night.