City Council - Regular Meeting

Jenna, it's good to have you here.

I believe additional congratulations are in order. Mr. City Manager's one year anniversary of serving the City of Santa Monica. Congratulations.

We're calling the regular meeting on special means order at the same time in three minutes, just FYI. OK, it's 535. We're going to call the regular meeting and the special meeting of the Santa Monica City Council to order. Councilman Raskin will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Great. Council Member Hall, will you read the land acknowledgement? Oh, sorry.

The City of Santa Monica is located on the land of Tovangar. With great respect, the city acknowledges the Gabrielino Tongva as the first people of this ancestral and unceded territory of Currlunga, a village that we know as Santa Monica. We honor their elders, past and present, and the Gabrielino descendants who are part of the Gabrielino Tongva tribes. We recognize that these peoples are still here, and as settlers and kuyum, 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 the Gabrielino-Tongva people to uplift their voices and visibility on their ancestral land.

Fantastic. Thank you.

Let me do the roll call. Great. Councilmember Negrete?

Here.

Councilmember Hall?

Present.

Councilmember Raskin?

Here.

Councilmember Snell? Here. Councilmember Zarniskaya? Here. And Mayor Terrosis?

Here. Thank you. And the city clerk will ask if any members will be recusing themselves from any items on the agenda pursuant to the Levine Act.

Are there any?

Okay, seeing none. I don't see any agenda management, so we will move.

There is agenda management. So, Mayor, I'm...

I don't see it. Okay. Oh, it's on the second. Okay, there's two versions of the first page. um can i get a motion to hear the city manager's report and proclamation before general public comment and to continue item 16a and 16b to the july 28th meeting consistent with our prior direction second great you can do this by voice vote all those in favor aye seeing none no abstention no pose that passes um mr city manager can you give us some updates

I can, Madam Mayor. We have some brief updates to share with the Council this evening. First, we are fully into our summer event season. Can you believe it was just two months ago when we kicked everything off with the International Jazz Festival? Since then, we've consistently seen and felt this energy in town as we've had the World Cup kickoff and watch parties. We've had Make Music Day, our Route 66 anniversary events, Juneteenth. So many activations at our public facilities, including the beach house and the swim center, just parties and events in our parks, the celebration of our gardens, block fests. We've had Pride, Fourth of July, and so much more. We wanted to let everyone know the summer fun has not yet come to an end. We have and will be bringing back an event that I've heard so much love from the community about, so many fond memories. We'll be coming back, our Open Streets event, this Sunday, July 19th, in partnership with Metro. We're going to be closing a mile of streets downtown to any vehicular traffic. The Open Streets event's going to run through Ocean Avenue. It'll extend and connect to the Promenade and the Pier. We're going to have four stages of live entertainment, screenings of the World Cup final, for which c'est la vie, the French will not be joining, which has been very, very sad for us in our office. We will have art, a community mural, games, giveaways, vendors, and so much more. We hope everyone comes out to celebrate with us. The following week, on July 23rd, we also wanted to invite the entire community to join us for State of the City. As has been our practice the last couple of years, we are looking to take the event out of an auditorium and back into the community. Last year was at Reed Park. This year, we're going to be hosting our State of the City event where the mayor will deliver the State of the City address on Main Street between Hollister Avenue and Ocean Park. We're going to have an open house at the newly reopened for four days a week, Ocean Park Branch Library. We'll have tours of the historic shotgun house. A lot of interactive booths from city departments and our partners, vendors, small businesses. We'll have the entertainment zone activated, which means be able to walk around with an adult beverage. We're even going to have our major event partners out, including Golden Voice, ESPN, and Fever. Everyone that is interested, there's also going to be a special Rose Parade float announcement at the State of the City. So not going to want to miss that. Make sure you plan to come out on July 23rd. Last big event that's on our calendar here at the City, August 4th, come celebrate with our Police Department. for National Night Out. It will be right here in front of City Hall. It's another Can't Miss community event. We hope everyone will join us. And with that, we wanted to introduce everyone to our adoptable pets of the meeting. And that pet is here with us this evening. Everyone, please say hello to a one-year-old terrier mix named Pumpkin. Everyone, Pumpkin has a lot of energy. Pumpkin loves to play. Pumpkin would do so well in a home with another dog that loves to run and play also. He starts off sometimes a little nervous, but as soon as he warms up to you, our team has told me he is the life of the party. So please contact the animal shelter if you want to meet Pumpkin. or any of his furry friends. And as always, you can visit the Santa Monica Animal Shelter Foundation website to make a donation or shop the Chewy Wish List. Everyone, make sure you hurry to meet Pumpkin, because I hear Mayor Pro Tem Zwick up here saying he is going to go meet Pumpkin here real soon.

Can Pumpkin come up here? Pumpkin.

Can you bring Pumpkin behind the dais? Yeah. And with that, Madam Mayor, that concludes.

Wait, sorry. How long has Pumpkin been with you? Remind the audience.

Since end of May.

Since end of May. If you don't want Pumpkin to be spending another holiday alone at the shelter, you will adopt Pumpkin. Pumpkin's a very small, very seemingly well-behaved... We're ready for you here. Pumpkin's ready for... Pumpkin is ready for you. Forever home. We need to sell it, okay?

Pumpkin's going to get adopted, right?

Okay.

Pumpkin will be adopted. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you so much. Fantastic. Thank you so much for bringing pumpkin. Appreciate you guys. And we can always donate to the Chewy Wish List if we can't actually physically adopt. So really appreciate that. I believe we are now moving on to our Proclamation for Disability Pride Month because I think we're done with the City Manager's Report.

Before we go, I think we have one caller on the City Manager's Report. Okay, great. David, do we have the caller there?

the caller is not present all right okay we will move on uh to disability pride month could i call for disability commission chair alex elliott um alex i believe you have two minutes

Good evening, city council and city staff. Thank you for having me here. My name is Alex Elliott. I'm the chair of the Disabilities Commission, and I'm here in recognition of Disability Pride Month. I'd also like to take this opportunity to formally invite everyone on this day as to our Disability Commission public hearing on October 14th here at 6.30 p.m. in the council chamber and also to the community in the crowd. Disability Pride Month commemorates the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and celebrates the strength and contributions of people with disabilities. It's a reminder that disability is a natural part of the human experience. More than one in four adults in the United States lives with a disability, making disability the largest minority community, one that anyone can join at any point in life. Disability Pride is not about pretending that barriers do not exist. It's about affirming that people with disabilities deserve dignity, equal opportunity, and full participation in every aspect of community life. Accessibility is not a special accommodation. It's a civil right and an investment that benefits everyone, including seniors, families with young children, veterans, and visitors. I encourage the City of Santa Monica to continue strengthening the commitment to accessibility by engaging the disability community as partners in policymaking. In other words, nothing about us without us. A truly accessible Santa Monica is a stronger and more welcoming Santa Monica for everyone. I hope to see you all on October 14th at our public hearing. Thank you for your time and happy Disability Pride Month.

Amazing. You can stay up while I read the proclamation, and then if there are members of the group who came and want to take a picture from the commission. Whereas Disability Pride Month is nationally observed in July, commemorates the historic signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990. This landmark civil rights legislation prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, laying the legal foundation for equity, inclusion, and full participation in society for people with disabilities. And whereas people with disabilities contribute significantly to the city's civic, economic, cultural, and social fabric, yet they continue to experience systemic barriers in areas such as transportation, employment, housing, education, healthcare, artificial intelligence, and digital access. And whereas by designating July as Disability Pride Month, Santa Monica affirms the dignity, humanity, and rights of individuals with disabilities This designation celebrates the diversity, resilience, and contributions of the disability community while also serving as a call to action for public agencies, private partners, and communities to dismantle ableism and advance accessibility, equity, and inclusion across all communities. And whereas the City Council appointed the Santa Monica Disability Commission to advance awareness of disabilities in its planning, decision-making, and advisory activities, and whereas the City of Santa Monica recognizes the importance of supporting the well-being of our community members, especially people with disabilities. And whereas Disability Pride Month is a time for community members, government, public and private agencies, health care providers, businesses, and schools to recognize, support, and uplift individuals with disabilities by promoting awareness, accessibility, and inclusion throughout the month of July and beyond. And now therefore, I, on behalf of the city council, do hereby proclaim July 2026 as Disability Pride Month in Santa Monica. And we will have a quick photo. And we don't clap, but you can clap if you wanted to. Okay, it's now also Parks and Recreation Month and Jenny Rogers, the director of our Recreation and Arts Department will highlight the Rad Impact Report.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council, Jenny Rogers, your Director of Recreation and Arts, and with me tonight representing our RAD, our Community Recreation Manager, Micah Ackerson, and our Cultural Affairs Manager, Sophia Klatsker. We are honored to be with you tonight to celebrate July as National Parks and Recreation Month. As we move from realignment into Santa Monica's renaissance, we wanted to share our inaugural RAD Impact Report. 2025 was a year of great impact for RAD. This report showcases the incredible breadth of our RAD services, programs, and facilities, with a department budget of approximately 25 million and a staff team of 87 FTEs. Thanks to the outstanding work of our leadership team and our staff, many of whom are here with us tonight, for their work in the creation of this report and their dedicated service to the community each and every day. The Recreation and Arts Department enriches lives by providing a dynamic array of recreation, arts, and community event services created with and for the community that inspire play, connection, and shared experience in Santa Monica's public spaces. How do I advance the slide? Oh, there we go. Yes. In the year 2025, the importance of providing safe, welcoming public spaces could not have been more vital. In the aftermath of the Palisades fire, the City of Santa Monica mobilized in relief and recovery efforts. RAD played a pivotal role, initially opening community facilities as places of refuge, and later relocating displaced recreation and arts programming to Santa Monica. Reconnecting those displaced with essential community services, friends, and chosen family, helping to rebuild lives devastated by disaster and restore community connection. RAD continued to advance the City's priorities and long-term vision, working closely with the Department of Public Works on a community recreation and arts needs assessment survey and in the development and adoption of the 2025 Parks and Recreation Vision Plan. After nearly 30 years since the previous plan in 1997, the new PRVP establishes a long-term framework for growth of recreation and arts facilities and programs, guiding future investment, including development of the beach and pier vision plan currently underway. RAD's work in 2025 also aligned with the City Council's adopted realignment plan, supporting public safety, economic recovery, organizational capacity, and long-term fiscal stability. Recreation and arts are foundational to this city's efforts to provide welcoming public spaces and programs for all. RAD continues this work closely with the city manager's office, major events team, and city departments to transform Santa Monica into a world-class destination for recreation and sports play, arts and culture, community, and major events. as we actively cultivate those only in santa monica experiences now i'd like to invite manager micah ackerson to talk about highlights from our community recreation division thank you jenny one of the challenges with an impact report like like this is that it's really difficult to fully capture the scale of community recreation and the number of people we serve every single day

In fact, as we're sitting here this evening, there are literally thousands of people enjoying Santa Monica's park and recreation system. Children are taking swim lessons. Youth and adults are playing in sports leagues. Families are enjoying our parks and playgrounds. People are participating in community classes. And yes, I can fully guarantee there are at least 100 people playing pickleball in Memorial Park right now. Across the city, recreation is happening in real time. That's what community recreation is all about, creating opportunities for people of all ages to be active, connect with others, and build community. The community recreation section of this report is organized around our four primary program areas. Aquatics operates three facilities and provides programs for everyone from first-time swimmers to competitive athletes. Beach recreation activates our coastline through recreation programs permits, and community partnerships. Community programs, camps and classes, offers camps, enrichment opportunities, and lifelong learning programs for residents of all ages and abilities. Sports and athletics manages leagues, tournaments, facility reservations, permits, and partnerships that keep our parks and recreation facilities active year round. While this only scratches the surface of what community recreation provides, here are a few highlights from 2025. Over 218,000 aquatics visits across our three facilities. Nearly 24,000 permits issued for courts, fields, meeting rooms, beach volleyball courts, reservable picnic areas, and other amenities. More than 11,800 unique participants registered in camps and classes. Over $5 million in recreation revenue supporting programs, facilities, and services. And one that is especially meaningful to me is celebrating 50 years of Westside Special Olympics programming serving athletes with disabilities. These numbers are certainly important, but what they really represent are people. Children gaining confidence in the water, families making memories in our parks, adults staying active, and community members building connections. That's the impact community recreation has every day, and we're honored to provide those opportunities for the Santa Monica community. Now I'll hand it over to Sophia Klatsker with my favorite photo from Cultural Affairs.

Thank you, Micah. Okay. So if recreation is the infrastructure residents use every week, Cultural affairs is what creates moments of joy, fuels curiosity, and strengthens community through shared cultural experiences. Cultural affairs exists to support, elevate, and invest in artists, cultural organizations, and creative experiences that strengthen Santa Monica's identity and enrich everyday life. Our work spans six interconnected areas, from managing cultural facilities and public art to investing in artists, supporting nonprofit organizations, and creating opportunities for residents to experience arts and culture throughout the city. This year marked several exciting milestones for our cultural facilities. The Miles Memorial Playhouse reopened after a five-year closure. More than 1,200 residents attended its relaunch at last year's State of the City, and it is now generating rental revenue again. At the Annenberg Community Beach House, we hosted 153 private events and over 11,000 attendees. Some of those events put Santa Monica in front of a genuinely global audience. Our TEDx program was live streamed to viewers on every continent except Antarctica. At the Annenberg Community Beach House, Camera Obscura Art Lab, Miles Playhouse, and Airport Arts Center, we expanded opportunities for exhibitions, performances, artist residencies, and community gatherings. This spring, we also opened the city's first gallery at Bergamot Station, activating and creating another public space dedicated to contemporary art and creative dialogue. Investing directly in artists and nonprofit organizations remains one of our most important responsibilities. In 2025, we awarded more than $538,000 through grants supporting nonprofit organizations, individual artists, youth access, and transportation to cultural experiences. Santa Monica also continues to be one of the few cities in the country that invests directly in individual artists, recognizing creativity as essential to civic infrastructure. Art of Recovery continues to demonstrate how arts and culture can respond to community needs. Through our Art of Recovery initiative, we funded 33 projects and allocated $144,750, and 11 of those projects went directly to fire recovery and community healing. That is cultural function as a direct public service, not an afterthought. And finally, public art continues to transform our shared civic spaces through collaboration across our city departments. Working closely with our partners in public works, we advance significant public art projects that will become lasting parts of our landscapes. I'm especially excited about the Tania Aguaniga's Manos Unidas, a major civic art that celebrates community connection and belonging at city yards, and it features the actual hands and tools of our colleagues. Also featured here is Deborah Scacco's work and residency, which featured a presentation at the Getty Museum recently, bringing national recognition not only to her work, but to Santa Monica's longstanding commitment to excellence, environmentalism, and essential workers. That is the same spirit in tonight's proclamation, welcoming the world to our public spaces, hosting the International Freeze Art Fair in Santa Monica at the airport, presenting international and local artist residencies, and world-class productions filmed here are all part of that same story. I'd like to hand it back to Jenny, who will further contextualize the department and celebrate Recreation Month.

In closing, RAD's administrative division and its community events team worked diligently on city-wide initiatives and special events. In 2025, this included celebration of Santa Monica's 150th anniversary, which included 80 events showcasing new community-wide events on a community calendar on Localist. RAD supported 33 local community projects through the Art of Recovery and the microgrants funding engaging activations which celebrate the unique history and culture of this great city. In October, RAD supported Council's adoption of a signature events resolution to provide greater support, high touch customer service, and a waiver of city fees for our cherished community events. As the worldwide audiences are riveted by the final rounds of the FIFA World Cup festivities this week, we recognize the power of play, recreation, and the arts to bring people together in communal experiences and cultural exchange. As a city department, we build community. Our RAD services provide public programs and places for social connection, enriching the small town character and high quality of life in Santa Monica. Recreation and arts are the why for why people decide to live, visit, and vacation in Santa Monica. Known for its exquisite natural beauty and near perfect climate, Santa Monica is the place for play. Santa Monica's recreation and arts programs indoors and outdoors serve people of all ages and abilities and reflect the city's identity as a place where recreation and art making are a way of life year round. We invite you to summer in Santa Monica. Come join the fun in the best place on earth for play. Santa Monica is rad. And our cultural renaissance has only just begun. I'd like to hand it back to our mayor for reading of the proclamation and invite up the vice chair of our RPC, Karen Malik, to receive the proclamation on behalf of the RPC and our RAD team. Amazing.

Thank you so much for all of your great work, and we are going to proclaim it National Parks and Recreation Month. Whereas the city recognizes the importance of recreation, the arts, and green spaces in celebration of summer in Santa Monica, and whereas our community continues to welcome the world to our public spaces, the promenade and pier to experience FIFA World Cup, the joy of worldwide sports competition, and communal cultural exchange, and whereas the Recreation and Arts Department, affectionately known as RAD, faithfully builds strong, vibrant, and resilient communities through the power of play, the arts, and parks to create community and elevate the spirit, and whereas the city is bringing greater awareness to the benefits of nature and outdoor recreation and positive impact on health and wellness, mental and physical, and Whereas our public spaces, beach, parks, green spaces, arts and recreation facilities continue to be welcoming, fun, and safe social gathering spaces for all. Whereas the City of Santa Monica and its RAD will continue to provide the community with robust recreation and arts activities and activate its beautiful public spaces so generations of residents and visitors alike can enjoy these spaces and program offerings for years to come and Now, therefore, on behalf of the City Council, we do hereby proclaim July 2026 as Parks and Recreation Month in the City of Santa Monica and encourage everyone to recreate, get out, and play.

Just thank you to the Mayor and City Council for this proclamation and your continued support for our parks and recreation. And thank you to all of the city employees, particularly in the Recreation and Arts Department and Public Works, who support our parks and recreation. Parks truly make life better. They provide places for youth and adults to be active, places for wellness, and environments that bring people together. I hope everyone takes the time this month to go out and enjoy our wonderful parks and recreation facilities. Thank you. Good, good, good, good. Very cool.

Denise, I wanted to speak on this item.

Okay.

Aren't we rad? I'm sorry, but we didn't receive, we didn't have you listed as a speaker.

I listed it outside, and he said yes.

Mayor, did you guys want to, on the disability item?

Do you want to accept a late check?

Okay, that's fine. One minute.

Okay, you get one minute.

Oh, do we? Okay. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Any abstentions? Seeing none.

Go ahead, Zoe.

Good evening, Council Members. I wanted to speak in both proclamations, especially the Disability Month, because there's been a misunderstanding on what disability is, and sometimes we focus so much on physical disabilities that we don't pay attention to invisible disabilities. And as someone who publicly disclosed that I was diagnosed with ADHD, that is a disability recognized by the mental health department, I would like the city to really do more work, especially with the city attorney's office. to really recognize invisible disabilities and to train the Santa Monica Police Department and other departments on what invisible disabilities are because they're equally important as other disabilities in this umbrella. So I really would like to see the city attorney paying more attention to that.

Thank you, Ms. Montaner. We will now go on to, okay, we do happy hands here. No clapping. Thank you so much. Appreciate that. We will now move on to general public comment, item one. I see that there were some, it appears that there were a couple late chits, so they will have, there's two late chits, right, for item one?

There's 31, there's 31. 15, I'm sorry, 15.

I only see 15 for this one. I just wanted to make sure that we can hear the people that signed up.

And then we have three callers on the phone.

Okay. Do we need a motion? Do you hear the late ones?

We don't need a motion because we haven't started the item yet.

Okay. Joe DeRosa, Bill Davids, John Medlin, Kelly Smith, and Denise Barton. And when you come up, you can just say your name. It doesn't necessarily have to be an order.

Mr. DeRosa, are you doing the video? Yeah. Okay.

Are we getting one minute or two minute? Two. Okay, so just play the longer one.

Welcome to this video on the Santa Monica Global Conference Center, a transformative investment in the city's future centered on iconic design, economic growth, and community benefit. Located in the heart of Santa Monica, this premier project offers a connected and walkable environment. With over 3,000 hotel rooms, direct metro access, and a thriving business climate, it is uniquely positioned. An iconic architectural vision designed by the world-renowned firm Morphosis will serve as a landmark that reflects the innovation, creativity, and forward-looking spirit of Santa Monica. The facility offers 200,000 square feet of flexible, state-of-the-art space. Features include two 50,000 square foot ballrooms, a 1,000 seat indoor amphitheater, and various meeting and exhibition rooms. At full operation, the center is estimated to drive significant economic impact, including over 400,000 visitors, 280,000 hotel nights, $650 million in total economic impact, and 2,800 permanent jobs. This project aims to benefit Santa Monica's key industries, including hotels, restaurants, retail, technology, and transportation, helping to foster growth across the entire local economy. Designed for year-round activation, the venue serves as a platform for connection, hosting events ranging from conventions and tech summits to cultural festivals and award ceremonies. The development acts as a catalyst for future growth, supporting new hotels, mixed-use developments, and office spaces to build a vibrant, sustainable district for generations to come. Ultimately, this is an investment in our shared future, strengthening Santa Monica's economy, culture, and community while establishing a world-class destination that reflects the best of the city. The current ask is for $250,000 from the city of Santa Monica to fund a comprehensive feasibility study and conceptual design renderings by the renowned firm morphosis. Welcome to this video on the Santa Monica global conference Center a transformative investment in the city's future centered on iconic.

Thanks guys morphosis.

Okay. Thank you so much. Bill Davids.

I wanted to come down because a very unfortunate statement came out of the city attorney's office. I'm not sure how many of you know that ownership of 220 San Vicente meets with the city on a weekly basis. tenants have been excluded from those meetings. And as a result, we discovered that the thinking in the city attorney's office apparently has become very lopsided towards ownership and also very biased against tenants. We found out that based upon the statement that I'm not going to identify the person, but the statement has circulated through the building that the city is pleased, quote unquote, with the progression of construction work in the building. We have many seniors in the building, although that's eroding. We have people with medical disabilities, medical needs, who are essentially caught up in the havoc of construction in the building. In my particular case, and this sounds ludicrous, my issue happens to be condensers that were put under my apartment by Deutsche Bank, the previous owner of the building. I don't think anyone in this room has seven industrial strength condensers placed under the building with the approval of building and safety under my apartment by building and safety, including one additional industrial strength condenser right next to my apartment that's eight industrial

Can we get someone from our city attorney's office to speak with Mr. Davids? This is concerning to me. Again, this is not like a question and answer session. We don't respond to folks, but I think we should talk about how to not have him come here every time so that we can have a better dialogue.

Absolutely. We have Mr. Davids' contact information and we will follow up.

Okay.

I appreciate that.

Thank you. So again, John Medlin, Kelly Smith, Neese Barton.

Madam Mayor, members of city council, good evening. My name is John Medlin. I've been here about 30 years. And it's a great place to live. That's why I moved here. First lived here in 1967. Today is July 14, 2026. 3,754 days ago, on April 4, 2016, a small group of citizens from the Pico neighborhood decided to seek power for their neighborhood. For too long, they had been on the short end of attention and support. For the previous 69 years, only two, excuse me, only three of 64 city council members had been similar to them. For almost 20 years, a pedophile had abused children in their neighborhood with nothing done in spite of the many rumors and whispers. After more than 10 years, you and your predecessors have refused to honor their simple request, neighborhood representation. district voting, which is true in most of the cities in California, including those between 50,000 and 100,000 like we are, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, et cetera, which are major cities. Over that decade, the city has spent $14.5 million paying the city's outside counsel to prevent PICO and all neighborhoods from having equal representation. Those monies could have been used for 14 sworn police officers or even 20 Rose Bowl floats. The next court date is Monday, October 26th. Our city is in physical distress. Stop the bleeding. Give power to the people on October 26th. Give power to the neighborhoods. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to call up a few more names as Ms. Smith is coming up. We have Claudia Cordero, Clarence McDowell, Lawrence Cohen, and Jonathan Foster.

Good evening. I'm Kelly Smith. I want to address the City Council except for Lana The recent Wall Street Journal article on the demise of Santa Monica was an absolute embarrassment a global embarrassment You have completely lost sight of your priorities you continue to champion affordable housing yet what's been built isn't affordable and and many are vacant, and I've toured some of those buildings this last weekend. You continue to neglect our small businesses, tourism, and local economy. You ignore how this city is funded. We need revenue, not more taxes. Nearly half of the Third Street Promenade, 40%, nearly half of the Third Street Promenade is empty, I counted, Forty percent of the commercial buildings sit vacant. Major retailers continue to leave for neighboring cities. Recently, I visited Malibu, Venice, Marina del Rey, Manhattan, Hermosa, Redondo, Newport Beach. Every one of those communities is thriving and full, and every store is full and on waiting lists. Santa Monica is the only exception. It should be the crown jewel of Southern California, yet it has become a symbol of failed priorities. You should be ashamed. With the Olympics less than two years away and the Super Bowl next year, the world would be watching you. And you, each and every one of you, have an opportunity to shine. It's time to stop serving developers in this community and your political and professional agendas, Caroline, and start prioritizing the residents of this community and our local economy. Start supporting the small businesses. Start getting more businesses and attracting more businesses here. Enough with the housing. There is plenty of housing, and I want each...

Thank you. Denise Burton.

Good evening. First, I wonder why the big blue bus is gouging seniors and the disabled on bus fare. I thought the fare was supposed to be comparable to Metro's, not double for cash fares. If Metro's fare is 35 cents and the big blue bus is 75 cents for cash fare, do you not see a problem? Then if the City Council falls under the Democrats' big tent as progressives, which is a nice way to say socialists, Marxists, and communists, Do any of these sound familiar? DEI defund the police and prisons, abolish ICE with unfettered immigration, the Green New Deal, single-payer health care, Medicare for all, and strengthening labor and tenant protections. Because these are all core policies of the democratic socialists. Just so everybody can see who's really sitting up there. Thank you.

Thank you. Claudio Cordero, Clarence McDowell, Lawrence Cohen, Jonathan Foster.

Good evening, dear city officials. My name is Claudio Cordero, and I'm the owner of a small business based in Santa Monica. I am now entering my second year of business after spending five years working as a service director for established service school in both Venice and Santa Monica. Through my first years of business, Santa Monica City officials visited my operation approximately three times to inspect my documentation. Each time I presented my Santa Monica business license and each time I was told, okay, looks good, thank you. At no point did I attempt to avoid regulations or operate outside the city oversight. TO THE CONTRARY, I OPENLY CONDUCTED MY BUSINESS IN THE SAME LOCATION WELCOMING INSPECTIONS PRESENTED MY DOCUMENTATION WHENEVER REQUESTED AND RELIED ON THE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE CITY STAFF. I HAD THEN INFORMED DURING ANY OF THOSE INSPECTIONS THAT AN ADDITIONAL PERMIT WAS REQUIRED, I WOULD HAVE APPLIED IMMEDIATELY. In late May of this year, I unexpectedly received an email stating that all served instructor conductors for compensation requires a city permit, that I was not on the approved list, and I must cease operation or face fines. The email also state that the application period for the permit had recently closed and will not open for another five years. Learning this was deeply concerned and after investing years into career and successfully building my own business, I was suddenly being told that I could no longer operate while also being given an opportunity to apply for a required permit. I respectfully ask the city to consider this situation and allow me an opportunity to apply for a certain structure permit as an independent provider. My only goal has always been to operate legally and responsibly, and I have never intended to violate city regulations.

Thank you so much. I don't know if staff can talk with him. Thank you so much. Clarence McGill, hi.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. My name is Clarence McDowell. My wife, Victoria, and my son, Adam, have been in Santa Monica for over 20 years. We are currently displaced from our home, 1011 Pico Boulevard, Unit 7, since September 3rd of 2025. That's 314 days. Why? Because the owner of our unit knows that the rent could double if we were somehow just give up our space, okay? So for two and a half months, our landlord tore apart our unit to make repairs without permits. Then on February 19th, a stop work order was issued, designating our unit as uninhabitable. ordering the property owner to pay a per diem that he paid partially and then stopped paying. But the city of Santa Monica will not enforce the code, the very code a year ago today that you revised to protect tenants from predatory landlords. Right now, in the midst of the World Cup, My family is bouncing around from one Airbnb to another. We have used all kinds of resources and as of today, the per diem that your city required the landlord to pay is now short $53,000. That could have gone to my daughter's college fund or my son's college fund or my wife and I's retirement. but we're paying to bounce around from one Airbnb another, waiting for code enforcement to enforce the code. HD 11536 mandates relocation benefits to be paid per day until we get back into our unit. Instead, we have code enforcement officers that are coercing us to take a comparable unit while waiting for our unit to not be repaired. I thought it was just us. But I talked to a senior neighbor of mine who's been out of their unit for three years with the same management company because her unit is close to the beach and they don't want her back. So they've been bouncing her from one comparable unit to another. And that's why she's my neighbor. I don't get it. You know, I've been here for 20 years with my family. I've seen my family grow up. I've seen my daughter graduate Samoa High. My son goes to Samoa High. But we can't even live in our own community because we're still waiting for the place that I've raised my kids to be repaired. But my landlord has no incentive or motivation because he can get $8,000 a month instead of what we're paying. So could someone give a crap about us or other tenants or seniors that are just pushed out of their units because a bag of gold or double rent is in the crosshairs of these landlords? Some help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Have you spoken with our city attorney? I mean, it's not a question and answer, but I would love to see it.

They've been on every email that I have had back and forth with code enforcement, and they have said absolutely nothing.

Let's set up a separate discussion. I see that you're a rent control tenant, and I just want to make sure that the rent control board is also involved. Thank you. No, no, no, appreciate it. I'm asking the city attorney to come speak with you now. Lawrence Cohen.

Hi, everybody. I haven't had a chance to formally thank you all for your support for the Denim Runs. Very successful here in Santa Monica, also in Austin, Texas, and New York City. So thank you. Year one was great. I'm here to talk about all my life I've heard the most important, this is going to be the most important election of our lifetime. And I agree, it is. I vote in vote centers every year, and every year I find that they're very underutilized. It's usually just me and my wife in there voting. So I have a new idea that I'd like to implement starting here in Santa Monica with the upcoming general election. I'm partnering with the LA Lagers. I have a relationship with them through all the years I represented the LA Marathon. And what we're going to do is we're going to put together the stroll to the polls. We're going to meet on the 3rd Street Promenade. And I know there's five voting centers within a relatively close distance. and the Lakers will lead walks or runs to those polls. People will vote at the vote centers, and then they'll come back to the promenade, support the local businesses, and it'll be a celebration of democracy. I'm not here to ask for money. I just wanted you guys to be aware that this is going to be happening, and I always like implementing a good idea first in Santa Monica. So thank you all.

Thank you. We have Jonathan Foster next, and then John Cyrus Smith, Zoe Montaner, L. Deja Connolly.

Thanks.

Thank you so much, Lawrence. Jonathan Foster. And then again, John Cyrus Smith, Zoe Montaner, L. Deja Connolly.

Jonathan Foster. who i am i guess if you don't like me you'll probably love this and if you like me and think i'm an okay guy you'll be maybe a little upset if it's something like this has happened to you well my professional drum set my whole drum set that i had in in victorville was in victorville california at a storage facility somebody broke in and stole my entire drum set and two cymbal packs that I had accumulated for 40 years, some cymbals since 1984 when I was just 14. I've had those cymbals all my life, those sounds, that's the sounds I know and stuff, and somebody broke in and stole them. So as I stood here and I said to council and to everybody in Santa Monica that things been trying to do the best I can do to prepare to be able to try to take work and stuff. And I have a whole thing of singing and playing guitar that I've worked on.

Somebody just walked off with my life.

And, you know, just somebody blasting me with repeated, chronically repeated traumas. Like, I think it could be the same person. Here in Santa Monica, at my storage place, somebody stole my bass guitar, a mixer, and a guitar. broken, stole that. They've broken and stole stuff from my car. They've scratched my car up on this one door. I've got nails in my tires. Stole a transcription clothing. I do feel targeted. I certainly didn't do this to myself. I'm not trying to be a career homeless person when I needed that equipment to help transition out of being homeless. Taking a nearly $24,000 loss on this.

Thank you, Mr. Foster. John C. Smith.

Hi, John.

Two minutes or one? Two minutes. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Council. I'm John Cyrus Smith. Tonight's recognition of National Parks and Recreation Month means a lot to me because for the past 12 years as a Rec and Parks Commissioner, every month feels like Parks and Recreation Month. I want to thank the three councils who appointed me, the commissioners and city staff who worked with me, and especially residents who often tell you exactly what you need to know if you just listen. I'm also grateful to this Council for committing to fund and begin the Memorial Park expansion plan, something I've worked hard for the last 12 years. Finally, I'm just really proud of the progress we've made at Reid Park. Healthy parks make healthy cities. I think good things happen when people work together. Thank you.

Thank you, John. Zoe Michener. You are the next person. Yeah. Thank you.

Hi. I have some images that I sent to the City Council at 1159 today to be loaded for my public comment. Thank you. Thank you for your report, City Manager Chee. I really enjoyed it. I think the City Attorney should also give us a report at every city council meeting and tell us how many new lawsuits have been filed, the residents of the city deserve, how many exposures to litigation have been filed, and how many risk of notices. And you should, because it's you, the city manager, the city is run by the city manager and the city attorney's office. So you deserve the time to tell us what your department is dealing with. Because the money should be accountable. and the exposure to litigation should be accountable and those employees that are exposing the city to litigation and to lose money should not receive a pension or the money should be removed from their pension when they're retired i think it's reasonable don't you think i think it's very reasonable can you put the next picture please That is my apartment on 14th Street. The same thing that happened to this gentleman happened to me. And the woman who owned that apartment stole three bedroom furnitures. The furniture of all my apartment, Marty Kaplan is a thief. Nothing, nothing, all the jewelry that my mother left me, all the artwork, all my sheets, all my towels, all my clothing. and she has not been charged because she has a lawyer that is another scammer in the city abraham sanai and they do horrible things and because they're politically connected they can get away with murder three bedrooms look how beautiful that apartment was apartment 8 on 14th street between wilshire and california

Thank you. L. Deja Connolly. And then we have Lydia Garcia and Jerry Rubin.

Is that noise?

I see the noise. I hear the noise. I don't know what's happening. Okay.

Hi. Sorry. Okay. Hello, Council. My name is Aldeja, and while I do not live in Santa Monica, I work here in Santa Monica at Dentai Fung at Santa Monica Place about six days a week from four to ten hours a day. And the issue that I'm bringing up is the parking for employees at Santa Monica Place and parking structures seven and eight. I've calculated that me and my fellow co-workers pay about $120 a month to park at Santa Monica Place as workers. That is with validation, because we are offered validation at the parking structures, I don't know what it's called, which is about $6 for six hours at the parking structure seven and eight, and $9 for 12 hours at the parking structure. Without validation, it is about $300 a month. I feel like that is absurd, as I, me and my fellow co-workers are working at one of the most main attractions, restaurant attractions at Santa Monica Place, Din Tai Fung, and making money for Din Tai Fung and Santa Monica Place and the city. I feel like it is just not fair and quite cruel to make workers pay for where they're working. And you've implemented cameras, very expensive looking cameras, I see, to catch people tailgating or going under the gates. And I'm sure that was very costly, but I feel like you could use... those funds for things like free parking for workers at Din Tai Fung and Santa Monica Place in general. Talking from my experience, I work paycheck to paycheck and it is not viable for me to be paying $120 a month for parking at the place of my employment. Thank you so much.

Thanks for surfacing that. We have Lydia Garcia and Jerry Rubin.

Hello. Good evening. My name is Lydia Garcia and I am an applicant for the Housing and Human Services and I would like to introduce myself. I'd like to let you know that I have lived the experience of being homeless. I'm certified as a peer specialist and I'm able to give guidance and emotional support to to the homeless community. I'm an alumni for Speak Up with the Corporation of Supportive Housing, CSH, Speak Up, and it's a program that teaches you to give a speech about your experiences of being homeless. And I speak at homeless events and express in a 10-minute speech of being homeless of eight years to being housed for 11 years. I'm able to understand the process of homeless programs from my lived experience with going to outreach, living in the shelter, and being housed in supportive housing with Step Up and Brilliant Corners. I'm able to give back what was given to me by being an example of a success person able to be housed with the support of my caseworkers from Step Up and Brilliant Corners. The program works when you put in the effort and to regain your life. My work experience with LA County, I was in charge of employee training and I planned training from the budget to the vendors, choose what course training, organize the date, the time, reserve the room for training. I received the materials for the course and I set up training room. I sent out information emails to the manager's department, for the training so I understand the process of organizing public service. So I understand the steps to organize a project and I'm...

Thank you for sharing. Jerry Rubin.

Thank you very, very much. Mayor Terosis, Mayor Pro Tem Zwick, honorable council members, city staff, fellow Santa Monicans. Hearing the city manager's report was pretty inspirational. I go around Santa Monica a lot. Looks like things are getting a lot better. I talk to residents. from all over the country and all over the world. And virtually every one of them says that he loves Santa Monica. What I want to say is I've run for city council myself before. I know what's going on. And I know all the flyers that are going to come. But my gosh, can't we make this a kind of a positive campaign? Does there need to be personal attacks? I haven't seen any really yet. And I guess I want to appeal to everyone. I was at a candidate forum at the Church in Ocean Park that the Santa Monica Democratic Club put in. At least 10 of the candidates so far all spoke. They all sounded pretty good. I have my own favorites. I won't share it here, but We can agree to disagree, but every one of you I know loves Santa Monica. I mean, my God, sometimes I even disagree with myself. So please, let's make it a positive campaign. Let's lift each other up and then make it a really great election. I love you all. I love Santa Monica. Thank you.

Thanks, Jerry. It looks like we have another late chit. Do we need to vote to accept this? Kaylee Scott? I see another one in the queue that just popped up. Kaylee Scott? Do people want to hear a motion? Any abstentions or objections? Hearing? Do we have a second? Yes. Any abstentions or objections? None. Okay, great. One minute.

Sorry, I was in a different section, and I had them move me here, so that's why. Okay. Hi, my name is Kaylee Scott. I'm a Santa Monica resident. I've lived here for just under a year, and I've been looking for a way to get involved, so I applied for the Restorative Justice Commission, and I'm here to introduce myself to you all. So... I'm an attorney, and I used to be a journalist, and I think these are unique qualifications. I'm so nervous. I'm so sorry. I think these are unique qualifications for me to be on the commission. Combined, both professions have helped me help shape my commitment to fairness, accountability, and improving the systems that shape our communities. By way of example, my journalism experience took me to the Navajo Nation where I reported on inequities of water security for Navajo Nation members. I carried this over, I am running out of time, I carried this over into my law school career and I continue that in my career today and I would be very honored

Thank you so much. Just for public information, the appointments 16A and 16B have been continued to the next meeting, so I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that. We will... I don't know if someone wants to talk to her, but yeah, just because it's not a dialogue. But thank you for being here. Okay. I know we have some phone calls. Are they all three of them here?

It's two, actually. Okay, great. Okay, Mitchell, we're ready for the callers.

All right, Mr. Whatley, press star six, and your time will begin when you begin to speak.

City Clerk, can you hear me?

Go ahead and speak.

Okay, great. Thanks so much. Okay. Tuesday, July 14, 2025. To whom it may concern.

Good evening.

My name is David Watley, and I am an alumnus of the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA Political Science Department Class of 2007. It is my honor to participate via telephone in the City of Santa Monica City Council meeting. I would like to say for the public record that I received a letter from UCLA Vice Chancellor Michael J. Beck and I also received a letter from UCLA Vice Chancellor Pete Angelou. My position is as follows. Foreign education institutions that violate American labor law should not be allowed to operate in the United States of America, nor should they be allowed to have a financial contract with the number one public university in the United States, that is UCLA, which is also a federal land grant education institution. Respectfully submitted, David Wantley, substitute teacher, Arlington Public Schools, Arlington County, state of Virginia, United States. Thank you very much and go through it.

Okay, Mitchell, we're ready for the next caller.

Mr. Montgomery, you can press star six and you'll be unmuted and your time will begin.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Teresas and council. am here to talk about the things that i like to continually talk about which are safety and honesty um i i have um got the sense that things are not improving especially on our streets parks or bus stops this approach to the unhoused is not working um i think people are left in crisis um which leaves residents feeling unsafe and we need to deal with transparency the open the the need for transparency is incredibly important these days especially after the ocean avenue debacle um which never should have happened the way it did um it's very disappointing um and uh Santa Monica can be amazing. We've seen it with the World Cup and the excitement that's been here. We need to keep that up and we need to be much more transparent with the residents. Thank you.

Thank you. And it appears that we have another person in the queue. Ms. Anderson-Moran, do we want to accept a late chat?

Was that Mr. Adler?

Yeah. I see him in the queue now.

Yeah, he said he signed up and he didn't show up.

Okay, well, we already agreed to take the late chit. So Mr. Etter, you have one minute.

I'm only having one minute. Okay. I submitted six pages to you. Okay. About 10 months ago, I gave you an affiliate declaration and notice of litigation. I gave it to all council members, to city attorney and city managers. It's lost. You threw it out. That's really effed up. I was evicted from Step Up in April of 75 and locked out by the sheriffs. This is illegal. Gave them notice as well. Also, also, And Sam O'Shell, we were kicked out three times. They threw our stuff out, and we tried to file criminally. They said we couldn't. The police said that it was their decision, a conflict of interest. Also, we filed this thing, and they threw out our case against Sam O'Shell, okay? This is not just... Lack of due process. This is not just gross negligence. This is obstruction of justice, and it's covering up environmental stuff with climate change and stuff that we've been working on for 50 frigging years, and it's outrageous, and it's murder. It's premeditated murder, and it's a cover-up of that. I don't have enough time. F you all.

Thank you, Mr. Eder. We are now going to move on to public input on the items under the consent calendar and closed session only. I did not get any polls, so you did. Oh, it's not in my record here. OK. Sorry, which number is that? D. OK. Great. Well, I think we have to hear the public comments first, then we'll entertain a motion. So Jerry Rubin and Karen Mielek. And then I don't know, Madam Clerk, if there were, I see.

If others signed up for consent, could you line up on the wall and give us your name when you get up there?

Okay.

So Jerry Rubin and Karen Millick are the two that I have.

Yeah, Jerry Rubin or Karen Millick. Karen Millick, you can go ahead. Jerry Rubin's not up here.

Great.

Good evening, I'm Karen Mielek again, and I'm here to speak on the negotiations regarding the Civic Auditorium with Golden Voice and AEG. I hope this is good news regarding revitalizing the Civic Auditorium. Nine months ago, you voted to not extend the ENA with RPG, and the City website was updated saying that the City will continue to engage residents and preservation groups and art organizations in an open dialogue throughout the next planning process. This has not happened. There's been no engagement with residents and preservation groups. In April, the Recreation and Parks Commission requested an update on the Civic Auditorium. The City replied, the City is not in a position to provide a meaningful update at this time. With this closed session negotiation, something is going on. Instead of coming up with a backroom deal, please engage and work with the constituents and the RPC. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Mr. Rubin?

Yes, thank you very, very much. So this is the time I can speak for the item under closed session?

Yes. Okay.

My gosh, I can just say from the bottom of my heart that I sure hope some miracle happens and we were able to bring the Santa Monica Civic back to the life that it had. And other people have done it with different forums successfully. And there's such an opportunity here. When I saw that this was on the agenda, and that our honorable city manager is going to be meeting with all of you with a group called Golden Voice, I could only think of, to my knowledge and everything I've known about them, they're one of the best promoting groups in America today. And if something could happen and we can involve the community, we're going to be much, much better off. Musically, culturally, in every way, educationally, in every way, it's going to help our economy. It's going to take a lot, but it'll be worth a lot when it happens. It's a landmark. You know it. Everybody knows it. It's been challenging. But please, save the Civic Auditorium.

Thank you so much, Mr. Rubin. So how are we, are they just coming up, Ms. Anderson-Warren?

I want to talk. Can you let us know your name?

Yes, Zoe Muntaner. The item you're speaking on. Zoe Muntaner, item 4C, and I also want to talk on closed sessions and conference with legal counsel. On the Santa Monica tourism marketing, I don't know if you have followed me on social media, organizing and planning the first inaugural Caribbean American Heritage Month, and fortunately I met one of the lead producers of LA 2028, and he's an event producer that has worked with the NBA, with the Super Bowl, and he is interested in helping me put this event together. I also want to invite the city of LA because the Caribbean has 13 countries, not counting the territories like Puerto Rico. So my vision is to put all the parks and give a country to each park and they can have their own parties. So activating all the parks and have a passport so everybody goes to all the city parks in Santa Monica and get a stamp of the country in the in the passport and then enter a big raffle. So that is part of the Santa Monica tourism marketing. So I would like to work with them to really market this event for 2027. It's June of 2027. It's gonna be after the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York. And then I wanted to talk about closed sessions because it is embarrassing the amount of money that we are losing. It is embarrassing. Those monies can go to really the community and do better things for constituents. We all pay taxes here. And instead of really exposing the city to more litigation, I remember when I supported the de-escalation grant that the city manager received a couple months ago for the police department. And I was the only person who spoke there. And instead of the escalating a couple weeks ago, what they did is escalate. And I spoke publicly at this very meeting, in this very chamber, in support of that. Thank you, Ms. Muntaner. Ms. Barton?

One minute, please. good evening on item 4e why are you hiring an interpretation service when the city employees are paid extra for being bilingual then on item 4d how can you justify passing any budget or work plan for downtown santa monica due to you disenfranchising assessment payers downtown by your appointment of board members not owning property businesses working or living downtown which are prerequisites for being on the DTSM board. And wouldn't you think business knowledge is necessary for being on the DTSM board? Because your appointments don't seem to have that by the things they need explained to them. But with the city having seven votes, the property owners only having six votes, you can push through it whatever you want, whether or not it's good for downtown. Thank you. Thank you.

Do we have any on the phone?

Mitchell, is the person on the phone ready?

We have one caller, Brad Tonoff. Mr. Tonoff, you can press star six to unmute yourself and your time will begin.

Yes, hi. I apologize. This was meant to be a general comment. Is it okay if I proceed?

Ms. Anderson-Warren. No, I'm sorry, but you missed your window. You would have had to speak before. This is on consent and closed session. You want to speak on either of those?

Mayor, I'm going to just take a motion. I don't know if this is to waive the rule or whatever, but just to hear the comment. I'll second that.

Okay. Any opposed or abstaining? Okay.

Mitchell, is the caller still there? Are you still there?

Yes, I'm here.

Okay. Go ahead. The council voted to allow you to speak. You have two minutes.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, this is regarding a complaint for the Brookdale Gardens assisted living facility. center on second street 851 i'm a resident in the apartment in the alley next to them and they frequently have a lot of deliveries coming in and are frequently blocking my parking space and a couple of our neighbors as well i've been in touch with their director over there and what she has said is just ask the drivers to move if they're blocking your space Yesterday, a U.S. food driver refused to move for over an hour. And actually, some employees from Brookdale came out and also told me that they didn't have to move. So basically, this is just bring this to the attention of the council. I'm not sure if anything can be done. We have called parking enforcement. many times over the last few years, but nothing seems to change.

That appears to be my comment. Okay. Thank you so much. We have noted that and our staff will follow up. Appreciate it. We will now move on to 4D unless we want to hear a motion to approve the rest of the consent calendar before we hear. Madam Zernitzkaya. Madam Council Members, I don't know what's wrong with me.

Apologies.

So I think either a motion would be in order or we can just hear a 4D.

I'd like to move that we approve everything other than 4D. Second.

Great. I did. Sorry, Dan. Sorry, Madam, Mr. Council Member Hall.

Council Member Zernes-Gaia? Yes. Council Member Snell? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Swick?

Yes.

Council Member Raskin? Yes. Council Member Hall? Yes. Council Member Negrete?

Yes.

Oh, okay. And Mayor Tarosa? Yes. That passes. Great. Item 4D is approval of the Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. Fiscal Year 2026-2021. 27 budget and work plan and community event license agreement for lock 27.

Yeah, so I don't I don't need a staff report. I just wanted to ask for some clarification and provide some comments. So how so I understand that. our city staff is working closely with DTSM Inc as well as other stakeholders to put on incredible events like we just had over the weekend and I think are going to be having as well coming up and I just wanted to get some clarification about how are we working collaboratively across these different groups and what kind of successes are we seeing and what are we hoping to see in in this coming year.

Great, thank you. And I know we also have Debbie Lee, the CEO from DTSM, as well as Sydney from her team. So yes, events are both strategic events as well as some smaller regular surprise and delight events are a big part and priority of the Santa Monica realignment plan and also the downtown Santa Monica annual work plan and budget. It's been a really exciting time over the last month or so, especially with the World Cup. Amazing opportunities to do watch parties on the promenade. But we've also collaborated together, both city staff and DTSM staff, along with some event producers, including Revel Republic and also Yappy Studios to do night market events and Blockfest. So that was last Saturday. That was the 4th of 5th. With more probably to come so this has been really where we've been working hand-in-hand I think both city staff and DTSM staff are working closely to ensure that we get the local businesses Participating in the events and then really trying to see in terms of metrics what kind of things we can move the needle So how the events can increase footfall activity to the promenade? I know Debbie and her staff are really keen on getting some really good new types of data around sales and spend and So where people are coming to the promenade, how they're spending their money, what types of businesses they're going to. And that both helps us to evaluate for future events that we want to try to attract, as well as for some of our business recruitment efforts to try and fill in some of the vacancies with other businesses that will help to benefit.

Thank you, and I understand that we're currently at 75% vacancy of the commercial spaces on, is it on the profit?

75% occupancy.

Occupancy, oh my God, occupancy, my brain, sorry. It's like that episode of 30 Rock where, anyway, sorry. So is it 75%?

Oh, I heard we're actually up now. It must be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles put us over. 77%? 77.5%. So let's round up.

78%. Okay, 78% occupancy. That's great. And where were we roughly a year ago or so? Do we know? What's the baseline that we're comparing?

That's a good question. Do you remember?

I can't give you numbers from last year right at this moment, but I can tell you that in the last month, there have been three new leases that have been signed. So while the spaces are not occupied yet, you will be, I think, working through, they're working through the permitting process, and that is all good news. So you'll see a lease signed now up on three more properties.

fantastic yeah um and and i believe that our city staff are also working to help bring some art and just more life to some of the vacant spaces uh you know the the 22 remaining uh vacant spaces so uh city manager would you be able to just give a brief update on that or or miss taylor whoever

Do you want me to? I can do that. Yeah. And that ties well with your commendation earlier to our RAD team. So both our economic development team and the cultural affairs slash RAD team have been working closely with the Artists Everywhere program to do. So we did a call out for artists several months back. We have a short list now with art pieces that can be used for window activations, window clings. We put the first one up actually at 4th and Broadway. And now we're working city staff and DTSM staff along with our brokers and some of our property owners to prioritize the next properties we want to move forward on. But just being mindful of incorporating things, especially ones that are having the context of the broker information incorporated with the artwork letting people see into the spaces. We're also exploring opportunities to do actual art installations in some of the spaces, working with Cultural Affairs and our event producers and DTSM team.

Awesome. And I understand that data is a bit delayed because we have to wait for it to be processed in order to get it. Have we seen generally improvements in downtown and throughout the promenade? And kind of could one of you speak to what those improvements have looked like?

Yeah, so I'll start and Debbie can jump in. I'm not going to put there's a 2.5% difference in rates. No, we've definitely seen occupancies increased, so a lot of business activity, new businesses opening, leases getting signed, which is very exciting. Even our farmer's market footprint is expanding on the Wednesdays and Saturdays. We're doing some cool activations around that. Footfall traffic has definitely increased. I mean, the World Cup events, even just today, If you guys have been on, you could watch the game on the promenade and tomorrow watch England win, hopefully. So that's helped to bring lots and lots of people both to the promenade and to the businesses. We're seeing actually retail sales, revenue. Some of that we're tracking. Some of the data you have, it's about three, six weeks out in terms of when it gets reported. Not real time.

I'm happy to jump in here. Good evening, Mayor and Council. We are tracking data in a slightly different way, a little more nuanced than we did in the past. We are looking at aggregated credit card spend. We are able to then track number of transactions per visit and the average spend per visit, as well as the average transaction spend per visit. This allows us to be very intentional about how we convert those numbers and look at how we can get higher transactions, maybe more frequency of visit. That is a much easier way to build business back. than to try to bring in, you know, it's much more difficult to bring people from further away. It costs much more money, as SMTT works really hard to do. So our goal is to do both, right? So short-term, mid-term, long-term strategy. And so we are looking at all of that. There is a lag in the spend data. So we anticipate we'll be able to see if any of these major events, the World Cup, our Pride event, which was very, very successful in addition to the Blockfest, we should have those numbers by the end of this month. And we can then use that information to guide our decision making moving forward.

I understand that anecdotally businesses have been sharing that they've had increased, they've seen increased business during these activations and events. Is that accurate to say?

Yeah, we do have footfall numbers, and so we can share that from the first Blockfest in June, or I should say the second one, and the Pride event, we saw an increase of almost 70% year over year. And the the number of people that were here in our downtown core was about 28,000 for the day, which is really great for, you know, a one day event. Now, that's only one sliver of the pie, of the whole pie when we look at how spend data actually reflects in that. We want to see both those numbers really high. We want to see a lot of people here spending a lot of time and hopefully eating and spending money in our stores, and that's really going to show us whether or not we are being successful with activating our spaces in the right way.

Thank you. If nobody has any questions, then I'll put a comment.

Oh, comments. Okay. No, I just I have a comment.

I just wanted to really thank everyone who's been a part of putting on these activations working so hard to get the promenade and downtown Santa Monica back to full strength. I recognize that these are not easy things that we're doing. The easy zones are not not very easy sometimes, except to enjoy. But I've just been really, really impressed, honestly, with all these events, these activations, the openings of new businesses, and this really intense focus on trying to get our downtown and our Third Street Promenade to a place where people really want to be and where on an average random night they'll say, I want to go somewhere. Let's go to the promenade. It was really fun when I went there last time. And I just want to encourage city staff and DTSM staff and community partners our event producers everyone to look for more opportunities to collaborate on on things to help get people to our downtown and to our promenade because it really is an incredible place and My dog and I really enjoyed our time at block fest on Saturday. Thank you

I would just make a quick comment. I think as I understand it, you know, first weekend of the World Cup, we had over 20,000 people on the prom run one day. I think it would be helpful and instructive for us to include the average daily rate information, the hotel occupancy information with respect to What SMTT is tracking? I mean, I think we have to have a whole of government approach here. So this is really important. This is amazing. You all have done incredible work. I have people from all over the county who are saying I'm coming to Santa Monica because it's fun. And that's the fun place that we want to go to watch these games. So I think, you know, that's amazing. But I do think that for our scorecard for the Santa Monica scorecard, Mr. City Manager, it would be helpful. for us to just have a few more metrics for us to track going forward, especially with, like, the average daily rate and hotel occupancy in addition to the spend data. So, yeah. But thank you for raising this because I wasn't going to say that otherwise. Thanks, guys. Thank you. I think we're ready to vote, right?

And with that, I'll happily move the item.

I'll second it.

Okay, let's take a vote. Council Member Negrete. Yes. Council Member Hall. Yes. Council Member Raskin. Yes. Mayor Potemczyk. Yes. Council Member Snell. Yes. Council Member Czarnyskaia. Yes. And Mayor Taroso. Yes.

Great.

Now we're going to go to the closed session. Yep. We have a conference with, it's an existing litigation, it's a bunch of John Does. Then we have another existing litigation, it's the city versus ICSOP. Then we have another existing litigation, it's Martha Garcia versus the city. 5D is existing litigation, Glenn Mastroberti versus the city of Santa Monica. And then we finally have, the last one is a real estate negotiation. It's for 1855 Main Street, a specific auditorium. City negotiators are the city manager, Oliver Chee. The owner of record is the city of Santa Monica. Parties to be negotiated, Melissa Ormond, COO of Golden Voice, and Chantel, EVP, COO, COO and general counsel, and AEG presents. Under negotiations, the price in terms of payments.

We expect to return in about an hour and 15 minutes.

So we will be back at 825. Thanks.

Recording in progress

Okay, it is 825. We are now back from closed session. I'll just wait till our city attorney is available. Hi, everyone. So while our city attorney prepares, I don't know, city attorney, do you want to give us a readout on closed session?

Sure, happy to. All matters were heard with two reportable actions taken. With respect to Item 5D, the City Council approved a settlement in Mastroberti v. City, a personal injury case involving a claim of dangerous condition of public property. The City denies liability and does not admit fault, but agreed to settle for $160,000, and in exchange, plaintiff agreed to release all claims against the City. The settlement was approved by a vote of 7-0. And actually, I might make a clarification. That was the only reportable action taken, but the mayor is voluntarily providing an update out of closed session on item 5E. Yeah.

With respect to 5E, council gave direction to the city manager to engage in negotiations with AEG Presents slash Golden Voice on the price in terms of payment for a potential multi-use entertainment venue. Staff anticipates returning to council with an exclusive negotiating agreement within the next two council meetings. Great. We will now move on to our public input on the remaining agenda items.

Before we do, let me ask if any council members have anything to report on travel since the last meeting.

Oh, sure, I will. I attended, at the last meeting I was in Nashville for the US Conference of Mayors National Endowment for the Arts Mayors Institute on City Design, where we gathered with six other mayors from across the country and some design professionals from across the country to challenge really intrinsic urban design challenges in our city. Specifically, we talked about the airport in Santa Monica and got some advice about what we do when we convert that to the Great Park. Additionally, this past weekend, I traveled to the National Convening for Local Progress. It's a national organization for local elected officials where we had conversations from leaders across the country who are working on issues like how we handle data centers in our jurisdictions and what responsible use of AI looks like. Also chatted with people in other jurisdictions who have set up their own local housing authorities and social housing models, both for affordable homeownership and affordable rental, and learned a lot. Do my colleagues have any comments?

Sure. I attended Independent Cities Association. I sit on the board representing our city and I've also just newly been elected to their executive board as the communications director. I was on two panels, one with other firefighters, consultants, and public safety folks talking about sharing with them what we did with our system of care in terms of bringing the ambulance services in-house. Also did a session on communicating with constituents, difficult information and being transparent. And of course attended sessions on everything from policies around AI, the flock camera, data sharing, data centers and other issues. There was a big session that we attended on litigation and how it impacts cities in AB 218. So it was in Coronado and it's an annual conference that happens once a year.

Council Member Raskin.

Thank you. Yeah, I attended the, excuse me, local progress national convening with Mayor Chorostas and Council Member Holland. There were over 500 local and state elected officials across America. We had an opportunity to talk and learn about models for a range of regulatory challenges and opportunities, tenant protections, municipal finance, new revenue. And it's incredible that in America there are so many different models for how local governments can work and work well. And it's really interesting to get a perspective from across the country on what's working. So I look forward to continuing this collaboration with our counterparts across the country.

Councilmember Hall.

Thank you, Mayor. As Councilmember Raskin and Mayor Torres just said, I was also at the Local Progress National Convening. It was great to be with other local municipal government officials and electeds. I would echo the sentiments of my colleagues. And also, it was really fascinating to really see how lucky we are to live in Los Angeles, where we are really standing on the shoulders of giants when it comes to renter protections and policies that are put in place to protect workers and neighborhoods and have the ability to share what works here with other localities that don't have such protections. I did attend on a scholarship, so no city funds were used. Thank you.

And I did as well. uh fantastic so we will now hear uh our remaining uh public comments on um all the rest of the agenda items not for the public hearing um so that's everything up till the 12 items so Gerard Joseph Ramos Agla Kelly Smith, Denise Barton, and Jeff Peek, if you could come, you can just walk up and state your name and then start your comments.

Also, could you let us know what item you're speaking on?

Just state your name, yeah. Thank you.

Was it two minutes?

Mm-hmm, two minutes.

Joseph Ramos-Fragla, speaking on 11B. We appreciate the city's desire to protect close family members when a renter dies or becomes incapacitated from being evicted due to not being on the lease as a co-tenant. Those protections have existed for years and are known to owners and renters alike. However, the current proposal goes to an extreme that makes it narrow compassion exemption into a highway for literally anyone to falsely claim a relationship, either family or non-family, to a renter, even when the renter has voluntarily left the unit. As such, these changes make the existing exemption completely unworkable and ripe for fraud. Also, provisions within the draft contradict themselves and possibly violate state law, which will result in substantial litigation for the city. By removing the requirement, the original random must have data being incapacitated allows individuals that have never been on the lease to break their ties to the rent and stay beyond when the renter voluntarily moves out. This makes no sense as a as a reason to the occupant was in the unit and not added to the lease was due to the fact that they were. They are based on the relationship, family or non-family, to the renter. That relationship should continue also when the renter voluntarily leaves the unit. Making things even worse, the proposal expands the exemption to non-family members, despite expanding the definition of immediate family to include domestic partners, spouses, grandparents, grandchildren, and siblings. As a result, literally anyone could falsely claim to have a household relationship to the renter. That would create a perpetual tendency to be sold to the general public. This will create a black market no other city has gone Uh, so extremely, including San Francisco, the proposal may also be against state law. San Francisco makes clear that any continuing occupant must sign a new lease at current market rate. This draft has no such clear language and as such may violate the cost of Hopkins rental housing at. We are just city council sends item back to the rent control board for further revisions to preserve it as a narrow compassionate exemption in line with other existing cities and ensure compliance with state law. If our renovation special is adopted, it should be based on the renter's actual rent, not HUD, small area or fair market rent to reduce the renter's total debt, create standard that is readily understood by both renters and housing providers. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Gerard. Or, yeah, Kelly. That's fine. I mean, you could just say your name. Yeah, that's fine.

Hi again. Kelly Smith, I'm also commenting on item 11b. First, I want to remind you that several of you were elected with the support of SMUR. I want to remind you that you represent and protect all Santa Monica residents, including homeowners and housing providers. Santa Monica has become one of the most anti-landlord cities in the country. Property owners are expected to absorb skyrocketing insurance, maintenance, utility costs, assessments, dues, city mandates, and inflation with little ability to recover these costs. The math doesn't work. This proposal excludes landlords from qualifying affordability and criminal history. So a tenant of 30 years can move in a grandchild, and now they have it for the next 30 years without even being vetted. Or a young professional moves in a friend as they are about to give notice and move to another city. It took me 25 years to buy a one-bedroom condo in Santa Monica under 800 square feet. I'm paying far more than families in much larger rent-controlled units. This measure would strip individual homeowners like myself of any rights at all. Homeownership should come with the freedom to make reasonable decisions about your property, not dictated by a city who basically takes control of your property. That is borderline communism. That is discriminatory against property owners. It's wrong, unethical, and you know it. This is beyond abusive of rent control and what it was intended for, which is to protect the individual, not for generations in perpetuity. Please, I urge you to do the right thing. I know you want to protect Santa Monica renters. I was a renter for 25 years in Santa Monica. I understand and I appreciate that, but we deserve to be protected too. If I came under a hardship and had to rent my unit for a year or I had to take another job for a year, you put me in a very difficult situation. Thank you.

Thank you. Gerard.

Good evening, honorable counsel Gerard Wright, government affairs director with the Greater Los Angeles Realtors. In alignment with what my colleague Joseph from AGLA talked about, I will just cover just two main pieces, and that's with regards to the opposition to the ordinance. One, with the tenants requiring a lease to know what their rights and responsibilities are. That goes across the board, not just the ones who are having the friends or family members coming in to lease, but the other neighbors who are tenants in that property. They deserve that opportunity as well. The current language has no resolution requiring new occupancies to sign a lease after the original renter moves out. Those leases are important. That's a contract between tenants The tenant and the housing provider, and that's very important to make sure that everyone in the building is protected. And most importantly, the last minute amendments for property owners of single family residents and condominiums. This was a rushed amendment wasn't even included in the rent control boards decision. It's unclear how the notification will be taking place. And in addition, it just further reduces the housing supply and available rental units in Santa Monica. Housing that's desperately needed to be built in Santa Monica across many, many neighborhoods in this city. We're talking about an affordability crisis, but part of that affordability comes from not being able to invest folks to invest housing into the city there that's also a reason why there's some general revenue deficits because they're not doing the investment that is needed for the city to thrive and that's so very and vitally important so with that with my remaining 15 seconds thank you for your time and attention you have a great rest of the evening thanks gerard um denise barton and then i'll call a few more names we have jeff peak karen milik kaylee scott zoe montaner

Good evening. On item 11B, I can't understand how you can prohibit evictions for nonpayment of rent. Who are you expecting to pay the rent owed? The taxpayers? You know renting apartment units is a business with rent making the business's relationship work. And how much more of a disadvantage are you going to put the business owners at And how much can you intrude on common business practices, which includes evictions, which are already putting the owner at a further disadvantage of income? The rent control increases in rent don't cover the cost of upkeep or operation. So you're already putting the... the property owners at a business at a disadvantage before you start telling businesses how to operate their business.

Thank you. Jeff Peek. And then, again, Karen Mielek, Kaylee Scott, Zoe Moutonier, Damon Kaye, Ted Winter.

This is my first time. Do I get more than two minutes because I haven't spoke yet?

Two minutes.

Oh, it's just two minutes?

For item.

Okay. Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Jeff Peek. I'm a homeowner in Santa Monica, and by the way, I'm speaking on 11A. First of all, it was not, well, let's skip that part. So my understanding that SMM, let's call it that, operating budget and reserves are in great shape. The school district ended up with $10 million surplus in 24-25. I believe the district's reserves are up to $84 million, and revenues have increased to $225 million. That, by the way, puts our average per student spend a few thousand above LA Unified. I'm not worried about SMM's finances and budget, and I don't think the City Council should either. It's also my understanding that staffing is not suffering and has remained level at 1280, even though the student population currently at 8520 has declined approximately 19% over the past decade. Currently, 59% of SMM's revenue is funded primarily by local property taxes, which makes me very uncomfortable. Assuming the facts I have stated are fairly accurate, I don't see how the city can make an argument why property owners need to pay more. Cost shifting is not a great solution. Property owners are already carrying the majority of the burden to finance the school district. The city has the money to continue funding the other 68% that they are currently funding. I already pay for the schools via the San Monica 1% of the 10.75 state sales tax through Measure R, which was passed in 2008, which does not have an expiration date as of 2023 and is $496 per parcel through Measure QS. through a bond that was paid off through 3 cent tax per $100 assessed property value, which is $1,050 for me. So with measure R, that's $1,546 I am paying. And now with your proposal, I'll be paying $2,041, which would amount to close to 50% of our old Prop 13 property tax. The city has already budgeted for and is paying $12 million annually to the school district. And it has been traditionally funded, so I think that the money is there. And I'm just not sure what I get if you're going to ship that money.

Okay. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Karen Millick?

Good evening again. I'm speaking also on 11A and I wholeheartedly support what he just said. Because affordability, that's the number one issue of Californians. And this parcel tax instigated by the city last fall affects housing affordability for both homeowners and renters as school taxes can be passed through on some rental agreements and may also affect market rates. A partial tax is a regressive tax that puts a disproportional burden on lower income residents and small businesses. School district property taxes, as he just said, are already extremely high with significant increases coming with bond payments. And housing affordability has contributed to the decrease, I saw 23% in enrollment. But fortunately, as a basic aid district, the school funding isn't tied to enrollment and has actually increased greater than the cost consumer price index. The city had a surplus of $9 million last year while making this school district payment. The city should not be transferring its commitment to the school district onto the residents and should continue to make this payment Don't solve a temporary problem with a permanent change. I ask that at least one of you stand up for the residents of Santa Monica and for housing affordability and write an argument against the partial tax. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Mielek. Kaylee Scott, is Kaylee Scott here? Okay, Zoe Moutonier, and then Damon Kaye, and then Ted Winter, Cynthia Riddle, Elizabeth Vandenberg.

I want to remind the City Council that tomorrow is Wallace Annenberg Day. And she's a huge inspiration in me because she, for me, she's so punk rock and I wore these antennas just to honor her. She put a public... beautiful, gorgeous facility between the most expensive beach clubs in the country. She had a vision for Santa Monica.

Sorry, which item is this on?

11B. 11B, because I'm going to get to the point, if you let me.

Okay.

I know that your vision is not the vision of Wallis Annenberg. I understand that and I respect that. But Wallis deserve attention because she gave a lot of money to the city and she made it more inclusive for black and brown people. And I know that after listening to the comments of elderly people that are being pushed of their apartments for tenant harassment and the drama and the theater of this meeting that we are concerned about them and a black man with his whole family and students at Santa Monica College. I understand the theater of this meeting. But Wally Zanenberg remember her. She stood for what was right and she put her money where her mouth was. And we honor her tomorrow. So pay attention to what you're going to do in this ballot measure, because I'm going to be writing as a citizen journalist about it, and I'm going to be writing about each of your votes through your whole term, and I am going to be very candid. A Latina, elderly, and black. Are you trying to push people of color and elderly people out of Santa Monica? Is that the strategy? Because it looks like that. Today, in this meeting, it looked like that. Latina, black men, and elderly.

Thank you, Damon Kaye, Ted Winter.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members.

I'm here to speak on 11A as one of the proponents of the measure, which before you this evening, asking you, of course, to, as required by law, to place this measure on the ballot since we gathered the required signatures as a citizen initiative. You know better than anybody that the city has stepped back from the fiscal abyss it's been looking at for the last couple of years, but you're still on very shaky ground. Your own finance director pointed out the other day that if this measure doesn't pass, you will have to face a choice next year in the budget hearings to make a decision about whether or not to continue the rather remarkable $12 million per year of unrestricted general funds the city's been paying to Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District for the last number of years. If you don't have those funds, you'll have to make some cuts someplace. You'll have to choose between schools, public safety, libraries, other community needs. You also, of course, have unfunded potentially liabilities from new legal settlements. You have reserves that are at an all-time low. You have unfunded capital improvements. You'd need this measure to pass to get the city back on better fiscal shape. As for the school district, you got an email from my colleague, Payal Maniar, who's on the Financial Oversight Committee of the school district, pointing out that right now, with the current funding from the city, that the district still has... What's the word I'm looking for? It's got a structural deficit. Sorry, there we go. And that without that money coming in, either from the city or from the proceeds of this parcel tax, the district will have to lay off the equivalent of 73 teachers out of a little over 400. That would be a big hit to classroom size, big hit to programming, big hit to the education of our students. So I urge you to pursue the staff recommendation, put this measure on the ballot. We've heard a lot of talk about affordability. I remind everybody there would be $1.35 per day per property owner. That's less than the cost of riding the big blue bus or the Metro Expo line. For property owners, your property values would continue to increase. You have a million-dollar home. Thank you. I can't answer any questions you might have about the particulars of the measure. Thank you. Cynthia Riddle.

hi I'm back I'm here to talk about not this particular issue is that okay well are you here to comment on one of the 11 items no I'm here to comment on the one thing I presented last time that didn't that we got interrupted and it still hasn't been resolved no unfortunately that would be in general public comment well I put my name into I wait till late I can wait till later no I mean you could talk with the clerk we take general public comment at the beginning of the meeting

So we already took that. But I don't know if someone can speak with, I don't know if someone is able to speak with her just to follow up on what was not followed up on last time.

Well, can I just say one thing? It got a phone.

Actually, no. I'm so sorry.

I'll make a motion that we consider this late general public comment.

Okay, that's fine. I mean, are we allowed to do that, Madam City Attorney? Does anyone oppose that? Any abstaining? I mean, Jesse, is that a no? I'll second it. Okay, fine. You said no?

Okay, okay. Okay, go ahead. So I have I've made it to only one minute.

Yeah, one minute.

Barnard Park is a senior residence on Barnard Way. I moved in there and found out that 14 of the residents don't have indoor parking. And every weekday, there are 15 aides that come there. On Monday and Friday, there's restricted parking because of street cleaning. The situation is made worse by handicapped placards of beachgoers. I started making calls about this in November. It's been eight months. In January 27th, I got a note from Peter Zewsowski, sorry, that was waiting on input from the fire department. In June, after I came here, I got another call back from him or an email saying they're still waiting from the fire department. That was a month ago. The solution is so easy. If they put a new sign on the east side of Barnard Way, just north of where this building is, and paint the red curb on the west side not red, that will allow up to 20 more spaces of parking without affecting anything that the fire department does.

Thank you. Hopefully you do. Okay, thank you. And then Ms. Vandenberg.

I'm speaking on 11 a good evening mayor and council members Elizabeth Vandenberg Wilmot before you take up the parcel tax I'd like to start with the master's facility use agreement or what is known as the joint use agreement this is a critical element between the city and the Santa Monica Unified School District Wilmot has few front or backyards we need we need as all the neighborhoods do, community access of the school's grounds facilities on weeknights and weekends. If the real purpose is to preserve a community access to school facilities, then why isn't the joint use agreement the only item before you? It should stand on its own merits, not be bundled with a permanent parcel tax. The proposed measure does not guarantee that the MFUA will continue after it expires in June, 2027. Santa Monica residents already contribute extraordinary amounts to our schools. School District is a basic aid district that receives tens of millions of dollars above the normal state funding formula from our local property taxes. More property tax revenue will also flow to the district with increasing housing pricing and the elimination of the redevelopment agency bonds. This is not simply a $495 parcel tax. It automatically increases every year with inflation and has no sunset date. Once approved, taxpayers will pay more every year indefinitely until voters repeal it. If additional funding is really needed, bring back a measure with a specific purpose, a fixed term, and a sunset date. And if the preserving community access is the goal, negotiate the joint use agreement directly instead of tying it to a permanent tax. Please do not place this parcel tax before the voters. Thank you. It's also a regressive tax, as many people have noted. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Vandenberg. Okay, that concludes our comments on the remaining items except for the public hearing items. So we will now move into 11a. Is there a staff report or this is ministerial because we have to? I mean, is there, sorry, just to be clear, there's no report on this?

There is. I mean, I can give, I mean, it's just the same thing in a staff report.

Okay, great. Just tell us quickly what we're voting on and why we have to vote on it.

Okay. So I'm asking you to receive, okay, so the reason you're doing this is because a notice of intention was circulated for a petition entitled An Initiative Measure Establishing a Parcel Tax Collected by the City of Santa Monica for the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District. It was submitted on time. The city attorney prepared a ballot title and summary. The appropriate documents were published by the proponents and the petition was subsequently circulated. The petition for signatures was filed at our office on May 29th, 2026. The city contracted with the county to verify the signatures. There was a minimum requirement of 7,038 that were needed to qualify. We asked the county to verify that many and the petition qualified. So I'm asking you to receive and file the certification. that the petitioner has sufficient and met the minimum qualifications for the required number of signatures to adopt the attached resolution, request and direct actions necessary to place the measure on the November 3rd general election, and authorize the city council members to file written arguments against if there are any who want to do that, and the measure directing the city attorney to prepare a partial analysis for the measure.

Thank you, Mayor.

I move that we adopt a finding that the resolution is not a project subject to CEQA, that we receive and file the attached certification of qualification regarding an initiative measure establishing a parcel tax collected by the City of Santa Monica for funding for the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District by adding Chapter 2.74 to the Santa Monica Municipal Code and establishing an annual parcel tax of $495 per parcel of taxable real property located within the City of Santa Monica, and that we adopt the attached resolution on the item requesting and directing the actions necessary to place the measure on the November 3rd, 2026 General Municipal Ballot. Second.

I was going to second it. Second as well. No, just kidding.

Do you want to comment?

Yeah, I do. Great. I just want to say that this parcel tax, as you heard earlier, is a relationship between the city and the school district, one that has been a longstanding relationship. Based on our financial situation, the $12 million that we assess to the school district on an annual basis is something that has been vital to our community. Obviously, we always know that our school system, a strong public school system, enhances property values and makes a stronger community. So I am excited about this parcel tax, and I hope everyone will, in November, vote for it. So I'd like to second it.

Thank you, Councilor Stahl. We have two public commenters who are on the line, so we should not vote until we hear from them.

Mitchell, go ahead, bring in the callers.

First caller is Brett Morrow. You can press star six to unmute yourself, and your time will begin when you begin to speak.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Brett Morrow. I'm speaking on item 11A in support of placing the school parcel tax before the voters. This measure is about stability. It'll save the jobs of more than 70 teachers and provide our schools with a reliable source of funding that isn't dependent on the city's financial condition. Long-term investments in education shouldn't depend on annual budget decisions or changing fiscal conditions. They deserve a reliable foundation. As someone raising a young family here, I know that strong public schools are one of the greatest investments we can make. They strengthen our community, help families stay in Santa Monica, and ensure our schools can continue providing the education our children deserve. I encourage you to place the measure before the voters. On item 11b, I'm also in support of the Rent Control Board's recommended charter amendments. One thing I've learned while serving on the Human Services Commission is that the efforts to weaken protections for our most vulnerable never really end, usually in the name of profit. They change form over time, but there's always an attempt to chip away at housing stability for people who are already struggling with the cost of living. These measures are thoughtful updates that strengthen existing protections and recognize the reality that even responsible tenants can face temporary financial hardship. Housing stability is one of the strongest predictors of health, economic security, and community well-being. And protecting people from unnecessary displacement makes our entire community stronger. I appreciate the Rent Control Board's work and encourage you to place these measures before the voters. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Debbie Mulvaney. So Mulvaney, you can unmute yourself by pressing star six and your time will begin.

Hi, my name is Debbie Mulvaney. I am calling regarding item 11A and asking you to put the school funding measure on the ballot. I have been part of the hardworking citizens team that helped gather thousands of Santa Monica signatures to qualify for the November ballot. I also sat on the school board's financial oversight committee for many years, including as chair, so I am very familiar with the school's finances. This measure is extremely important for both the city and the school district. If the city does not renew the MFUA in 2027 when it expires, the school district will lose $11 to $12 million per year. That loss would be catastrophic, the equivalent of 73 teachers, which would result in approximately one less teacher in every grade in every school. That means increased class sizes and less options for our students. The school district is one of the best things about this city. It is the reason why my family moved here 32 years ago and the reason many people are still moving to Santa Monica. The city's obligation to turn these funds over to the school district without any strings attached should reassure anyone that the money will go where it is intended, as well as the recent guarantee by the school board that regardless of the outcome, the district's field spaces will be available to the public when not in use by the schools. Please adopt this measure and put it on the ballot in November so that we can all move toward helping both the city and the school district be the best they can be. Thank you.

Thank you. Great. So we will now vote on this item, 11A. I just want to ask one quick question before you vote on it. Ms. Anderson warned, since this is a citizen's initiative, we have no ability not to put this on the ballot. Is that correct?

That's correct.

Yeah, okay. Just wanted to make that abundantly clear for everyone. All right, let's, not that that was the direction I was going in. Again, it's a citizen's initiative, so I want people to know. All right, let's take a vote.

Council Member Negrete? Yes. Council Member Hall? No. Yes. Councilmember Raskin? Yes. Mayor Potemciewicz? Yes. Councilmember Snell? Yes. Councilmember Czarnowskaia? Yes. And Mayor DeRosa?

Yes. Congratulations, everyone. All right, we will now move on to 11.

Sorry, Mayor Pointblur. Do you have to request if any councilmember is interested in writing against the measure? Is that what we do on the dais?

It is, yeah. That's why I said if there are any council members who want to write an argument against.

Okay, do any council members want to write an argument against? Seeing none, who wants to write an argument for?

We don't write an argument for. Sorry. It's just against because it's a citizen issue.

Of course, that makes sense. The proponents are the citizens. Thank you.

Okay, so next we have adoption of resolutions placing proposed ballot measures amending articles 23 rent control law and 20. Oh, okay. I'm sorry What are the numbers?

Sorry, so we have you want to read it? So the rent control and the housing policies of the city charter for the November 3rd ballot rent control law and 23 and section 23 housing policies And I believe that council members wick has recusal on this item I

Yeah, I'll be recusing myself from item 11b due to my employment as Southern California director at the Housing Action Coalition, which has previously advocated on the issue of rent control and tenant protections.

Okay, we will welcome you back shortly. Or not, is what he just said. Romy.

Good evening. Yes, there should be a PowerPoint.

Madam Mayor, while we're getting that going, I'll make just the public disclosure while health members are speaking. We have the office. I think this is a matter of public record, but my wife is an elected member of the Rent Control Board. I have consulted with the city attorney's office. There are no conflict issues, and this will not impair my ability to consider this impartially, especially in light of the fact this is a legislative item.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Romi Ganshaw, Chief Deputy City Attorney for the Consumer Protection Division of the City Attorney's Office. I'm here today to present some information about some proposed resolutions to place proposed ballot measures on the November ballot to amend City Charter's Article 18 and 23. So just as an overview, Article 18 of the city charter is the city's rent control law. That provision governs the role, authority, and structure of the rent control board, sets, regulates maximum rents for rent-controlled units, and regulates the grounds for evictions from rent-controlled units. And Article 23 is what's called the housing policies charter amendment. That regulates the grounds of eviction for non-rent-controlled units, which are defined to include residential units that are basically multi-dwelling units that are not rent controlled, so not single unit dwellings. Section 1806 and Section 2304, the just cause eviction provisions of each charter provision are nearly identical and they are often amended together. So as some background is how we're here today, on January 27th, the Council provided some direction to propose additional tenant protections and stability measures, including looking at tools in similarly situated jurisdictions. We went back, we looked at some of these options, we provided some feedback and input to the Rent Control Board, who ultimately held multiple meetings and public hearings on these recommendations, and they have recommended that these ballot measures be placed on the November ballot. So before you tonight are three proposed resolutions. These are grouped as follows. The first resolution includes an amendment to both Articles 18 and 23 that would affirm that local just cause eviction regulations prevail over state law, would clean up or address some administrative issues in the Rent Control Board's administrative charter, and would help to preserve affordable housing. The second resolution would introduce a ballot measure that would help to regulate evictions based on non-payment of rent when a tenant owes less than a certain threshold of rent. And the third resolution would introduce amendments that would limit evictions based on the addition of new occupants, would also limit evictions based on a new occupant remaining in a household after the original occupant vacates, and would also extend just cause eviction protections to single unit dwellings and update owner move-in eviction regulations for those types of dwellings. So diving a little deeper into each of these, the first proposed resolution would, again, would include this finding that is actually required under state law. If you have a local just cause eviction regulation that is stronger than state laws and ours are, if that local eviction regulation is amended at any point after 2019, you actually have to include a binding finding in that ordinance that it is more protected than state law. So this is just that affirmation that it's more protective and it will apply over state law. The second piece are the administrative amendments that have been recommended by the Rent Control Board. So the first one would clarify commissioner term limits. The second would clarify that the maximum allowable unit registration fee is just a ceiling. It's not the actual fee that's charged and would allow that ceiling to be adjusted annually upward based on CPI. And then the third provision would clarify the Rent Control Board's authority to set timelines related to issuing decisions on individual rent adjustment petitions. The third major piece of the proposed resolution would add two just cause eviction grounds for evictions from deed restricted affordable housing. So it would provide that a landlord actually, it has just cause to evict a tenant from a deed restricted affordable unit if the tenant does not qualify for the unit under the terms of that deed restriction and the landlord has complied with all applicable guidelines. I'll explain what that means in just a minute. And then the second ground would be if the tenant is not providing proof that they qualify for the unit and the deed restriction does require them to provide that proof, often on an ongoing basis. And they also have failed to provide that proof after a written warning that they must do that in order to stay in the unit. So I just want to take a moment to discuss a little bit about what it would mean to add the just cause eviction ground that a landlord may evict a tenant from an affordable unit who is no longer eligible for the unit or is not eligible for the unit. So that provision would require that the landlord complies with all applicable guidelines. And the City does have AHPP guidelines that govern What happens in this situation if a tenant who was eligible for a low income affordable unit ends up no longer being eligible for that unit because they have an increase in income. So, if a tenant was eligible for that unit at move in, they were met the income threshold requirements or the income ceiling requirements at the time they moved in. They can continue to stay in their unit even if they have an increase in income over that ceiling, over that limit, as long as it's a relatively modest increase in income. But if the tenant's income increases to more than 140% of the applicable limit for that unit, then certain procedures kick in. But even in that case, it's not like the tenant is immediately forced to leave. So first, if there's an available affordable unit at the property, maybe at a higher income level, and the tenant qualifies for that, they can be offered that unit or an available market rate unit if one's available. If the tenant doesn't want to relocate or can't relocate for any reason, then they get a year to move. So it's not an immediate displacement. the tenants still will have the right of first refusal to any market rate unit that comes up during that year. And also, if their income ends up dropping back down below to within that 140% of the applicable income ceiling for their unit, they can continue to remain in their unit. So these are the guidelines that would apply for AHPP tenants. And even if a landlord were to evict a tenant in one of those units for being over income, they would generally have to comply with these guidelines as well. So the second proposed resolution just includes one regulation in both Articles 18 and 23. So this regulation would prohibit evictions for nonpayment of rent if the tenant owes less than the average of one month's small area fair market rent for zip codes in Santa Monica for an equivalent size unit. This is sometimes referred to as a rent threshold eviction regulation, and there are similar such ordinances in other cities, including here in the Los Angeles area. And I just highlighted some statistics here just about how prevalent nonpayment evictions are. They really do make up the vast majority of evictions and also threats to evict. So notices that tenants get that if they don't pay past due rent, they may be evicted. IN THE CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE WHERE LANDLORDS ARE ACTUALLY SUPPOSED TO FILE ALL EVICTION NOTICES AND ALL EVICTION LAWSUITS WITH US, WE HAVE SEEN CASES FILED FOR AS LITTLE AS $405 AND NOTICES GIVEN TO TENANTS THREATENING TO EVICT THEM IF THEY DON'T PAY AS LITTLE AS $73. SO THIS RESOLUTION WOULD SAY THAT A LANDLORD CANNOT MAKE AN ENDEAVOR TO EVICT A TENANT IN THOSE SITUATIONS UNLESS THE TENANT'S RENTAL DEBT ACTUALLY STARTS EXCEEDING EFFECTIVELY ONE MONTH OF FAIR MARKET RENT FOR THE Also, just to just want to highlight that this regulation would not mean that a landlord or would not take away a landlord's right to collect that rental debt through means other than an eviction. So they could always demand that rental debt as long as they're not threatening eviction for it. They could seek it through small claims process, whatever they would need. The third resolution also has sort of three core components. So the first one is a limitation on evicting current existing tenants based on those tenants bringing in new occupants to the household. And this would be effectively, if a tenant has a provision of their lease that says the tenant cannot bring in additional occupants or any occupants that were not originally in the lease, The tenant would still have the right to do that if the additional occupant that the tenant is bringing in is either a minor child that the tenant, their partner, or their spouse is obligated to care for, or if the additional occupant is one of a specified family member, provided that the tenant has lived in the unit for at least a year and has notified the landlord of who the additional occupant is and that they meet one of these qualifying family relationships. or if the additional occupant is not necessarily related to the tenant, but they intend to create a household with the tenant, the tenant can also bring that additional person in, provided, again, that the tenant has lived in the unit for at least a year, and the tenant notifies the landlord who the additional occupant is, and the landlord has a reasonable opportunity to deny approval, provided they do it on legitimate grounds that are actually relevant to issues the landlord might apply a criteria for. The second core piece of resolution number three would be a limitation on evicting lawful occupants who remain in a unit after the tenant of the owner has vacated. So this would prohibit evicting a lawful occupant who's been living in the unit with the tenant of the owner for at least a year before the tenant of the owner vacates the unit. This expands on an existing protection that's in both articles, eighteen and twenty three that provides that children, spouses and partners who remain in a unit and lived with the tenant of the owner for at least a year before that tenant vacated due to death or incapacity. Those specified family members can currently stay in the unit and this just expands that protection. And the third sort of bucket of items in resolution number three would be to extend just cause eviction protections to single unit dwellings and condominiums and to update owner move in regulations for those units. So currently, single unit dwellings are exempt from Article 23. These are the non-rent controlled units that are actually exempt from that protection. Many jurisdictions, including many in Los Angeles County now, do apply just cause eviction protections to single unit dwellings. So this would sort of bring those in line with other jurisdictions in the area. And then would also just align some of the protections around owner move-in evictions for Article 23 units to align them with some of the same protections that already exist in the rent control law. This is a chart to try to help provide somewhat of a visual of what is in each of the three resolutions and which provisions, which articles of the charter would be amended if according to each of the three resolutions as they're currently presented, although the staff report does also provide some potential ways to move things around if the council were interested in doing that.

That's all. Thanks. Okay. Thank you for your efficient presentation. We do not have any requests to speak in the queue. Go ahead. Go ahead.

I had a quick question on something that I wasn't completely clear on. In proposed Resolution 3 on the limiting evictions of remaining household members, if the original tenant of leaves for whatever reason, would the rents remain at the rent-controlled threshold, or would it reset to market rate, or does it depend on the specific situation?

MS. Yeah, so it would depend on the situation. What this proposed amendment would do, it just regulates whether or not the tenant can be displaced. Now, as to rent-controlled units in particular, whether the landlord could – what rent the landlord could charge for those units to the subsequent occupant is a question that is sort of determined under state law, under Costa-Hawkins, and it is sort of a fact-by-fact or case-by-case

back intensive inquiry so this ordinance or this regulation would not touch that it doesn't address that it just regulates whether the tenant can be evicted simply because they were not they were not initially approved by the owner so if legally under state law the landlord would be able to reset to market rate at that point they would still be able to do it but if they wouldn't then they would still the remaining household members would still maintain the existing rent-controlled rental amount, right?

Yeah. What the landlord's rights would be to change the rent or increase the rent would depend on the facts of the case, and it would be determined by state law. And this ordinance doesn't touch what that state law determination would be.

Okay, got it.

Thank you for that clarification. Great. Council Member Stahl.

Thank you for your... So my question is Proposition Proposal 3. It says a non, what is a non-resident tenant? I think it says with respect to it. I mean, is there, I'm trying to figure out, obviously a family member, extended family member, but could anyone move in and be extended as a tenant?

So the proposed amendment does allow for certain specified family members. That doesn't include every type of family member. It doesn't include, I don't believe, nieces and nephews and that sort of thing. But certain specified family members could come into a unit if the tenant notifies the landlord that they're coming in. Anyone who doesn't fall into that category could be another type of relative or could be somebody that the tenant is not actually related to, could still be added or the tenant could still have them move into the unit provided that the tenant gives notice to the landlord and provided that the tenant and that person intend to create a household. The reason for this is in part to do with California privacy law and for housing protections for sort of nontraditional households and also the rights of people to create households with whomever they choose, whether or not they are related to them by blood or legally. So this allows and recognizes that people may choose to create households with people that are not specifically recognized as a certain type of familial relationship, but it is still a household nonetheless.

And so are you telling me that that particular individual that's moving in, if five years from now the original tenant left and another individual wanted to move in, that that would still be in compliance?

This doesn't really necessarily speak to what happens if it's not the tenant of the owner bringing people in. It specifically provides that if the tenant of the owner brings in these additional occupants, then the tenant of the owner can't be evicted for violating a provision of their lease that says you can't bring in other people. So it doesn't provide that additional, the people who are brought in as either additional household members or subtenants, it doesn't give them the right to necessarily bring in more people.

So if the original owner or the original tenant was gone, then subsequent individuals moving in, then this doesn't comply with it?

So people are only entitled to, the tenant can only, the original tenant, so to speak, can only bring in additional occupants if they've already been in the unit for at least a year. And a separate provision of this package would allow that if the tenant of the owner has been living in the unit for a year with one of these people that they brought in lawfully and they complied with all those requirements, if the tenant of the owner then vacates, then that remaining occupant would be able to remain in the unit. But that remaining occupant

wouldn't be able to comply with the law if that original tenant moved out. Is that what you're saying?

It may depend a little bit on the facts of whether that remaining occupant enters into a different type of rental agreement with the landlord. These protections, especially the one allowing an existing tenant to bring new tenants in, really relate to whether or not the landlord can enforce a provision of a written rental agreement with that tenant that would sort of artificially or arbitrarily limit how many people that tenant can have in the unit. So whether the landlord has a written rental agreement with the subsequent occupant and would try to enforce a term like that would depend on sort of the facts that they develop after the subsequent occupant continues to stay in the unit.

So if they didn't have a rental agreement with that subsequent occupant, then it changes it. Is that what you're, I'm trying to understand.

If there is no written rental agreement, which there are not in many cases since a perfectly legitimate form of a tenancy, there's actually no restriction on people bringing occupants into the unit.

So they couldn't?

Yeah. I mean, in effect, this regulation wouldn't apply because it only deals with sort of applications of rental rental agreements. If there is no written rental agreement, there's really no limitation on the right to bring occupants in other than sort of public safety and health standards. Thank you.

Council Member Negrete.

I'm going to dovetail on that because I just want to clarify, I think, more specifically or more in maybe plain language, hopefully a more concise answer that I think what Council Member Snell was saying, which is still my question, which is if tenant A has the lease, someone moves in with tenant A that wasn't originally on the lease. is there for a year, tenant A vacates and now tenant B is there, they forget about whether they have to pay market rate or their rent goes up, they are legally now allowed to be the tenant that occupies that apartment. If a year later they bring in someone and that person's living with them for five years, when that tenant vacates, does that now mean that the next person, this is why it's called in perpetuity, right?

Yeah, so that could, I think that could happen under this regulation. It wouldn't preclude that.

So I just want to point out, because, listen, I live in a rent-controlled unit. I have an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old. And I think of the scenario of if my husband and I got in a car accident, God forbid we both lost our life, I would want my daughter to be able to use whatever life insurance we have to stay in our apartment to take care of her little sister. I realize those are extenuating circumstances and it's really hard to create policy around these very specific circumstances. My concern is in buildings that are deed restricted a lot like, you know, no shade on the big market dwellers, but they have different reserves to dig into to make up for scenarios that happen that might impact them financially. But I can speak to someone who allowed me to say his name tonight who was pretty upset about this not knowing about it, not being talked to about this. He lives and he's a small family business owner. He owns Casa Marti and him and his family, there's 10 siblings, they scraped up their money to buy small apartments. They often have Section 8 vouchers and he's fighting for over a year right now because of a situation like this and unable to remove a tenant who is creating so much havoc in the building. People are moving out, causing police calls constantly. And so I guess this was not the original person that he had the lease with. And this is a family member that is currently, I guess, governed under the current policy, which is different. The concern is that even as someone who lives in an apartment with kids, that like now you're not leasing with the person. I mean, there's some process you have to go through where you fill out an application, maybe there's a credit check. And to the extent that I get that people sometimes fall on hard times and they need to couch surf or stay with a friend, we don't want to put people out. I just feel like we haven't had enough time, at least for me, to digest this and actually hear from the small mom and pop landlords who this might have unintended consequences with. And that's one of the questions I have. Have you guys looked at how that may impact small mom and pop landlord with a deep restricted small building that has five six units whatever um well i also just i will note that um even if a landlord if a

If a tenant who the landlord did not initially approve but comes in under one of these provisions and then has the right to stay, even if they don't have a written rental agreement but they are doing anything that is interfering with other tenants, with the landlord, the landlord always has, under both our local eviction laws and under state law, the right to remove that tenant if they're causing a nuisance. The right to evict a tenant because they're violating a lease is actually just one of the 10 or 11 reasons why a landlord can evict a tenant. There are many other reasons why landlords evict tenants. Most often it's because they didn't pay the rent. And this would never, of course, waive the obligation to do that. So in terms of whether or not we've connected with small mom and pop landlords, they did speak at the Rent Control Board, hearing the Rent Control Board took that under consideration, and they have recommended these proposals.

And what about, have they thought about the loopholes that people create, which are rampant? We were talking about that, too, that it happens all over in my own buildings where people have their unit and then maybe their kids or somebody else, but they're essentially subletting it. And do you think that this has the analysis been done as to whether or not this would create more of that scenario? Like, you know, now that it's not a family member, it's like bringing someone else in like a roommate and then you vacate. And they're paying, I mean, this is where the rent part, you're saying that it doesn't have, that's a separate policy. It's sort of hard for me to understand because I guess if At that point, if you didn't want that person in there, you would just be like, oh, rent's going up to market rate. It's getting jacked up $2,000. That's one way to get someone out. But in the event that that doesn't happen, now this person is like holding on to a deed restricted unit that, I don't know, it just feels like it's creating, I don't understand how you can't talk about the rent part. I understand what you're saying. Because that seems to play into keeping someone in their apartment. Maybe that wasn't a good question. My other question is, was there any economic analysis done specific to small landlords as it pertains to this crazy math around missed rent? And I call it crazy math only because if your contract is with a housing provider, just like with your car payment, I can't be like, oh, I had a 0%, but the average... rate you know going lease payment for a Honda is such and that's what the missed payment is going to be you know based on if someone's paying you know $500 a month and the going rate for their apartment is a thousand to this math they'd have to miss a hundred and fifty percent of it

It's the average of the sort of the 40% median, 40 percentile rents in Santa Monica. So it comes close to 150% of the regional rents, but actually I believe it's lower than that.

So what I'm just saying for the purpose of saying that.

It's not actually the tenant's rent.

If you're paying 500, but that number is 1,000, you would then have to miss 1,500 before, right?

1,500 or 1,001. I mean, a tenant could be partially behind on the rent.

And that's not every year. That was just in totality. Like, that wouldn't reset every year where this tenant could do that every year?

That's right. I mean, a landlord also, though, only has the right to evict a tenant. This is a state law thing. They can only evict a tenant for rent that came due within the last 12 months. So even if a tenant owes rent for more than 12 months ago, it's not a basis to evict a tenant anyway. So I mean, but yes, a tenant could be behind potentially more than one month's rent if they're a below market tenant and not be evicted for owing one month or even more than one month's rent.

But is that something that could happen every year or is it tied into?

There's no limitation as written on the amount of times that this would apply. It's just as long as the total debt that's sort of subject to eviction remains below the threshold. That could happen more than once.

And the folks that I talked to when I asked, like, what was the thinking behind that was that it was to give the proverbial us more time to gain access to Measure GS funds that's supposed to help preserve folks in their apartment. I wonder why we don't just make policy to make, if that money's there, to make that money available to people and get it to their landlords or be able to pay their rent to assist them instead of putting the onus and the burden on housing providers.

I mean, the reality is it's just when a tenant is in default to the rent, the landlord can give them a notice to pay rent or quit. They have a very short amount of time to pay that, and often by the time that person has started contacting, whether it's a CBO or the city themselves, the documentation that needs to come together, or sometimes there's tax documentation that needs to come together, it just can take longer than the tenant actually has.

And then going back to this perpetual tenancy thing, the other thing I think about is there's a lot of cases right now where people bring in folks as roommates, and then there's maybe a disagreement, and the person who has the apartment can't... And I know there's other rules around 31 days and you have rights and stuff like that. Has there been any analysis around whether that would exasperate an issue where... If somebody had a roommate and then that roommate doesn't want to leave, does this perpetual tendency give this person different rights that they don't already have based on whatever policies we have set forth, not just in Santa Monica, but in California about living somewhere for X amount of days?

I don't believe so. I don't believe it necessarily augments those rights. I mean, these provisions also don't necessarily touch the subletter situation where a tenant brings in a new person to be their subletter. There's actually already a protection for tenants to have the right to do that under the law. So this is sort of expanding on that protection to say, even if these people aren't your subletters, you can still bring them in as long as it's not sort of creating an unsafe condition.

And the difference is that the landlord has to approve whoever you say you're bringing in, and they can't apply a limit to how many people per unit?

I mean, in both cases, whether it's a subletter or not a subletter, the landlord has the – well, if it's a – non-family member, non-subletter, or if it's a subletter, the landlord can apply a reasonable criteria related to evaluating whether they're basically going to be a problem in the unit. But if the person is not going to be paying rent to the landlord, then what criteria apply may not include things like the person's income or credit score, since they're not actually paying the rent.

I guess that's sort of what I meant, but just simply, if I'm in an apartment building and the person upstairs, it's two people, can they now all of a sudden move in seven people?

We depend. I mean, they may already have the right to do that if they don't have a written lease limiting the number of people who can.

But if they do have a written lease limiting to the amount of people, does this now?

So provided that the tenant has been in the unit for at least a year, provided that the additional people that they want to bring in, they're trying to create some sort of like a household with them, provided they tell the landlord about who those people are. And the landlord has, I believe it's 14 days to approve or deny that person based on sort of legitimate criteria. they would have the right, assuming all those things happen, they would have the right to bring those people in.

To be a real life circumstance, person upstairs has been living there 20 years, I'd like to bring in five people, it's a friend, we're starting a new family situation that we define and it's called the whatever family and they're all gonna come in and this is Bob, Joe, Sam and Fred and whatever, and here's who they are and here's their names. They look really like nice people. And I don't get, like, where is this, where is the landlord's ability to say no, yes, because then what's the point of putting this on there if they have the ability to say, oh, no, I don't like that person. I don't understand where that comes into play. It sounds like what we're saying is, because I know that when you have a roommate, they actually have to fill out a credit app and be added to the lease, at least in the apartment building I'm in because we have a lot of college students. But to the extent that no one has to do that, and I'm actually asking because we have college students and it rotates a lot, I'm just thinking like, oh my God, there's going to be they're going to have, they're going to invite people and there's going to be nine people living in one apartment. And it sounds like under this, it's based on a very loose idea around a family or building a household. And what's this part of like, where is the part where there's policy that supersedes a landlord's ability to say, yes, no, I don't like you based on what? So it,

We have seen sometimes that landlords can sort of use things like a tenant's creditworthiness or a tenant's sort of lack of landlord references sometimes as a protectional reason to deny the ability for someone to live in the unit. So this would say those things that are not really related to whether the tenant is going to be a problem in this building or is going to create any sort of real problems for the landlord are not legitimate grounds to deny this person who's just coming in to be a roommate.

Okay, wait, just say that more simply. You're saying that normally they use a credit check, like you have poor credit, you don't have three apartments you've lived in. That's usually what tenants use. What is this other criteria then, if that's the only thing they have to go on? And I get that. It's hard if you don't have those things. How do you get an apartment? I mean, what are you supposed to do, like write a resume and be like, check out my Instagram? Like, I don't know. How do you prove that you're like a worthy tenant?

So you can have other references. We also have a different housing discrimination ordinance that does require that landlords allow tenants to demonstrate their ability to be a good tenant through means other than landlord references. Which is some examples. Which could be some other sort of a reference, a job reference. It could be some sort of community reference. But a landlord, you know, depending on if someone is prohibited from living in a unit because of a registration status or. Like a sex offender. Right. Or if somebody has some other sort of relevant history, actual specific history to that person. that raises a concern, that could be a legitimate grounds to deny the person. But just sort of speculation about people with low credit might be a problem wouldn't be a basis to do that.

So is that the change, then, that currently? I'm trying to get at how this is changing, because that's the conversations I've been having. Like, well, now what would happen if, like I just gave you the scenario, where is the landlord's ability? It's sort of very loose, and I'm trying to understand how it's changing from what it is now and what it would look like in this very same scenario of multiple people moving in. It sounds like currently, if in your lease it says only three people can be there, That's how it exists. And if you want a roommate, they have to fill out an application. And these things we just talked about, credit, worthiness, whatever, having references of where you lived is what they apply. Now it sounds like we're saying that is not the basis to come into the apartment. Also, the amount of people now no longer can be impressed upon people. You can't say they can't point to, well, I told you only three people can be here.

That's really the main change. There's already a provision that says if someone moves out, you can replace them on a one-for-one basis. This would say that if your lease says you can only have a certain number of people or you can't add people that weren't originally part of the lease, that that is effectively not enforceable against the tenant. So this would say that you can have more than the original number of occupants or you can have more than the number of occupants that the lease specifically allows for. subject to some of these requirements. And there is also a general requirement that it still doesn't preempt any sort of fire code or other sort of law that would actually limit, based on actual health and safety standards, the number of people that could be in a unit safely.

So more simply put, yes, someone could now have five or six people, assuming that per square foot the health code says you can have that.

Yes? Provided, yeah, that they complied with all the other, that they gave the notice, that sort of thing. Yeah, they've been in the unit for a year.

I don't want to hog the mic, but I have more questions, but I just need that to sink into my brain. I'm going to get out of the queue so other folks can ask questions.

Council Member Hall.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Ms. Ganshaw, for an incredible presentation, very helpful. Some questions. For the public's benefit, can you explain a little bit further about why we are connecting amendments across Articles 18 and 23? Excuse me.

Yeah, so Article 18, the rent control law, was adopted in 1979. It had this section about just cause eviction. That's a core feature of every rent control law. In 2010, Article 23 was adopted, and it basically just mirrored Article 18. And it's always been intended that Article 23 will mirror what's in Article 18. So the Rent Control Board has recommended that all of these substantive changes be made to Article 18 eviction protections. And it's always been previously articulated as the intent and sort of the plan that all tenants in both non-rent controlled and rent controlled units enjoy the same protections against eviction. So that's why the changes are mirrored in both places. Okay, thank you.

And what is the policy genesis behind extending just cause protections to single unit dwellings? Yeah, specifically for, you know, Article 23.

I mean, I think increasingly, especially in condominiums, increasingly single-unit dwellings, we are seeing that they are a place that people are using for rental housing. I will say in the city attorney's office, we frequently get inquiries from people who live in either condominiums or other types of single-unit dwellings asking about whether the protections of the relocation code apply to them, asking whether the protections of the just cause eviction law apply to them. And for the most part, they don't. And so there's been sort of an increasing recognition that those tenants are also tenants entitled to these protections. And especially, I think, for condominium units, where rents are more likely to be lower and sort of in line with other non-rent-controlled units, it makes sense to extend those protections.

And are we concerned about the increasing presence of corporate buyouts of single-family homes and condos in that essentially renters are in these units with a corporate landlord?

Sure, yeah. The idea that it's just an individual owner may not necessarily be true. Okay, thank you.

Are there statutory definitions or case law surrounding what the definition of a household is?

So there's like, as I mentioned, there's sort of a general provision of California law that says that, as I said, under the California right to privacy, people have the right to form households and live with the people of their choosing, form a household with the people of their choosing, whether or not they're related to them. And that cities also have to sort of allow people to do that. They can't prohibit people from forming those sorts of households. And generally, it's sort of construed as people who intend to have a sort of enduring relationship Intent to form a sort of a single unit of a household. So we tried to capture that definition here. Okay.

Thank you And then the question was raised about time to analyze and discuss with community members landlords, you know tenant advocacy groups Would you mind just sharing the process these amendments have gone through to get here tonight starting with item 16 C That this council passed unanimously and it's January 27 2026 meeting and then the subsequent rent control board meetings, please. I

Sure. So yeah, item 16C did direct the city attorney's office to evaluate and come back with proposed tenant protection measures and tenant stability measures, including specifically asked to come back with a measure to protect tenants when new family members move into the unit, but then also asked to come back based and to propose additional measures based on what would be effective here, but also what's been utilized in other similarly situated jurisdictions. places that have other tenant protection laws. So we did a little bit of a survey of that, reviewed some of those ordinances, also looked a little bit at the types of information that we have about the grounds for which people are actually being evicted. We, the City Attorney's Office, made a presentation to the Rent Control Board, I believe in May. They held a hearing, heard some of the recommendations, some of the items that we had sort of turned up. They held At least I don't recall if it was one or two public meetings after that including at least one public hearing two meetings where the public had an opportunity to weigh in publicly and Including a public hearing and they did get a lot of feedback from various members of the community including landlords. Okay.

Thank you Council member Raskin I'm prepared to make a motion Given the extensive public process this has gone through and given the fact that this has largely been developed by our elected experts at the Right Control Agency, but given that Council Member Negrete has more questions, I'll maybe take my name out of the queue and put it back in after that.

MS. Well, I'll second the motion. We can have a motion on the floor.

MR. All right. Well, I'll go ahead and make a motion that we proceed with putting the three resolutions on the ballot, making the findings, and I think we'll have further direction with respect to ballot arguments, but perhaps we can make that in a separate motion.

Council Member Negrete.

So I guess I have a comment just based on the public process. I just want to point out here, we've talked about it before on this dais, that Before I got on City Council, I can't tell you that I was and I'm an involved person from the schools and at the time when we had the seascape, I read it and all that stuff. I didn't know about every meeting and I could say the same thing about my school PTA meetings. So I just want to be careful about assuming that. this city and the people that show up or show up to the meetings or get the communications are actually everybody in the city i spent time people called today that were all small landlords saying i just heard about this And yes, I could penalize them and make them feel really bad for not, this person particularly runs a local two restaurants here, works in the kitchen, serves in the front, runs apartments and goes, I don't think that, you know, they're not, they don't not want to be involved. They're just not getting these notifications. And I'm sorry, I happen to be one of those people that was there myself before. I'm not going to pretend to be somebody who was always notified about everything and showed up at City Council and spoke all the time and that's what led me to be up here. You know, so I just want to be cautious when we say that because I don't know that this process happened in a way. Look, right now we were asking questions and it's not easy stuff to understand. It might be for some of us up here who do this for a living or have been doing this for a while. But it's just not easy to understand, and it's not... Listen, I live in a rent-controlled building. My building is poorly, poorly, poorly maintained. Today, I walked out, there's shrapnel everywhere. I'm dealing with rent control because we were poorly notified about my whole front landing. We can't use our front door. I have to park on the street without no notice. So I know what it's like to live in a dilapidated building that's not well-maintained. And my concerns, and so are a lot of my neighbors, is that if we don't strike a balance, we... We incentivize in the wrong way and we have unintended consequences for deed restricted buildings potentially being, you know, these landlords that are small mom and pop good landlords say, God, I can't handle this anymore. I'm going to put it up for sale. Or they just find ways to make it harder for us to live in well-maintained buildings. I'd like us to focus on that. I just want to understand these things. I want to be able to protect hunters like my dad passed away I'm glad that my stepmom still gets to stay in that apartment and like I said if god forbid anything happened to my husband I would hope my kids get to stay in that apartment. I just feels like the language and some of this stuff. I Don't know if I'm crazy or something. It just sounds a little like huh like anybody could go move in now that I I think, unfortunately, more than we know, people find ways to weave in these loopholes and take advantage of it. And then it ruins it for everyone. So without being penalized up here and just feeling like I can comfortably have this dialogue without it meaning political assassination, I'm just asking questions because I don't understand it. And I had five phone calls today from five different, all small mom and pop families, landlords that somehow got some email that they've never received they're not a part of all the landlords whatever of the city organization so I hear you and I'm sure you guys did all your outreach I know there's a deadline I know that this there's a majority on this council who's probably not going to go for this but I just wanted to propose that in the spirit of understanding it more and helping maybe some of those folks that don't always get outreach is it possible to push this to the next meeting because I think we have until the 28th to make the deadline for the ballot I don't know if anyone's amenable to that but I say this because I I got calls today and I know I think councilmember Snell did as well um but I know you're in the queue councilmember so I'll let you maybe speak to that councilman I'd like to know there's a motion on the floor uh could we uh make a motion on each resolution separately

each ballot measure separately? Can we get a vote from us on each ballot measure separately?

I mean, that was not the motion.

Yeah, I mean, as the maker of the motion, I'll say that there is a long precedent going back to 1979 and the initiation of the Red Control Agency to not, you know, to respect the separation of powers and to not second guess the hard work that the Red Control Agency has done. I understand that we have the purview over Article 23 portions of this. If you want to make a substitute motion, you could. Look, there's been a lot of hard work that's gone into this. Our elected experts at the Rent Control Board have been hard at work at this over the last six months. There have been at least four hearings of the Rain Control Agency about this. Our very skilled city attorney team has been working tirelessly night and day on this. I feel very confident that this is the right thing to do, so I'm going to keep the motion as is.

I understand that. And my only question with respect to is, because I also am a renter and really much understand the other two resolutions and very much supportive of it. But this third resolution is one that I have much more difficulty with. And I understand what it is to be a renter and not to have the comfortability of being able to stay in your place for whatever reason. But I am also a business owner. I am not a landlord, but I also understand for the small landlords and those landlords that do not have the ability, based on this resolution, to be able to dictate who's in the place on a serial basis, and that's my biggest concern. I understand the amount of work that's been done on it, and I do support the other two resolutions. That's why I asked if I can make a substitute motion to vote on each resolution separately. And so, if I could get a second on that, we'll see.

I'll second that.

Is that a substitute motion on the table?

So you would like to vote on... Okay, so, but it's a superseding motion, I mean.

It is, so you would vote on the substitute motion first. I just would like to note that the, just a clarification on the CEQA finding would also be voted.

would still be voted on under the substitute motion as well. So you're basically asking that we bifurcate one, two, three, four, and five, Barry? Or are you asking that we pull out specifically number three? Wait, sorry, number four. Yes, number four. You're asking for two votes, one on one, two, three, and five, and one on four. Yes. Okay. So that's a motion before we can consider the first motion.

Okay, can you repeat that again? Which ones are we voting on?

So Council Member Snell, seconded by Council Member Negrete, is asking us to vote for the adoption of the finding for CEQA 1, 2. for the administrative items that the Rent Control Board put forward to vote for the less than one month nonpayment of rent, effectively, and the written arguments. He is asking that we vote separately on item 4, that the moving in of new occupants item. Okay.

Sorry, point of order. Were you able to discuss the motion?

Yes, sure.

So do we need to clear the queue or how does this work?

Is the question related to this?

My question was regarding like a clarification on The limiting evictions based on new occupants and the number, because my understanding is that there is a maximum number per type of unit. So if it's a 1 bedroom, there is still a maximum limit. And I was wondering if the. If the city attorney's office could please just clarify.

I think she had stated that, but yeah, I apologize if I missed that.

Yeah, so general standards under any building code, fire code, other health and safety law would apply, but it does vary on the size of the unit, certain features of the unit, so it's not as if every one-bedroom unit is three people. It depends on the specifics of the unit.

So is it based on, like, square footage, number of bathrooms, plus number of bedrooms, so...

I believe so. It might have also to do with other things related to age of the building, those sorts of things.

Okay. All right. Got it. Thank you.

okay councilmember hall now had a question or comment yeah just just on the substitute motion um i would encourage us all to remember back what was going on when we passed item 16c immigration and customs enforcement was conducting raids in our own city in the city of los angeles where primary tenants were taken into custody by federal immigration enforcement leaving family members with the uh in in pretty rough straits family members were moving in with other family members and and landlords were causing problems around this um non-payment evictions were happening uh and what is being proposed tonight i think go hand in hand as both a financial protection and a household protection And I'd like to remind everyone that was the genesis of what we were thinking when we wrote item 16c and when we passed it. Thank you.

And I would also just like to add, sorry, I'm going to take prerogative here because I haven't had an opportunity, that we have seen countless times, and I'll just say in my personal experience on the Rent Control Board site, where you have, you know, an elderly parent passes away, child is not on the lease, lives with the parent as a caretaker. We have situations where someone passes away, their wife is not on the lease. We have real life situations that this is trying to address. And I think, of course, anyone can make a scary situation about what's going to happen. But I want to be clear, there is no guarantee that the rent remains at the same rate. It's a fact by fact analysis. And we wrote this and asked for this to address a real world scenario that we were seeing happen in our community. So, again, we're trying to protect folks. And I understand that it's always a balancing test. There's always going to be folks that are concerned and it could impact them. We're talking about someone's pocketbook versus a life or death roof over someone's head and an exacerbating homeless crisis. So, you know, on the totality of circumstances, I just have to look at what's more important. It looks like we're, oh, Council Member Zernitzkaya.

Sorry, a brief comment slash question. So, you know, even with all of this, we still have to be in compliance with state rent control restrictions, right, where landlords are still entitled to a fair return. And if they're not getting, if they don't feel they're getting a fair return, are they still able to file something with the rent control board? Because I don't know if that's the concern of not being able to. Okay. Okay.

And I would assume that Costa-Hawkins and the Ellis Act both still apply. We're not invalidating this.

Okay, yeah, so it doesn't touch those protections.

And that's exactly right. I'm Jonathan Holub. I'm the Rent Control Administrator. And the simple answer to that is yes, and they can file a petition with the Rent Control Agency to ensure that they're getting a fair and reasonable return.

Thank you. Can you introduce us to the other gentlemen that you have with us? Of course. Because I think the city.

I'm Kevin Mitchell. I'm the general counsel for the Rankin Report.

Welcome, Kevin, to Team Santa Monica. Thank you. I understand this might be your first council meeting.

Well, in this role, yes. Yes. Great. I've been to several.

Right. No, no, no. I get it. Council Member Negrete. Okay.

So I just want to be clear that this isn't about not wanting to protect people. I bet you happen to be referring to me and my family in many of the scenarios you just aforementioned between a couple of you and the dais. So I just want to be able to be clear that there's the difference. You know, we're saying pocketbook. Like, when I see those big, tall buildings, and we're talking about conglomerate LLCs, corporate landlords, I wish we could bifurcate in this small mom-and-pop Landlords that that would be nice only because there's a lot of those people that are at the point where we saw what happened to the Virginia Avenue Apartments right like that person became unable to care for that building and it ended up falling apart and people ended up living with mold for years and ended up impacting their health so that's that's all I'm trying to understand is that I I get the intent. I understand that. I just want to make sure that the unintended consequences aren't greater than the intent and that we don't end it. Because we have a lot of smaller, older buildings in Santa Monica. I would beg to say that maybe more than most cities our size, we have a lot of these older deed-restricted buildings that are owned by you know, an elderly couple and this is it for them. So that's all I was asking because I happen to live somewhere where there's constant turnover and people subletting their units and no one paying attention to it because the landlord has given up. And it makes it unsafe for me and my family and my kids. We don't know when we're walking back there who we're coming home to because there's multiple people in a unit all the time. So that's why I was asking this because it's also something about the tenants that have to live within these buildings. So I appreciate being able to separate the items out. I thought that's how we were going to vote on it to begin with. This has nothing to do with disrespecting the Rent Control Board and the thought that went behind this. And full disclosure, I'm not as bright and I don't pretend to be around these issues. I need to break that information down and away from legalese and plain speak. And thank you. I'm not saying that you're so great and it comes natural for you. But for me, I need to just hear it in plain talk. So thank you. That's what I needed to do tonight. So thank you for, I guess we have to vote as to whether or not we're even going to vote on it that way.

Well, if I could just speak to that. And I'll preface by saying that we're not making law tonight. Things in the charter are decided by the people. It's the electorate that decides whether it's the law or not. But seeing that we're heading towards, I think, a procedural mess here, and I would like to get unanimous support for those areas in which we have agreement. Yeah, Council Member Snell, if you withdraw the procedural motion, I'll withdraw the main motion, and I'll remake this one part at a time.

Why don't we just do what he had previously asked for?

This is faster that way. We don't have to take votes.

Okay, all right.

I don't see that it is faster, but that's okay.

There's a motion on the floor right now.

All right. It just varies. It's just Council Member Snell's motion.

Substitute motion now?

Yes, let's vote on that.

All right. Council Member Negrete? Yes. Council Member Hall? No. Council Member Raskin?

Yes.

Council Member Snell? Yes. Council Member Zarniskaya?

Yes.

Mayor DeRosa?

Yes.

So now we're doing the vote for 1, 2, 3, and 5.

Correct.

Okay. And who wants to make the motion for that? Because the only thing we just voted on was to substitute.

I'll make the motion. I'll second. I'll second.

Sorry, Mayor, can you please restate the motion?

Sure. We are voting on recommended actions 1, 2, 3, and 5. That would be the CEQA exemption, the administrative items from the Rent Control Board, the attached finding on the prohibition of evictions based on non-payment of rent, and the authorization of the council members to file written arguments for or against.

Are we ready?

Yep. So if I may, I apologize for the interruption, but with respect to item five, generally it is the practice of the council to list those council members as part of the motion. On who's going to make arguments for or against each particular ballot measure, you may want to defer that one until after you've decided whether or not to advance all of the resolutions.

Okay, great. We will do that. So we will vote on one, two, and three.

not five we will do five after we vote on four and just who made the motion um yeah and you still second that modified yes okay yeah yeah we're just getting rid of that okay great okay council member yes council member hall yes council member raskin yes council member yes council members arenaskaya yes yes Now we'll go and vote on four.

I'll move. Second.

House to Rosas and Hall, correct?

Mm-hmm. So now the motion is item four, correct?

Correct.

This is the... And then we're going to list who does the arguments after?

Yeah. No breach based on specified new occupants.

Councilmember Zarniskaya? Yes. Councilmember Snell?

No.

Councilmember Raskin?

Yes.

Councilmember Hall?

Yes.

Councilmember Negrete?

No.

Mayor DeRosa?

Yes.

Okay, so now let's call for the motion to authorize the City Councilmembers to file written arguments for and against

and so it's now going to be three yep so we're going to be um in your agenda packet it's going to be two three and four so um i would move that council member hall prepares the argument in support of item two i'll second that i accept can we just do all of that okay and what about three uh i sorry i will move

I'll second Mayor Tarosas for item number three, the nonpayment of small red debt.

Does someone else want to second it? I'll second that.

I think you guys should prepare this.

What about four? I think you already said that. Yeah. And item four, what about Councilman Raskin? I thought you were doing that. Great. So the motion is that we – does anyone want to file an argument against? Okay. So the motion is that Councilmember Hall will prepare two, Councilmember Tarosis – Mayor Tarosis will prepare three, and Councilmember Raskin will prepare four.

Can I ask a procedural question?

we wanted to collaborate with elected rent control board commissioners and preparing these arguments is there a way to include that emotion there's no ability to select those commissioners this evening right there's no ability to correct to select the rent board members this evening but council may authorize to do, it's two, up to two? Up to two. Up to two additional rent control board members.

How soon, or at what point in time would the rent board have to select members on its own if they wanted to do this?

Select?

Yeah, like if we ask the rent board to come back and...

Okay, so the arguments are due in 14 days, so they're due on the 28th.

Okay.

So basically the way it's been done in the past is that you would just... collaborate with the Rent Control Board and decide which two of the Rent Control Board members want to put their name on your ballot, on your argument. I don't think we need to talk about that here. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't need to get that deep in the weeds.

All right, so it's a motion. Do you have it? Yes. Okay, great.

Okay, do we need to vote on this, City Attorney? Okay. All right, here we go. Councilmember Negrete.

yes council member hall yes council member raskin yes council member snell yes council members arenaskaya yes emeritus yes great thank you everyone um congratulations to our rent control board colleagues who worked so hard on this to bring it forward to us we appreciate you and thanks to some of you for being here um all right council members wick someone bring them back and thank you to our rent control board staff as well and our city attorney team thank you guys Yeah. Oh, my bad. My apologies. I believe that Council Member Zwick should hear this. So can someone call Council Member Zwick back? Oh, he's coming.

Great. Do we need to do a procedural motion to hear that now?

Well, we have the special meeting, the special agenda meeting.

So are we going to, because I put the special meeting at the end.

Well, it's related to the ballot initiative, so I'd like to hear it now. Yeah. Is there any public comments on that? Okay, they've already given it. Okay, so Mr. City Manager, do you want to let us know what's going on?

Yeah, we have a brief PowerPoint presentation to walk us through the item on the special meeting agenda. We'll pull that up right now.

Can you guys just pass? This is not related to the special agenda, but I forgot to hand these out. These are my gifts from local progress. You can go ahead and hand that out. I forgot.

Yep, that's it. Thank you, Denise.

That's from my conference.

Denise, can you help me steer?

No, I've got one for each of you.

And Mayor, members of the Council, the item before you on the special meeting agenda that was called is related to transient occupancy tax or hotel tax considerations. If we go to the first slide. As the Council knows, our TOT regulations, they were last adjusted in 2022 when Measure CS was approved here locally. Our current TOT rate is 15%, and the way we apply that 15% is that pursuant to our Municipal Code, any person who books a hotel room stay for up to 30 days, pays the TOT rate. Our code, though, defines person for the purpose of TOT collection as, I quote, any individual, corporation, company, association, firm, co-partnership, or any group of individuals acting as a unit. Our regulations also stipulate that any stay by any person for more than 30 days in a hotel, that for that stay, if it exceeds 30 days, there is no TOT collected on the stay at all. Based on, that's not atypical for individuals. One of the things that we have noticed, though, is we've been working with Olympic affiliated organizations. As we move towards 2028, we have heard an increasing number of large corporate room blocks that would exceed 30 days in duration as part of the preparation for the 2028 games. Given that those stays would collect no TOT rate, there is a potential that the current circumstance would create an adverse fiscal circumstance for the City. What's the scale of that if we go to the next slide? Just this isn't an unusual circumstance that we've had discussions with folks about we move to the next slide So if we look at this scenario a corporate block of 100 rooms gets reserved and If the rate is $500 per room, they're staying for 45 days. The TOT that would have been collected for that stay should be $337,000 and change. But given that it exceeds the 30-day duration, the actual collection rate would be zero. Go to the next slide. We've been assessing this issue at the staff level. That's something that we can address if we feel like it's an important enough issue to make an adjustment to our TOT regulations. However, in order to do so, we would have to go to the voters with the ballot measure to make that adjustment really in a narrow way to address the issue of we're going to be doing corporate room bookings in more than 30 days, especially with the Olympics coming up in a couple of years. If we wanted to get that measure moved forward for voter Election we would like to be able to bring that measure forward for council review in July and obviously if the council directives to do so we'd engage with our hotel operators to make sure We're taking into account all of the considerations and moving this particular item forward Last slide really is the council decides you would like to take action on this particular matter The staff recommendation is listed here Really, it's to direct the city manager and city attorney to prepare the proposed ballot measure language, bring it back at our July 28th meeting in order to see if we can address this particular circumstance by placing the measure before the voters in November. With that, if the council has any questions, we'd be happy to address them at this time.

Great. I'm prepared to make a motion. I think we'll discuss this further when you bring back the item. But of course, we want to maximize our revenue as we usher in our economic recovery. So I would move that we take both of those actions.

Seconded.

Great. Any comments? Any questions? Great. Let's take a vote.

Council Member Negrete? Yes. Council Member Hall? Yes. Council Member Raskin? Yes. Mayor Pro Temswyk? Yes. Council Member Snell? Yes. Council Member Zarniskaya? Yes. And Mayor Tarosa? Yes.

Fantastic. I am now going to just do another part of a point of agenda management. So my understanding is that Mayor Pro Temswyk is recused on item 12a and 12b. So just in the effort to move this forward, I would ask for a second to my motion to move 12C before 12A and 12B. Second. Great. Do we need to roll call vote on that, Ms. Anderson-Warren?

No, you guys.

Okay, great. Any opposed to that? Any abstentions? No? Okay, the ayes have it. We're going to go ahead and hear 12C now, unless you would like to recuse yourself from the other items. No, thank you, Mayor. Great, no problem. Okay.

Item 12C is Introduction and Adoption of Emergency Interim Zoning Ordinance Establishing Standards and Procedures for Light Fleet-Based Service for Autonomous Vehicles.

Fantastic, and we are going to hear the staff report and then the public comments, and then we will deliberate. There are public comments, yeah, because it's a public hearing.

Yeah. All the 12 items, yeah. It's okay. It's okay.

It's okay. This is 12C, right? 12C. 12C, right? Yep. Okay.

That's it.

Good evening, Council. Jing You here to talk about the emergency ICO for fleet operations for autonomous vehicles. This is an emergency zoning ordinance to regulate fleet operations for autonomous vehicles. What the ordinance does is it creates a new land use classification and it creates a new regulatory framework for that new land use classification. which is fleet operations for autonomous vehicles. So it creates kind of a tiered system, kind of structured actually on our alcohol exemption and CUP, like how we regulate alcohol, where there's a standard set of conditions and it's a ministerial permit. You can't meet those, then you can get a minor use permit. And there's also augmented conditions for sites that are within 100 feet of residential zone property. The intent of this ordinance is to establish enforceable standards balancing neighborhood protections, public safety, and innovation. We do want to be clear, it does not regulate electrical vehicle charging, which is governed under separate state law. So why an emergency IZO? Why action is needed now? Autonomous fleet operations, we've observed, they create impacts not addressed by current zoning. We do not have kind of a good framework or zoning rules that establish autonomous fleet operations. What we have observed with these kinds of uses is that there are definitely the potential to impact the public right-of-way in terms of queuing, which results in the potential for obstructing the right-of-way, obstructing emergency access, and also noise and light impacts, so those health and safety concerns, particularly when there are maintenance activities near residential neighborhoods. We also do have a pending building permit application for a facility like this and pending inquiries. So there are definitely an immediate need to create standards to be able to create certainty in the process for these autonomous fleet operations. What the proposed regulatory framework does is, as I mentioned, it creates a new use classification called light fleet-based service for autonomous vehicles. This classification is based actually on existing land use classification called light fleet-based service. So it's not something brand new and it's just kind of tweaked for autonomous vehicles. That particular classification, and we base that on that. So it is permitted in the general commercial, the GC, the industrial conservation, the IC, and the transit adjacent TA districts You can see there in the green outline, where all of those areas are. So generally, it's kind of what we call like Otter Row and Santa Monica Boulevard between Lincoln and 20th, Lincoln Boulevard south of the I-10 freeway, the Olympic Boulevard corridor on both sides, kind of that navy blue that you see in the middle, and then the entirety of the downtown adjacent to the freeway where that like blue striped area is, are all of the areas where these fleet operations or autonomous vehicles would be a permitted use. As we mentioned, this is really structured similar to the alcohol exemption CUP or MUP process that we have for alcohol sales. I'll kind of walk through how that works is basically The framework really responds to fleet operations as a distinct and separate land use, particularly when it involves autonomous vehicles. Why it needs to be regulated differently is that you're talking about a volume of vehicles and the coordinated dispatch of those vehicles, and importantly, the 24-7 nature of the operations. This results in concentrated impacts, and there's a kind of unique ability to affect the public right-of-way, because unlike non-fleet operations, vehicles may arrive all at one time or dispatch all at one time. So you kind of get that concentration impact in a way that typical fleet operations don't. Maintenance operations that occur in these field operations really create a situation where it's much more similar to an industrial worksite. And so the ordinance itself regulates fleet operations, again, that are not integral to EV charging. So for example, maintenance of vehicles, cleaning of vehicles, vehicle servicing, those are some of the key activities that distinguish that. And it regulates fleet operations to mitigate impacts to the public right-of-way. Again, to emphasize this ordinance does not regulate EV charging. The standard operating conditions, the first tranche that apply to all fleet operations for autonomous, the focus is really on mitigating impacts to the public right-of-way. So what that looks like in terms of standard Conditions is a dispatch coordination plan. We require a parking and loading operations plan and a requirement that there's no off-site queuing or staging of vehicles. The fleet, number of fleet vehicles are limited to the on-site parking capacity. There must be a limit for an emergency access maintained in the public right-of-way. There must be a minimum two trained staff on-site to deal with any vehicle malfunctions, ongoing monitoring and operate accountability, including designating a neighborhood liaison. Some of the augmented conditions, and these apply only for fleet operations for autonomous within 100 feet of residential zoning. So these are focused around light and noise. And again, it's only on those sites within 100 feet of residential zoning. This does not apply to sites that are outside of 100 feet of residential zoning. And the noise controls include overnight restrictions on fleet operations for autonomous, so between those hours of 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., no maintenance, cleaning, servicing of vehicles during those overnight hours. However, EV charging would be allowed during those overnight hours per state law and compliance with the noise ordinance. Requirements for shielded lighting and glare, sound walls, and site design were appropriate. and a maximum of one autonomous fleet operation per block. That particular regulation is quite similar to how we regulate, for example, cannabis. We used to have a provision like that for restaurants on Main Street that no longer exist there. So this is something that has existed in the zoning ordinance before. That concludes my presentation. The recommendation is to adopt the CEQA finding and to introduce and adopt the emergency IZO. Happy to answer your questions. I also do have some red lines to the ordinance itself. There were some clarifications, which if Council chooses to move forward with them, we can put them on the screen as well.

sorry but can you just address why we have these red lines and what they are or maybe our city manager can talk about the engagement that he's had at a high level um as we've been um the council recalls we had agendized this particular measure for consideration um a couple of weeks ago the initial construct was slightly different we had pulled that item because we had gotten some correspondence from the state We subsequently engaged with state. We also engaged with representatives from the industry in order to try to craft an ordinance that Pursued our policy objective and bring this matter forward, which is protecting residents that are living adjacent to these types of charging facilities. As we engage those conversations, we had some clarification questions that came up after posting. We published the additional clarifications in via red line to the agenda. We have copies here. Basically, the construct remains exactly the same as Jing described, but there's some clarifications and some wording changes to make sure there's clarity in how the ordinance would be applied moving forward.

Yeah. And I'm happy to just, I put on the screen here what has been published to the agenda and is available in the Chamber. Some clarification wording around the neighborhood liaison contact, just indicating that person shall be the primary contact for a neighbor and transportation-related

concerns and complaints.

And then the other one is, again, clarification about that piece around EV charging, except that autonomous vehicles shall be permitted to enter and exit for purposes of vehicle charging only. And then this B is basically a replacement. Previously, there was a provision kind of like a plainly audible standard that was in the ordinance. So that has been replaced with compliance with the noise ordinance.

I'm sorry?

Oh, for overnight. Excuse me. For overnight operations compliance with the chapter 4.12. Excuse me.

Great. Is that it? Or, oh, there's more. I think that was the last.

Oh. And then the definition itself striking parking from the definition.

Great.

So I think we have some folks in the queue.

I think you already recognized me and my apologies. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yes, go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. I was like, what? I'm done? Okay. So I just wanted to get some clarification. I apologize if you already addressed this. Why are we doing this as an emergency interim zoning ordinance?

Sure. So it's an emergency interim zoning ordinance because we are seeing kind of like public health and safety impacts, you know, form some of these existing facilities. in terms of impacts to the public right-of-way, and also from light and noise, and then secondly, that there are pending applications, and we have inquiries for at least, we're probably at least three potential facilities, and we have no standards in the zoning ordinance to address a use like this.

So would this be in order to allow those three potential facilities to move forward with the process while still giving us time to work out the permanent language for this?

Correct. Yeah. So this would get standards in place quickly, provide a predictable and certain path for these kinds of uses with standard operational conditions. You know, so there's no question about what the rules are.

Thank you. And I'm not sure if this is a question for the city attorney or for you, Maceo, but Like, can we confirm that this wouldn't be retroactive? Because my understanding is ordinances can only be on a go-forward basis. So would we need an applicability clause that this only applies for applications for these types of facilities after this is enacted, or is that just state law?

So typically, ordinances are prospective, meaning that they apply point forward unless the council makes a policy decision. to kind of reach back. I think, I mean, if there was a desire to have clarifying language of that nature, I don't know if there would be any legal objection to that.

Yes, usually I agree with the planning director. If it's something council would like included, we could. Usually when you see language, it has to do with pending applications, which actually this would apply to pending applications. But existing operations are not going to be affected by a zoning ordinance change.

Okay. And we don't need to have that in the ordinance in order for that? Okay.

No. And we have received questions from the industry about existing operations in the city, and we have confirmed with them that this EIZO would not apply to existing operations.

Okay. Thank you for that clarification. And then... One more thing. I really appreciate the language updates that were made today because that addressed some of the concerns that I had heard from folks. One other question on the two minimum, the standard to have two employees at minimum on site. Is that for operating hours? How is that calculated?

Yeah, it's well, it's it's just on the site at any point in time. And really it's to deal with because you're dealing with autonomous vehicles. If there's a vehicle breakdown, a malfunction, we're also considering, I mean, they typically have security on site, you know, that kind of thing. So two seemed quite reasonable, you know, based on the need to have security, assuming one security, let's say in like one operational person, it's just someone able to, you know, address things that might happen.

And for EV, like for overnight EV charging only. So if it, It's only EV charging at night with the additional language that ingress and egress from the site is still part of EV charging only. Do they still have to have, I mean, I assume they have to have people on site just to plug in the vehicles because I don't think we have autonomous vehicles that plug themselves into charge yet.

Yeah, that's what we have observed when it comes to vehicle charging.

Okay, and also to clarify, because I saw fueling in here, apologies, I know I said one more question. Does this also apply to autonomous vehicles that are powered through means other than EV? So hydrogen powered, I'm not aware of any autonomous vehicles that are powered by combustible gas, but who knows, somebody... So it applies to autonomous vehicles no matter what type of fuel they use, whether electric, hydrogen. I don't know, maybe somebody will invent something that runs on happiness and laughter. That would be great. Okay, cool. Thank you so much for those clarifications. Council Member Zick.

Thank you for this. One question, I think I saw the mention of sound walls and other mitigating elements that might help with compatibility with residential zones. But I've also heard that some of the current standards that we might have from a building and safety or other perspective might be delimiting on some of those types of mitigations. I'm just wondering how this will interact with with, say, you know, our code that, you know, in terms of what kind of onsite improvements can be made on a space. But, you know, some project like this is contemplated.

Yeah, I mean, the sound walls themselves, it would just be like a typical wall with acoustic measures, if you will. You may be referring to maybe some confusion with respect to if we treated like parking lots or what have you which have a different standard lower walls what have you we just have different standards often yeah like but that's a completely separate land use and this is a different land use so these are not these are not considered parking lots these are fleet operations you know so the there wouldn't be that limitation there in terms of wall height the only one i'm aware of is like up to seven feet you don't need a permit beyond that you need to get a building permit so okay um and then so i think this was just mentioned by council members and sky but

It says that fleet-based operations include fueling. So that's considered different than charging?

Yes.

OK. So if you're charging, that's kosher.

The ordinance is not about electric vehicle charging.

But if you're fueling, that means you're operating a fleet.

You're fueling. Autonomous vehicles are not necessarily, they're not the same as electric vehicles.

But they can be electric.

They can be electric. However, as we said, EV charging is regulated under state law. This ordinance does not cross over into that state law.

Okay. Thank you.

Great. Let's hear the public comments, and then we'll potentially hear a motion or have some discussion. So we have Alex Brown, Harvin Melendez, Dylan Moore, and Amarvir Brar. So Alex Brown, maybe you can go first. Or if Alex Brown is not here. Oh, Alex Brown is here. Go ahead.

Yeah.

Hey, guys. How are you? I'm Alex. I'm speaking on behalf of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce. So first, I just want to say thank you for the revisions to the proposed EOZO. The redlining looked like it covered a lot of the issues that we had. allowing the overnight charging, softening the noise standard, addressed our core concerns, and we appreciate that you did all of that. One just note is that moving forward, the original draft would have effectively banned overnight charging near residential areas and with a zero tolerance noise standard. Language that's that sweeping brought forward without advanced consultation can rattle businesses and make future investors wary of regulatory fights, even if they have potential to get fixed. So going forward, we just hope that there's a conversation between business stakeholders, the chamber, if necessary, before language like this reaches a public draft.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Brown. Harvin Melendez.

Good night, council member. So my name is Harvin Melendez. I'm an Uber driver, and I live in Santa Monica. Today I'm speaking as a member of California Geek Worker Union. So as a full-time doing Uber driver, the streets are my workplace. I am out there day and night. in all conditions, responsibly for the safety of my passengers and myself. When autonomous vehicles block traffic, interfere with emergency service, and run noise, 24-hour facilities in our neighborhoods put our streets at risk and disrupt our communities. The emergency ordinance is a major step toward making sure autonomous vehicles operators don't put new strain in our neighborhood. My hope is that this one ordinance limits how our neighborhoods are impacted by any future autonomous vehicles facilities, as well as those already operating here in Santa Monica. Autonomous vehicles companies need to know our streets and our neighborhoods are not testing grounds. It is time to hold them accountable. Thank you, Councilmember, for thinking about how autonomous vehicles operate in our city. And thank you for your time.

Thank you. Dillon Moore.

Hi, good evening. My name is Dillon Moore. I live near the AV fleet lots on Broadway. And I've spoken here before about how my neighborhood has been impacted by fleet operations next to our residences. I appreciate the work that went into tonight's item 12C, and I recognize my neighborhood's lived experiences in it. I came to voice my support and to say thank you, and thank you for taking our concerns seriously and moving it in a direction that can help modernize and future-proof our city. Thank you. Please vote yes.

Great. And then Amarvi or Brar?

Oh, are you not talking? You're good? Okay.