- ...

I'm spending does make that causal connection and resultant lower incidence of diabetes or
reduction in the consumption of the sugar sweetened beverages, what-what kinds of expenditures help
make that happen?

- I think that they're the biggest-, the well, best known one looks at whether or not there's walkable
streets and public transportation things that get people out of cars and that encourage other kinds of
activities for instance the data on childhood obesity in the-the improvement of parks is well established.

- Thank you. Thank you. It's very helpful. I appreciate that. Mr. Gundani[?], if we are sued on this issue-.
on this issue, to defend ourselves we would use what color dollars to defend ourselves?

- General fund.

- General fund money, but I suspect I'm in the same place everybody else is which is the industry is not
even pretending as if they're not going to sue us over this. They're very clear. They don't think that is
settled off at all.[Laughs] And if I also understand it correctly we are the single city, no city, no county in
the state of California has adopted this under the current set of rules. Is that right?

- That's correct. No public agency has enacted one of these types of taxes since the Keep Groceries
Affordable Act was enacted.

- So my sentence is, my colleagues do great work in this what I've called the public health space and I
think you do really good work. I-I think this is wonderful, and that's not a verbal racer[?]. It's wonderful,
with our eyes wide open. We're obviously doing something no city, no county has desired decided to do.
We believe if we do this and we prevail we may be the pointy end of the spear that allows other
jurisdictions to do it if we prevail. It's not going to be prevailing because our voters vote for it. It's we're
going to court,

and if I was the industry, any industry fighting a little city, I would make it a resource mismatch and I
would take it to the to the trial court, the appellate court, the court passed that and the court passed
that, to see just how far I could go and whether this little city is going to blink.

Because as I understand it, we don't have the league of cities standing behind us. I've heard the-, what
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-, Foundation, may or may not, but if I understand it, we're taking this
action today with not one entity standing with us to agree to defend us on this if there's litigation, is that
right? We don't have any reason to believe that there's anybody who has committed to funding defense
for the city of Santa Cruz.
- We have reason to believe that there may be organizations or groups that will support the city in
defending the litigation, but we do not have a contractual commitment to do so at this point in the time.

- I would say likely.

- Please, please do.

- Yeah.

- I'd like to hear if you have a response on that.

- Yeah, I-I would just say, not only would they maybe, they would likely, and they're already, you know,
preparing for that moment. This was the second stage of the lawsuit...

- Yeah.

- ... I was involved in that was pro bono funded by folks who wanted to make sure that local jurisdictions
could uphold what we have as a right in the state of California and being able to bring these types of
taxes to our voters. So this is no surprise to folks who've been tracking this. And they're certainly
standing behind us, but we have to have something for them to stand behind before they actually get
direct dollars and they're lining those up if we are able to move forward to here today.

- Thank you. That's very helpful. Please, Ms. Kalantari-Johnson.

- Thank you. I just want to add that in our community engagement we have local stakeholders who have
also indicated that they will be supporting this should it move forward to the ballot.

- Supporting defense...

- No supporting-,
- ... on the ballot and escalate.

- ... supporting. Yes.

- Oh, I suspect it has passed. [Chuckles] That's not my issue. I-I'd be stunned if this didn't pass.

- Financial resources is what I meant.

- Right.

- Yeah, on the campaign side. So I-I think this is what's going to happen, we can foresee this and don't
have to be James Carville to figure out the politics of this. What's going to happen is we're going to put it
on the ballot, the industry will come in and spend a million dollars against it. Some group of somebody's
who are-are wonderful and committed to this will raise and put up money that will be no match for that
million or more dollars. It'll either pass or fail. If it passes then the industry will spend whatever is
necessary to wan-wander this thing through the courts for multiple years costing us huge amounts of
money to defend if we choose to defend it.

That's my only point I'm trying to make is, we got to go into it with our eyes wide open. I don't want the
constituents to think, 'oh, yeah, you can just do this', and then it's going to go, then it's going to pass and
then we're going to reduce childhood obesity or whatever. It's all-, it's just blue skies and sunshine out in
front of us. It's not even close to that. It's dark clouds and thunder in front of us, but you're doing-, you
brought the right thing to us. God love you for doing that. But I predict we're a long way from ever
collecting a penny and spending on it to reduce childhood obesity. The clerk will call the roll.

- Councilmember Newsome?

- Aye.

- Brown?

- Aye.
- Watkins?

- Aye.

- Brunner?

- Aye.

- Kalantari-Johnson?

- Aye.

- Vice mayor Golder?

- Aye.

- Mayor, Keeley Kelly?

- Aye, motion passes and so ordered. We're on item 42, city of Santa Cruz homeless response strategic
plan for July 2024 through June of 2027 as Ms. Murphy and Mr. M. Wally queuing up here, and good
afternoon and welcome.

- Good afternoon. If you just give me moment. I'll get my trusty city clerk to help me out here.

[Background conversation].

- Damn, right. Damn, right. Damn, right.

[Background conversation].

- Ms. Murphy.

- Thank you. Right. Good afternoon mayor and councilmembers. Lisa Murphy, deputy or city manager
for the city of Santa Cruz. It's my pleasure to present to you and to the community the city's updated
homeless response strategic plan. I'll be presenting to you today along with my colleague Larry Imwalle.
We're going to do a little tag team. So the Strategic plan builds upon the foundation of our past
accomplishments and carries the work forward with a more informed perspective from our past
experiences.

And while some of the terminology has-, terminology has changed and our values have been updated to
include equity or unwavering commitment remain steadfast. This plan will guide the city's homeless
response efforts over the next 3 years. I just want to give a brief overview of some of our successes
many of you've already seen some of this information. In the 2023 pit count, and to say also denote the
2024 pit count, the details are not quite out yet.

So these are 2023 numbers, 29% decrease in unhoused citizens in the city of Santa Cruz from 2022 to
2023. We've housed 121 individuals and we've built 960 affordable units. We picked up 948 tons of
trash. We serve 776 people in our shelter programs, and we have 165 tent based safe sleeping programs
at the Armory and at the 1220 River Street Shelter. This strategic plan will be a road map for the next 3
years. It builds off of our previous work that the-, amazing previous work we've done before. This plan
also accomplishes one of your seven strategic plan goals that you set out with addressing homelessness.

This plan we will come back to annually update with our status of how we're doing. And finally this plan
is in alignment with the state and the county plans. Just a little bit of background on how you put this
plan together, the city held h-, strategic planning process sessions with our community stakeholders.
Other stakeholder meetings were held with people with lived experience, city staff, service providers,
community members. and businesses.

We took all of that information and we incorporated what we heard. What we heard from the city staff
and their priorities was we wanted this staff safety to be prioritized, more permanent Supportive
Housing, expand shelter capacity with the diversity of shelter programs, continue to collaborate across
all City departments. They want to see increased participation from the county, increase number of case
managers housing navigation and Outreach, and ongoing Community Education about the city's
homeless response efforts
What we heard from the feedback from our service providers, their top priorities for our strategic
planning process was expand shelter capacity with a diversity of shelter programs. They want to see
improved communication between the city staff and the community based organizations when we go to
resolve encampments. They'd like to see increasing of our staffing of our case managers and-and in the
region and of course more Supportive Housing. They'd also like to see assistance with collaboration
across all regional service providers.

Our staff met with people with lived experience in November and December. They conducted surveys
and-, with focus groups, with folks from the Armory 1220 River, and at that time people living up
friendship Garden. What we heard from these folks were expand shelter capacity with diversity and low
barrier shelter, more day services to meet basic needs, better access to hys-, hygiene and health
services, access to training and classes, job support, literacy support, and more assistance navigating the
complex network.

And finally in the spring of 2024, we did a community survey. It was an amazing response. We had 690
responses. Many of those people are also businesses. We also had about over 600 of those individuals
write in responses that we went through and read each of those responses. It reflects a well-informed
community that recognizes the complex relationship between social economic environmental factors.
And while this was our first survey we will be doing an annual survey to track the changes around our
community sentiment around these issues over time.

And what we heard from the community the top priority issues for them, accessible parks and open
spaces, citizens safety, business and economic concerns, humanitarian concerns, environmental
concerns, environ-, equitable enforcement of the law, community well-being and quality life, clean
neighborhoods and streets, more affordable housing, and service provisions for support for the in-
house. Our team took all of this feedback from all of these stakeholders to help us create this new
strategic plan.

Just real briefly, it's not just us and I know you all know that. It's a crisis at all levels, the national state,
county, and in the city level and so we try to incorporate all of those plans and all of the data to help
inform us in this plan. Again, I won't repeat all the data but just as a backdrop and context of why we
have the priorities and the goals that we set was based on what is happening in our community, 57% of
the homeless population in the county lives right here in the city of Santa Cruz, and I know you all know
that.

And just briefly from the-the pit count, why? What are the causes? The majority of homeless in our
County are white male over 25 years old. And why are they homeless? I hear this all the time when I'm
meeting with people, 35% is due to a lost job, 24% is because of substance use, 19% was from eviction,
13% from a divorce or breakup. It's important to understand what are the causes and what else
contributes to the homelessness in our community.

The survey also reported self-reporting of individuals who are experiencing homelessness and what are
their current conditions, 46% do identify themselves with substance use disorders, almost 40% have
psychiatric or emotional conditions, 38% with PTSD, 34% with physical disabilities, on and on and on. It-
It's heartbreaking when you're out there and I know many of you, I went with you on the pit counts and
you see this. It is heartbreaking to watch what's happening in a community in the state.

I want to show you that this plan aligns with-with the county. Where it lines up I've identified in our
strategic plan. I want to outline it here in decreasing homelessness, prevention of homelessness and
building regional capacities. We have shared goals and we're working together diligently to meet the
needs of this community. And I just want to give a couple of other little brief outlines of what we're
doing together. We are working together in lobbying.

We work together to create the Severe Weather Shelter last year and we will do it again this year. Thank
you for passing that in your budget. We're working together with the county[?] and the Coral Street
navigation center. As you know, the city was rewarded an encampment resolution Grant and we're
working with housing matters and-and the county to implement that Grant. And as you know, we meet
bi-weekly, coordination meetings. Several of you work on the-, on the housing for health policy board
and our outreach staff support with the county during encampment closures and service connections.

With that I want to jump right into the actual plan, the heart of the planet stuff and I'm going to turn it
over to my colleague Larry Imwalle.

- Good afternoon, Mr. M. Wally. Thank you for your good work.

- Great. Thank you. Good afternoon. Mayor, councilmembers. Larry Imwalle homelessness response
manager. So what Lisa described really is is the context the information the input we received is we set
about update the action plan that we adopted two plus years ago really trying to take what we've
learned what we've accomplished the work of.

Transcript: Partners making sure we're aligned with the state and I think importantly as we talked about
the community engagement the stakeholders we engaged for this iteration and strategic plan. So we're
really getting more diverse perspectives that are really informed how we've gone about this. So the
framework for this process really is building on our commitment which is connected to our values. You
will also see that in this strategic plan. that we hope to achieve with through our strategic plan.
Transcript: Not really focus and drives our action areas that organized the strategies the specific
activities that we're doing to have an impact on homelessness. So our updated commitment statement
is in Santa Cruz or homelessness response will strive to balance individual needs with broad Community
impacts spanning from prevention strategies to successful Pathways to stable housing. And so we
modified that really to reflect the spectrum of the work that we're engaged in.

Transcript: Our updated values include health safety collaboration as Lisa mentioned Equity is now
explicitly in our values environmental stewardship transparency economic vitality and fiscal
responsibility.

Transcript: So we've articulated broad goals in this plan what we're really trying to achieve. We're trying
to decrease almost notice an existing homelessness. We're trying to prevent new homelessness and is
part of the strategy is increasing affordable housing units housing is the solution to homelessness and
reduce the impacts of encampments and protect our environment and continue to build Regional
capacity and Partnerships to do this work.

Transcript: work

Transcript: and so the action areas that we've developed to organize our strategies to work towards
those goals. We continue to have five but we have re labeled and reorganized some of these compared
to the action plan. So we continue have building capacity and Partnerships affordable and Supportive
Housing, which is slightly modified from permanent affordable and Supportive Housing in the action
plan.

Transcript: Environmental stewardship, which was part of Karen stewardship previously shelter care and
support instead of basic support services. And finally Community safety, which was a category one of
our focuser is last time and really we try to do the big change here is really trying to clarify our strategies
between last night basic Support Services had elements of both environmental stewardship and care for
people. So now

Transcript: Shelter care and support is really about focusing on our work with people environmental
stewardship is really focusing our activities on our protection of the environment and our open spaces
and our streets.

Transcript: So I'll go quickly through each of the Five Focus areas and give you a sense of some of the
updated strategies. They're all articulated in the full document I wanted to highlight some of the work to
give an idea of what we've changed and what's been updated in this iteration of the Strategic plan. So
building capacity and Partnerships is really about our commitment to collaborating both internally
across City departments and externally with our

Transcript: T Partners through the first two plus years really a lot of our work in terms of building
capacity was focused internally building our team's building out our Outreach team building our Police
Department's almost Response Team our Public Works field crew to be able to do this work across
departments. So in this updated strategic plan really now that we have that internal capacity and place
putting more effort in terms of building our

Transcript: Community Partnerships working with CB OS faith-based organizations and continuing

importantly to work with the county and making sure that our work is aligned Community engagement
getting feedback from Community to make sure that the services and programs that we're doing are
efficacious and are working and meeting the needs of the community as well as continuing to look for an
established sustainable funding sources.

Transcript: Affordable and Supportive Housing again. As I mentioned, you know, the solution to
homelessness is really housing and having appropriate housing that's accessible to everybody Santa Cruz
is a leader in the state in terms of affordable housing Pro housing designation meeting Rena goals at all
income levels. So continuing building on that work is important in the next three years at the Strategic
plan think importantly

Transcript: To at this updated strategic plan. We put more explicit focus on prevention efforts are really
one of the Dynamics that we're seeing now is we are having as a community as a region and in this I
think this is true across California more success and getting people from homelessness into housing than
ever before. The problem is people are losing their housing at a greater rate than we're able to move
them through the system. So putting more focus on

Transcript: Attention on prevention efforts which are much cheaper to keep up.

[END]