City Council Crapshow Coming Up Tuesday December 9th

It's usually misleading to suggest activists and other community members go to Council meetings with the notion that Council, the staff, or the City Manager meaningfully care to listen to you. Some members of the public (the few who come) and others on distant media are your real audience.

To be successful in a subsequent court challenge, you need to address specific issues either in written form before or during the Council Meeting or verbally in the tiny time allowed you. Good luck with finding and funding an attorney.

Still for those diehards who want to speak at the Council (and to the Community), here is my sense of the nonsense being presented for rubberstamping before the Council tucks in its tail and heads for Xmas vacation for six weeks. As well as what's not on the Agenda, but should be.

Oral Communication (for items missing from the Agenda that should be there)
That's most everything including
meaningful police accountability and review;,
transferring funding from overarming the cops to real social services;
restoring Coral St. services slated to shut down in March;
helping MHCAN to restore its services; with MHCAN and the Street Team shut down
funding immediate walk-in emergency shelter for winter
serious vacancy fines for keeping properties vacant for investment
stopping the intensifying homeless sweeps funded by City Mangler Matt Huffaker,

Huffaker, the highest paid official, works with a compliant City Council, and "No Kings but King...er...Mayor" Fred Keeley to continue the regular theft and destruction of homeless tents, blankets, and other property. This gang presides over the isolation and destruction of homeless communities while maintaining a pretense of "adequate shelter" and the even more unlikely "Pathway to Housing".
In the past, members of the public had the right to single out individual items for public comment, staff report, Council discussion, and.Council vote. In a Council swing towards authoritarism, 20 years ago the Council voted to require requests be made to and granted by the Council. If a Royal Councilmember of King Keeley's Court grants your wish, you may be able to slow the inevitable.

The agenda is mostly made up of items to be rubberstamped by City Council, set down by staff before hand. Public Comment is choked back to a tiny 2 minute allowance for the total mass of all 26 items as a group (including Consent and Consent Public Hearing Item).

To see staff the agenda, staff reports and details of how to squeak out 2 minutes by phone go to
https://ecm.cityofsantacruz.com/OnBaseAgendaOnline/Meetings/Search?dropid=4&mtids=103%2C104%2C105%2C106

For a discussion of many of the following items, go to https://www1.huffsantacruz.org/lost/1%20FRSC%2012-7-25.mp3 (30 minutes in)

These Agenda items--the ones I found time to skim over-- were
## 10, 11, 12,13, 16, 17, and; 18
+Consent Public Hearing Items ##31, 32, 35, & 36

Read them and weep.
#10 Slush Fund for the "All in the Family" City Attorney's Office
#11 More chatter rather than funding or action on current and coming cuts in homeless services
#12 More battery storage without specifying whether lithium batteries involved
#13 $$ for more "Outreach", without providing housing or services to those directly affected
#16 $ for Phony, ineffectual, and non-transparent-"police review"
#17 Likely cutbacks in City Commissions further centralizing power in the staff and City Mangler
#18 More crowd control devices for dealing with public anger when folks have had enough.
#31 Law criminalizing holding up protest signs, or "help wanted" signs on medians
#32 Law allowing the seizure of "abandoned" vendors' food, crafts, and goods.
#33 Law sweeping away homes-on-wheels under cover of "street cleaning"
#36 Staff recommends removing two Coast Redwood trees at 401 Ingalls St. ($$ for someone)

Choose your poison. You will only be allowed 2 minutes before your mike is shut off and Fast Lane Fred hustles you out--with help from an armed cop as needed.

Item #37 is the "election" of the Vice-Mayor. That is, the Council chooses who It wants.

Keith McHenry of Food Not Bombs has announced he will be present to add additional issues to the discussion outside City Council. One of the principal benefits of treking down to City Hall for their twice monthly meetings comes when larger crowds of people gather (often on issues that the Council has ignored). There you can meet with others concerned about finding new ways to address an antiquated, corrupt, and authoritarian system here locally.