Bienvenidos.

Welcome to a special meeting with Zapum Bay.

2024.

May I have a roll call, please?

Councilmember Brownstone.

Here.

Councilmember Reddick.

Here.

Councilmember Penrose.

Here.

Vice Mayor Marback?

Here.

And Mayor Jimenez.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

May we stand up with a pledge?

Thank you.

How about motion to approve the agenda?

So moved.

Second.

Roll call.

Councilmember Brownstone?

Yes.

Councilmember Penrose?

Yes.

Councilmember Redick?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Raback?

Yes.

And Mayor Jimenez.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Do I have any reports from our closed sessions?

Thank you, Mayor and Council.

The council did meet in closed session prior to this meeting to discuss one item, conference with real property negotiators regarding 555 Kelly Avenue and negotiations regarding terms of a potential lease agreement.

Nothing to report out of closed session.

Thank you.

And just wanted to let the council and the community know that this is a because this is a special meeting, there's no requirement to have a public forum, so that was not agendized for tonight's meeting.

So the only substantive item is the item 1A.

We're ready.

And we can go then briefly just into what the county is is asking for in their ballot and go from there.

So thank you.

So the request again from the county executive is to consider the uh ballot measure here, and I won't read it because it's um long, but basically what is being requested in uh um in principle is a countywide election ballot measure and election to um consider basically overriding and accepting um uh elimination of Article 34 within um all boundaries of the county, including incorporated and unincorporated cities in that and unincorporated areas of the county.

So that is what this generally entails.

Article 34 in its basic sense is goes back to 1950, was approved by an initiative, and what Article 34 put forth is that a voter approval is required prior to development of I euphemized a little bit public rental housing.

What it really says is low rent housing by the state, a city, a county, or any other subdivision or public body.

What this really was geared at in 1950 was federal kind of urban renewal programs and things that were put forth.

And at that point, and even proceeding into subsequent decades was a focus on federal money focused into basically public projects, and I think any number of us can list out some that we might have come across in our travels or in our lives with that deal.

But that was the issue.

And bottom line kind of takeaway on this is that it is not applicable to projects involving public agencies and ownership units.

I've gone into a bit of that, but um generally goes back to a single um Eureka housing project in which a challenge to the project was sought by referendum.

Supreme Court determined that that was not a referendable project, and ultimately this snowballed um into a 1950 election Prop 10 statewide election, which created um Article 34.

Um as far as we can find, Article 34 is the only such article in any of the constitutions of the 50 states, other 50 states of the of the union.

So this is a very unique situation.

Um Article 34, sort of the impacts as I noted, obviously were um probably uh significantly more considerable when the model was funding by the federal government for city county authority projects, things of that nature.

Um 50s, 60s, and 70s, that was really the policies out there.

Um Article 34 impacts by all assessments and and and evaluation that we've come across, basically agree in that Article 34 has far less implications and impacts today simply because the model of delivery of housing in its exist in its existence is less impactful than it was in the early days of that um of the law because of the models changed in part because of probably Article 34 to some extent, but but not fully that reason.

Um there have been several repeal attempts over the years, 74, 77, and 93 notably were statewide ballot measures that failed.

Um in um more recent times, just this last June, the legislature withdrew um SCA 2, which was approved in 2022, which would have placed an initiative on the city on this on the statewide ballot for consideration of removal of Article 34.