Tuesday’s City Council meeting is a packed start to the year and included in the diverse agenda are a pair of items covering the city’s Cannabis Equity Program and more than $1.6 million in contract modifications to expand automated enforcement of bike lanes and extend real-time bus arrival predictions.

The cannabis equity proposal comes as the city prepares to accept cannabis business applications later this month, with staff recommending changes to align local regulations with state standards and ensure eligibility for future grant funding.

Under the proposed updates, applicants would need to meet two of three eligibility criteria instead of all three, providing more flexibility for potential equity applicants while addressing recent legal concerns about residency requirements raised in challenges to cannabis equity programs in other jurisdictions, including Los Angeles County.

The three criteria categories are cannabis conviction or arrest history, household income levels, and neighborhood criteria.

For conviction history, the updated program would require that qualifying arrests or convictions for cannabis offenses occurred before Nov. 8, 2016, aligning with state standards. The income threshold would be lowered from 80 percent of Area Median Income to 60 percent of AMI, matching the state requirement for low-income status.

The most substantial changes affect what the city previously called “Community Ties,” now renamed “Neighborhood Criteria” to match state terminology. The updated criteria would require at least five years of residency in a qualifying county between 1980 and 2016, plus either residence in a qualifying census tract or an immediate family member with a pre-2016 cannabis arrest or conviction.

For business applicants, the updates would establish that equity individuals must own 50 percent or more of the business to qualify as an equity business.

Two program benefits will be eliminated because they became obsolete after the council’s decision last September to remove the 300-foot minimum distance requirement between cannabis businesses. The removed benefits are exemptions from minimum distance requirements and provisional license approval before securing a business location.

The modifications come after staff received guidance from the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development following the council’s initial adoption of the equity program in September 2025. Adopting the updates before program implementation will ensure all eligible applicants can qualify for direct assistance and grants under future state cannabis equity funding, according to the staff report prepared by Associate Planner Ana Fernandez.

The city plans to begin accepting cannabis retailer and equity permit applications at the end of January 2026.

The council will also consider two separate but related transportation proposals, both involving modifications to existing software contracts rather than new physical infrastructure.

The first would add $944,000 to the city’s contract with Hayden AI to launch automated bike lane enforcement on up to seven Santa Monica Police Department parking enforcement vehicles. The second would extend the city’s agreement with Swiftly Ltd. by $718,751 to maintain real-time bus arrival data through fiscal year 2027-28.

The bike lane enforcement initiative comes after a six-week pilot program in spring 2024 revealed widespread violations in the city’s bicycle network. From May 6 through June 19, two SMPD vehicles equipped with cameras recorded 1,679 violations, with most occurring along north-south streets in Downtown Santa Monica. The vendor identified 263 of those as “egregious” violations that posed the greatest risk to cyclists by significantly blocking bike lanes.

“Staff concluded, based on the pilot data, that vehicles stopping and parking in the City’s bike lanes were a recurring issue of concern that warranted further exploration and mitigation measures to improve safety on our streets for all users,” according to a staff report from Anuj Gupta, director of transportation.

The program is authorized under California Assembly Bill 361, passed in October 2023, which allows local jurisdictions to use camera-based enforcement for bike lane violations. The program will be funded by Measure K, with $200,000 allocated for the first year and $186,000 for subsequent years.

The transit tracking proposal addresses keeping Big Blue Bus riders informed about when their buses will arrive. The city’s 195 transit buses serve an average of 820,000 riders monthly across 69 square miles of greater Los Angeles, with most riders depending on real-time bus arrival predictions available through smartphone apps including Transit and Google Maps.

Swiftly provides the cloud-hosted software that generates accurate real-time bus location and arrival information. The city originally planned to complete a competitive procurement process for a new real-time analytics system, but staffing constraints and the need to integrate with a recently installed Computer-Aided Dispatch Automated Vehicle Locator system have delayed that timeline.

Both items are part of the meetings consent calendar and may be voted on with little or no comment unless specifically pulled from the agenda for discussion. The City Council meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 1685 Main St.