 Good afternoon. Welcome to today's City Council meeting. We'll reconvene an open session. Mr. Gulen, item 3.1. Thank you. Item 3.1 is a wireless small-cell deployment on city-owned streetlights and joint utility pools and presenting as Deputy Director of Development Services, Gabe Osborne. Good afternoon, Mayor Schwedhelm and members of the Council. As Mr. Gulen mentioned in the introduction, the item before the Council at this point in time is an update on our small-cell deployments, which are cellular infrastructure that is being installed in the right-of-way. I'd like to begin the study session by providing a brief background of how we got to where we are today. And that background will include past Council discussions. So we've had two action items that resulted in policy creation or amendments that we'll talk about. And we also had two study sessions to discuss the deployments of small cells. Also get into a detail of the different cellular types. So we're focusing mainly on small cells, but we'll also talk about macro sites, which are cellular installations that are taking place on private property. We'll talk about the difference, as well as the legal framework that controls those. So there is quite a bit of federal and state requirements that affect the approval process when dealing with cellular sites. Also talk about the... Can you remember just for a minute? Absolutely. Council, we're going to stop after I think about slide 16 to give you an opportunity to ask questions, then we'll finish the presentation. And then on slide 32, I think there's 33 slides after that. Another opportunity. So you'll have two opportunities to ask questions. Sorry, go ahead. No problem. So we'll also talk about installations. So this will focus on the installations that we currently have within the city limits. So those are either going to be installed small cells or permitted small cells. Those are all focusing on deployment of the 4G network that Verizon is focusing on. Now, of course, there is more of a nationwide discussion about 5G. So we will have a further discussion in the presentation about how the deployment of these small cells would potentially support the installation of a 5G network. We're also going to talk about community concerns. In the previous two study sessions, we focused a lot on the importance of expanding cellular connectivity. It's either closing coverage gaps or it's providing better data. So an example of a coverage gap would be dropping a cell phone call while driving down a street. The better data would be more capacity to high-speed data and better speed. So that's really catered to individuals that are usually in phones for that purpose of downloading video, for example. So we see from the prevalence of cell phone use that that is desired. But instead of focusing on that, we wanted to focus on some of the negative sides of that rollout. And those came through with the community concerns that we heard. So we're really not going to talk much about the portent of the network expansion, but we're going to talk about the community concerns. That's the intention of this study session. So following along with that, we wanted to take those community concerns and see what we can work out as far as solutions go to those that are within our control. So we'll be talking a lot today about a limited release on streetlight installation. So all the installations thus far have been on PG&E utility poles. So we'll talk about the importance of that. I'll explain further why we want to do that. And that will be limited to commercial areas only, non-residential. And I'll talk about what that looks like as well. And the intention behind that is really to address the concerns that we've heard over the last year or so. We will also be talking about emergency learning. That came up in previous study sessions. We were fresh off of the 2017 wildfires at that point. Since then, we had massive evacuations due to the concaved fire. We've also had power shutdown events. So we're going to talk a little bit about the importance of maintaining emergency alerting in those types of events. So when looking at the previous council actions, there was an adoption in July of 2007 that created council policy 300-04. And that's our telecommunications policy. And that deals with the installation of telecommunications equipment and antennas. And it mainly focused at that time on either publicly owned or privately owned parcels, not the right of way. And those are usually where you see macro sites. They're larger installations. So most of the language in that policy really governed macro sites. We amended the policy in February of 2017 to incorporate small cells. So those are slightly different. They're smaller in size and they're located in the public right-of-way. And that policy governs the guidelines that the provider must follow before getting approval of those sites. And in the policy, it requires a master license agreement. So that would be the provider executing an agreement with the city that gives them rights to install small cells in the city limits. It does not give specific polls. Then they have to follow through with a site license agreement, which is approval for a specific poll. And that is a discretionary action. So we can control the outcome of that. There are also annual license fees that are negotiated into the master license agreement. And the execution authority has been delegated down to the city manager or his or her designee. Currently, assistant city manager Gwin has the authority to execute those agreements. In addition to the adoption of the policy, we had council study sessions conducted on March 6 of 2018 and June 5th of 2018. And at that point, we were deploying small cells, really based on the fact that we had an approved policy to do so. So the intention behind the study sessions was to provide an update. And based on the feedback we received from council members and from the community at that time, we elected to pause the installations that we controlled under the policy, which were those on street lights. So for the last year or so, we've been trying to figure out a way to move this forward while addressing the concerns. So since the pause was placed by staff, as we talk through some of these solutions, some of them will move forward based on the language of the policy as early as tomorrow, and some of them will acquire a future council adoption. I'll be very clear as we step through these as to which ones will happen now, and that's our proposal, and which ones will come back to council to lump it back together into more of a formal policy discussion. So we'll start with a brief discussion of macro sites. So either typically larger installations, as we can see of the image on the left, that's an antenna array. So there's multiple antennas, they're larger in size. There could be multiple providers on one site. So the building on the right is actually the fire training center. So that's a city facility, and we see the antennas on the top. For other city facilities, they're commonly on water tanks, so they look for the height to get the proper coverage for the antenna. So they also go in private structures. So oftentimes the provider will negotiate with a private property owner. We've seen them in church steeples or on private buildings, and the construction is addressed under the zoning code, as well as the council policy. The approval process requires that the provider submit a use permit or a design review. They are reviewed against published design guidelines in the zoning code, and as part of that process, they're required to submit an alternate site license agreement, as well as a radio frequency analysis, excuse me, alternate site report, and a radio frequency analysis. So the alternate site analysis basically looks at other sites in which a similar facility can go to make sure that this is creating the least amount of impact. So they have to show that they looked at other sites prior to getting approval to put it on private property. The radio frequency analysis looks at the radio frequency emissions from the site, and we'll have a hefty amount of conversation about this. This is an important piece to the overall deployment. So this will be covered further in future slides to explain how that review process works. So in addition, the review process involves public meetings and public hearings. That's part of the use permit or the design review. There are building permits. Those are not for the installation of the equipment. Those are for the attachment of the equipment to the building. So that's what we look for as part of the building permit process, and there are also lease agreements if it's on city-owned property. So as I mentioned, there is a significant amount of legal framework associated with all the cellular installation types. The important one is associated with the RF, and it actually comes from the Federal Communications Commissioner, the FCC, and the RF basically has to be reviewed against admission limits presented by the FCC. So they determine the thresholds in which these sites can exceed, and then there's an analysis that takes place through the review process of the site to determine their within threshold. And there were federal law that was generated in 1996, and this is a telecommunications act that states that the city is prohibited from denying a permit to construct a wireless facility based on health concerns over RF emissions, provided that the emissions from the facility comply with FCC standards. So a big piece with the review is ensuring through that analysis that the installation meets the FCC standards. The more recent cellular type is the small cell, and this is smaller in size typically, and they were designed to basically fill in smaller coverage gaps. So we're seeing the placement predominantly occur in the public right of way, and they are currently covered under Council Policy 300-04 and Chapter 13 of the City Code, and that section of the City Code deals with street encroachments, and it requires an encroachment permit process. So typically when we review these installations, they are reviewed to ensure that they're consistent with public street standards. We're concerned about pedestrian travel, vehicular travel, and protecting the public corridor. It's important to note with the small cells that there are two pole types that they go on, and there's two separate processes for those pole types. So as we can see to the left, that is what's referred to as a joint utility pole. That pole is actually owned by PG&E. The city does not retain ownership rights over that. So on that pole, to the top, we have power, and the white circles are the small cell equipment, and the cables that are midway up are other communication cables. They may be fiber, they may be Comcast, but we have multiple providers on that pole. So those poles, since they're not owned by the city, do not fall under Council Policy 300-04, and they are able to go straight to an encroachment permit process, and that was discussed in depth in the previous Council study sessions. So as part of that, they apply for an encroachment permit. They have to submit a traffic control plan that makes sure that the actual construction under the encroachment permit does not impact traffic. We looked at it for consistency with design standards, and it does have a notification requirement. The notification requirement for encroachment permits is a little different than entitlements or design review applications. In that situation, since it's covered under the standards, it looks at construction impacts, and those are typically noise impacting driveways, closing sidewalks. So the notification process is typically 48 hours prior to performing work, which for the small cells we learned as part of this process is not enough for the community. They need more notice on these. So we'll talk about this as a fix a little later on in the process. There is also a building permit, and that's typically for the meter installation, and PG&E often requires that prior to setting a meter. Now, once again, there is legal framework around these. In this situation, it's from the state. So the California Public Utility Commission has granted the wireless providers rights to the poles. So they treat them very similar to a wired provider. So PG&E, when making a determination, doesn't have the authority to deny the installation on the pole as long as it meets certain criteria. And that criteria is usually associated with the installation not impacting the operational nature of other utilities that are on that pole and the structural aspect of the pole. So it's holding more weight. So as part of the process, the provider is required to submit a structural analysis. And in many of these situations, the pole is being replaced to address that as part of the installation. The other type of small cell are those that are on city-owned poles. So when we talk about pausing, this is what the pause has applied to. So we have not installed any small cells on city-owned poles to date. So from a construction process, it's very similar to the joint poles. They are required to get an encroachment permit. The council policy requires more front-end work. So as I mentioned in the previous slide, they're required to obtain a site license agreement as well as a master license agreement. They're also required as part of the review to mitigate any operational issues. So we do maintain the pole to provide the streetlight. So what we're looking at is how does that pole react in a pole knockdown? So there's shutoffs to make sure that that can be safely handled if it's laying in the middle of the street. We also look at routine maintenance and how they're occupying the pole to make sure we can handle that properly. Another aspect is we look at controlling the ground equipment. So what we've seen with previous rollouts, there's larger cabinets, and we'll talk about that in a little more depth later on about what the benefit of that cabinet is, but it's also a piece that occupies the right-of-way around our infrastructure. So what's the benefit of maintaining that right-of-way corridor and reducing the impact? So the legal framework in general around small cells is the FCC has been pushing for encouraging the deployment of these devices. And there was an action late last year that really encouraged agencies to move these forward. And one of the important pieces is they really say that we can't deny them. It really brings in the RF, but one of the important pieces is a shot clock. So they created a shot clock, which basically defines the period in time in which we must review the application. It's defined as either 150, 90, or 60 days, and most of the small cells will likely fall in 60 or 90 days. It's based on the complexity of the installation, and the application can be deemed automatically approved if the state or local agency does not act within that timeframe. Now what we'll talk about a little later on this presentation, all of this is fairly new. There is going to be a lot of case law that comes out of this. There's a lot of challenges associated with some of these, and it is going to take time to figure out ultimately where these land, but this is really the initial stance of where the FCC has been coming from with a recent order. So the next slide shows the actual deployments that we have in the city. So when we saw previous maps, what those maps focused on were permitted applications, but they also focused on applications that we had not seen yet. So they were really conceptual sites, and those are always good because we can understand the overall deployment of the provider. So what we see here is the only sites that we've had installed are from Verizon, and once again these are all on the joint poles. So we have 31 completed, and those are reflected by the green dots. We have 14 that are issued permits that have not been started, and those are the orange dots. And then the blue dot is important. They are not small cell sites. They are locations where they were providing wiring or fiber to support the small cell sites. So that was a piece that the community wasn't really understanding where last go around because we were focusing on the small cell sites in particular with our data transparency, and all of a sudden work to support the small cell was happening block away. So we wanted to make sure that that was brought into the conversation too to give the complete package of what that impact to the overall area looks like. So what we had in the other map, and I don't have a slide that shows that, but we can talk about what was being proposed the last go around. So we had two companies at the table the last time we did a study session that was Verizon that was interested in deployments and mobility, and Verizon had 68 sites at the time that they were looking at, and that would include these, and anything in addition to those would have been the street lights sites, and mobility had 18 sites that they were looking at. So that was a total of 86 deployments that we were looking at in the city with those two providers. Of course that did not include AT&T at the time, and it did not include Sprint. So as we move forward, we'll see a more comprehensive program as we bring more of the providers to the table to better understand the total saturation of small cells. So as part of the rollout process, there was a significant amount of community outreach that was performed. Verizon was the main provider at the time, and they conducted open house events that occurred in really the first quarter of 2018, and there were four of those. They were conducted in various days throughout the week and various times, and looking at the stats, we had 26 participants from the community in the first event, 20 in the second, 10 in the third, and four in the last event. And in addition to those meetings, we wanted to conduct more down to the neighborhood level sort of meetings with the community members that had concerns with us, and that's highlighted in those neighborhood meetings at the bottom with the Hidden Valley Group and the Neatomas Group. So those were two potential sites that were being looked at at the time. They were both on joint polls, and we wanted to get a good understanding of what that overall residential neighborhood was concerned with to really understand if it was RF, it was aesthetics to basically be able to bucket all those concerns. So we actually had two with the Hidden Valley Neighborhood Group, one with myself and one with Verizon talking to them about coverage, and then I conducted a meeting with the Neatomas Group around that same timeframe to better understand what those concerns were. And what we found is that they had a tendency to fall into the following categories is we did receive concerns regarding health risks, and they were citing RF exposure. Those had a tendency to come out in both the community meetings as well as the neighborhood meetings. There were a lot of concerns about aesthetics and the look and feel of these installations, and some of that concern was how does that affect property value? So they were claiming potential loss of property value. There was definitely a concern about saturation, and what we saw at the time, many of the members of the community thought was really the tip of the iceberg was small cell deployments. We only had Verizon installing, and Verizon had about 68. There were concerns that there would be more from the other providers, and we would have a significant number of these in residential neighborhoods. Many individuals cited a lack of notification, so it was either a lack of early notification or a lack of notification. And then we also had environmental impacts, and that was mainly associated with the cabinets that were being installed, which provided backup batteries to the small cells, powers it approximately four hours after power outage. And there were concerns about how that battery backup would operate in a vehicle strike situation, which we'll talk about in future slides as well. So as I mentioned, what we really wanted to do is get it down to what the community concerns are and how can we fix these. And with the federal regulation, obviously, the RF standards become problematic because we can't make a decision based on RF. So oftentimes I'll get the question, are small cells safe? And that's a bit of a challenging question to ask because of all the technical review that goes into the development standards in the review. So what we wanted to do is bring a consultant on board that could handle the technical aspect of RF testing of standard development in really 5G. And how is that going to evolve as far as the standards go from a 5G standpoint? So we went into contract with Hammett and Edison, and I have Bill Hammett with me today who will talk about the RF aspect. So the way it works with RF consultants is they often do reviews for the cellular providers. They participate in community meetings supported by local agencies, by school districts, and by cellular providers. So as a licensed individual, they are tasked with basically taking the information that's brought to them, making a determination, and giving finding that's to the best of their knowledge. So at this point, I'd like to bill forward to have him discuss the main points that are highlighted in this slide. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council Members. My name is Bill Hammett. I'm a registered professional engineer in the State of California. I manage a firm of 18. We're located just on Highway 12 in Sonoma. I have been there since 1994. A regular part of our practice is the calculation or the measurement or the mitigation where it's appropriate of radio frequency exposure conditions. We do this work for broadcast stations, for wireless carriers, for cities, for school districts, for landlords. As engineers, the issue is really straightforward. What are the exposure levels, whether calculated or measured, and how do they compare to the standards? I've been doing this for 34 years. McGraw-Hill has published the text I wrote on this topic, and I figure it's been well over 20,000 sites we've done evaluations for over that period of time. I wanted to address the question, are small cells safe? The timing is good, in that the FCC just released its most recent report in order. It had said some time ago, back in 2013, that they were going to study this issue and consider a new set of rules, and they've released those rules. The key finding is that there is no change in the exposure standards. They have not tightened the exposure standards that have been in existence since they were adopted in 1996. 1996, it was an act of Congress. It wasn't the FCC that said, well, let's have standards. It was an act of Congress signed by Bill Clinton, the Telecommunications Act, that directed the FCC. You will adopt a standard, and that'll be the only standard that's applicable throughout the country. Mr. Osburn has mentioned the exemption that is in the Telecommunications Act exempts local jurisdictions from applying anything tighter than the federal standard. So part of the analysis that he described, the application process, is a showing of whether or not it will comply with the standard. That's the threshold that needs to be met. Once that threshold is met, then the issue of RF exposure, health effects, is off the table as far as a local jurisdiction is concerned. So that's one piece of current new information, is the FCC's report in order. Another key piece of information is an update in the standard on which they had based their adoption on, that is the FCC is not a health agency. In fact, when Congress said you will adopt a standard, they went to EPA and said, well, what do we adopt? And EPA said, well, we don't have a standard. So the FCC ended up adopting a blend of two standards that were in existence at that time. One of those was the IEEE standard, the 1992 standard. It was updated in 1999. It was updated again in 2005, and now it's just been updated again in 2019. So we have that document based on all the research that's been done over that period of time. This is the standard. It's a very interesting technical read. They have not tightened the standards from the previous edition. And then the third bit is the expectation from the ICNIRP people. This is the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection. They have had a standard for many years. They also, much like IEEE, was looking at its standard. Do we need to tighten it? Do we need to change it? And ICNIRP hasn't yet issued theirs, but they've given an indication that they're not planning to tighten the standard. So a key quotation from all of this new information, and this is from the new 2019 standard, there is no credible indication of adverse effects caused by chronic exposures below levels specified in the standard. So for 70 years, they've been doing research on this topic, and there's no credible evidence of any adverse impact. That's at levels equal to this standard or below. So I'm just repeating exactly what the standards say. Excuse me. If people are going to interrupt the presentation, you're interrupting the meeting and you'll be asked to leave. So we're going to give everyone time to share their opinions with council and please respect the folks that are sharing their opinions with us now. Thank you. So those are the facts of what the environment is for the standards. FCC, IEEE, ICNIRP coming up. I want to talk a little bit about 5G, and I suggested to Gabe that he put in quotation marks because 5G means several different things. At heart, it's a technology for encoding data onto a radio wave. So if you listen to the radio, AM is amplitude modulation. It's a way of putting information onto a radio wave. FM is frequency modulation. It's a way of putting data onto a radio wave. As we've gone through different generations of improved data capacity by the carriers, by the industry, we've had 2G and 3G where there were different technologies. In 3G, they had two different technologies. GSM and CDMA were two different methods for encoding data on the radio waves. By the time they've got to 4G, LTE is the term you may have heard, long-term evolution, that's the technology, that's the technique that they use for encoding data on the radio waves. 5G and R, new radio, is just that. It's another way of encoding information onto radio waves. So when people say 5G, they could be referring to the new, more efficient way of coding data onto radio waves. And 5G can be rolled out on the same set of frequencies that are being used at all the existing sites right now that are on your phone now, that have been for a long time, different frequency bands that the FCC has allotted for that purpose. 5G sometimes refers to a different set of frequencies. And the commission is releasing new frequencies in the millimeter waveband. They're higher by about a factor of 10 in frequency. The wavelengths are shorter, they can get more information on, and it's going to be a very powerful method for downloading information. So we need to make a distinction because a lot of carriers now are going to talk about doing 5G on their existing frequencies. No change, no change in equipment. Some carriers have purchased from the government these new millimeter wave frequencies, and they'll be using those frequencies for 5G. The bandwidth is larger up there at the new bands. And so it's going to be easier for them to get more data through more bandwidth. But T-Mobile purchased old TV channels in the 600 megahertz band. They're going to be looking at doing 5G on that. Sprint has some frequencies in the, what's called a BRS band at around 2.5 gigahertz. So they're using existing frequencies and rolling, trying to roll out 5G to see if they can get better data capacity, which is anticipated. So the question was technology? Yes, it's a technology. Does it also refer to frequency? It can refer to frequencies. And some of the comments we hear behind me are talking about the new millimeter wave, where the standards do apply. We can go back to the question of the standards. The standards include the millimeter wave frequencies. The limits are established there. And the literature that I gave you the quote before, a lot of literature is done at millimeter wave frequencies. No credible indication of adverse effects. So that's the answer to the initial question, are they safe? Full compliance with the standards. Now, I was also asked to talk about the testing requirements, which are a local issue. And some jurisdictions have more strenuous measurement requirements than do others in terms of monitoring. What we find, having done this at literally tens of thousands of sites, is that the carriers install the radio, particularly the small cells. They'll install the radio, turn it on, and it runs. The radio is running at maximum capacity. It's not like somebody can crank up the power at some other location. The radios are put in, and they're relatively low-power facilities, five watt, 10 watt, maybe 20 watt radios. Just put them in and they run. So the levels that we've observed are very steady from these facilities. And the initial testing, in some cases, they may be put in omni-directionals. I know that some of the Verizon proposals were for omni-directional antennas, where they're up high on top of a phone pole higher than the neighboring homes and residential areas. And those will be omni-directional antennas sent in all directions. When you get into more built-up urban areas, they'll often use directional antennas going up and down the street rather than back toward buildings, which may be closer. And so part of the testing process that we use, we go in a bucket truck, go up, and with our meters measure at the antennas to make sure that if it is a directional, it's oriented correctly. Make sure that levels are as expected well below the standard. Typically, we measure the distance of the public limit as a matter of a foot or a couple of feet. That's as far as the energy goes before it drops below the public limit for a full-time 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week exposure levels. And the inverse square law, and then I'll wrap up, the inverse square law says that as you move twice as far away from the power source, the energy level goes down by a factor of four to squared. If you go 10 times as far away, the power level is going down by a factor of 110 squared. It's dropping with a square of that increase in distance, which means when you get 10, 20, it's dropping rapidly. A typical exposure level, even opposite at the same elevation as an antenna would be a percent or less. So in addition to the safety factor built in the standard, there's another 100-time safety factor in most typical installations at least. I'm happy to take questions. This was the point at which you wanted to pause after slide 16. So I can talk at length on a variety of topics, how the systems work, the derivation of the standards, whatever might be of interest. I know you've had several study sessions already. Great, thank you. We're back to Council. Questions for either the staff or Mr. Hammett? Seeing none, go ahead and shoot. Mr. Mayor, what's considered a dangerous level of RF? The standards have two tiers. So there's a public exposure level. Five times relaxed from that. So five times higher is the occupational level. The occupational level has a 10-time safety factor in it, so you'd have to be 10 times the occupational limit before you reach the most sensitive measure of responsiveness. And that measure, I'll read you the quotation, the most sensitive reproducible effect is disruption of food-motivated behavior in animal species ranging from rodents to primates and over a wide range of frequencies. So they'll have primates doing some task or related to food and behind the wall where they can't see it, they'll turn on RF and add a little bit more, a little bit more. At some point they can sense it and they just assume being the other part of the room. That's the most sensitive measure. It's not cancer, it's not cataracts, it's not any of these other things that you'll hear about, which occur, do occur, at exceedingly high levels. So there's not like a level, it's not a number? Yes, yes there is. It's four watts per kilogram. That's what the research shows, 70 years of research shows, is a threshold of effects. And that, the one I just described, is that effect. Okay. So the standards have a 50-time safety factor, puts it at 0.08 watts per kilogram. That's the 50 times the public limit. And if, as I described, you're 100 times below your 0.008 watts per kilogram, well below that four. What level is common to experience in a small celled tower? The question is proximity. If you're up at the antenna itself, you're working on the antenna, or you're changing the lights, you're going to be below the one milliwatt typical exposure threshold level. You might be 50% of the limit. If you're in a building nearby, you're going to be one or two percent. If you're at ground nearby, you're going to be a tenth of a percent. So 100 times below, 1,000 times below. Okay. And if we're dealing with the same radio waves, would that be the same as if I was standing next to a radio using high wattage to put out FM? FM antennas would be higher. They typically will operate at higher power levels, and they're up high on towers. So the proximity, you can't really get near them. That inverse square law is what comes into play. Okay. So we do work, suture towers are client, up on top of these tall towers that have the high power transmitter and antennas on them. And we help them with their occupational exposure limits so they know what to shut down and so forth when people are doing work on the tower. Okay. And I forgive me. I know you touched on this, but how does this compare to the new millimeter wave frequencies? Are these smaller frequencies that are moving through the air? They are a higher frequency, which means they're shorter wavelength. They're more efficient at carrying information. But they are part of the radio frequency spectrum. There's a large spectrum that goes from the alternating current that comes out of the wall socket 60 times a second. A wavelength at that frequency is 5000 kilometers. Here to New York is one wavelength at 60 hertz, the power line frequencies. Frequencies in the radio spectrum vary from a thousand feet at at AM to a fraction of an inch up at the millimeter waves. But they're larger. They're larger frequencies, I guess. One of the concerns that I think somebody mentioned to me was that the smaller wavelengths allow it to pass through hard material easily. Is that a valid claim? It's actually the other way around. It's the other way around. It's the other way around. In the radio frequency spectrum, when you get into ionizing energy, ultraviolet x-rays that add up over time, a little bit of damage, and we can talk about that, but the wavelength is so short that it'll get into a molecule and break off electron. That's called ionization. So ionizing energy is up above light above ultraviolet and x-rays. We're not talking about that. We're talking about radio waves, where the wavelength is anywhere from a thousand to a half an inch, and those don't like to go through something you can't see through. So when we're in and out of, in San Francisco as an example, you have to offer measurements to anybody who lives within 25 feet of an antenna. So we're in and out of apartment houses a lot because they're typically on apartment houses a little higher than the residential areas around. And we measure directly below the antenna, you're getting next to nothing. Jesus, is it really working? Well, yes it is. You can go over by the window, and it's higher at the window because the energy is going out toward the horizon, bouncing off of some other source and coming back in through the window. You move the probe over next to the wall, instead of the window, it goes down. A very reproducible, good demonstration of the fact that the energy is happy to go through something you can see through doesn't like to go through things you can't. Thank you, and you mentioned in your presentation that there were some strict testing standards being implemented in other municipalities. Can you touch on that a little bit? What type of methodologies are they adopting as they adopt ordinances like this? Well, the jurisdictions can insist on a preliminary study, which has been talked about, a theoretical study. We use the manufacturer's data for the antennas. We use the drawings as to where the antennas are going to be, evaluate where accessible areas might be where people could walk on a roof or on ground or in buildings nearby, and then calculate what it is at all those locations. All those locations have to comply with the standard in order for the city to have passed that threshold in order to grant a permit. After the fact, the cities can adopt whatever program, and you're asking which one. San Francisco, every two years, the sites have to be recertified. That's not the smell cells. That's only the macros that are on tops of buildings that require a conditional use permit. Every two years, that's about the most strict of those. So we're in back to these sites every two years. Typically, the operation hasn't changed, but the environment might have changed. A door that was formally locked might be unlocked. For small cells, it's not a question of the environment changing because their buildings nearby and the small cell is there and it runs. It's not that anything is changing in its operation, because if they do, they have to, if the carry wants to make a change, they'd have to come back here and go through a permit process again that was described. So that doesn't change in the environment. It really doesn't change. So in some cases, where we've been back again after a change has been made, unless there's a change in the environment, it's still the same. Thanks so much. Certainly. Council, any other questions? Okay, if I had one question for you, if you can pull up slide 10 and just to reiterate, make sure I heard that with, that's a joint utility pool. If there was a complaint to a resident in Santa Rosa saying, City Council, we don't like those in our neighborhood. Do we have any authority to do anything whatsoever on a utility pool that's pictured there? Yeah, that's an excellent point. And we will cover it in depth in further slides. One of the challenges has been on the aesthetic front. How can we control that? So as it stands currently, the city doesn't have a policy that governs the aesthetics. Other agencies are a bit more involved in that and they have attempted to control that. I will cite San Francisco as an example. They look at how do they physically look from one's living room on the pole? How do they look in historic areas? Do they impact view corridors? So there's potentially mechanisms that we can look at. As it's currently standing now with these deployments, and I do want to stress this, we have Verizon and AT&T at the table right now and they're looking at deploying. It attempted a very collaborative approach to understand the community's concerns and see what we can do to control those. And that isn't just the metal pole. We've had conversations about the joint pole, how we can reduce cabinet size. What can we do to push it closer? What can we do to spread it out? To have those little aesthetic features to it that make it look better. That's a good start. And I think what we'll talk about in future slides is how do we let that evolve into something that can solve the problems in the residential areas? And I think what will be pretty clear out of the study session is there's still concerns in those communities. And that's what we want to be sensitive to. So looking at what's in our control, how can we let that evolve? And that will be the next phase of when we come back to council and look at some of the case studies play out and understand what's going to happen with the FCC and develop a comprehensive policy that addresses that. Great. Thank you. Okay. Looks like those are all the questions for the first portion. Slide 17. Okay. So the next series of the presentation is really going to look at the solutions that are mainly policy related that we have in our control now. We will be looking at adopting in the future. So currently what we want to do is address the metal poles. And we are proposing to move forward with a limited deployment in non-residential areas for the metal poles. And the benefit of that, there's a few. One, it helps us guide our aesthetic requirements. We can get a better understanding of operationally how this equipment will impact our ability to maintain that a pole. It takes some pressure off the joint poles. And it gives more options of placement. So one of the important pieces that came to my attention from the community is when really get down to it, a lot of times they say that's just not the appropriate location for that. But it happens to be the only pole that we can put these on. So what we're going to use that program for is to help guide that bigger policy that we come back to council. So as I mentioned, I would point out those pieces that we would move forward with. This is one of those. We would start working with the providers. It would require executing agreements. It would require notifications to the residents well up front before we even gave any level of approval to understand what the concerns were. And as I mentioned, it will focus on commercial areas. So I'll have a slide that addresses those locations. We also want to increase transparency in the process. So we learned a lot of lessons from the rebuild. And that's the delivery of information and how important that is and how important it is to be transparent about the decisions that are made. So we're looking at mapping portals. We're looking at providing RF analysis and getting it to those individuals. We're looking at FAQs and guidance documents. So we want to bolster up our web presence to make it easier for people to get the information they're looking for to better understand what's happening. One of the important pieces is we really want to align our code sections. So we have notification processes that are a little different in our zoning code than our right of way code. We want to make sure once again that we are engaging the community early and often understanding those concerns and we want to align those code sections. So between the council policy between chapter 13 and chapter 20 of the code, we want to bring forward a formal package that addresses some of these and benefits. We also have a desire to improve emergency learning. And I'll leave that to the slide. Paul Lowenthal from our fire department is here to present that slide and he'll talk about some of the benefits of that. But it's really to develop solutions for us that are concerns which we feel is if we can control and it's giving some level of location flexibility which gives us the ability to address some of those concerns that we're hearing. So that's some of the direction and this will cover some of the future slides. We'll go in a little more depth in some of these topics. So we have engaged the two providers to look at some locations that would be included in our limited deployment. And the slide we see now is the result of those conversations with Verizon. So typically when we say commercial areas or non-residential areas, that's based on zoning classification. So it's defined by the zoning code. And then if we're right on the fringe of a commercial area, if it's directly adjacent to residential, we then look for a physical buffer and that's usually 300 feet. So we'll take 300 feet pushing it into a commercial zone. Where it gets a little challenging is because we have a lot of areas under transition. So we have mixed use, we have transit village, we have downtown where potentially you could have residential in a zone that was historically commercial. But you usually have really good locations as far as the street configuration or the placement where it isn't directly adjacent to a residential unit. It's right in the middle of commercial. And the two examples you'll see that kind of highlight that is we have one on Minnesino Avenue, which that's right across from the JC. It's a good corridor from a street standpoint. People are used to seeing that type of equipment on those types of streets, but it's one block away 200 feet from a residential area. So although that's a good location, what we've discussed is how we'll address the potential community concerns is we'll do a hefty level of outreach. And if we hear any concerns about it, we'll move forward with a different location because it's not right in the middle of the commercial area. Same holds true for downtown. So there is a location that we're looking at right next to the entrance to Prince Memorial. It's actually right across the street, next to commercial, good buffer to residential, but close enough to where we would engage those individuals to see what sort of concerns they have with that. One of the other benefits that I didn't touch on the other slide is a lot of what we'll see with these street lights or photo simulations. We want to see what these really look like in work through that. And that'll help us control the aesthetics. When we look at these other locations, they are clearly in commercial areas, Santa Rosa Avenue, Corby. We have one location here that's identified as Cleveland Avenue. That's actually Maxwell Court. And once again, that's in a transition area, but that's fully in a commercial area right now. So those are the areas that we're identifying. When we look at AT&T, they actually have five. We're allowing up to six. And in this situation, they have one right in front of Codding Town. They're focusing more on that Corby Avenue, Wilson Court, very much commercial. And they have a location in Verizon, had one as well on Stony Point Road. And that's right in front of city facilities on Stony Point Road. We initially, what the providers talked about that as a good location because it's close to the team that manages it. So they wanted to use that as a bit of a pilot to look at that site to understand how it was going to work with the electrical components of the streetlight. So the next few slides just give us a rough idea of those locations we're looking for. So once again, no residential. It's close to commercial. It's really not close to where people are occupying buildings on commercial. It's well protected. That's exactly what we're looking for. So that is a photo simulation. So that's roughly the size cabinets we would be looking at. There usually is ground equipment associated with these, but we think we have some solutions to get rid of the ground equipment all together. Now that will come back into play if we start talking about backup batteries. And that's a decision. And this is one of those items that we'll clearly point out that we are looking from impact from the council on that. And that will control the ground equipment. The next location is front of Codding Town. It's very difficult to see because it's essentially hidden by that tree. Once again, not around any residential, fairly open, major arterial roads. Those are the areas we're trying to identify. And this is the location in front of the Transportation and Public Works Building on Stony Circle, the location that we wanted to use as the pilot. So once again, we're really talking about solutions from mapping standpoint. So the image we have to the right was the RC Resilience City Recovery Maps that we developed for the rebuild. And one of the tools and the concepts we used in this was pretty simple. It was essentially, spatially, people know where things are and they want to click on them and get as much information as possible about that. So we've actually already started the development of a mapping function that will act in a similar fashion. So we'll highlight the cellular facilities. We'll give people information about where they are from a timeline standpoint, a permitting standpoint, and any associated documentation that they would want to see. So that's the transparency aspect that we want to bring in. We also heard concerns about lack of notice. So we've been working with the providers on that to say that we not only need to notice on the poll, we basically need to see a listing of the properties that receive the notice. And I also want to see the feedback so we can talk through that. So we're giving confirmation of noticing through this mapping portal as well. And we also talked about links to state and federal resources and requirements. And then as other agencies have developed, there's a comprehensive list of FAQs that will be developing as part of this process. This is another one of those items that is happening now. We will work through this in the next coming months and hope to have a delivery in the next six months of a final product. We talked a little bit about code alignment. And that is an important piece because if we start developing more stringent requirements from an aesthetic value where it becomes more discretionary, we want to make sure the code supports that. So as we work through this limited deployment, we're going to look at various techniques that we can implement on these polls to make them look better. And we're going to want to memorialize that in the code. So that'll be across the board. And we want to treat basically macro sites to some extent in the same way we treat small cell sites because people have the same level of concern and there's community engagement. And the community engagement is more robust in that level than it is in small cells. So we're trying to figure out once again how we can engage the community. That will be memorialized in that process. So it's really when we get into noticing, it's developing consistent radius to make sure we're not differing based on the small cell type. We want to give feedback prior to approving any site licenses agreement. It's not before construction prior to granting that overall approval when it's discretionary. We also want to streamline and review and improve the process on both macro and small cell. The more we can make this consistent, the easier it's going to meet to meet shot clocks and requirements from the federal government on turnaround times. And really the big focus is on the public process on these. I think the lessons we learned from the deployments prior to is we really need to do that better job of engaging the community. So I really can't stress that enough. So when we look at some of the solutions that we will implement, these are more how we get into some of the design criteria. So a lot of agencies, I've done quite a bit of research in the state of California and throughout the entire nation on small cells to see how aesthetics are really controlled. There are not too many agencies that specifically control the box that is placed on the cabinet. That is left up to the provider. So that's the physical equipment. They do place the location in the, or they do excuse me, control the location in the size of that box. So typically when we see small smells, there's antennas, which are the devices to the top. There's radios that communicate with those antennas. Some level powering to the device. And there's what was referred to as backhaul. So all these small cells connect to the bigger network in some way, shape or form. And that might be a fiber optic cable that comes in, but there's some communication measure from the antennas to the radios going out to the network. And then what we've seen in the cabinet on the right is that battery backup has a tendency to have a larger cabinet. There are options to look at going below ground with these. There are pros and cons to that approach. The cabinets, there are better locations in some situations for the cabinet. So we're looking at the appropriate location for that type of equipment. And our design criteria could then specify when we're going to allow this when we're not. So the equipment size and placement is pretty critical. That's what most agencies focus on. This expands on that a little bit. So the image to the left was produced in the press democrat. That's our link lane location. And many of the residents in that area were not happy with that installation for a few different reasons. So what we did is we worked with the provider. And this is just an example of when you reduce some of the equipment you control the impact visually of how it looks. And some people still may not agree that it looks well. So this is a step in the right direction. And it's simply just removing the large cabinets and there are tricks such as painting the equipment to make sure it blends into the pole. That's pretty consistent through most agencies that control aesthetics. Now when we look at the backup battery supply this location is actually on Montgomery Drive near Channel Drive. There is residential on the opposite side of the street but it backs up to this. So those are their backyards. We did reach out and we did not receive any negative comments on this. There are actually positive comments on this one. And if we look at the placement of the cabinet it is set back from the street. It is not in a planter strip and it is behind the pole and there's a retaining wall. So if we looked at protecting the box there are situations in which you can do that. It usually means pushing it back from the right of way. The aesthetic aspect of the box is directly in front of somebody's view out of the living room. And we can look at it along those lines to basically kind of govern where that goes. Once again we will talk about those benefits in the future slide about that backup power but this is more on the aesthetic front. This is actually an image from San Francisco. These are street lights and they're very small devices that you can hide with signage. So once again on the aesthetics there are signage measures or certain things you can do to screen the equipment that's placed on the pole. This is something that we want to entertain. These images were taken from the city of Fremont and they have a utility box art program and these aren't small cell boxes. These are likely boxes that are controlling traffic signal equipment. If providers want to put these in we have talked about how can they mitigate the visual aspect by placing art and there's a few different ways to run that program. We can keep it in house and we can require an in-loofy and we can acquire an artist to develop a theme for boxes in certain areas or we can create those themes and have the provider perform the art. So one of the pieces that we're going to roll up into the code update is this program and bring that back to council for determination in the future. So we definitely want to look at this and we've even talked to the providers about working something out potentially through the limited release to see what that program would look like as a bit of a test case. So the other important point is location flexibility. So this is an image of a Hidden Valley neighborhood and we dealt with this community group on two different occasions. There was a proposed location in this neighborhood and they had concerns with it and this is a Google Street View image and what you can see from this is the only pole out there is the wooden pole and the street light is actually on the wooden pole. That's actually the white circle there. So the only options the provider has is the wooden pole. They have a tendency to be a 20-foot setback, give or take from the residential unit, so you can't really create a buffer from the home and the placement is usually mid-block and intersection. So inevitably that wooden pole when you look at it falls in front of someone's home. So we sat down with the provider, we looked at how it would work from a coverage standpoint to look at other locations. In some situations you can pick locations that do not have a pole but are better for the community. And we have a lot of areas of Santa Rosa that look just like this much in the east, much in the older area, Link Lane is a prime example where the undergrounding hasn't quite commenced yet. So one of the pieces that we do want to look at once again will require a future council action is the ability to erect a custom pole as a way to mitigate residential concerns. So if we meet with those groups and they all agree that there is a better location that works for the provider, we don't necessarily want to limit that by the fact that we don't have a pole in that location that's potentially a solution. It will only be limited to that sort of occurrence. We typically don't want to add more poles, the desire is to pull those down. So we definitely want to play around with that tactic and see if it's a reasonable solution to mitigate some of the residential concerns. And I believe that's where we wanted to take the next break, the next one. So most of those items were policy related. And before we get into the emergency alerting and more of the fire-related pieces. Yeah, thank you. Councillor, are there any questions over that portion of presentation? Mr. Tibbets. Thanks, Mayor. Thanks, Gabe. I appreciate it a lot. One of my prevailing questions is on the one hand, I like that we're trying to take control of a situation that otherwise seems like we don't have any control over it. One of the frustrating parts for me, and I'm sure it's shared on the Council, is when we get calls from concerned neighbors or residents, the best answer I have for them is sorry, is the CPUC's jurisdiction. But one of my concerns is if it's my understanding that these antennas or small cell towers require a patchwork of relatively tightly knit antennas to provide ultimately the coverage that these carriers are seeking, if we are trying to do this piecemeal, how is that going to achieve in the long run for the carriers what they ultimately want to do? What I'm driving at is, as my fear is, are we bridging a gap to the residential neighborhoods where the CPUC polls exist? That's an excellent point. Thank you for bringing that up. And I think that gets into the concept of what is the comprehensive deployment program. So when we sit down with a carrier, we don't necessarily just want to talk about what it's going to look like in a limited deployment in commercial areas, because you're absolutely right. Is that a way to basically move forward with that? And does that then put further pressure on the residential? What we want to do is figure out a solution for the residential. So the better understanding of that exact situation of Hidden Valley, if we have sites in which the provider needs to fill a coverage gap in those areas, how do we basically tackle that? So knowing where they're all going is really critical to the conversation, because you have a better understanding of figuring out the ones that are easy, that people don't have as much concern with, and the ones that are more challenging in the residential areas. So I'm going to ask the question a little bit more bluntly, but how do we ensure that? What recourse will we have over the CPUC polls, both aesthetically and from an encroachment perspective? And that's a difficult one. And I think that what we're going to have to have play out is some of the case law associated with that to better understand the aesthetic controls on that. So with the CPUC and the federal government with the FCC requirements on the emissions, where it becomes challenging, what I've seen from most agencies is they've managed to grab that control back through aesthetic controls. And the development of those aesthetic controls is really important. And from a timeline standpoint, the FCC order required that they be in place at a certain time, and a lot of agencies jumped on that, and a lot of agencies are also sitting on the fence a little bit to see how it plays out. So I think what's really important to control that is we have to understand legally what we can control, which may take time to figure out. And we have to get right into policy development to look at that with that comprehensive discussion of the provider as well as the community to understand how to frame that policy. But it is an excellent point, and it is the challenge we've really struggled with over the last year is really understanding, we know we have control over the metal poles, what really can we control on the joint poles, which I believe is going to take a little time to figure out exactly what that looks like. Okay, I appreciate that straightforward response, and I'll hold my comments till later on that. Ms. Westerner. Thank you, and I appreciate all the community outreach, and I look forward to I'm going to hold most of my questions and comments to give the public who took time out of their work day a chance to comment on this. But I do have a couple of preliminary questions. One is for the areas identified that the Council and the Planning Commission have jointly made really clear that we want to support residential development, specifically Maxwell Court in downtown. Would we be setting a precedent where these, if we go forward and later on decide that we're going to try something else, and we have authority to do so, would we be putting ourselves in a position of having given these utilities to go ahead and then have people who are hopefully moving into these transitional neighborhoods be in an area where there's mixed policy? Once again, sorry about that. Once again, an excellent point, and I think that really is the challenge in a mixed use area, especially one that's in a transition state such as downtown, such as Maxwell Court, is you would focus on that on commercial. You would allow something like that under a limited deployment, and then all of a sudden as we allow this to progress, we determine that that scenario has changed and it's become residential, and then from an aesthetic standpoint there's more controls on that. So I think that that's similar to how policy in some situations progresses, that if we have rollouts and we determine from just the course of learning that it doesn't necessarily work, that we do have the position to basically change the aesthetic controls that would govern that in the future. And do you see this as any way interfering with the council goals of developing those two areas? So what we've seen from the small, so it's a very difficult conversation. Once again, I kind of mentioned that we've have a lot of individuals that use cell phones. We do receive a lot of public comment that is beneficial. So the most recent round of comments we receive are all positive about individuals getting better connectivity. So people are using the phone for data, and when we get that input, we know that that side that is interested in that. Of course there's other residents that have those concerns, so it's been very difficult to balance this out. So at what point does it become a product that we know people living downtown would potentially want, then it becomes a little challenging because then we're balancing out the other side of it? It seems like you don't have a crystal ball right in front of you, and that seems to be a problem. But I do appreciate you trying to opine on that question, which doesn't have a very clear answer understandably. I'm wondering, last question before I move on is, do we have any sort of mechanism to claw back? Not just address aesthetically, but adjust the location if it becomes a problem with any of these sites? We do when we have the license agreement. So for the streetlight poles, we control, it's a discretionary action, we can say yes or no to that. And one of the tricky pieces was on the brown poles, and you get in certain areas where there are mostly streetlights because the undergrounding has commenced. And those are more recently developed areas or where undergrounding policies have come through and dropped those poles. And those areas, we're just going to have more control because those poles the city owns, and we have a policy that governs how to do that. The challenge becomes in those areas where it's more predominantly the joint poles or there's a mix, how we balance it out in the absence of an aesthetic policy that can control it. Thank you. Any other questions, Mr. Sorter? Thank you, Mayor. I'm curious about the coverage. Are there any requirements that every area of the city have the same coverage? And if the worst that happens that we have a gap in the coverage, or the coverage on one block is just less than it is on another block, is there any, if that's the biggest result or the most negative result, which to my mind sounds not all that important actually, just because there's a gap in that coverage, is there a requirement that the coverage be consistent? So there's discussions about coverage gaps and how you actually determine that there is a coverage gap is justification for rolling those out. So we have no requirement locally to say certain coverage needs to be met in certain areas. That's on the provider to provide that product and the benefit to them of providing a better product is they're satisfying their customer base. So that's definitely part of it and there's a little bit now with data being an interesting piece because it's not as much of a coverage discussion in some situations with voice calls falling, it's all about data capacity. And at that point if you start seeing more of a demand then it gets more into that discussion than identifying these coverage gaps. So it's basically giving more capacity to the network than a coverage issue. So that's the tricky part to balance out between the desires of the community for more data as well as determining what these coverage gaps are and as well as the provider having that ability to provide the product that their consumers want to some extent. So to answer your simple question is we don't necessarily control it. We can actually force the providers to justify where the coverage gap exists and have that brought into the conversation to get a better understanding. That's very similar to our site analysis process we look at at macro sites. So how are you meeting your coverage demands in the most unobstructive process possible to make sure that they look at those sites and play that out. But there are no specific requirements on our end. I appreciate that. And just as a follow up, does the community have a role in determining whether they are willing to accept a gap in coverage as opposed to having another antenna in their neighborhood? Well, and I think the way we want to look at it in these things based just on experience is that the community should. And I think it's the example that we looked at in our Hidden Valley area. So it isn't talking to one resident that has the poll in front of their house. It's talking to the overall community in the overall neighborhood to better understand how that works. And oftentimes when we get to that level of conversation, there is the desire to see additional coverage. They understand the benefit. It isn't always all about RF. It gets into aesthetics and placement. And I think that's where you get into not only the engagement of the community at that level, but the flexibility to be able to address their concerns. Because I think in this situation it's really important to get that feedback and be able to incorporate that in the process. Thank you. Okay. I think those are all the questions. Paul? Good evening, Mayor and members of the Council. Paul Lothals is in Fire Marshal with the Fire Department, speaking specifically to the wireless emergency alert capabilities. In October 2017, obviously we're aware that our ability to provide situational awareness to fires developing around Santa Rosa was limited, as well as our ability to directly use wireless emergency alert tools. Since then, obviously a lot of changes have occurred that we've spoken with Council directly about. One of those is our ability to monitor fires developing around the city of Santa Rosa through the network of cameras. But a critical component of utilizing that early detection is also making sure that we're providing the emergency alerting to our community. If you remember last year, we tested the emergency alerting capabilities here in Sonoma County and specifically in Santa Rosa. And one thing that became very clear to us was that when we work and operate in areas we're trying to provide emergency alerting, the ability for the recipient to receive that emergency alert is dependent upon carriers, as well as location of the cell sites. We tested it specifically in Roseland. We saw how it did not work. But for us, that was actually good to know. As we're working to move forward and provide that early notification, early detection to our community, one of the things that we're working closely with to avoid what happened in October 2017 is target specific areas that we want to get the emergency alert to. What we refer to it as geotargeting. So one of the common concerns that comes up that I know we've talked about in the past is Oakmont. When we look at the need to evacuate someplace like Oakmont, one of the concerns is they think that we're going to evacuate all of it all at once. And that would typically not be our intention. We'd want to geotarget specific areas within our community, set the boundaries of where the evacuation needs to occur, and through our iPause system, our integrated emergency learning system, we utilize a geotargeting system to area and map out specific areas that we want to evacuate so that we don't run into issues. We're evacuating more than we need to and having unintended consequences with that. So we do benefit from additional sites that allow us to add those sites into the areas we're geotargeting to make sure that the people that need to receive the emergency information are actually getting the emergency information. There's also discussions about the data that can be used to support the emergency learning and whether or not we'd able to put maps. So currently right now you see that when you use our emergency learning, specifically why is the emergency alert is limited to text. We've also now enhanced it to where you can add in the links, but there's talk about being able to actually integrate in maps that would be beneficial during a wildland fire. In regards to the backup, one of the things that we have actually been asking because of outages and or catastrophic disasters that do cause long-term outages is the ability to get emergency information to our community in those first several hours. So we're seeing a lot of the macro sites actually taking their backup power and extending it with the installation of larger tanks to support their generators, but we're also actually asking on the cell sites. Currently we're seeing a lot of installations where they have only an hour or a couple hours of battery backup and we're looking at asking that they provide additional batteries to make sure that we have a longer battery backup in place so that we can get critical information to those in need, especially in the first few hours of a disaster. Okay, and that actually brings us to the completion of the presentation. So we'll go over a little bit of the next step. So I'll bring all that together into one slide and we really bucketed that into two categories. So we're focusing on really that limited release on streetlight poles. That's the piece that we can move forward tomorrow or we would like to move forward tomorrow. And there's a few different steps in that. So what that would involve is we would be executing master license agreements with AT&T. That'll bring the two providers to an equal playing field. We will be executing site license agreements with going through the appropriate public noticing processes for those sites that we discussed. Those sites aren't written in stone. As I mentioned, if we start seeing public feedback from those transitional areas, we'll move those sites into more commercial. That's also an area where we can accept feedback from council. And if those transitional areas are sensitive and we want to go to more commercial, we can definitely work with the provider on those sites. But the concept of moving forward six sites is what we want to move forward with this week and start that. That's going to involve working collaboratively with the cell providers to improve that notification process. So we'll work those requirements in. We do want to identify areas of potential battery backup. Once again, a good piece to get feedback on. Do should we focus on these and make that a primary goal or should we let aesthetics be the primary goal? So there are some locations where we can easily put them in, but it would be great to get some feedback on the direction. So we also are going to improve the educational mapping resources and we are going to develop RF testing procedures. So that was discussed briefly in Mr. Hammett's presentation. We want to define really what that looks like. And part of it is requiring that RF analysis and we can require the provider to provide it. We can hire a consultant and the consultant can provide it with a cost recovery mechanism to it or we can provide some peer review on the technical aspect of it. And then there's a frequency in which we can provide it. And like was mentioned in previous slides is that typically any change or modification to that equipment, we can basically have the RF analysis rerun to make sure that those are safe anytime it's touched as part of a permitting process. So we're going to look at that as well. The second bucket are the bigger code changes. So it's really how do we want to get back to our council policy 300-04 and look at those deployments that are allowed into that. We are not moving forward with those until we go back to council. So this is where we get into the really hefty code upgrades between chapter 13 and 20. We want to look at our design criteria. We do want to look at ways of streamlining the process. And it really is that core of developing the solutions for the residential area. And at that point we'll come back to council for the more formal adoption, which brings forward more solutions that addresses some of those concerns. Now, if we highlight some of these particulars, most of what's in one is easy enough to move forward under current priorities. We've been working on most of those. When we get into the utility box art program, that's going to take a little more time to develop. And then doing the code adjustment, something of that nature is usually a six-month to a 12-month process. What we're looking at now is a lot of agencies have moved forward with this. So we're not really reinventing the wheel. We're taking what's already worked out and we're making it work for the city of Santa Rosa. So what we'll look forward with this is there's some level of cost recovery model. It does benefit the providers by moving forward. To help assist with the cost associated with that. But it will become a priority discussion. So we'll start shrinking the turnaround time, but the start date will have to be determined. If there's concern about design criteria, there's certain pieces that we potentially could pull out of there and focus on in a more rapid fashion. If that's better in a deployment to start saying we need to jump on that. But these are the ones that take a significant amount of staff time. So I wanted to make sure we highlighted those. So at this point that concludes the presentation. What I encourage anyone to do that has concerns about this, that's my contact information. We are going to be engaging the community as we move forward this looking for different solutions. So I encourage people to reach out and come to the table with some ideas. So with that I will actually slide back to this slide, which lists some of the details. Great. Thank you so much for that presentation you gave and others. So I think we'll first take a public comment here. So we have, oh we have a question, sure. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Did one want to get a clarifying question before we hear from the public because I think that it'll be interesting to hear what our residents do have to say. Is there a significant conflict between focusing on simultaneously on aesthetics and battery backup? I think the aesthetic, the battery backup should focus on the aesthetic discussion and the reason being is because there may be better ways to control that cabinet from a battery backup. So if we say our goal is to try to provide battery backup, if it ends up with that cabinet, can we put them underground? Is there ways to shrink that cabinet size? Can we place it on the pole in a different fashion that doesn't have the same impact? So it actually helps govern the aesthetic conversation because it lays it down as a foundation and in direction we want to take it. Okay and can you discuss the meaningful differences between the options for RF testing procedures between the peer review, the city consultant, or applicant responsibility? So often they are a means to the same end and you have a private consultant run an RF analysis and you generate an RF analysis. So one of the requirements often with macro sites is to say you have an RF consultant, you submit that and then we review it. Oftentimes we don't necessarily have the technical expertise and it's presented by a licensed professional. So the benefit of having that individual as a consultant is you can work through and get a better understanding and you control the result of it a little more. So it isn't necessarily the applicant providing that. The peer review aspect would step in if you really do not have the technical expertise, you can have another licensed professional review the findings to make sure that the conclusions are correct. So the benefit of bringing it in house is we control the timing of when the RF is done more than we currently have now. So that would say once again that it's done with initial installation, there can be a theoretical that's done up front to understand what it would look like testing when it's installed and then testing when it's modified and that's similar to what other agencies have done. Thank you I look forward to hearing what the public has to say about those things. Okay we are at that point we won't hear from the public. Since we do have several cards here just as a reminder I'm going to allow three minutes for all your comments. Please let's not respond to every comment. The intended audience is the five of us here so if you want to wave with your support that's fine but please let's keep the plotting verbally acknowledging something let's keep that to ourselves so we can hear everything that everyone's got to say. So first up is Paul Andre Schwabach followed by Tom Laporta. My name is Paul Andre Shabrak. I'm a urban planner and a property owner in Santa Rosa and apart from the well-documented adverse health effects one key issue facing the city council is whether it is more important to install wireless transmission facilities throughout the city which will result in significant reduced property values and thereby lowering the property tax revenues versus the doubtful benefits of increased conductivity. The research clearly indicates that over 90 percent of home buyers and renters are less interested in properties near wireless transmission facilities. Documentation of a price drop of up to 20 percent is found in multiple surveys and published articles and I've got the references and the documents that I'm giving to you. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development which is HUD considers wireless transmission facilities to be quote hazards and nuisances. HUD requires certified appraisers to take the presence of nearby WTS into consideration when determining the value of residential property. HUD also prohibits FHA from underwriting mortgages for homes that are within the engineered fall zones of wireless transmission facilities. The standard property sellers questionnaire which realtors all over California use requires specifically cell phones as one of the disclosures of problems in a property and there's also in your packet there's the National Institute of Science Law and Public Policy Survey which was done in 2014 over a thousand people found that the overwhelming majority of respondents about 94 percent reported that cell phone towers and antennas in a neighborhood or building would impact their interest in a property and the price that they would be willing to pay for it and 79 percent said that under no circumstances would they ever purchase a rental property within a few blocks of a cell tower or antenna. 88 percent said that under no circumstances would they ever purchase or rent the property with a cell tower or group of cell towers on a roof or on the side of a building. So these are you know what you're planning to do would actually result in an immense drop in the value of property as a result of the proliferation of wireless transmission facilities. One of the effects for your tax revenues would be it would go down and property owners like myself would suffer a significant drop in our equity thank you. Thank you. Tom Laporta followed by Jennifer Laporta. Hello there we go. My name is Tom Laporta and I have a background as an RN and electronics technician. Here's a simplified version of how data carrying radio frequency radiation which includes microwave radiation affects us all. This radiation creates chaos in our bodies. If you're healthy you may not notice any immediate effects but the radiation is adversely affecting you nonetheless suppressing your melatonin and interfering with whole body central nervous system function reducing sperm quality and quantity and pairing cells from communicating properly and causing inappropriate cell division. Constant exposure slowly chips away at our defenses. The main energy producers in our cells the mitochondria are like electricians who detach electrons from food and push them through our wiring. This is called the electron transport chain. The electrons complete a reaction resulting in the production of energy. However RF radiation causes a work slowdown by those mitochondrial electricians that's less energy for health and more opportunity for disease to take hold or if you're already sick disease progresses. The scientific literature has been out there for decades informing us that our cells are thrown into chaos when exposed to manmade RF radiation via calcium channels. It's like a distracted hotel doorman who holds the door open too long and a crowd rushes in. Now you have to corral the people and get them back out the front door no way to run a hotel or a cell. Over 10,000 studies indicate that RF radiation is not benign no matter what the telecom interest industry reports. You can't see what you're not looking for but we're all here today because we did look and we found that exposure to RF radiation is hazardous particularly when modulated and when its wavelengths match the very dimensions of our brain and other organs producing maximal absorption and maximal consequences. In the face of all this evidence why do some studies show no ill effects? If the cell is healthy it can maintain a higher voltage a more intact cell wall and repair minor injuries from other environmental hazards. The cell may initially absorb RF radiation without acute adverse effects but damage is still being done. What we don't see is hurting us. The evidence is clear it's out there for the looking. Public officials need to use whatever tools they have to put the brakes on new wireless transmission facilities in the city. Let's not pay for faster download speeds with our health. Thank you. Thank you. Jennifer LaPorta followed by E Orleans Coley. A test and affirm that the following statements are true accurate and within my personal knowledge. The Telecommunications Act of 96 recognizes the actual environmental effects of radio frequency radiation or RFR from wireless telecommunication facilities or WTS. This act left regulation of the health effects entirely within state and local officials authority obligating said officials to protect its residents from health effects with regard to the placement construction modification and operation of WTS. In plain reading quote no state or local government or instrumentality thereof may regulate the placement construction and modification of personal wireless service facilities on the basis of the environmental effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent that such facilities comply with the commission's regulations concerning such emissions end quote. On 3618 during this council meeting as recorded on video on the city's website city attorney Sue Gallagher stated quote the FCC preempts any state or local involvement on issues of RF emissions. There is federal law statute. There are FCC regs and also case law I looked at. Dot, dot, dot went so far as to say if a local jurisdiction or a state made any decision that was even partially based on RF emissions that decision would be set aside even if there were good valid other grounds for the decision. So that's pretty strict end quote. Clearly the recent decisions with T-Mobile versus San Francisco and the NEPA decision earlier this year underline that this old view is incomplete. FCC is not the U.S. Congress and does not make laws. Congress's TCA does not preempt local authority over WTF operations including emissions rather when given the choice to preempt operations Congress positively left all authority over operations entirely within state and local officials hands. By making reports like this the city attorney did not have this did not have all this recent law. It is necessary that you immediately stop all placement construction modification operations of new recent and applied for WTFs. Please write a letter to your wireless applicants that all of their applications are incomplete. The required environmental assessments or EISs must include negative health consequences and safety concerns as per the 4-4-19 California Supreme Court ruling in T-Mobile versus San Francisco. This will give Santa Rosa time to update its ordinance. Please let's have reasonable setbacks of these towers to where people sleep, live and heal. I have expressed no concern or any other non-stip stand of matter but I solely matters of fact and law. Accept your oath of office. Thank you. E. Orleans Coley followed by Bill Cossett. Thank you. You actually pronounced my last name Kerla, German. I represent an organization that is nationally wide and here in California I'm the president of Eagle Forum of California. It's an organization that has always been very concerned about privacy rights and property rights. I've written two books that I'm going to give to you. One I wrote back in 2012, just say no to Big Brother's smart meter and this one is Wo Nelly, 5G dangers and deception of powerful new wireless technology. I am very concerned because I believe that this data collection that is coming in on all of us is so pervasive. It's already pervasive with 4G but with 5G it is going to be sped up so much more quickly as you've already heard. That's one of the big things that they're using to push 5G every one months faster data. They want to be able to download a movie in three seconds when it used to take 24 hours but this data collection is really going to be the big oil. It's going to be bringing in so much money that's what is really pushing 5G. That's what the big tech companies want and some have estimated maybe five billion dollars are going to be coming because of 5G. Well in my book I mentioned this quote, smart cities that's what we all want to have our cities be with 5G will be like an expounded electromagnetic microwave blanket above each city and county permeating the airspace and providing seamless connectivity where people and things will exchange data instantaneously. This is what it's all about. It's called the internet of things. I have a whole chapter on it and how can this happen? We as well of all of these things will have to be connected. They want to have things to things to things to people connected. How can that happen unless people also have chips? That's the ultimate goal and I have much information about that in my book. Tom Wheeler who used to be the head of the FCC under Obama said that this super fast data collection is what 5G is all about. I urge you to please consider this and say no with any further implementing the deployment of these small cell antennas. Thank you. Thank you. Bill Cossett followed by Martin Miller. Yes, hi. My name is Bill Cossett and I'm a resident of the near Thomas area. We addressed the council last May in regards to the residential placements of these mini cell towers but thanks for the time today to address the council. My concern is again the saturation that these cell towers will provide. I'm glad to hear that the licensed professionals now on board to verify the use of these mini cell towers but I would really like to see them if there's 31 in place now to turn several of them on, use them under actual circumstances for several weeks and make the measurements there and then have the licensed professional check the results that he comes up with against what the manufacturer is saying will happen to see if we're perhaps oversaturating these areas because there seems to be an awful lot of dots up on that map or that just Verizon alone would like to install a mini cell tower and if we're going to have up to four providers if AT&T is coming on board now and then there's two more major providers what's the situation with that type of saturation are we going to be over covered when we don't really need to be so that would be my suggestion and also that I'm just a little concerned a very concerned with the fact that we're using 1996 standards you know dial-up modem era standards in 2019 for 5G and beyond so it's a I think that's a major concern from what I'm hearing so far today thank you very much for your time thank you Martin Miller followed by Jennifer Starr hi I attest and affirm the following statements are true accurate and within my personal knowledge my name is Martin Miller I'm a licensed active puncturist I also happen to be a licensed health insurance broker I live just over the border of Santa Rosa and spend a great deal of my time visiting and serving customers in this Santa Rosa area there's a growing body of research establishing a direct causal relationship between cell tower frequency microwave transmissions with markedly increased occurrences of cancer in the population living near to them so you have in one hand the 1996 standards and you have on the other hand the experiential reality which I'll mention a few for you now here's a short sampling long-term exposure to microwave radiation provokes cancer growth evidence from radars and mobile communication systems this particular report which I'll provide you afterward even a year of operation of a powerful based transmitting station for mobile communication reported reportedly resulted in dramatic increase of cancer incident among population living nearby unquote this next one is mortality by neoplasia and cellular telephone base stations by that they mean cell cell towers this 10-year study on cell phone antennas by the municipal health department of Belo Horizonte and sub universities in brazil found a clearly elevated relative risk of cancer mortality at the residential distance of 500 meters or less from cell phone transmission towers end quote the figure of 500 meters comes up several times in the number of these studies this one appeal logical evidence for health risk from mobile phone base stations stated eight of the 10 studies now these studies happened in seven different countries including france germany portugal uh and israel those of the ones combined oh and poland reportedly increased prevalence of adverse neurobehavioral symptom or cancer in the population living at distances less than 500 meters from base stations was interesting about this is none of the studies of these 10 studies reported exposure above accepted international guidelines suggesting that current guidelines may be inadequate in protecting the health of human populations and of course there was a large romazzini study in which lab animals were exposed to environmental uh levels allowable comparable to allowable limits and cell towers that found the rats develop increased cancers and this also confirmed the same results of the 25 million dollar us national toxicology program which uh was the gold standard of these studies that also found the same results uh this last one i'll mention is increased incidence of cancer near a cell phone transmitter station a significant high rate of 300 percent among all residents living within 300 meters and there was a 900 increase among women alone i think i fit it in thanks thank you jennifer star followed by jane herf hi there i'm a resident um in sabastopol i'm very interested in this topic and i'm just studying along the way i have two three children and um i can't and i care about our health and happiness in our home um one of the things that i'm learning just through looking at different articles and stuff is that data mining and selling data is making more profit than oil and um just the mere fact of looking outside of ourselves for information is already like a big dysfunction in our culture um thinking about aesthetics and what things look like um i think our communities are going to look pretty bad with more anxiety and depression and children with attention deficit disorder and all of the other ailments and illnesses that are connected to the radiation frequency that is going to be coming out of these devices i you know wish and hope that we can all get humble and just be grateful for the internet that we do have and um have some more patience with the downloading process um i think our culture needs to slow down instead of speed up um i was passed a letter that was written by a doctor gary camarada md dear mayor and council i'm writing both as a concerned citizen as well as a concerned public servant with regards to the proposed permitting of 100 close proximity microwave radiation antennas in san rosa i'm a family physician who works in our community health clinic system and have been in practice for now now for over 25 years in snow mccounty wireless radiation has biologic effects period there this is no longer a subject of debate when one looks at pub med online library of all medical research and the peer reviewed literature on the topic these effects are on all life forms plants animals insects microbes in humans we now have clear evidence of cancer with causality essentially established growing evidence links growing evidence links wireless radiation to dna damage neuro psychiatric effects cardiomyopathy leading to congestive heart failure and diabetes mellitus leading to renal failure and need for dialysis so 5g is not a conversation about whether these biologic effects exist they clearly do period 5g is conversation is conversation about unsustainable healthcare expenditures why do i say this the data on the adverse effects of wireless radio frequencies has been accumulating for decades now this with virtually no in the industry or public health oversight of the development developing technology in essence we have been sitting on the data in our public health of diabetes mental health disorders and suicide as well as thank you thank you jane herge followed by kim shredder hi i'm jane herge a fairly long-term santa rosa resident i'm very opposed to this mainly for health concerns as radio frequency has been proven to be injurious to all living organisms not only birds and bees but everybody in this room we need to back off consider what we're doing very carefully we may worry that the state or the feds can overrule anything done in this room or decided but we're if we can take a stand for health for our community for life and the planet i think we should do that thank you thank you kim shredder followed by scott compton there you go okay my name is kim shredder i'm a santa rosa native and resident i attest and affirm that the following statements are true accurate and within my personal knowledge regarding slide 17 of the santa rosa city presentation and have attached exhibit a here are the solutions to protect santa rosa's health safety property environment and history from so-called small cells here and after wireless telecommunications facilities are wtfs and ordinance must include both city-owned light poles and pgna utility poles wtfs irradiate block the landscape and skyscape and disallow healthy private living as such they cannot lawfully be placed within 1500 feet of sensitive areas including without limitation residential and school zones senior centers health care facilities playgrounds and parks a detailed list of preferred or disfavored locations is included in the attached recommended revisions to santa's telecommunications ordinance few examples include all wtfs require a conditional use permit notify all property owners within 1500 feet of the proposed installation within 14 days of public hearing 1500 foot setback from other small cell installations radio frequency data report requirement ada compliance requirement general liability insurance in the amount of two to five million to protect the city of santa rosa obtained paid for and maintained by the permitting per the last item note that the reinsurance and insurance industries have refused to ensure the wireless communications industry for 4g and 5g technology when allowed in commercial or industrial zones wtfs must comply with city code 20.44 and their effective radiating power erp must be limited by means of protective fuses to 0.04 watts such limit as allows carriers to provide more than adequate coverage but not irradiate at maximum capacity the protective fuses are of nominal cost and will earn the city considerable income from violations of this erp limit the telecommunications act of 1996 tca does not preempt local authorities from regulating the operations of wtfs indeed it requires them to do so any refusal to to regulate as city officials are obligated to do and any misrepresentation such as a false denial of the existence of authority renders an official ultra virus the best solution for any city is fiber to the premises fttp fiber optic cable is the most energy efficient expedient reliable secure safe and democratic way to offer broadband service with fiber individual households can choose whether they want to run wireless in their homes via wi-fi or not santa rosa would use the fiber optic cable that we're already paid for through our phone bills as a starting point which the wireless industry uses free of charge i've expressed no concern or any other stand of manner thank you thank you can scott compton followed by alex crown mayor vice mayor and uh council members think you're having me my name is scott compton i'm actually i drove down from bend oregon to be here um i've been working at the community up there because there's a cell phone tower going in an elementary school right adjacent to the school it's a 78 foot tower so it's very low to the exposure to the children there but um i really wanted to kind of give everybody an overview of what i do and who i am i run a company called lifestyle hygiene i'm an electromagnetic specialist i'm also a video game designer of the past two decades and i'm a previous biologist at sanford university so i'd like to give you an uh kind of an overview of um like biological effects so everybody's talking about here and kind of put this in preface with the physics of what we had presented earlier today so biological effects obviously we've heard the dna effects genotoxic effects blood brain barrier effects haven't been mentioned yet learning behavioral memory effects myla sheath effects that's your insulation around your neurons protect your protect your brain that can be degraded over time with this which thing in the scientific literature autophagic activity and neuron effects inducing stress and anxiety effects and a big one that martin paul talks about a lot is the calcium channel the vg cc effects voltage gated calcium channels on the surface of our cell membranes but the real question is why why aren't we seeing what why is there a discrepancy between what we're hearing which is the intensity of the rf and and what else is going on with the light but light itself frequencies have different properties and one of the properties that's never talked about here and we won't hear industry talking about is the polarization of the light polarization sunlight comes down naturally and it's and it's non polarized meaning it just is chaotic all around it doesn't have like a waveform actively to it we're not hearing a lot about the the pulsed effects of light like even our artificial lighting is off of the 60 hertz grid and it's pulsing at us every moment and that has biological effects and the modulation how how the actual carrier waves are modulated on the light is also quite unique and different when when you do it artificially so when you look at these effects in the science what we see is an increased biological activity of these artificial frequencies so yes ionizing radiation can cause damaging effects like from this time but you have to have your proper dose size to do it and there are non ionizing effects which i just talked about which cause these biological effects so my big question is why are we having somebody a physicist talking about what really a doctor or a biophysicist should be talking about on this when we're talking about safety up on that board and what previously mentioned we also heard we also saw in slide seven at the beginning of the presentation it was actually going into the scc lawn on health effects but really it's it's really defined back in 1996 as environmental effects right and rf has also classified they use this as a blanket term radio frequency when you look at 300 megahertz in higher higher frequencies this is microwave radiation so i just wanted to make sure this is all clear thank you scott alex krone followed by kathryn dodd i attest and affirm that the following statements are true accurate and within my personal knowledge my name is alex krone i'm a licensed physical therapist and i work and live in the city of san aroza i address here in slides prepared by city official gabe osburn slide three exhibit a the amendment council policy 300-04 was drafted and presented to city staff and council on february 14 2017 by eric mchenry and verizon representative miss canada the presumed exemption of so-called small cells here and after wtfs to our city code 20-44 is without merit we have submitted evidence onto the public record that proves the same equipment and technology used for macro towers are being used for small cells in addition we have proof that the amendment to council policy 300-04 addenda for applications were not complete prior to the execution of the master's license agreement therefore these two contracts contracts are void ab initio slide 10 exhibit b the 2016 california public utilities commission order was used throughout this entire process by city staff persons to advise city council falsely that it had no jurisdiction over the placement of wtfs on pg and e utility polls city staff further used this document to advise city council not to adopt an ordinance to regulate the placement and thereby any other activity of wtfs on pg and e polls these public officials were and still are ultra viries induced in doing so slide 13 exhibit c this map is highly inaccurate indicating falsely the only joint utility polls under contract according to the information obtained from the city staff in their website were for only 41 polls this slide is showing 45 utility polls now such incompetency makes it unreasonable to expect the city to maintain an accurate precise detailed and dynamic website portal as is such proposed in slide 23 slide 15 exhibit d mr osborne falsely categorizes health as a mere concern despite established science science pertaining to adverse health effects which already occur in santa rosa and will increase with additional wtf irradiation of santa rosa homes schools workplaces and other institutions such peer-reviewed science literature as we have voluminously submitted is admissible under the supreme court dobear rule and cannot be refused ignored or mischaracterized the communications act of 1934 of which the telecommunications act of 1996 is an amendment states that it's very purpose to protect safety and property therefore health safety property value lack of notification and environmental impact are substantive and cannot lawfully be suppressed or dismissed out of hand as it has been done in this slide i have expressed no concern or any other non substantive matter but solely matters of fact in law i accept your oath of office thank you katharine dawg followed by pat that call in my name is katharine dawg good afternoon mayor and um shrent shrent helm um ice mare plumbing and members soya olivaris and tibet's i live just outside the city borders in wikia but i spent a lot of my time in the city proper as a local shopper a library visitor and caretaker of people with terminal illness who live in this beautiful city i would like to start by saying thank you to you for the attention you paid to the well-being of our residents especially during the tubs fire and the kinkaid fire i'll come back to that i'm a registered nurse with a phd in sociology with an emphasis in health policy i've worked in the legislative and executive branch of government at the local and federal level for over 35 years i greatly respect the commitment you bring to your position and the 1980s i worked i was working for a member of the san jesco board of supervisors and a strange disease began to affect members of the gay community it was the beginning of the AIDS epidemic like many perhaps here i lost friends and colleagues i thought that this would be the worst public health crisis i would experience in my lifetime i was wrong the health effects of the health effects of wireless radio frequency radiation are an invisible threat growing in exposure to all of us every day this is larger than lead larger than asbestos both of which we are still remediating it's larger than pesticides like dbt larger than smoking all of these previous epidemics took seven to ten years before the damage was detected the standards you heard about from hemid and edison have been disproved by countless articles of peer reviewed science you receive lots of factual science today and prior to this meeting by residents and by experts much of which i would like to associate myself with those remarks the FCC is a captured agency it's made up of telecom executives their statements in fact disregard credible scientific evidence they are the fox guarding the chicken house and we are the chickens i'm not going to go into what's at risk i'll hand you my testimony 4g and 5g densification of it is an involuntary exposure we are not volunteering to be exposed to this people can't afford to move from their homes here to avoid being sickened by rfr a serious constellation of symptoms recognized in international code of diagnosis or icd 10 as our elected leaders you must keep keep us safe and prevent major public health epidemic i want to add this last comment about our permission checking because that's what you're talking about you need an independent staff person of the city to do unannounced random visits and if they exceed two times in 12 months they lose their permit thank you thank you pat and bakalian followed by gary or good afternoon mayor and council members i am a resident of san aroza and i am here for my grandchildren and other young children who have no voice in their increasingly hazardous polluted environment wireless radio frequency radiation is a form of pollution and is becoming more of a threat to our children the environmental health trust says children are not little adults obvious uh children's skull skulls are thinner and tissues of a child's head including the bone and marrow and the eye absorbs it's significantly more energy than those of an adult's head it is scientifically accepted that children are more vulnerable to biological effects of microwave exposure than adults children's stem cells are more affected by microwave radiation no studies show that microwave radiation exposure is in children is safe in addition the FCC guidelines i believe are inadequate they are out of date they have been set in 1996 guidelines were based solely on preventing thermal effects like heating no guidelines the guidelines do not account for exposure of multiple sources and only consider 30 minutes of exposure from one device at a time the guidelines do not consider research showing that current cell phones can produce hot spots in the brain i have um handout that i'm going to give you that shows that um the guidelines were based on an adult male body not children children's smaller bodies and brains are not considered in the metrics the guidelines consider average exposure not peak exposures the american academy of pediatrics recommends that the united states government tighten wireless exposure limits and that the public reduce children's exposure to cell phones phones and other devices that emanate radiation the academy also cautioned cell phone that cell phone that cell tower radiation is linked to headaches sleep problems and depression i urge you to heed the advice of the experts and um i hope that you will join other cities in california around the u.s in the pending court case against the FCC thank you for your consideration please think of the children while you're making your decisions thank you thank you gary oar followed by janice bradshaw my name is gary oar i'm a lifelong resident of san rosa and i'm in one of the areas where one of these poles is going to be outfitted with i suppose the same small wireless uh device which has happened to be 20 feet off my bedroom and 35 feet from my neighbor's house is slated for the property next door to me but it's right on the edge of my property and on my drive we are common neighbors in that regard where the pole is uh i assume that the city council has on the internet probably put out flyer or you know contact as far as when the meetings are going to be in one thing another i don't know because i don't have internet um but what i would say is the paper finally came out today and i was finally able to find out some information i had another neighbor that called and had a hard time getting hold it finally did he got a hold of me but my concern is i'm here because of my neighbors and you know some of them most of them don't want to have this go in right where it's going i mean there's other places they could put it i think the city council needs to find a way to combat some of these positions that um the internet companies are trying to push off on you i guess the only way is probably to get a class action against pgne and against verizon that's the only thing i could see that would do any good i'm concerned for my grandchildren and my great grandchildren i don't even want to have them come to my house if this thing goes in because i'm afraid it's going to bother them and as for myself i'm old enough that i guess it really doesn't matter at this point but i think there should be some way of controlling the amount and the areas of where these things go and i appreciate your listening to me today and i hope you carry on for the rest of us thank you thank you jenice bradshaw followed by moshasha shaffer hello thank you for your time i attest and affirm that the following statements are true accurate and within my personal knowledge my name is jenice bradshaw i'm a mother grandmother past elementary teacher in resident of santa rosa the polarized pulse modulated microwave radiation from wireless telecommunication facilities wtfs that the city wishes to allow without regulation would produce many harmful effects on the neurologic functioning of the people of santa rosa it is well established in relevant peer-reviewed scientific studies that the highly xenobiotic foreign to life type of radiation deployed by wtfs produces very serious adverse impacts on the neurological systems of humans and animals the nervous system at the whole body level relies on precise electron flow to and from synapses as well as potential energy to function the pulse modulated rf radiation that the wtfs deploy interferes with proper functioning of this delicate system the addition of more wtfs emitting constant 24 7365 forever pulse microwave radiation will lead to more neurologic problems including without limitation demyelination of neurons melatonin suppression insomnia fatigue lack of productivity learning and memory impairments lord iq attention deficit the art disorder hyperactivity early early dementia's headache anxiety depression violent behavior and accelerated neuro degeneration let me be clear that by the physical nature of such microwave radiation action upon a delicate nervous system every person is adversely affected our children are more affected than the adults since i am a mother and a grandmother i'm very worried about our children and i was a past teacher i also submit into the public record substantial evidence that is peer-reviewed and as such admissible under the supreme court dog dog bark rule the evidence cannot lawfully be refused ignored or mischaracterized as mere concern indeed i've expressed no concern or other non-substitive matter but solely matters of fact and law and i accept your office i am submitting to you to each of you my presentation along with with links to studies i ask that you please read the peer-reviewed studies yourself please read them yourself don't just rely on anybody else what they're saying and also um i have a whole thank you time moshia shaffir followed by judith monroy moshia shaffir i i practice and license architect in the state of california first is a question and a statement we are the people we own this building and we own the voting machines we are given only three minutes to talk here why the mercenary of the telecom industry given unlimited time and i am upset about it what is missing here now medical experts researchers independent researchers that tell you the dangers of these magnetic fields in 1983 i attended a conference a seminar i was just a young beginning architect about indoor pollution we studied magnetic fields of 60 hertz from their home electricity and we learned how to make it safe for people today we're speaking of energies and fields millions time folds and we still talking about aesthetics like the man sitting in the middle of the room or engineer lying to us and telling us he's safe he doesn't have a medical clue in 1969 i served in the israeli army we used machines that omit electromagnetic signals to detect motion movement the orders were to stand behind the machines when i turned off because of the toxic radiation we were protected by our superiors looks like now no one is protected in this room i feel constantly uncomfortable here because of the radiation here best of my experience i never used wi-fi in my home in my office all hard wires and work well 2015 i was hired by company in mil valley after being there for two weeks i started being sick then i discovered that was a wi-fi router the only wireless machine in the office when i asked to turn it off i was threatened to be fired when i fireworked the scope i was fired those shall not bear false witness against the neighbor exodus 2013 the telecom company industry publishes false statements data research claiming that wi-fi and wireless are safe there are not these credits independent researchers and some of them are names they are telling us the truth because they do the own research dr. dicker klinghardt dr. shane golbert dr. george carlo that were harassed and fired by them dr. devra davis and dr. martin paul the scientific fraud is larger than tebaco merrick all right and everything thank you sir june monroy followed by tom soyer good afternoon i have prayed to a higher power that you will hear us today look how many have come in the middle of the week in the afternoon we have jobs we have children to pick up and yet these people are calling out to you as guardians of our well-being of the quality of life in santa rosa that's where you were brought here not to represent the people at this table i can tell you personally i sat there biting my tongue listening to lie after lie after lie i will tell you what really goes on and what happened to me i bought a house at 7 21 ling claim and one morning very early between christmas and new years i heard a lot of noise going on outside for several days over a week from christmas through the new year period when city offices were closed and it was hard to get a hold of people i saw these crews come in they were in trucks that did not signify who was involved there were blank trucks pin ski um rented trucks anything but equipment that would not identify what was really going on and who sent these people they started digging 20 feet for my living room my favorite chair which to me had been a sanctuary where i could sit and read in supposed safety they went and filled a pg and e pole with all this ugly equipment and then they sunk at least a five by four foot maybe larger of of this collection electric box and they stuck it in there and when i went to them and i said i live here what's going on they would not respond and i had to knock on the doors all over these buildings to finally narrow down about this electrical wiring that was going to go in 20 feet from me i protested i finally was heard the electric box was left but all the equipment of the pg and e pole was left they did not i'm telling you may it was a fraud of going out to inform the community not one person in that neighborhood except my next star neighbor thank you junef there's the lies there's mr tom tom Sawyer followed by brian powell hello there you go my name is tom Sawyer i'm an electrical engineer and a lifetime member of iEEE i hope we can keep these away from schools and residential neighborhoods one thing we haven't talked a lot about tonight is exposure time like if they're on signals then you have people passing underneath them they're very low exposure time for the most part if they're in front of a resident that's 24 7 also i'd like to point out that the FCC testing that was done in 1996 that was done that was not done with pulse cold modulation in mind and that's that's what we have today and so a lot of energy can be put into a single spike over a given amount of time and you can come up with the same amount of power all although that spike could have consequences uh that hasn't been included in that testing although i think a lot of other institutions and academic studies have shown that uh that there is an issue there um also you know occupational rf there's there's uh there's time limits on that so i know that wasn't brought out today and i also like to point out that mr. Hammond who i know uh is uh also a consultant to Verizon so just thought i'd throw that out there thank you very much thank you brian Powell followed by martha and blazer so there's only a few things that can make people say poor mental state poor nutrition and poor environment we can give an individual the best food on the planet and teach them to vibrate and think better than anyone around but if you stick them in a microwave and spray them with pesticide they'll get sick anyway we need to stop this madness this equipment was designed in the past for specific reason it's still the reason why it's being used this isn't my knowledge this is what's you go ahead and read back in history what this stuff was used for this is a weapon and we're under attack my son's 12 years old and he won't see his future if we don't stand up and stop this madness the individuals you see here are part of the problem we need to come together and stop coming into these meetings complaining about it with each other we need to stand up and fight we need to get every man and every woman that can stand and fight and get our town back and our country back we've lost control we've lost control of what's important and it's time to get it back that's nothing to do with cell phone towers these devices have been making people sick since they put them in my neighborhood in the early 80s I have so much information about what's been taking place my family's been here for over a hundred years we didn't have this mess until we started putting these we lost the bees the butterflies and they started saying oh the oak tree is sudden death oak no it's the same thing all living things are affected by radiation it's destroying everything at a cellular level it makes you weak it doesn't give you cancer it makes you susceptible to any and everything the young and the old and the compromise are the most susceptible this is madness we're under attack these people are attacking us they're allowing people to destroy our future and we're standing and allowing it to happen enough of this madness time to stand up and stop this get all the people that you know around and stand up and take these goddamn things down stop the government destroying our sons our children's future we have no shot if we don't stand up soon we're going to be destroyed these are weapons this is what they were made for and this is what they've been used for it's never been any different go ahead and do your research read in history go back to the cold war understand what you're talking about in here understand what it's been doing understand the effects you apparently don't because no one on city council we need to start learning to elect individuals that have qualifications because we keep electing individuals to council that are qualified to govern our safety of our communities because they don't know anything about what's going on it's time for change this is this is who has nothing to do with cell phone towers time to get our country back and start here with our community we need to do this now we have no time to waste if we don't stand up soon there's going to be no hope for our children's future all right thank you martha glazier followed by debora gambrell test and affirm that the following statements are true accurate and within my personal knowledge my name is martha glazer i am the mother of two teens at questford high school in santa rosa a homeowner landlord and an adjunct instructor in the college skills department pool at the santa rosa junior college my family lived in california for generations and for over 30 years we've been in santa rosa my parents were instrumental in creating a cultural community center the glazer center barba and jewels lived out a happy retirement santa rosa for their last years and died and are buried here community is an important value in my family i'm here today because i want to be able to continue to contribute to this community although speaking out now about my experience with electromagnetic sensitivity is very hard to do this is my contribution to our community at this time i am not alone with this condition ems is a common problem one with an official medical code icd 10 cm code w 98 x x a also called exposure to other non ionizing radiation initial encounter right now and for the last few hours i can perceive the radio frequency microwave radiation here in is already been it's been hard to be in here i already live in a world that forced me to carry a radio frequency radiation meteor around to make sure i live in a safe place i'm in a safe place to spend any significant amount of time in the effect of my being in an environment like this for more than a few minutes makes me very unsettled with a fight or flight feeling like i'm in danger this is the sound of the microwave radiation i perceive and react to we're all in this right now with prolonged exposure i will more specifically feel head pain and ear temple and jaw pressure and will begin to feel anxiety and difficulty remembering what i'm trying to say will struggle to follow my own train of thoughts get words wrong and forget simple words get dizzy lose my balance get nosebleeds i'll feel heart palpitations and exhaustion in a microwave radiation ambient environment i suffer with deep fatigue for which sleep does not revive me what has convinced me that my symptoms are induced by rf microwave radiation is that when i'm away from antennas and towers spend time in homes with no cell towers or antennas nearby use corded landlines ethernet wired high speed internet no sparring meters no smart devices no streaming routers i feel no symptoms at all all i need to be healthy is simply to be away from such radiation simple or is it it's getting harder and harder to be away from antennas and wireless devices the saturation of highly unnatural radiation that the telecom industry is trying to force upon communities makes it impossible to just stay away from wireless devices and enjoy the quiet of our homes and streets it breaks my heart to think that i won't be able to continue as part of this community antennas and radiation pull pushing community members out are destructive of community it's unhealthy for all to put profits over community values i know that santa rosa will no longer be habitable on by me with 112 more cell phone towers here even with 10 more what's already here is already devastating to my health and others feel this too as more people observe the impact of the radiation on their own bodies and those of their loved ones under the telecom act you have the power to stop these companies you from pushing through their agenda and chasing away many solid rooted community-minded people you can avert harm you for those who remain we have just learned this morning you're you're going to get support 100 mayors in italy have just declared a moratorium five many people in our community are now effecting the experience and the effects of these thank you deba uh deba gombrel followed by disayana in ov hi good afternoon my name is dr deba gombrel i am not a technology expert rather i'm a triple board certified physician and one of my roles is as a pediatric developmental specialist one of the things i do is i go into classrooms and evaluate the development of our children as they are transitioning from kindergarten to first grade and what i've seen this is based on my experience and my clinical experience what i see is when we turn on these rf emitting devices with the smart fans and all the smart technology that we have in our classrooms the children's behaviors change their ability to concentrate changes their perception of abdominal pain changes their complaint of headache changes their ability to move in their body changes now i was an intern when the whole merc vioxx scandal came out when i saw patients that came into the emergency room dying after being on vioxx of heart attacks and i was told by my attending don't believe what you see the vioxx rep is here telling us this is impossible what i teach in my facilities is to trust what you see trust what's happening in front of you and what i see with these children developmentally is they are affected i don't care what the research says i see what's happening like i said i'm a triple board certified physician i'm not just falling to some fad this is what i see clinically and it's significant so i think despite what all the research says i think we need to ask what are we seeing what's the truth out there thank you for your time thank you gasiana followed by katya miller it's dachiana yankou i am an internal medicine physician and i'm also a resident of santa rosa and i just want to add that i agree with everything dr gambrel said and i have also seen that in my practice especially with the children um so today i attest and affirm that the following statements are true accurate and within my personal knowledge the post modulated microwave radiation from wireless telecommunications facilities is hazardous it causes dna damage to the mitochondria the energy generators inside the cells it also damages the membrane of red blood cells when cells are removed from these rf radiation exposure after a limited amount of time they can still recover however their dna damage does not recover and this gets passed on to our children when cells are constantly exposed to microwave radiation they're not able to recover studies have shown that one microwatt per square centimeter of radiation can cause decreased sperm viability 2.5 microwatts can affect the calcium metabolism in the heart muscle six microwatts can cause dna damage exposure produces cumulative effects over time current radiation exposures within cities without 5g have can reach around 5000 microwatts per square centimeter 5g is expected to deploy concentrated focused and constant radiation in excess of 100 times the current levels the cells most affected are those with rapid replication like sperms over and cells of fetus and cells of children young children and fetuses these causes problems with infertility birth defects memory problems learning disability cancers adults can be affected as well especially those with weaker constitutions and more stress they can develop short-term neurologic and cardiac conditions and in the longer term chronic illnesses such as auto immune disorders cancer memory problems fatigue the hormone effects of rf radiation have been documented by over 10 000 studies over the last century bio initiative 2012 which is now updated is a review put together by 29 scientists from multiple countries about the harmful effects of rf radiation on human health the global fertility rate has decreased three percent just in the last year and much of this is due to male infertility many studies have shown that sperm exposed to rf radiation loses its viability girls exposed to rf radiation while in utero can develop damaged DNA when they become pregnant this damaged DNA can cause birth defects in their offspring including infertility in their female children however we will not know this for another generation and these repercussions thank you doctor katia miller followed by max crone thank you for having this study session i test and affirm that the following statements are true accurate and within my personal knowledge my name is katia miller and i'm a mother a grandmother i'm a resident of oakmont a co-founder of an organization called sonoma county for responsible technology i'm a researcher author with a fellowship with the united states capital in washington dc our group submitted packets to you last week to the council members from our national organization called americans for responsible technology including this brochure wireless radiation an undeniable risk to human health which i hope you have a chance to read and i'm going to include a few extra for gabe uh osborn because i don't think i did that the current wireless communication telecommunication facilities wtfs misleadingly called small cells already which are already undermining the cardiac function of people in san aroza and if not removed will continue to do so research shows increases in heart rate arrhythmias dizziness increase in blood pressure and other disturbances in cardiovascular functioning following exposure to wireless radiation several studies reported changes in eeg after prolonged repeated exposure to radio frequency radiation such as the wtc's deploy and immediate and short-term effects were also common the people of san aroza are experiencing and will continue to experience increased autonomic nervous system sympathetic activity and decreased parasympathetic activity in response to wtfs highly unnatural pulsed modulation microwave radiation diminished health and productivity of san aroza's will result leading to increased health care expenditures and early death i submit herein onto the public record substantial evidence in the form of relevant peer reviewed scientific studies which are admissible under supreme court dober rule i have expressed no concern or any non-substant substantive matter but solely matters of fact and law and i accept your oath of office thank you max crone followed by deba tavarez thank you mayor and council members i attest and affirm that the following statements are true accurate and within my personal knowledge my name is max will crone and i live in the city of san aroza consistent evidence from epidemiology in vivo toxicology and in vitro laboratory studies show that rf microwave radiation exposure is respectively associated with and causal to produce reduced burn count motility and concentration as well as dna damage and altered cell structures research also shows damage after wireless exposure to the ovaries of rats and mice as well as to the eggs and of flies and birds in overall degradation of fertility capacity over just a few generations decades of such studies have produced an enormous volume of data constituting proof of harm to humans animals and plants particular particularly radiation where radiation is modulated for data carriage and i have a packet here to submit public records here that shows some of these studies and i have expressed no concern or any other substantive matter but solely matters of fact and law i accept your oath of office thank you thanks deba tavarez followed by mark solovan deba tavarez and i run the website stop the crime dot net i am a researcher a journalist an investigative reporter and i'm on radio shows all over the world on stop the crime dot net we have much information about this 5 g apocalypse and that's what this is this is a silent weapons system of death make no mistake this is a genocide plan we know that we know that we look at the deagle dot com website and we understand the percentage of reduction of population by 2025 in the united states but i shan't digress because certainly we all must understand this is an illusion of public input right now this is a corporation santa rosa is a corporation they are in lockstep with all of the executive orders that run this country including the executive order on january 18th of 2018 requiring the expeditious rollout of broadband a k 5 g throughout this country over indian tribal lands to every corner of this country everywhere everywhere also the executive order of the expeditious rollout of ai this is where we are heading massive data collection and a digital reality this is what this foundation is all about we are heading towards a digital everything the internet of things let's get now to the battery backups of the of the grid battery backups are run on lithium ion batteries they explode they degrade rapidly and they are like shrapnel did you know that these are going to be our backup batteries throughout this city everywhere actually solar as well which is a weapon but it's most important to understand that this is an illusion of representation because we are a corporate structure the united states is a corporate network of agencies run by the united nations the international bankers and the imf this is a silent weapons attack and there is a document that all of you should read if you haven't called silent weapons for quiet wars have any of you heard about the smart nodes being deployed in langcaster california right now if you haven't you should it's on the street lights it's going to come here too it is creating the internet of things where you walk out and you say uber and it arrives without a cell phone in your hand that's where we are going rapidly right thank you mark sullivan appalled by peter chanoff can you hear me now just kidding just kidding i'm uh i'm a second generation native santa rosa mark austin sullivan thank you city council and all of uh all the members of the city itself for pulling this together today and everyone in the audience here give yourself a high five for feeling your your potential and being here don't ever forget you got it 1996 was mentioned as the testing standards for telecom industry is using which is not good on the face of it but also the flawed aspect of that is they're using a thermal rating much like your microwave is high temperature most of the uh electronic communication isn't doesn't get that high as far as thermal so it's a deceiving number when they call it safe the human body is basically a biologic a bioelectric component a biologic thing every every living thing is so the rate the the exposure to any any radiation at all is definitely going to have an effect babies especially because they their cell division happens so fast that's why they grow fast and if there's any disruption of the uh dna or the mild mitochondria the the cells early on that progresses very rapidly and can turn into who knows so many different aspects of ill health for the children human technology um is advanced really well as we all know but we tend to be um not used too much wisdom when when it gets going and we look there's a lot of instances we can look back on now and say we're well why didn't we see that coming so it's a precautionary principle now that glad to see the city's moving forward slowly the the other aspect of the telecom industry they have no insurance against lawsuits for damage so in this position the city might be opening itself up to tremendous lawsuits that will affect all of us down the road as we witness by the amount of damage we uh it's evident from this um technology so go forth and do well thank you peter chanoff followed by noah davidson i am peter i am here speaking truth the power free of all fear debert tavera stopped the crime dot net it's worth looking at she's telling the truth and the young man that was in this spot earlier who said uh to take our country back was absolutely right but the question is how do we do that well first you got to understand this we're under martial law since the 1947 national security act which basically says you all are slaves and this guy down here he's not asking them to do this he's telling him to do this he's like the head of a pedophile organization that comes to town that's going to rape all your kids but he's going to ask them nicely to do it first they do not have the power that you think they have which is why i am commanding you to general strike this system into submission starting now with a total economic strike i tie prophecies together blackout prophecy the power of the wind when it's returned back to the people will be in the midst of the greatest of changes ties into Ephesians we fight not against flesh and blood but against the powers and principalities of the air that's what you're looking at i trust a former sheriff watson from alameda who was an expert and brilliant and having auth authored a book on the very radio onyx and frequencies verifying that this technology is military application and it also has the ability to go to lethal force and before the sheriff uh uh uh became a sheriff he created the first radio dispatch technology for law enforcement this was in the 1930s his son put up all the 19 major radio towers on the mountaintops of california afterwards i think he knew a little bit more than what we're being told this military tech is an initial step to additional upgrades with satellite interface interfaces all brought to you by the military industrial complex with the united nations agenda 21 fema and their cohorts which rule over them so how do we fight this well you see the firefighters and the police department they're kind of like in the middle of a satanic riddle and the answer is with us so we shut down by prophecy the 40 day strike shut down the entire west coast for 40 days and 40 nights and the u.s constitution is for the first time ever released out of the prison cell a letter peltier who's been down 44 years now the whole world walks a true trial of tears and the law enforcement works for us first time ever and this kind of shit goes away immediately and so i am here speaking truth to power fear i am commanding you to join the strike no labor no schools no longer they're fools you're all off the fence no mortgage is no rents and get ready to put a party together to welcome home some of our most well-known political prisoners that have been in that are known and that's letter peltier noa no davidson followed by sharyl healer i attest and affirm that the following statements are true accurate and within my personal knowledge i'll also be providing you with an email to add to the public record documenting what i've stated today my name is noa davidson i live in sacramento california one of the first 5g test cities in the world in late december 2018 verizon installed an omnidirectional 4g small cell antenna just 45 feet from my family's home at roughly the same height as our second story 4g small cells form the backbone of the 5g infrastructure with multiple millimeter wave antennas installed around the 4g antennas this is the same infrastructure that verizon is trying to build in santa rosa shortly after the antenna was installed my nieces began experiencing health problems including immune system suppression manifested as persistent cold and flu symptoms in addition to sleep disturbances headaches and chronic fatigue these symptoms have since been documented by a practicing physician and attributed to the antenna outside our home our family also hired a local certified electromagnetic radiation specialist to take measurements in and around our home he measured exposure as high as 460 000 micro watts per square meter or 4.6 of the fcc limit inside my nieces bedroom while this may sound low compared to the limit it is actually hundreds of times higher than typical exposure from cell antennas which the fcc defines as quote thousands of times below safety limits this is the main problem with small cell technology although the antennas are slightly lower wattage because they are being installed so much closer to the ground and so much closer to people's homes exposure from small cells can be much higher than exposure from previous generation antennas this is confirmed by a pilot study conducted by the city of sacramento in which they hired hammett and netison to take measurements of 28 small cell antennas that have been installed in my small neighborhood greater exposure levels means greater threat to public health period there is no debate in 2011 the international agency for research on cancer or irk part of the world health organization labeled rf radiation as a possible carcinogen just this year irk has def has decided to reevaluate rf radiation based on research that has been conducted since 2011 and they have designated this action as a high priority this is one of the world's leading authorities on health saying very clearly that rf radiation is potentially carcinogenic and needs to be reevaluated the only party is saying already rf radiation is definitely safe are the telecom industry the fcc that is in the pocket of the telecom industry and engineering firms like hammett and Edison who is not a health organization as the elected representatives of san aroza you have a sworn duty to protect the health property and rights and you know sharyl healer followed by harry layman is sharyl here sharyl healer nope okay let's go with harry leeman followed by ian wilkerson wilkerson i want to first engage as others did earlier in thanking you i particularly want to address mr tibbetz mr tibbetz was asking questions earlier about frequencies penetration levels between different wavelengths and frequencies i have submitted to you today which has been submitted to you by email a paper which i think you'll find people talk about telling the truth here i'll tell you that everything that's been said in this paper is well documented well sourced and easy to read and explanatory so if you wanted one place that you could find out whether it was a truth or not by looking at it the paper i put into you today in addition to my own work attaches the work of dr gullum and thereby integrates approximately 370 peer reviewed studies on this she is a professor of medicine at the university california school of medicine san diego uh points that i wanted to make and this which are ones that i made recently also in napa first there is an impermissible and i say this to you particularly sir with great respect i i think you're secure a sincere man the assistant administrator down there that was speaking earlier i think he's sincere but you know a lot of people were sincere believing in vietnam and a lot of people were sincere in believing in iraq for example for just a couple of the things that we've gotten on the bandwagon for when we really weren't ready for them this is one of them one of the reasons is the whole theoretical basis for putting these small cells up close together is because the short wavelengths require that but instead they're putting 4g in which penetrates much more deeply this is very dangerous it's a very dangerous thing to have 4g penetrating like that that is discussed here of all the things that you can read please read and it's mentioned in here it's sourced in here you can find electronically the nation magazine how big wireless convinced us that cell phones are safe which shows that dr carlos epidemiological studies in late 90s showed the carcinogenic characteristics of this wavelength these wavelengths collectively which of course by the way that here's the core point talking about mr hammond and i'll be happy to debate with mr hammond anytime the reality is his entire dialogue and that entire dialogue is based on a false premise and that is that the thermal standard is the one that matters how do we know that that's false because the national institutes of health national toxicology program on may 27 2016 on march 18th 2018 and the spinal report on november 2nd 2018 stated that the mechanism of the cancer causation specifically the formation of glioma cells was non ionic it is occurring as a result of vibration in physically call this acoustic so i wish i had more time but i promise everyone in this room because this is now a public record that the things that have been said here are well researched and thorough and i beg you to please do the job that you've been begged upon here by all of us to do which is really please look at the science please stop this horrible thing thank you thank you ian wilkerson followed by sydney cox ian wilkerson not seeing ian sydney cox followed by mary doll hello my name is sydney cox i live in windsor california i have a letter that i've drafted to go to the windsor school board um it's a bit of a personal story about radio frequencies i would like to explain why i first became aware of the effects of radio frequencies my husband a retired physics professor and i have a current electro smog radio frequency meter we've had it for about five years ever since his diabetes alerted us to the fact that his blood sugar levels were about 10 to 20 percent lower in a rural area on east eastern long island where there were where the rf levels were very low cell foam inception was basically non-existent in the house we stayed at this location three separate times in the winter and spring of 2013 while clearing out my aged mother's house and noticed this remarkable effect each time wondering what the reason was brought us to the possibility of rf's effect on my husband's blood sugar that began my six year investigation into the effects of rf's which include smart meters wi-fi cordless phones cell phones and all matters of wireless devices now i have been a volunteer in the windsor schools for 10 years spending time every week in the second grade classroom i was always loved my time with the children however this year the second grade classrooms have moved to matty washburn and most of the second grade portables have wi-fi emitters which seem much more powerful than the ones i measured last year at windsor creek i brought my meter in on several occasions took some readings and was alarmed the readings range from 0.241 microwatts per centimeter squared to 0.0152 microwatts per centimeter squared which studies show have been found to produce biological effects lest you think i'm simply an alarmist i've attached some findings that corroborate my alarm and i have them here and here are the readings these are the readings that i took and these are all the listing of biological effects that happen to children i still spend time in the classroom but since i'm 67 years old and only there one morning a week i'm not worried about myself however i am worried about the children biological effects include hyperactivity disorganized thinking agitation headaches and emotional behaviors and i've noticed all these in the second grade classroom this year because i've been there for 10 years and i see such a change thank you thank you mary doll followed by megan jerkevic hello my name is mary doll i'm here to address the issues i have with a cell tower just feet from my home of 50 years since the cell tower was turned on approximately july 2018 my health has declined to the point that i can't be in many of my rooms without getting very sick several times i was so very close to calling 911 think back to your worst flu bug that's what i live with every single day i am a prisoner in my own home as a result of this i have not been able to perform my normal daily activities like chores cooking cleaning gardening since the cell tower was turned on even my orange tree just a few feet from the cell tower normally produces much fruit now one side barely has any fruit it is clear to my friends that my health has declined i've learned a great deal about the harm radio frequency radiation affects one's health the energy levels of radiation frequency radiation in my home yard and street are thousands of times higher than they were before the cell tower was turned on i called miss karen mcpherson first part of september and she told me she'd look into my complaint and get back to me she called me back several days later and told me that it would be looked into by an independent contractor and when they get the report they'll would go from there september 20th 2019 there were people from val x nexus company working on the cell tower and i asked what was going on i was able to speak to the boss he told me they came to turn the cell tower on the city doesn't want the liability i said oh no it's been on for a year i've been very sick since it's been on he got his meter and measured outside no readings he measured in my home no readings i asked if his meter was turned on before he measured any answered yes and after a friend approached him he said the cell tower had been on the whole time end of october miss mcpherson called me and gave me a brief report on the findings something about noise level a broken fan and is now in compliance with the city ordinance when i inquired about the radio frequency report she said she can't share that with me why i told her how i resent my monteverny drive address on the battery backup box i want to change them immediately it should be four three nine calistoga road as stated on the permit they no one had my permission to use my address i asked for copies of said reports and i received said reports but it was for king's street not calistoga road thank you megan jerkovic followed by melissa chianta is megan is megan here now go ahead melissa followed by donna davis there's a little button on the side there if you want to lower that okay can you hear me yes okay as a cancer survivor i am extremely concerned about the health effects of emfs there is ample research that indicates that emfs are hazardous to human health just ask the 240 scientists who have published peer-reviewed research that's 2000 papers and letters on the biologic and health effects of emfs and have consequently signed international emf scientists appeal the statement says numerous research recent scientific publications have shown that emf affects living organisms at levels well below most international and national guidelines effects include increased cancer risk cellular stress increase in harmful free radicals genetic damages structural and functional changes of the reproductive system learning and memory deficits and neurological disorders and negative impacts on general well being in humans damage goes well beyond the human race as there is growing evidence of harmful effects to both plant and animal life one of the researchers and signers of that document is joel moskovitz phd the director of the center for family and community health in the school of public health at uc berkeley dr moskovitz began translating and disseminating the research on the health effects of wireless radiation after he and his colleagues published a 2009 meta analysis of research that found long-term cell phone users were a great risk greater risk of brain tumors and we have no reason to believe 5g is safe a piece published on scientific americans website on october 29 2019 dr moskovitz weighs in on 5g he states 5g will will employ a millimeter waves for the first time in addition to microwaves that have been used in in use for older cellular technologies 2g through 4g given limited reach 5g will require cell antennas every 100 to 200 meters exposing many people to millimeter wave radiation millimeter waves are mostly absorbed within a few millimeters of human skin and in the surface layers of the cornea short-term exposure can have adverse physiological effects in the peripheral nervous system the immune system and the cardiovascular system the research suggests that long-term exposure may pose health risk to the skin as in melanoma of the eyes as an ocular melanoma and the testes as in sterility one of the defining experiences of going through cancer is feeling completely out of control it's a sense that echoes through the days and if one is lucky years that follow surviving it for me that echo raises to a roar when i read the research about the ill effects of 5g and know that major corporations are making decisions that it could affect me and the other cancer patients at sonoma county i demand that the santa rosa city council not give those corporations that control please listen to the science and give the power back to the people where it belongs thank you donna davis followed by richa kenny good evening council my name is donna davis i'm with at&t external affairs i would like to thank the staff for allowing us to collaborate as we look forward to solutions for the network demand that we have here on between 2007 2016 we saw a 250 000 increased in data traffic on our network this isn't just from us as individual users but also our small businesses which now more than ever depend on wireless services to support their day-to-day operations and probably most importantly here in sonoma county you know we look at emergency and first responder support and the use of the wireless network to do that we heard from assistant fire marshal lowenthal speaking about emergency alert systems which depend on an effective wireless network 2018 we began the rollout of first net which is our nation's first unified communication platform dedicated to first responders with that kind of network and the technology that we have it's allowing for our first responders to have video live video feeds during an event for situational awareness something we didn't have you know prior to what happened in 9 11 so you know with all of this increased demand how is santa rosa faring with network performance i may recall in 2016 your press democrat cited a root metrics report which rated santa rosa 122 out of 125 metropolitan areas with respect to mobile network performance 2018 that dropped to 125 of 125 metropolitan areas so you know how do we solve for this we heard about the small cells and addressing network performance with respect to coverage and really we're also talking about capacity so why you might have bars where you are the service might not work when it's needed during those high capacity moments if you think about it like 101 that's the bandwidth that's the pathway to get around in the north bay but when it's high peak or high traffic it becomes slow or maybe it comes to a complete stop so if i'm using my travel app it'll take me and it'll divert me to a surface street so that i can get to where i'm going without being stuck in the traffic so these small cells will offload some of that capacity demand on the network so i just wanted to again thank the city for the opportunity to collaborate on this i know it's important for the community feedback and and we look forward to continued work on this solution for you thank you richard can you followed by steven holless excuse me federal government has established standards we should be reassured because the federal government has established standards i do not trust the government the government lies the federal government is practically a wholly owned subsidiary of wall street wall street's interest is money not people wall streets writes the legislation the congress passes there are higher standards for the safety of people involving these cell thingies the european union which has great demonstrated a greater concern for its citizens and our government has ever demonstrated for us european union has higher standards give you one example m&m's the m&m's sold in this country may not be sold in europe you can get colored m&m's in europe but not the colored m&m's in the united states colored m&m's in europe are made with vegetable coloring the colored m&m's in these united states are made with paint that's not allowed in europe europe has much higher standards for food and regulations on emissions such as this that's one place we could look maybe it's time we petition our government for redress sometimes if you get their attention if they hear from enough people enough voters they'll act they won't just take the money from wall street because they know wall street can give them millions of dollars but they wall street has no more votes than we do we each have one vote and that's our power and we haven't been using it properly but we need to contact our congresspeople in my opinion and get them to raise these standards or abolish these things or find a better method let them know directly and if they don't vote them out that's the only power we have and if that ain't gonna work and i asked you to take the lead in this petition of redress you are city leaders if you care about the people and you've heard enough tonight you could take this lead and we could join you but you'll be much more effective than we will be and if not that the only other thing government understands is lawsuits that's one thing that'll get their attention and they'll get these corporations' attentions and this should go on record because when these problems occur we can prove that they knew about it and still acted egregiously and criminally thank you very much to the barricades thank you Stephen Hollis followed by Rob Hansen is Stephen Hollis not seen Bob Hansen followed by Chris Villegas go ahead Bob please Pierre Bob Hansen going on two years ago i gave the city council documentation documentation which stated the majority of the world's scientific and medical communities have deemed communications transmitters placed within city proper a global medical crisis you don't get any much more blunt than that when the majority of the world's scientific and science and medical communities call this a global medical crisis you've got to listen like Roundup and the city council meeting with the public saying we do not want this in our city it took multi-million dollar settlements against Roundup for this city council to act it's time our city council realizes you do not work for the corporation of the city of Santa Rosa you work for the public you work for everybody here that voted you on to that seat and when the public says we do not want this in our community you've got to listen thank you thank you Chris Villegas mayor and council members my name is Chris Villegas and i'm the community outreach representative for the north bay for Verizon wireless at Verizon we are hopeful and excited to move forward with providing better coverage and capacity solutions to residents and businesses of Santa Rosa through the past two years we have worked closely with city staff and support the request that he staff has made to move forward with small-cell deployments with with the industry Verizon wireless is happy to be a resource to the city as we have done many small-cell deployments within the country and locally in northern California again my name is Chris Villegas and i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have thank you those all the cards we have here we'll bring it back to council give you want to put that next steps slide 32 up to frame the conversation okay let me first start with council based on any of the comments that we heard from members of the public did you have any additional questions you'd like to ask any of the presenters see none let's start with you mr. Tibbets for any feedback all right thank you mr. mayor at first i'd like to thank the gentleman who came i'm sorry sir i'm missing your name but thank you for coming and providing those insights and of course appreciate the input from the public you know for me this one and gave i'd mentioned to you the other day the hard thing for me here is you know not even necessarily trying to determine or speaking of the health benefits it seems that there seems to be a study for either side of this argument um where i struggle with it is it just comes down to a citizen's ability to you know feel safe in san rosa and i i think it very well could be that in 20 years this this proves to be a non-issue but i don't like the idea that somebody who something is the sacred to them is their health feels threatened especially when they're in their home so i am you know i like that what you've got here i like that we are looking at commercial zones keeping it out of residential neighborhoods um and i but i want to really make sure that we truly create a system that that does that and also has enforcement capability i think i mentioned to you but i really want to see us if we're going down this road come up with a policy that allows us to also have some degree of control over the cpu sepals and to me that policy has to move hand and glove with this policy that we're talking about here tonight i'd also i wasn't really discussed but i i think it was it was kind of brought up a common theme that i was hearing was that the residents want some degree of control and and i was thinking about that what could control look like for a resident let's say it does even though it's in a commercial zone let's use the example of the junior college that you mentioned but it's within 200 feet of of homes there um would it be plausible to uh you know essentially take a compass draw a circle 500 feet around that point or whatever the range effective ranges of these towers and notify those residents before it comes in much like we would for a planning hearing or something like that but not just say to the residents hey come on down to this this hearing or come on down the planning department and voice your opposition but actually if they gather more than 51 percent of signatures of people in that neighborhood saying no could a process like that be instituted to truly give residents control over this process yes that's definitely more of the discretionary process you're describing um and a lot of these review cases especially with macro sites it's reviewed against design guidelines and if it meets the design guidelines it moves forward which to some extent does it creates a challenging atmosphere for the resident because they have valid concerns about the site and we turn around and open up a public process really to check some boxes on design criteria so what we'll look at is we'll definitely take a radius so it'll probably be a bit more aggressive than the impacts of that site just so we can incorporate the community's concern when we do the limited deployments and in this situation since we're trying some things out we can definitely look at other sites if we get those types of concerns when we get into more policy development there's a big difference between ministerial and discretionary and even in the discretionary realm what are we reviewing it against just from a staffing standpoint and the ability to process that application but we can definitely look at those pieces to say that if we're seeing those concerns that we really can't control from a current policy how can we get creative on ways in which we can address that feedback and incorporate into the decision-making process so definitely on the limited deployment and is definitely some impact input we can factor into our overall code change yeah I'd be really interested in that and I want to be clear I'm not asking you to bog down the design review board or the planning commission I think they're bogged down enough I think it would actually be a ministerial process but something as simple as a certain period of time that people have to petition to not have it in the neighborhood and if they collect the 51 percent of signatures of property owners in that zone then it's not going in that's something I'd be curious about on to the you know I'm trying to address your questions too that you had in the study session Gabe so if I miss one please let me know but the other one would be is the battery backup boxes for the ones that do go into the commercial zones I think it's it makes absolute sense to have a battery box if we're going to have these things at all they might as well work in the event of an emergency when it when it comes to the testing so I think this is this is important but I also wanted to be effective I don't want it to be just doing something for the sake of doing it you know somebody mentioned that in San Francisco it's checked twice a year do we even know if that's if that's sufficient I mean if the hard part here is what's what's enough and I do agree with your idea of having the the leaseholder I actually not the leaseholder but the the tenant if you will on the polls pay for that that service but how would that how do you envision that that system working well what we can look at in in there was public comment points addressing this too is some of the concern is when they're up and running how does the RF how is it handled a year after that and I think San Francisco has took that two-year mark we can do some research is to see how effective that is there's the other pieces we can track with which are any activities on just from a permitting standpoint changes are made to the facility and we can retest but I think the more important point is how can we address the community's concerns when they feel as if just on a regular day-to-day basis there's experiencing problems how do we provide those internal services to be able to test in that situation that would still have to be built into a cost recovery model but we can definitely explore that along those lines of we receive a request from the community member to go out and test how can we handle that again I'm recognized that's probably going to create a headache for whoever's doing that job or whatever department is managing that person and you said something that I'm glad to hear you say which is that that should be an internal person that person should be independent of carriers and things like that but again what we do is I think it's going to be important that for that person that again feels unsafe and for me to to support an eventual policy like this it just comes down to how that person's feeling in their home for me and I think that might might help um I think oh and um yeah I think that's it for me from now thank you mayor and thank you Gabe thank you mr. Oliver's okay thank you for the work that you put into this and and uh all the effort to and and developing some of these solutions that I think are viable here I am in support of moving forward with those things that we we can do within our legal restrictions with the limited release of city polls and what can we do as it relates to the utility boxes of the battery backups I am supportive of eventually having some kind of an art thing associated with that if it's if it's feasible again all of this recognizing the so many other responsibilities that you have going on with your new department now so how do we time this out to roll it out and also looking at potentially what policy changes can we be making of our own policy down the down the road to meet our current issues and future issues as well mr. sorry thank you mayor I do have one question given given the changing landscape of legislation around this issue not only in California but across the country is have you heard anything about the retro activity that could be in place if if legislation changes and allows us and which would probably follow other studies I mean one I can always find you whenever someone uses the word studies show I know that there's always going to be someone on the other side that's going to be showing another study that that perhaps counters that and it does it creates a it puts us in a difficult position of course and but I have a sense that the that there will be more information that will come to bear around this technology one way or another and so if there is a retro activity that is attached to some legislation that changes I'd be interested in hearing about that I agree with councilmember olivares that within our legal whatever legal restraints that we do actually have that anything that gives us more discretion in our decision making about where these antennas are located I know that Gabe you you mentioned in our meeting that prior to this evening that you were dedicated to making sure that whenever possible that these were not located in residential areas and that there if something did occur where there was a potential for that that there would be a great deal of community outreach so I I'm I know you're dedicated to that and I know that that would be that would be happening but I again it is discretion in our decision making that I think it's never it's never very comfortable when the federal government says you can't say no and makes me feel very uncomfortable and we it's this is not the only area where we are in that position but I expect in some ways that may change but but that discretion in the decision making is something that's very important to me I think then and the entire council and clearly to the community that it was here this evening thank you this wife mayor thank you mr. mayor and thank you to everybody who came out and expressed the information that they did as well as the hard work of our team I'm with my council members in that with our within our limited scope of authority I believe that we should move forward so that we can exercise as much local control as possible and to that end a couple of my thoughts are that I do believe that in as much as this is one aspect of this is about public safety that we can't move for without battery backups but that Santa Rosa historically has moved forward in favor of development without aesthetics and then we have paid dearly for that and so I I believe that both have to go forward with equal importance and urgency the second thing that bothers me is the idea of having a less than 300 foot setback in doing outreach to neighbors I think that that maybe in the Mendocino corridor the residents that that I'm that I serve are very engaged and will come out and tell you exactly what they think but in lower-income neighborhoods where people have two or three jobs and less bandwidth I don't think that that's reasonable to expect that they're going to be able to express themselves at the same rate and so that that will disadvantage lower-income communities and I'm not in support of that let's see I I definitely support the idea of having a city review process and figuring out a way to fund that through through the utilities and let's see did I miss anything else did I is there anything else you'd like some feedback on that I missed I think that covers it thank you okay thank you great yeah thanks for the presentation variety of different perspectives here and I really appreciate the one thing you said the limited deployment non-residential areas because really the the deployment of these cell towers in residential areas as we talked earlier I mean it greatly concerns me and and I would be interested in this may be more of your item two deployments allowed under council policy 300-4 when that does come back could we have a medical professional talk about the safety of these devices and I'll do respect our engineer it's a different filter to be looking at this issue because I can't all of us on council have received much information by the different studies and it seems like there's a missing point here so again I do appreciate the engineer's perspective but FCC dealing with medical issues concerns me it just seems that that's out of their ballpark so one of the other questions that I was interested with our current policy what is our standard with I know there had been no cell towers around firehouses and schools can you just update me about what institutions are cell towers are allowed to be away from are there any so as it stands now there are not so as we incorporate that there is a lot of sensitivity around schools as been mentioned I'll let Mr. Lowenthal talk a little bit about some of the input that's brought into the fire station discussion but these are all pieces that are really great feedback so if there's those critical facilities or there's high level of concern about some of those locations that would then govern the radius in which these can go in that's excellent feedback now and then as we roll this forward because obviously that concerns me and I thought with one of our last previous study sessions there's something about firehouses there was some legislation that forbid them from going close to them can you not I don't know necessarily can't speak necessarily to them going close to them but I think one of the concerns was them being placed on top of them because historically fire stations are looked at as commercial buildings and that's why you'll typically see a lot of cell towers going in and fire district station locations commonly around the state because it's also a source of income for a lot of those smaller districts but I know I think one of the things you're referencing is IFF requesting that they not go on top of the fire stations because they are looked at as homes because that's where the firefighters are sleeping so the concern is is that work that has to be done them on off hours things of that nature could be disruptive to the crews that are in there but as far as specifically within close proximity of it not to my knowledge so that was more about and you understand I apologize for not sharing this with you earlier but what I just heard you say is more about the construction of it not the actual what comes off the device was the bigger concern for the IFF there's there's a couple different points there is the point for disruptive to the crew but is some of the issues I've heard not just from IFF but other departments around the state but yes also potential limitations to any exposures IFF is always very proactive to reducing any risk whether it's sound whether it's carcinogens so anything they can be done to limit different types of exposures is what believe the IFF was referring to back in 2004 so again for me coming back with policy a comprehensive policy so if there are exceptions like schools firehouse whatever whatever the reasoning that those entities were excluded I would like to it for it to be consistent because again if it's not good for the firefighters the school kids the same thing with the neighborhood so let's just try to be please Alex you've been here enough please give us a respect I didn't interrupt you thank you so anyway those are things that I think once we get more into item number two here let's be a little bit more specific when we get to the potential backup batteries you know I like the art thing in commercial areas something that's going to be aesthetically sound because I do see the need that is a valuable resource for our community and getting feedback from the community about what that looks like I think would be a good step in the right direction so did you get the information to move forward for your next steps or is there any other feedback you need from the council I think we have enough I appreciate the feedback and as soon as we really know timelines of that second phase so we'll move forward in the first go around with the rollout very sensitive about the radius we'll expand it out above the 300 feet as we get into that pilot program and then we'll incorporate the feedback we heard as we bring that back to council determine that bigger code change okay thank you very much okay council is going to take a brief 10-minute break we're meeting at 5 30 okay welcome back to the city council meeting madam city clerk we get an announcement of the roll call let the record show that all members of the council are present thank you we just had our study session madam city attorney would you like to report on the closed session items yes the council held discussion on two closed session items 2.1 and 2.2 and on each of those gave direction to staff great thank you we have no proclamations mr. goon do we have a fire recovery and rebuild update what we do item 7.1 is a fire recovery rebuild update in megan masinger our housing committee service manager will give the update okay good evening i'd like to provide you with a brief update on the status of the cal home disaster assistance program as you may recall in fall of 2018 the housing authority was awarded 1.2 million dollars in cal home disaster assistance and this is funding to provide eligible homeowners gap financing up to a hundred thousand dollars for the reconstruction of their destroyed residences hcd which is the california department of housing and community development has made amendments to state legislation so the program is now available to households up to 120 of am i which is for a family of four hundred and eleven thousand dollars a year we are we being the housing authority is in the process of amending our guidelines with hcd so we'll have a rollout of the program in early january we are also seeking to modify the cal home program to allow gap financing assistance for owners of manufactured homes some of the other parameters of the program is that the post rehab or reconstruction value of the house cannot exceed six hundred and sixty thousand dollars so that is one of the limitations that has been an impediment to the process that is not going away but we can now assist households up to a hundred and twenty percent of area meeting income and interested homeowners can look on our website we'll have further information rolling out in january um and they can contact staff with any questions i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have so what website just the city website they have to go to srcity.org and if you hit the recovery button there is a link to the program there great thank you council any questions on that thank you so much maybe stand by there may be a question yeah i'm curious to know if that number the total value if that is something that is assessed when the construction is completed or at the outset and i ask because i do see prices starting to come down and i'm wondering if that might be one of the upsides of a softening real estate market so unfortunately the the value does track the real estate market and it's updated monthly based on data from the california association of realtors and that's available on the state's website it's by county and it is an appraisal that needs to be prepared prior to the execution of loan documents so we need to have a good understanding of what the estimated value is prior to construction of the residents but it's about when it's the completed value and the completed value if the trend lines are going down it would be what if it were completed today what the value would be today so it would be the estimated value prior to beginning construction so if we're able to estimate that the value of the house is going to be 650 when you start construction and that's what the state is currently trending then we would accept that we don't go back and reassess it at completion is there any discretion with that but it's pursuant to state regulations so no okay thank you you're welcome any other questions seen them thank you may any additional items to report on that that's the end of that item okay great uh mr assistant city manager do you have a report for us this evening we have two items both from san rosa water in october san rosa water was honored by the american council of engineering companies uh north coast chapter as the 2019 infrastructure public owner of the year award for the work they did on restoring the water system in the fire damaged area of neighborhoods of fountain grove so and that was back in 2017 in the tubs fire um it's also as part of that they've got they received a special recognition from congressman huffman congressman thompson as well as uh from the state assembly i do want to acknowledge though a few people jennifer bergamel walton and joe schivoni and their teams um they did act very quickly found creative solutions for that and got that system addressed very quickly so um applaud to them they also are sharing their information and knowledge to other areas that are affected by similar disasters which is a good thing to pass that along secondly um do the most recent fire the concave fire we think we've told the council aid of calpines power poles that provide power to the pump stations that provide recycle water up to the geysers from our system they were damaged um those have been offline since mid october so it's been a while since the power's been off and what that means water can't be pumped up to the geysers for energy generation so the the good news is that that those repairs have been done the water has been resumed to pump back up to the geysers which is really important because during that six week time frame when the power shut off the city had to store that additional water which was about 400 million gallons um to put it in perspective that's about uh about 60 percent of the story i'm sorry 40 percent of the storage that we have that we reserve for um future rain events so uh the water department's going to be watching that very closely to make sure that if additional rain events come over the next few months uh that's going to be a trigger to determine if we need to discharge um and there's protocols in place to make sure that we discharge appropriate per our uh agreement with the state board so and we'll give it more update and if anything does move forward on that we'll make sure to update the council okay um city attorney do you have a report i do not thanks okay let's go back i do have one card on i'm 7.1 uh peter charroff thank you mayor i am peter and i'm a bit of a spiritual arsonist and as i tried to make it clear in the other meeting that uh uh the city council for all their good intentions can only do so much because they are under united nations agenda 21 which can be verified a number of ways so they want to do good things but they're hampered they're hampered because uh they do not have the political will that they could usually have and the people that want to make things happen somehow are lacking the spiritual will to make things happen i wanted to bring up the fact that uh you know there's going to be the earthquakes are coming you got all these fires and waters does the city have a couple thousand gallons of water clean drinking water put aside or are we going to rely on on the big stores charging ten dollars a gallon when all these things happen beginning this week with the earthquakes and when i hear discussions about manufactured homes and i see all these people homeless on the streets and there's a lot of people that are struggling that had homes and they're also in the streets or in campers why why are we why is not somebody putting something together on some fairgrounds using tps tps worked for a long time they worked great they're perfect and so i want to finish by sharing the fact that you know if we all got off the fence stop paying mortgages and rents for two months and then decided to pay 25 percent of what it was before then all of a sudden we eliminate the bankers and the lawyers in this game and a 40 day strike and powers law enforcement with the u.s constitution first time and we change the entire equation it cannot be done within the system by the system's rules it's the united nations it's the usurus bankers running this whole show these are people that want to do the right thing and you have the power to let them do the right thing but you have to disengage financially from the system for the 40 days which the prophecy calls for that sets the entire world free i've been sharing this for 30 years the world's walking a true trial of tears martin luther king says you can't uh if one person's wrongfully incarcerated so are we all letter peltier has been down 44 years jamal 39 mcdonald 47 and we're sitting there worrying about ourselves so as those that seek to save their lives so lose them you have to do for others first and what's first is first is these people that have been down that are our champions our jedi warrior knights that did things on behalf of many of us before we were twinkling anybody's eye so the power is with only the powers with the strike the 40 day economic strike that disengages the bankers and the united nations off their back so that they can then do what you ask but as you've seen for the last 10 years they cannot do what you ask when it comes to serious issues even though they want to it's the same thing with law and police they're in the middle of us that thank you peter uh council any statements of abstention anything on tonight's agenda mr rogers thank you mr mayor i will be abstaining from item 14.1 any others seeming great uh council in mayor reports anyone have anything in the elect report mr all there's thank you mayor we had our um monthly downtown subcommittee meeting last thursday uh not a high attendance because a lot of controversy had been resolved for us which is good uh the members that attended i mean the downtown folks that attended were very appreciative though of the efforts our efforts in uh moving forward with with rolling back our parking hours uh they did talk about some of the difficulties they've had downtown this season i think we saw that in the paper as well but more importantly they were really surprised and express gratitude for the speed in which that was done i believe that change over was done within two hours i mean i'm sorry two days uh with the help of various volunteers and getting those labels on those parking meters so they wanted to extend that appreciation hey thank you mr rogers thank you mr mayor so three primary things uh first i had a chance last week to join the league of california cities for a discussion on league priorities i think i've reported back to this body that i was appointed by the president of the league of cities as the vice chair for the environmental quality committee and we were successful in making sure that resiliency and recovery made it as a top three issue for the league of cities primarily around for other jurisdictions how to prepare for disaster for fire uh and learning from the lessons that we've learned as well so that'll be moving forward uh there is going to be a ribbon cutting this coming friday for smart for the larksburg extension at one o'clock uh everybody is welcome to attend but around that smart is doing two specific programs to try to get folks used to using the rail line in conjunction with the ferry down in larksburg uh so first is for the months of january and february uh free rides uh on the weekends so take advantage of that and then the other is during the week uh at the non peak times uh and they have it on their website what the peak times actually are they will be doing what's called a rail and sail pass where if you are a user of the smart train and you pay your fare to go down you then can ride the ferry for free and if you're coming up into marin and sonoma from san francisco taking the ferry you pay for the ferry and then you can ride the smart train for free so it's going to be cross marketed between the jurisdictions to try to bring folks in sonoma county down along the rail line to check that out and then to bring up from san francisco people to shop in our downtowns and to see what sonoma marin counties have to offer and that'll be running for the next six months uh as well third and final i attended the sonoma county transportation authority monthly meeting yesterday there was a very interesting study that they have been working on around vehicle miles traveled to try to judge where transportation funding should go they used over 25 million data points through 2017 and 2018 and they found that actually almost all of the trips that are generated in sonoma county also stay in sonoma county there was very little crossover into other jurisdictions and san aroza actually not surprisingly did the best so 89 of all trips in sonoma county that started here finished here for san aroza 76 of all trips that started in san aroza finished in sonoma county we had 84 of our total trips in san aroza that were under 10 miles total and we had 61 of all of the trips in san aroza that were under five miles so our folks particularly in our downtown don't tend to move a whole lot we were 44 of the trips that were generated over that time span and only 36 percent of the vehicle miles traveled and then finally they did a cross reference and all of this is available on the sonoma county transportation authorities website they did a cross reference to see which plots of land in sonoma county generated the highest density of travel the answers were san aroza marketplace which is the cosco and best buy and target was number one downtown san aroza including them all was number two downtown peluma was number three and then the san aroza kaiser was the highest the fourth highest density of travel per acre in the county so some really interesting data there to take a look at particularly as we move forward with talking about measure m and the reauthorization of measure m and how to best spend those transportation dollars okay thanks so much for that report any other reports seeing none uh approval minutes did anyone see anything to add delete or adjust from the minutes of november 19th seeing nothing we will accept those uh mr gohan consent calendar all right the consent consent calendar item 12.1 is a motion contract award fire damage street lights replacement in found grove item 12.2 is a motion contract award fire damage street lights replacement in coffee park item 12.3 is a resolution resolution of the council the city of san aroza approving amendment number one to the communication systems and service agreements with motorola solutions ink san diego california not to exceed five million three hundred three thousand two hundred dollars to purchase and install a digital p 25 trunked radio system solution approval of equipment leased purchased agreement and appropriation of 145 thousand dollars from federal state federal asset fortressers fund hundred thousand dollars from the state asset fortress your fund and three million seven hundred seventy two thousand from the general fund reserves to the radio project key nine five eight six zero item 12.4 is a resolution speed limits on piner roads the basketball road and summerfield road item 12.5 is a resolution voc environmental mitigation trust fund application and item 12.6 was an ordinate adoption second reading ordinance of the council the city of san aroza increasing the compensation of the city attorney by providing effective may 12th 2019 one a 7.5 merit increase and two a 2.5 increase in deferred compensation for a total contribution of five percent of base pay and effective July 7th 2019 one a 2.5 cost of living salary adjustment and two an increase in contribution by the city for the 2019 2020 fiscal year equal to 0.25 percent of base wage to the city attorney's retiree health retiree health savings plan for a total contribution of 0.75 percent of base wage thank you council any questions do we have any cards on the consent calendar miss vice mayor yes thank you mr. mayor i move items 12.1 through 12.6 and wait for the reading of the text we have an emotion and a second any additional comments your votes please in that passage unanimously thank you do we have cards for non-agenda public comment okay these are for items not on the agenda first up alan thomas followed by lisa landers thank you good evening my name is alan thomas 306 boy street i'd sent you an email this afternoon or this morning regarding night street and as you know i live over in the west end neighborhood and our kids go to school up night street west night and then they go over to night street then they go to high school so these are school children that have to walk in the gutters filled with beer cans and garbage because folks have decided that that's where they're going to live and i said in in the email to you folks that to me that's a taking that that's no that's a adverse taking so your legal department can describe what a taking is to you but that's when you take something and you don't you don't you don't mitigate it you don't mitigate it when with money or services and things like that you just take it from somebody and you're taking our public property away and giving it to someone else for their use whatever their use is it doesn't really matter the nobleness of the use you're basically taking it so do the ends justify the means to those kids they have to walk in the gutter in the garbage to go to high school you folks are all about high school and school safety and all that kind of stuff but yet you sit quietly and there's people underneath highway 101 probably right now that are camping and then tomorrow morning those kids are probably doing their school work some of them i see kids down here from the Boy Scouts or whatever group they're with and they're they may or may not walk to school but our kids do walk to school and so i'm asking again like I ask in the email to put your emergency homeless item that you keep extending for years on the agenda so the public can come and comment so you can make a decision as to how you're going to deal with this situation and working with the county and sending you know letters back and forth and working with Shirley Zane or Linda Hopkins it really doesn't matter to those kids that have to work to go to school they have to basically walk in the street so again i'm just asking for your cooperation to look at all sides of this issue and there isn't a protect a more protected class of my opinion than school children but yet for whatever reason we're okay with having them walk in the gutters it's not acceptable and you can do better i know you can so again thank you for your time and please put that this on your agenda as soon as possible thank you Lisa Landers followed by Valerie Schloefke Lisa Landers i got three quick things for you um one is it's come to my attention that clerical support would really benefit our city council in efficacy a lot of them have full-time jobs this is an afterthought job that has to be crammed into a very very big format with lots of paperwork so i think i don't know if it needs to be an agenda item or what but i don't want our police without guns and tear gas and all that and i don't want our city council without clerical support so if they could share one clerical support person between them and get more work done that would be beautiful okay my second item uh we have put together a community listening session we have finally got all parties to the table santa rosa police department sonoma county animal control sonoma county board of supervisors susan goren uh we have mayor tom we have chris rogers from city council did i forget anybody so there's a multi-layered thing that happens with animal control we have our own legislation here they're the legislative body we also have enforcement that comes a little bit from santa rosa police department and then we have sonoma county animal control that has to be brought in and then they are governed by board of supervisors so it's a very complicated thing hard to get traction on we got everybody coming to a listening session it's going to happen sometime in the first week of february so if you are a walker a bicyclist um a runner someone who likes to go to parks and you have been annoyed as almost every person i know has now been by off-leash dogs particularly by homeless people um it seems to be more prevalent as that crowd rises the incidence is going up uh now you're going to have a place to voice your concerns on that and maybe we won't have to have any more vicious attacks because maybe everybody will come together and find better solutions for it and make headway on it okay my third thing is needles i've been a creek steward for many many years i don't even go just with the big troop i go on my own and i do it hours and hours every week of volunteer service i am finding so many needles on every path every parkway i go to i use coffee containers that have been donated by people and then i label them and i hand them off to parks and rec i got this in my um recology thing and it's about the sharps containers but unfortunately when you call the number to get one they have been out for over a year so i then called the eco desk they didn't have any way to get them to me so i called allister from the creeks he's going to supply them so if you are a trash picker upper a needle disposer of person talks to talk to the creek stewardship program allister and he will get you one of those containers thank you thank you valerie schlafke followed by peter churniff is valerie here valerie apparently not uh peter churniff followed by andrew roth so here we are in the eve of a full moon and not a thing has been accomplished yet but it's going to be very exciting right now with the homeless we get the forced vaccines we get the 5g military programs we have a bunch of high school kids here that could probably list about five or six other things we have a few adults that actually do work and try and make a difference but we're still on our knees to corruption and the and and and the god mammon of greed before we still maintain the slaughterhouse of the animals and the slaughterhouse of the oil which is the blood of the earth ghosts abound make not a sound as spectators warriors arise free of compromise overcome as liberators rainbow spirit warrior students walk out of school lead the way so you spectator adults abide courage to join them to play shadeh shadeh adonai shadeh arise together as one and shine as the sun's ray i am peter i am servant commanding the ongoing fires and earthquakes till every knee hits the earth remanding no labor no school no longer their fools no mortgages no rents we're all off the fence i am commanding the student strike on this full moon like jedi knights to finish the fight of all fights this be their high noon as above so too below now revealed so long concealed behind the golden mask the cap now off contents revealed of this ancient egyptian mask a mystical cobra released proceeds with its task already arrived this full moon as a matter of course uniting in power this moment this hour with the warriors of crazy horse with the fiercest warriors both bitten and unseen they be an almighty force all gathered from past and future all heartbreaks they be here to suture in present time it won't be nice it won't be pretty not in any corrupt city that be filled with crime crime against what has been given for the promised lands living as this magical rhyme political religious deceivers are no more than riff raff like ancient jews who pervert true news while dancing about the golden calf as thunder and lightning comes forth more than frightening as to sever them in half almighty power as a promised shower unseeds abusers from their perch the serpent seeds selling blood and greed the hierarchy of the catholic church almighty's love from beyond and above collects safely the innocence by search lord almighty your spirit lord almighty your spirit be my home the doors open for all your children from once they roam the last now be first as we cease all the curse by the power of this poem as the fires be commanded now the earth shakes so all remanded their knees to the earth and laying down the sword by authorities living lord we see the promised birth releasing our spirit the power the way followed by craig murphy and peter could you let andrew up please thanks i've got a few comments about the recent police shooting the other day at the corner of gurnville and fulton or in that neighborhood and also about police firearm discipline and command discipline in general uh i was a boy scout and if we we went to um shooting ranges at scout camps in pennsylvania and maryland on a number of occasions any of us who had used the level of ill discipline that uh it was reported in this incident at gurnville and fulton would have been ejected from the range immediately and given the lecture of our lives not allowed to return probably for the duration of camp it strikes me that you know a private citizen opening fire under the same circumstances this man was wielding an umbrella would likely face felony charges might be barred upon conviction from ever possessing a well really possessing a firearm again um you know the range discipline that i mentioned has to do with in particular with siding and uh identifying the target but you don't just open fire blind onto something you haven't identified and sided and uh you know i don't really see how i would misidentify mistake a um an umbrella for a long gun especially in broad daylight this incident happened i believe about 12 30 p.m uh i can see how you know if 911 caller might misidentify it but we would certainly hope that a police officer would cite it and identify it before opening fire um it seems like there's you know this feeds into a general sense of a police privilege that once officers are through probation there really are very few restrictions on what they're allowed to do on duty uh very little accountability um and that uh another um related comment i have is that we've there's a an even worse problem with uh with tasers maybe not so much in the santa rosa police department specifically but police forces in general they've got the same grip and design as uh as side arms and as you saw in the uh oscar grand shooting in oakland that is very clearly an incident where where the officer involved uh mistook it for his gun he immediately reacted with shock when he he discovered he shot oscar grand and uh i think that just in general that uh there were other incidents like that uh it really taser should be uh removed from police officers thank you thank you craig murphy hello thank you council members craig murphy santa rosa um wanted to start by reporting out uh citizens for action now as a group that that i'm what been and um recently we uh were successful at clearing a homeless again but that was behind montgomery high school um but that wasn't the end of it there was there was still uh work to be done because there was nothing preventing the folks from moving back in our future people moving back in uh so uh we had caltrans involved through a series of conversations with chp and caltrans they cleared the site of all brush and trees and then just this morning they installed signs saying the stating no trespassing and that's a big deal because that gives the police and the chp authority to go in and arrest people who do camp there in the future so um citizens for action now was instrumental in making that happen and so that's a good thing we are making a difference um the the topic that i want to talk about briefly tonight though is about needles that are in parks drug paraphernalia this sunday a woman was playing with her child at howarth park and a lot of people might recognize this uh in this picture here there's a playground that has some structures that look like a little storefront area uh chief photographed needles and a torch and a butane canister so tools for cooking heroin or meth uh somebody left them behind as they were tuning up probably the night before literally they left them on the play structure without the protective caps on the needles and this this lady's child was crawling around on the area and she saw something over there and she went over and stopped her child before the child got to the needles so this is this brings the question about why are we not enforcing the laws why are why are the and i know it's it it's homeless because there's homeless campers that are at howarth park there's homeless campers that live up above the camp watom sleeping area and others that periodically camp near the baseball diamond and then others that live up in in um in annadale park so and primarily the users of drugs are the homeless population so it's pretty safe to say it's likely homeless people why are we not why are we holding them to a different standard than we're holding ourselves what if that was somebody's child maybe they got infected with hiv or or another disease from a dirty needle um i've emailed chief navarro i asked him to up the uh the patrols of the parks um my own kids have walked by needles dirty needles uh and somebody that was strung out um and i would also finally finish with if we're not going to enforce the laws let's put up signs like we have at the joe redota trail that warn people to stay out let's warn people to stay out of spring lake park and howarth park in annadale thank you uh 14.1 mr gulen at 14.1 is a report the fiscal year 2018-19 measure o annual report and presenting will be chuck mcbryder assistant city manager and cfo and team are you missing someone fire chief uh fire chief is going to kick it off actually our cfo is going to we'll fire department will start and we'll move it to police and then uh violence prevention so uh mary schwedhelm vice mayor flamin councilmember thank you for having us now this is our annual report on the major o for the city and as the agenda says uh fire department will kick it off to my right is uh jim randy's the asl for the fire department he'll deal with the financials uh and we'll get going right now okay to start out um for um for the fire department on slide four you'll see that uh our sales taxes were four million dollars that was up 9.97 percent over the year before our expenditures were up 9.7 percent so we had a net gain in our fund balance of 424 thousand dollars um to bring us from the 2.6 million up to 3.1 million as of the end of the year slide five goes into the expenditures um a quick synopsis at the top you'll see that 84 percent of our expenditures through measure o are on salaries and benefits so we're mostly staff 10 percent was spelt on debt service for one of the fire stations and another six percent on administration and service and supplies um we increased overall our expenditures by 330 thousand but like i said before our revenues were up higher than that so we ended up actually coming out ahead um going to slide six you'll see the differences where they lay out the revenues and the expenditures and the green is the revenue and you'll see over the past several years we've had a gap in between and that's kind of what you want to see that means we're building up fund balance at that point and that's a by design that we're doing that um and the chief will address that on to come of our future concerns with that i'll turn it over to you yep so for major it's major has been really great for the city of santa rosa and the fire department so for major oh it provides 10 additional people for the fire department nine people are on an engine and then we have one training captain so with fire engine comes three captains three engineers and three firefighters we also get to enjoy it 25 uh pay for a used to be a quarter quarter time ems battalion chief we have since moved that to a full-time ems battalion chief of major oh picks up 25 just like they did on day one also a couple years back we added paramedics to all of our truck companies so major picks up the incentive for those six uh paramedics uh the impact so with the nine firefighters and the training captain i will tell you that this year we're going to we've already run over 30 000 calls for service our training program is very very stout uh meaning it's year to year it's 25 to 30 000 hours of training that we we perform annually uh department wide uh so major oh gives us the ability to really really put uh some really good training in the works for the fire department i and one of the training is one of the one aspects that i really really have a hard time uh short-handing uh meaning i don't want to cut any training because that's what makes us as good as we can be in the low the less staff we have the more training that we need um what this does is it has allowed us to fund two stations so station five up on new gate which we are in the process of uh working through fema and rebuilding or at least that's where we're heading we aren't there yet uh and station 11 on lewis road those two engines especially engine 11 took up a huge call volume uh that engine one in engine three and engine five shared so uh engine 11 is one of our busiest station uh engine one is our busiest station i will tell you that uh when you're running 30 000 calls with 10 fire engines the system is very busy so on the major oh side having those extra additional engines and equipment that we're able to purchase with major oh is very very helpful uh these are the stations so station 10 helped the construction off circadian way station 11 against and on lewis road and station five was on new gate and these are just some of the uh pieces of equipment so the type one engine we had two type one engines that major l funded the type three engine which is a wildland four command vehicles one swift rescue trailer all these uh pieces of equipment are used um quite often uh even the swift water rescue trailer that sucked up every winter and it was very useful last year many times throughout the floods around the city center as a while we did not typically have too many issues with flooding there was a lot of flooding around us we provide mutual aid to everyone around us so um looking ahead so with our addition of our what we've done is we've completed a strategic plan it's three years in we've done a standards of coverage which you guys are aware of and then on january 14th we'll be presenting a staffing study for the fire department so all major oh is is trying to help push these items forward we have funding for future location and construction of station eight we have plans to move that down towards north north dotten and herne avenue area not north dotten but dotten and and uh herne avenue uh and then we have to rebuild station nine station nine or we have to build station nine that's the southeast side and then station 11 so station 11 is a station that we have it's a triple wide building that was meant to be seven to ten years it's been in service for ten years and we're not going to have enough money in major but we're doing everything we can to make sure that that we are using that money and saving it for those types of infrastructure projects and with that we'll entertain any questions thank you chief i have a quick question just on station eight do we have a location for that because i know i i i get the response time thing but do we have a location where that's and we don't we have the general location right now we're focusing on on purchasing property for station five and getting that going and uh station eight has been put on hold in terms of property acquisition until we get station five okay council any questions on the for the fire department miss special this is totally out of order but i just want to say that that engine number one is eddie's favorite so good work that was my favorite too okay so many comments not to say anything else thank you chief thank you all right thank you up next is the police department and chief navarro good evening mayor schwedhelm vice vice mayor phleming and city council rainer of our chief of police and before i get started uh engine one i think is my favorite too so uh so i'm here to provide an update on the police department's use of measure funds here we go so as you see from this slide we had approximately 5.4 million at the beginning of this fiscal year that includes the beginning balance of 1.3 and the tax revenues over the over the year of 1819 that was about four million dollars the the bulk of the expenditures that we'll we'll go into a little bit later here includes a special project regarding the radio project and also increased spending that has to do with personnel costs in this slide here you can see that about 85 percent of our our measure of funds are allocated to salaries and benefits for our staff there's about three percent that goes to services and supplies which includes a downtown enforcement team office that's over by the center as a transit mall you can also see about it was about 390 000 that was transferred out that transfer allowed us to do work on the radio infrastructure which just a little bit earlier before during consent you approved funding for the second phase of that project and so what the first what the 390 000 did would allow it allowed us to upgrade our dispatch center for improved emergency response communication and laid the foundation for this next phase of the radio project so we're really excited about that moving forward this slide here provides a an example of what our trend is as you can see that our expenditures are actually increasing greater than our revenue early on we had early on during the measure row we had opportunities to prevent layoffs because of measure row is very important to us but as we've moved through the years what we're seeing is that we are experiencing an increase in salaries and benefits that has that makes us dip into the measure reserves right now to address the increasing costs of staff as a staffing model right now our measure row again it's very vital to us we we we gain a lot out of the measure of funds that was voted by voted in by the by the community we currently have 19 positions that are staffed through measure row as you can see we have a lieutenant that lieutenant is overseas our special our special events program and our traffic our traffic bureau the special events program that has become vital right now especially with all of the things that are going on we have an iron man cinema county fair the ones that i market and all of the other special events that go on throughout the year and our lieutenant is the the point person when we are working with the other city departments to put those together to make sure that we are doing it in a safe and efficient manner the sergeant is currently overseas our downtown enforcement team and we have a couple of officers within our downtown enforcement team i apologize we also have officers that are that are assigned to traffic and and then we have two field evidence technicians and a community service officer those are important we're we're actually using funds in non sworn positions civilian positions to provide a greater efficiency for funds and using a civilian personnel out on the street to to provide direct resources to the community again we have from a measure row impacts we can attribute 611 arrests and 412 citations to our measure row staff even though we have experienced some staffing issues in the past we've been able to and some of those some of the staffing issues that we've dealt with we've had to pull back to patrol from some of our special assignments but measure row has allowed us to maintain motor officers within the motor on the motor team to address traffic traffic issues and complaints throughout the city we've increased been able to increase our customer service again we have the measure row funds has allowed us to lay the foundation for the radio infrastructure that we have going right now and for the next phase we've also used it within our downtown enforcement team our host our downtown enforcement team is the major component for our patrol down in the downtown area they represent the liaison with our host team and several of our nonprofit providers and the the measure row has supported police operations related to a homelessness and quality quality of life issues again you know looking ahead with measure row some of the things that we're going to be doing is we have to prioritize and we will be prioritizing the needs of the department we're going to continue to evaluate the most effective use of measure row funds to enhance services to the public this basically means that we are going to be looking at how we use measure row funds as it relates to staffing and also staffing specialized teams and also equipment that actually enhances our core function our our vision for the police department is to be the standard of excellence in policing and we believe we the measure row is helping us reach that vision and in the future we're going to be we have to address infrastructure needs we're going to evaluate how we can use measure row funds from an emergency response standpoint that includes addressing and assessing what we need to be doing in active shooter scenarios rescues natural disasters collaboration with other public safety entities and public communication it's we've we have learned over the last several years that communication with the public is vital and and necessary and so we are going to be assessing how we can use funds within measure row to help us out with that and then we're also going to be looking at technology in the future technology has become an industry standard and technology is becoming more advanced and more expensive and so it'll be important for us to be leveraging measure row funds to assist us as we move forward in technology and we'll also be evaluating how we assess and work within the quality of life issues including homelessness and mental illness and our services to youth and our local schools as we are currently have if we came here a few months ago in front of you and the school board and talked about how important our school resource officers are we currently have five and we have you know with the annexation of rosalind and we've added high schools and so it'll be important as we move forward looking how we can leverage some of these funds to address some of those staffing issues with that I am open to any questions or comments I also have my acting ASO Pam Lawrence here with me in case you have any questions for her thanks for your presentation chief council any questions of chief Navarro miss vice mayor yeah thank you for your presentation and your good work I was curious about slide 16 you mentioned that that benefits and salaries have gone up I'm just wondering if part of that is has to do more with our purrs liabilities or if it has to do with budgeting and planning that's something that is more under our control so purrs does play a part in it we do have it's the basically the the fund is is going to run out at some point and so if you know measure row is is very important to us if if if it does sunset then the funds begin to dwindle and disappear and so the the measure roll funds just can't compete and keep up with with the current the current funding that we have thank you do you have a plan to have the the green line be higher than the blue line going forward we we are currently working on that we are evaluating what we need to do from a staffing level and how we how we can address that with a within measure row and our general fund but so we're working closely with the with our finance finance team including Chuck McBride and our ASO as we as we look into the future to see what we can do thank you I appreciate it any other questions thank you chief great the next section is violence prevention and kicking off this part of the presentation is interim director Carter Mayor Schwedhelm vice mayor Fleming Jason Carter with community programs and engagement with me I have Kelly Magnuson deputy director of recreation and Jason Parrish the ASO for community programs and engagement before I hand it over to Jason I'd also like to give a shout out to event minors he's the vice chair for the measure of citizens oversight committee so feel free to pass along any compliments as far as measure of funding goes so with that Jason Parrish will start us off all right in the first slide here as you see our ending fund balance of just short of 1.5 million dollars is or 1.1 million dollars is roughly a hundred thousand dollars more than what the city council saw from the 10-year plan in spring that money will be reconsidered as part of the next budget process and how to continue to sustainably fund our programs and overall in the funding scheme as you could see the choice grants as the ordinance requires is 35 percent of the violence prevention program the rest vast majority of the rest of the money is split between the staffing to provide either direct services within the neighborhood service sites in recreation or the community outreach and grant management program within the office community engagement and as you could see we have been working very hard to ensure that for the long-term health of the program through the end of the measure o that our expenditures and revenues are able to be sustainable through that period so the partnership has continued alignment with local and state initiatives such as health actions cradle to career we have Sonoma County probation's keeping kids in school initiatives as well and also the Sonoma County upstream investments policy team and of course are regularly occurring internal cohorts the policy team and operational team we currently have 43 members of the policy team and 64 members of the operational team representing over 50 organizations in september 2018 we had our first annual gang prevention awareness month after a successful nine years of gang prevention awareness week we kicked it off with a seminar focusing on trauma informed toolkits for over 125 direct service providers we also had our first annual youth september madness basketball tournament with recreation's division we had over 300 in attendance and also our first ever rosalyn unity run in addition to continued events such as the south park day night festival for our third annual parent engagement month that's a series of trainings for parents of at-risk youth to identify early at-risk behaviors and also community resources that are available through nonprofits and various organizations we did a little twist this time instead of asking our parents to come to us we actually went to them so we went to cook middle schools elac meeting which is the english learners advisory committee we also went to san rosa city schools district wide delac meeting as well and we partnered with the rosalyn cbi group for a parent engagement dinner in partnership with the police department i think this was a win-win because not only was it an opportunity for our parents to be educated on some of the resources out there but it also gave an opportunity for our police department to initiate some of our community policing dialogues we are currently still administering our choice grant program we're wrapping up cycle nine and we will be here next week to discuss the grant review teams is it safe the grant view teams recommendations for cycle 10 and our guiding people successfully program i'll discuss on a future slide so you can see with cycle nine we funded nine organizations with 736,000 some of that data we served over 3,400 youth participants almost 1,400 events and workshops with a total of 6,100 attendees something that i'd like to recognize this was the first grant cycle after releasing the community safety scorecard it's the community safety scorecard had 10 strategic recommendations and during the strategic planning process we narrowed it down to four uh students excuse excuse me school readiness truancy prevention workforce development and street outreach and and this shift was definitely noticeable in this grant cycle in particular services from early childhood education pro-social activities parent education crisis intervention and of course reentry services for for youth that are that are re-entering into the community so our guiding people successfully program is our referral component with state funding we are able to have a wraparound coordinator take referrals in for high-risk youth from probation from schools from different organizations and she takes that information and does a case review at an m dart which is a multidisciplinary assessment and referral team which consists of all of our choice funded agencies plus different entities such as different law enforcement entities and also a couple more state-funded nonprofits and although gps is not specifically funded by measure we did leverage local measure o dollars to apply for the grant and in turn we've received multiple rounds of state funding uh and this past fiscal year some of the data points from gps specifically 96 high-risk unduplicated youth and 51 of their family members receive case management mental health support and workforce development and with that i will turn it over to kelly magneson good afternoon kelly magneson with recreation division and um the neighborhood services section of the recreation and parks department serves at risk underserved areas of santa rosa so our focus is on direct service for youth primarily school age youth but we also serve middle-aged school kids and then we also hire older teens and college students so we've got quite a range of ages that we're serving um we have a very robust sports program it's very popular serving about 1300 youth a year at 10 sites our most popular program is our junior warriors basketball we have it in the fall and the spring and it is always full and very popular and then this past summer we added on a softball component to our junior giants program and that that served over 350 youth with a lot of the people participating were volunteer parents and then volunteer coaches so that was that was very popular program over the summer and then during the school year we have our community after-school programs at different sites throughout the city primarily in the northwest and the southwest however this past year we added on the lark field sites if you'll remember and they were fully funded by burbank housing and so those other six sites are also co-funded by burbank housing with measure o dollars and some general fund dollars but they can burbank housing continues to want us to add on sites in their rec rooms at their housing facilities and so we're working with them on the highest needs neighborhoods as well so those programs are going really well they have a homework component arts and crafts recreation activities sports field trips we bring in guest speakers and we also have several large special events throughout the year and then during the summer we have the full the full day programs we call that recreation sensation there for seven weeks during the summer they're very popular they're at school sites and so we partner with um san rosa city schools and rosalind school district and last year we were at belviews belview school district as well and then during that summer season we have a program called work experience where we have middle age middle school age kids participate on a voluntary basis and that's become real popular as well there's about 40 middle middle school kids that help out in those programs and that's like a training ground for them to eventually apply for the paid job so we really like to take the kids from our programs as youth into the middle school program into the volunteer program and then hopefully we're hiring them to come back and work in our programs so also during the summer we have our teen basketball camp that's that's very popular 50 60 teens participate in that we've been working really hard the last couple years to involve the parents and the families more the staff are doing orientation nights so they get to meet the whole family they're doing more barbecues at each site special events so the whole goal is to keep the family involved with the youth and their programs and we hope to see them program after program year after year trying to keep them involved in healthy activities so lastly i'd just like to uh note that about 30 of our temporary seasonal staff that work in our programs are from the high needs areas that we serve and i'd be happy to answer any questions great while we have uh the vice chair i bet would you like to make some comments on uh conversations you had with the oversight committee good evening everyone and thank you for giving us an opportunity to speak i just wanted to reiterate the importance of this measure o i've seen many students and many people in the community as you're out and about and you hear people talking about the different programs that is served by measure o i just want to reiterate to you all that you continue to keep this in mind as we're moving forward and that the sunset time is coming up so please take that in consideration uh many of these activities that we have i would like to see as as a measure old person like to see more bumper stickers and things letting people know what exactly measure o is funding all out here in the community is fire police that's not all that measure does so it's very important that we get the word out about what it offers the city so as you're moving forward and as we're all moving forward i would like to see more documentation pointing out what measure old funds is actually taking care of out in the community because it does do serve a great purpose and it helps keep people kids families together and try to keep them together in the sense of being able to have that family time and spend more time together so please as you're moving forward with this with these decisions that we have to make continue to keep us in mind and continue to move forward with the funding great thanks for that council questions this vice mayor thank you for all the great work you do i'm curious to know it's you serve a ton of of young people i'm wondering if there's demographic information that you collect on our young people beyond that that some of them are at risk i'm asking basically are we serving equal proportions of male and female children can you say that last part again yeah are we serving equal amounts of male and female children equal amounts our girls getting the service there's a lot of emphasis on sports in this and i'm curious to know if girls are getting same rate that the boys are and the reason i'm asking is because you do have a an awesome pipeline for jobs but only a third of city employees are female so i'm curious to know if we're doing something about that at this level i think we're doing a great job of that our all of our sports are co-ed so we and we have a lot of girls playing in the leagues and then our after-school programs i would say are equal as well that's fantastic to hear yeah so it's going really well we try specifically to get the girls to play all the sports as well wonderful any other questions mr alves thank you mr mayor our current plan our current efforts are tied to the community safety scorecard that was developed i believe 2016 so i think it's guiding the current plan so how do how do they tie in it's been four years so at what point do we start measuring and looking at comparisons as to what has changed with i think probably over 15 different domains that are included in that so this upcoming fiscal year we'll have an update to the community state to scorecard that will be initiating we're also working with the sum county human services department upstream investments team that not only released the portrait of snow but also the the recent latino scorecard that was released at the state of the latino community event by locy n and so we really want to look at those 10 original recommendations and how the strategic plan narrowed down to four but then from that gather the data with those four and then see if there's a potential change in in how we're gathering the data who are funding who's at the table i think we made a big statement with the school readiness component as you know councilmember alavarez from the beginning it's it's mainly the intervention piece and over the years it's evolved and matured into very much of a public health approach of violence prevention and now i'm i'm proud to say that category of school readiness is our most surprised our highest funded category and that's a big statement to us and so i think for us we're constantly evolving and we look forward to seeing what the data shows but not only that utilizing that to implement and then release a new update to the scorecard i'm sorry so so we are collecting data as time passes since the implementation of the scorecard and the current strategic plan correct okay thank you any other questions do you have any cards on this item all right mr. sorrier you have this item thank you maren before i um introduce the motion i want to say thank you as well and i know that the police department and the fire department and the violence prevention partnership all benefit a great deal from the funds that were approved and voted on by the city by the residents of the city center rosa so thank you to those residents and one of these days we will be looking at reauthorizing um i would think reauthorizing measure o it happens fast it's um it's something that seemed far away um not that long ago and so i agree that that as much promotion as we can to get the word out about these the enhancements to our police and fire departments and the programs that are provided by the violence prevention partnership um getting those word getting that word out the better off will be so with that i'll introduce the motion to accept the measure o annual report for fiscal year 2018 2019 and wait for the reading second we have a motion in the second any additional comments i just also want to reiterate you know my thanks for the work that's being done and miss myna your points about whether we're marketing it recon park does a great job of marketing all the activities there but the one thing that's missing is like how much is tied into measure o people i think are getting the benefit of it not realizing that's the source of it the voters of san rosa so i think it is something i know in the next couple years we'll be working on as the measure is due to sunset and this body will make a decision if we move forward on with it because the work is um incredible so i appreciate all your efforts all right with that your votes please and that passes with five i's thank you very much mr and ianum 14.2 item for 14.2 is a report and potential termination of the city's temporary prohibition on rental housing price gouging through repeal of chapter 10-44 of the city code reporting is sugella her city attorney good evening mr mayor and council members this is a opportunity for the council to consider whether to continue or terminate the city's temporary prohibition on rental house price gouging that prohibition was put in place shortly after the 2017 fires and has been continuing since that time so as i said this is a scheduled review in the immediate aftermath of the 2017 fires the council adopted the temporary prohibition on rental house price gouging and last year last november of 2018 the council considered whether to continue that prohibition in place and determined yes to continue it and extended the price gouging ordinance to and i quote at least october 9th 2019 at which time it shall be subject to review by the city council at a regularly scheduled council meeting so this is that opportunity for review the background we're all very familiar with the background of this ordinance came out of the october 2017 wildfires when those wildfires destroyed approximately 3 000 homes in santa rosa alone but in addition several thousand more in the surrounding area that destruction made exacerbated made significantly worse and already very severe shortage of rental housing and it was almost immediately after the fires that we did begin receiving allegations of potential price gouging in the city's rental housing market those allegations and complaints were received both by council members and by our staff so just about two weeks after the fires the council did adopt an urgent ordinance adding chapter 1044 to the city code chapter 1044 prohibits any landlord from increasing residential rents to more than 10 above the price charged immediately prior to october 9th october 9th of course was the date on which the city proclaimed a state of a local emergency due to the um due to the fires that were still underway at that time chapter 1044 also prohibits any landlord from evicting an existing tenant or terminating an existing lease and subsequently renting the same unit for more than 10 above the price that had been charged in the 30 days immediately preceding october 9th 2017 these prohibitions apply to all residential units in santa rosa residential units of any kind and it includes also hotels motels and vacation rentals there are some exceptions that are built into the ordinance that allow landlords to increase rents when certain types of repairs are needed to the unit the ordinance is enforced through code enforcement i will say that we believe it has had a significant deterrent effect and certainly we've had many conversations with both landlords and tenants but there have been no formal proceedings enforcement proceedings instituted under the ordinance the ordinance generally mirrored state law in penal code section 396 section 396 is triggered in the event of an emergency declared by either at the federal state or local level and in the event of an emergency section 396 prohibits landlords very similar to our own chapter from increasing residential rents more than 10 and it begins just during the first 30 days after the declaration of an emergency but then it also continues for any period in which the declaration of emergency is extended the governor has specific authority also to extend the operation of 396 as he deems appropriate section 396 also prohibits landlords from evicting an existing tenant or terminating an existing lease and renting the same unit to another person at a price greater than the than then allowed under the statute that would be above the 10% based on the date of the declaration of emergency the state statute applies only to those units with an initial lease term of one year or less so it is slightly more narrow than our local ordinance which applies to all rental units of all kinds in Sonoma county the section 396 is enforced by the Sonoma county district attorney and that office does have a very strong and effective program of enforcement and particularly in the immediate months after the 2017 fires the district attorney's office did handle quite a few complaints and did pursue a number of criminal actions so initially chapter 1044 when this council first adopted it was to remain in effect until April 18 2018 that followed the governor's extension of the effectiveness of penal code 396 to that same date so that was how we set that date was that was a date that that the governor had had set for the state statute on May 8 2018 the council by urgency ordinance extended the term of the price gouging ordinance to December 4th 2018 that also mirrored actions by the governor we made it we made the term go till December 4th or for so long as the state declaration of emergency remained in effect on November 27th 2018 week or so before the ordinance was scheduled to expire the council by urgency ordinance further extended the term again to at least October 9th 2019 and that was the point at which council directed that after October 9th it would come the matter would come back to the council for a consideration of of next steps so the price gouging ordinance does remain in effect at this time and similarly section 396 also remains in effect at this time as I said at the soon after the 2017 fires the governor extended the prohibitions in Sonoma county and the surrounding counties including lake mendicino napa and Solano to April 18th governor subsequently extended the applicability of the statute three additional times all again relating back to the 2017 fires so under those extensions section 396 remains in effect in Sonoma county through December 31st 2019 the end of this year I'll note that section 396 has also been triggered by the declarations of state of emergency relative to the Kincaid fire this year so it's now up to the council to determine what what next steps to take whether to continue chapter 1044 in effect or to terminate the price gouging ordinance now after a little more than two years of its effectiveness and there are three things that we looked at first is what is the state of city's reconstruction and recovery as you know and as you have heard reports we have substantial reconstruction is underway many homes have been rebuilt but we're still far from completion there's still a lot of reconstruction that that needs to take place our rental markets remain significantly constrained perhaps in part due to the the the destruction that was due to the 2017 fires but also that our rental market in general has been um difficult for some period of time second element that we've looked at is the passage of time chapter 1044 sets a baseline of october 9th 2017 the date on the our local declaration of emergency and it prevents increases of more than 10 percent above that baseline for the duration of the ordinance so it is a one-time cap and it survives for the entire life of the ordinance it is not an annual increase it is a one a one time cap we are hearing from a number of landlords i know we get calls into our office i know the city manager's office gets calls and i imagine that the council members do as well of landlords who are feeling pressure because of that that ongoing restriction the other thing we looked at is the availability of ongoing state protections at this point petal encode section 396 is still in effect relative to the 2017 fires but only through december 31st i have not heard whether the governor intends to extend that but as i mentioned that section is now applicable under the declaration with respect to the kinkade fire the other piece of state legislation is the tenant protection act of 2019 that's ab 1482 that'll go into effect as of january 1st 2020 and i i think it's it's relevant to look at what the terms of that statute are tenant protection act applies to rental housing units in general applies to rental housing units 15 years and older it does exclude single family homes unless those homes are owned by certain types of trusts or corporations the act limits rental increases to either five percent plus the increase in the cpi or 10 whichever is less i would note also that this annual cap's an annual cap and that for the initial year it will reach back to march 15th 2019 so any increases in rent that took place from march 15th up to january 1st will be included in the calculation of the rent increases that are subject to this limitation the tenant protection act also includes just cause eviction restrictions so it prohibits eviction of tenants without just cause and includes at fault just cause which would be a tenants failure to pay rent tenants breach of the lease tenants maintenance of a nuisance and similar behaviors and also includes no fault just cause which would be the landlords actions that the landlord is removing the unit from the market the owner is moving in those kinds of things the act is does include a sunset provision that it will be in effect for 10 years and then we'll sunset unless the legislature at that time decides to continue it and i will note that the act expressly does not preempt additional local regulations on top of on top of these provisions so with that we do recommend and this is pursuant to council's direction from last november 2018 it's recommended that the city by the city attorney that by myself that the council consider whether to repeal chapter 1044 of the city senator was a city code at this time repeal of chapter 1044 would terminate the city's temporary prohibition on rental housing price gouging and the associated temporary limitations on tenant evictions again as those prohibitions were originally adopted following the 2017 wildfires and i'm happy to answer any questions thank you sir uh council any questions for our city attorney mr. Rogers thank you mr. mayor hey suit there's on slide nine there's a little bit of an odd overlap between the local ordinance as well as the state law so i just want to make sure i'm understanding correctly that from the reach back of ab 1482 uh to the to march 15th if somebody in santa rosa a landlord in santa rosa had not raised rent at all at that point or say they'd done five percent that from that point forward from march 15th of 2019 regardless of what we do at this point through march 15th of 2020 they'd still be under that five percent plus cpi cap that's correct five percent plus cpi or ten percent whichever is less yeah so currently they do have the five percent because that's all we've we've got allowed in our ordinance uh and then if the the ordinance were to expire then they'd have basically the cpi that was left does that make sense um i'm not sure i understand um our ordinance 1044 limits the increase to 10 percent over that from from 2017 and and that's for the entire period so a landlord could have increased the rent shortly after the ordinance was adopted could have increased their rent by 10 at that time and then would have had to stay with that rent level all the way through till today until this for so long as the ordinance survives um you know another scenario perhaps someone had not raised the rent at all uh until and then on march 30th of last year of this year 2019 raised it by five percent they would then be limited to uh an increase um by the increase in the cpi um or five percent which is less that's the direction that i was mostly asking questions about is for folks who had not raised it to that 10 percent level yes before 1482 was passed how that would interplay and then obviously we're not discussing this in a vacuum the county also is discussing this the state has been discussing or at least the governor's office has been discussing um 396 do we know what those conversations are looking like as well do we know if the governor intends to allow the emergency declaration uh to actually sunset on december 31st and has the county gotten into any conversations about price gouging and what that means for them on the county level as well i'm not aware of any decisions that have come out of the governor's office um and i am not aware of conversations taking place um at the county either the county back in 2017 chose not to adopt a local ordinance but to rely on 396 and um yeah and so they will be it will not be a county decision uh at this point they're at the whims of the governor uh they are um now that being said if 396 continues in effect county has adopted its own local declaration of emergency so long as they maintain the declaration of local emergency at the local level um 396 will continue to apply so it applies whether it's a federal state or local declaration of emergency and for so long as that declaration remains in effect so is that different from the local declaration of emergency that we do as well no we're um both our local both chapter 10 uh 44 and penal code 396 both apply at the same time within the city of san rosa yeah i guess my question is uh will we continue to see local emergencies from the city that are on the agenda that uh are separate from the price gouging ordinance and does it have any impact on that that conversation um yes we'll be the under state law we need to bring back for review by the council the local declaration of local emergency every 60 days um we will be bringing that back to the council i believe it may be even uh at your next meeting um and so long as you continue that declaration of emergency the provisions of 396 would continue to apply okay great thank you any other questions yes this is sort of tagging on to um what mr rogers was saying i'm just curious to know how you know when we consider repealing this how we determine a state of emergency because i'm wondering if staff and i understand this may or may not be within your purview but that staff will likely be recommending that we maintain a state of emergency um yes and again um that that state of emergency isn't of course on the agenda for tonight but i will at least answer it in the context of its impact on on this matter um at this point we will we will be recommending i believe it's in the preliminary agenda that's been published recommending continuance of the declaration of an emergency um we are aware that there um have been uh suggestions that at some point we need to come back and talk about um does it make sense to continue that proclamation of a local emergency from the 2017 fires what are the criteria that we should use to determine whether to continue it or not and that discussion um we would be anticipating that that would happen you know soon right so again you feel free to to tell me that this is not an agendized matter and so just to move on to my next question but how how would we determine fidelity in this one area to an emergency or saying that we're done versus not in another area and i can tell that i've gone off the agenda here but i'm just trying to figure out here how to justify saying that in this one matter we're not in an emergency but we're still in an emergency for broader purposes we will either be in the either the proclamation of local emergency um relative to the 2017 fires will remain in effect and would have the impact here of keeping us under 396 and have impacts in other elements uh you know other realms in the city is working in at this point or it will be terminated and it will be terminated for all purposes it would not be continued for for only one purpose it a proclamation of of local emergency either continues or it doesn't okay i'll move on from this because i can sense i want want to go further off um on that but let's not do that and stay within the brown act um at at what rate uh compared to say 18 months ago are we getting complaints of rent uh price gouging i don't have that data um our office um early on we were receiving on those complaints um we have not i mean but that's anecdotal information i don't yeah i don't know if you've seen a decline um we have in our office but again our office is not the proper venue for bringing those complaints so i can't say whether folks have learned that there are other avenues better avenues to bring those complaints but i am not aware um of i i can't tell you right now what the numbers are i see our director coming down thank you sorry to put you on the spot so dave wine housing and community services we also operate the code enforcement program for the city of santa rosa and we have not had any complaints regarding price gouging where we had to open a case mostly when we hear about it it comes through our section eight voucher program when our excuse me one of our property owners is inquiring about how they can increase the rent and what the rules are the under complaints no so when i look to moving to considering you know repealing this ordinance what i'm trying to figure out is has there been a change or a delta since the post acute post fire period and i'm asking you if you're a been able to track that and if there has been a change not through code enforcement there has been no change there's been no change so that it remains continual um complaints or well under price gouging and code enforcement we haven't received any complaints is the most direct whack and answer the question so there's never been a complaint no what i was trying to explain council member is we get inquiries into our voucher program about from our property owners our landlords about how they might work with this cap to raise rents under our program but not through the code enforcement program sorry if i confused you there okay all right i'll thank you for your your help and maybe i can add a little bit to that i i think um what director quine is indicating and i think has been um at least as i say anecdotally experienced through our office is that while initially we received many complaints by tenants concerned about price gouging or improper evictions more recently we are receiving more calls from landlords expressing concerns about how they might be able to adjust their rents but again that's only anecdotal that's helpful and i'm just curious to know from the from i did go online and i saw the the portal for filing um for code enforcement and for filing a complaint i'm wondering if it's possible going forward if we are to to repeal the ordinance can we have a way of essentially tagging the the type of complaint so that we know uh and and the second half of that is is if we are able to tag it would we be able to bring it back to council i understand if we're potentially not under a state of emergency we wouldn't be able to do this type of thing but we might be able to do other policy things or just be aware that there this has been an impact and work with our partners like legal aid to to assist our more vulnerable tenants we can track complaints on this nature and certainly if the council wanted us to return with that information we could do so thank you thanks and i have a just related question so i heard there have been no formal investigations related to our emergency ordinance but i also heard you say this snow and county da's office investigates you know violations of 396 um do you know what their numbers are i don't have their numbers off hand uh and i'm sorry i did not bring those but the i know in the early probably for six six to nine months after the fires um they did handle a lot of complaints and in fact we often referred people to the district attorney if it if the if the alleged violation fell both within our ordinance and within 396 we would give people options because through under 1044 it's a code enforcement proceeding whereas if it's under 396 it's a criminal proceeding proceeding and has all the has a stronger and quicker enforcement through the district attorney so i know that we also referred people we gave them the options i wouldn't say we referred people but we could take care of here or you have this other option as well and i am just not recalling the exact numbers but i do recall in generally that they process um you know probably a hundred or more complaints and that they did prosecute or at least initiate actions against uh um perhaps a couple dozen uh landlords and those jurisdictionally the da's office they would prosecute in some of those cases probably were with san rosa involved san rosa residents correct correct okay great any other questions from council mr. Rogers yeah just as a question do you have any information for us data on what the market trends are right now uh what the vacancy rate is in san rosa versus sonoma county at large or other comparable counties i don't have that information in front of me tonight there might be some speakers in the audience who can speak to that okay i would hope that they would thank you mr. Tidditt yeah thank you mayor i'll chime in because before this item i i scan three sites a site that derives numbers from the u.s. census bureau hud and rent cafe excited to wanted to get kind of an idea of what's happening in the market out there and the numbers i got i'll share with council in 2017 this is from the website that supposedly derives it from the census bureau it was saying a 4.6 percent vacancy rate up from 3.4 excuse me 4.6 percent up 1.59 percent from 2016 hud's website uh on analysis of san rosa market trends is 3.5 percent up 1.9 percent and rent cafe uh i also was curious about average rents rent cafe said it went down 1 average rents in the city but that was across all sectors of housing so that includes studios all the way to multiple bedrooms so i don't know how detailed that is but i too would welcome if anybody from legal aid is here i might have more uh some other numbers all right seems like a nice transition we have several cards here uh so first up would be shelly clark followed by effin cavio shelly has left the house effin are you still here effin's not here um mark gwitam followed by isabel fischer so i just wanted to speak to why we should extend the prohibition on rent gouging in 2016 i moved into my house um and i was paying rent at $1900 um then in 2017 that was in may i moved in so 2017 of may before the fires um my landlord raised the rent $100 and then in 2018 she decided to raise it $200 after the fires um and then i got an email in 2019 saying that she wanted to raise it so now i'm paying $2,200 um she wanted to raise it to $2,500 which would be $300 um however i was able to speak with people who knew that there was a prohibition on rent gouging um and figure out that that was illegal um and so fortunately um i'm still paying $2,200 thanks to this prohibition on rent gouging um and uh the same landlord also to give a quick story since i have a little bit more time um was my brother's landlord and um my brother lived in coffee park and he if you drive down coffee park from hopper lane uh going south um the first house you see standing in that area was my brother's house that he was renting um he uh watered down the house saved the house um and so that was the first house you would see standing and he was evicted from that house because it was below market value and uh that same landlord knew that she could um raise the rent uh much higher and it currently is being rented out for much higher than what uh my brother was paying at the time so there is a lot of rent gouging going on um it will happen for sure if this doesn't get extended um and you you saw different people here talking about the homeless population and needles and whatnot and um i live on the other side of highway 12 uh where where you see all the tent encampments and whatnot and so if this if this doesn't get passed my guess would be that there will be more homeless people um i think it's a simple deductive conclusion to reach um so if we want to prevent that uh we should extend it and people just um you know really need it so uh please extend the prohibition on rent gouging thank you thank you miss bill fisher followed by keith becker good evening mayor and city council members my name is isabel fisher and i'm the chair of north bay organizing projects housing task force i'm here tonight to urge you to extend the prohibition on rent gouging not just until the end of this year but extend it uh until the end of next year i have several reasons why i believe you should do this one we just had another fire prior to it during and after came power outages and with those power outages came a lot of lost wages from workplaces being out of power people lost the food in their homes people are struggling to make up for these losses and it's harder than ever to pay rent two um as was mentioned ab 1482 although it is going into effect january 1st it's not going to protect all rental units in the state uh all all units built within the last 15 years will not be protected under this bill so if the prohibition on rental gouging is terminated and we're still in a housing emergency what are renters in those units supposed to do without any protection it's very likely going to become a free-for-all once again to raise the rents three although we just passed a $15 minimum wage for santa rosa which was a necessary step to help working folks it was only one small step forward $15 an hour is still not even close to a livable wage in this city or county with rents still hugely disproportionate to what working and middle class folks make finally if you as you say you haven't heard any reports on rents being raised over 10 and you're using that to justify terminating the prohibition on rent gouging then please consider that folks are too afraid to report when it does happen to them in any unbalanced power dynamic the person in the position of less power will rarely report when they are being abused out of fear of retaliation and as we just heard landlords have tried to raise the rent but but because tenants knew their rights and knew it was illegal they were able to prevent it so just because you haven't heard a report about that doesn't mean that raising the rent past 10 percent was not attempted and finally through undocu fund north bay organizing project has heard stories from tenants who are receiving eviction notices because they are unable to pay their rent because of the lost wages from the power outages please extend this necessary prohibition on rent gouging for another year we are still in a state of many emergencies especially a housing emergency do this for your constituents please use your power to protect and extending this prohibition will protect tenants thank you thank you Keith becker followed by peter adams good evening council members first thing i do want to commend both city council and the county board of supervisors for everything that you've done to date because the institution of penal code 396 the institution of the urgency ordinance in the immediate aftermath of the fire had a dramatic effect in the immediate aftermath of the fire there were terrible things happening are those terrible things still happening have they been happening i've been tracking this for many years um and only recently did we start actually doing measurements but i've been doing measurements and calculations of not just our vacancies but the vacancies of 11 property management firms throughout sonoma county and as i say only recently this is from july to present 11 different property management firms representing 539 properties listed as available for rent rents have decreased in five months by 10 percent on average the length of time that they've been on the market has increased from 16 days on average to 36 the market is and as somebody mentioned earlier on a different subject and you're talking about the real estate sale market moderating and actually softening the rental market is actually doing the same it is finding its balance yes there has been and had been years ago um many instances of just egregious behavior but that is not happening furthermore as chris pointed out as long as um you consider a state of emergency penal code 396 remains in effect um is it necessary to keep the urgency ordinance in effect on top of that my argument would be no because i think the market is finding its own balance and it's no longer necessary to keep this in effect thank you thank you peter adams followed by gelona reitzner all right hi i'm a junior college college student right now i also work 30 hours a week at a restaurant as a server and i can tell you right now that the only reason i'm able to go to the junior college is because i'm currently living at home with my parents if i was not able to live here because of the higher rents i mean i would i just wouldn't have the time to go to school i'd have to get a second job as all of my co-workers who live independently do who are in their 20s more over um so that being said um homelessness is absolutely a crisis here i think we all can agree on that i think there's sadly um some who view it more as its homeless are pests who we we just want to leave but it is true that some people are homeless because of drug use mental illness but expecting that to get better while someone is homeless is a pretty tall order it definitely doesn't help but more importantly yeah i was looking at vacancy rates versus homelessness and in the north bay there it's about three to two three vacant homes per homeless resident per two sorry for two homeless residents but that's also assuming that each person is going to have one home all to themselves which is also not how things are around here um but yeah the main reason people are homeless is because they can't afford rent three of my co-workers work multiple jobs and are still sleeping in their cars um another two of my co-workers who both have both parents are working they have three children they're sharing one room with one bed so this isn't these are working people who can't afford to live here already so like increasing these rents will not help anyone well it won't help poor people that's for sure it'll certainly help someone um so if our solution to homelessness is to hope to outterrorize them and make it so unpleasant to live here via law enforcement raids then maybe maybe we can beat the other cities around here and make it so bad here that they go somewhere else but that doesn't really i don't think that's practical and i certainly don't think it's moral so yeah i mean i've lived here my entire life i would like to remain here but these increasing rents are making that it's very very untenable for me and yeah it's like saying if the rent cap becomes five percent per year that's 60 percent over 10 years and yeah so i mean i definitely won't be able to have kids here at this rate and i might end up joining my friends in nevada and sacramento so thank you very much thank you jelona reitzner followed by a till and a good evening my name is jelona reitzner i'm a teacher here a local teacher and uh i i was going to say i haven't really heard that the city council has reached out to get some research and some data that would actually inform us which i can see by the questions you have i have concerns that some of the data has taken from representatives that from landlords rather than from the community and i'm here to speak for the families in my school i have we have three schools we have in all of our districts we have about 12 percent students that are registered as homeless that means every classroom has about three students who sleep in their cars or are registered as homeless many of our families live with other family members they rent garages they do couch serving and i think it's really urgent that the council reaches out into the community and into the organizations that represent the community before we make a decision on how uh families are still affected and um when we i was here last year ago just about a year ago and i remember the city council saying that they got uh complaints but they weren't really able to handle them so they referred them to the um district attorney who had at that time not acted on it i remember shelly clark from legal aid speaking that they had about 500 cases of rent couching and you have to understand that if you are afraid to be evicted and there was no protection and we still don't have any protection for that you are just biting the bullets if you're in some rage and a race um race i'm sorry and also i remember um that people speaking up that they um that the half the conviction have been increasing so there are a lot of loopholes with the 10 and i see there's pressure from landlords and i can see if you're small landlord 10 is not much if you consider that over two years but i'm a teacher we have to fight for a two percent pay raise every year so if i'm looking at three years that's six percent in three years though i don't see why they would be in a bit different boat than we are and uh i'm protected with a union job so i know our pay raises are as more steady than most peoples and we have data for california and the data in california is very different it says in between 2006 and 2017 medium annual earnings for california full-time workers was increased by about 2.1 percent annual while the rents increased about 16.1 percent and i also remember a report last year saying that rent prices went up about 35 percent um not less so i'm really urging you to do further research and 1482 does not go far enough thank you patel and i can follow by alex coughing hi um we were talking about emergency but really the reality as we know it is that the wages are low and the rent is high and if we need to extend this as you should know i mean i'm wondering and i just i just feel like nobody who's who will be making this decision actually has this problem with rent i i couldn't guarantee that and to for you to make a decision for other people who actually can't make the rent and do you want to see more homeless people which we haven't done anything about we're concerned about the landlords what are we concerned about the people who actually don't even have a roof um what else that i i if if uh 396 uh is will stop then uh i think we need to still extend our ordinance here uh because uh well you know why so i just urge that you extend this and not repeal it because it doesn't make any sense at all and you should actually know that alex colfin followed by effran curio good evening mr mayor miss madame vice mayor and members of the council and staff alex caliphant with the california apartment association thank you for the opportunity to have this discussion again no one in this room is going to argue that there is a housing shortage and it's not just the santa rosa it's across the state that is true and the fires made an issue that was already hard that much more difficult to handle the issue with this particular ordinance is that you know we hear folks talking about 10 percent well we're in year number three now and if you just do the average it's really not 10 percent if someone went three percent first year the second or the third that's really what we're talking about if you extend it forward that creates a significant challenge for folks that are trying to manage their properties um capital costs do not go up they're not capped folks are still responsible the same way to maintain their units um and that is a challenge for some of our members um so it's not just that simple is well it's a 10 cap it's a one-time issue the other thing i wanted to mention to you is that we hear a lot of rents are high okay but let's address it and i think the real solution here is that we'll continue to have this discussion until we actually increase the supply of the units and there's no way to get around that and one of the challenges is that the units are pretty expensive to build that's a fact the reason why units are expensive to build is that's what they cost to be built so when projects come forward and developers look at them they look at these type of policies that cities have and they ask the question well is this project going to be feasible in this city so it's sort of this endless cycle where we want to increase the units to get the rents down but we can't because i have certain policies on the books that make it really difficult to do that so it's not that simple and while i'm sensitive to the argument of wages i'm not convinced that wages really go along with this issue and that is why it's so hard to actually come to a solution because it becomes a very emotional issue where it turns into many discussions and we lose sort of the goal of what we're trying to accomplish and on the point of 1482 that bill wasn't passed in the vacuum that was months and months and months of discussions and negotiations with stakeholders at the table that had skin in the game on both sides and that was the compromise that was reached and i think it provides a significant level of protection for tenants moving forward and next year it's the strongest bill in the country that's also a fact so those are my comments and thank you for the opportunity to talk to you this evening Thank you. Efren Carrillo followed by Thomas Ells. Does this work? Yep. Mayor Schwedhelm, Vice Mayor Foaming, Council Members, Efren Carrillo with Burbank Housing, first and foremost wanted to point the obvious. I think that the emergency ordinance that the council instituted certainly did what it was intended to do. It prevented the possibility in most cases for folks to increase rents or price gouge as was seen immediately after the fires. On behalf of Burbank Housing we don't have a position on the extension or the continuance or potentially the termination. The position for Burbank Housing is if the council does decide to move forward with the price gouging ordinance we would ask that you consider the possibility of having organizations like Burbank that manage affordable housing communities to be exempted as was the case with Assembly Bill 14-2. The component as was shared a couple weeks ago. We had soccer practice earlier today so he's with me. As I expressed before the council a couple weeks ago there have been some unintended consequences as to how rent increases have significantly impacted communities like ours as also was expressed a couple weeks ago. We are essentially rent restricted by federal or state covenants in some cases local covenants administered by the housing authority and we would just encourage again if the council does have the desire to continue moving the price gouging ordinance forward you consider an exemption for affordable housing communities affordable housing developments because essentially we're already ranked controlled by default and by the funding mechanisms and the compliance that comes forward. You have a tough task ahead of you I think in balancing various aspects of protecting renters protecting communities and also affording an environment that invites development as was stated we do have a supply issue. There's certainly a demand concern keeping folks housed is what we do at Burbank but we also recognize that the city needs to do what it needs to do to ensure that it fosters an environment that invites the type of development we want to see and this is development that is across the board at all levels both market rates and de-restricted or affordable. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. Thomas Ells followed by Mara Ventura. Thank you for addressing this issue and thank you for the opportunity to speak. I just want to say that the conditions that were prevalent at the time of the fires haven't changed. We've got another fire in which case we're still under the 396 state conditions so and you know as long as the governor would allow that but the point is is that we don't have the houses bill yet I think you need to really examine what's going to happen what is happening and what's going to happen with the people as their they have come off their payments that they've been made by the by the insurance companies so if you remember what happened to rents was they went up to as high as $10,000 a month people were paying doctors had to pay really exorbitant amounts of rent supposedly in a home that that wasn't rented I mean where that wasn't an increase right but those people are still expecting really really high rents those are going to affect the market as we see it until those houses are built to replace the houses that burn the people paying high rents are going to drag up the other rents right somebody's going to say look I have the same house as that guy why is he getting $10,000 a month or why is he getting $5,000 a month for this house and I can't get that right until the houses are made until there's a stabilization in the market where the rents stabilize of their own through the production of the houses that were burned and other houses then you're going to see this tremendous impact if you release this people will just automatically raise their rents a lot right and maybe there are some caps we've seen caps through the state that could be imposed but those are still untenable for the people that are here because for the very same reasons that that wages are not rising so I would just say that the conditions are still the same there's no reason to take off those caps thank you very much thanks maraventura hi good evening council maraventura director of north bay jobs with justice I just wanted to make a quick statement on hopefully the off chance that you decide to lift the emergency rent gouging ordinance and what I mainly wanted to say is that my concerns that we don't have enough local data collected at the moment around the possible impacts that it could have and I know a few of us have spoken and and we are hoping that the impact will be little to none and I understand the complications of having this on top of the state law but I really want to encourage you to either push this off for a few months until there's more comprehensive data or there's been an opportunity for community organizations like the tenants unions like north bay jobs of justice and legal aid to possibly survey renters who might be impacted to get a sense of how many cases our organization specifically the tenants union have had to deal with that maybe aren't recorded at the da's office but I also if that is not something that this council is willing to do tonight I really encourage you all to be prepared to collect data over the next couple months but we can get a sense of repealing this rent gouging ordinance did in fact have an impact so I know it's something that I'm chatting reaching out to your city staff about even in terms of minimum wage just making sure that we are at least collecting information on possible impacts of wage theft and so in terms of repealing this I know that we are hoping the risk will be the impact will be little to none but I hope that the city is thinking about the ways in which we will provide an accessible opportunity for residents of Santa Rosa to at least let the city know file a complaint or put it in public records somehow that they were seeing rent increases especially now during the holiday season because this was repealed they're the folks that fall in between the cracks of where the law is not protecting them so at the very least I hope that that's being considered by this council and that there's direction to city staff to make sure there's a formal process for people to let you know so that in four months from now you can actually know for sure whether repealing this tonight was a mistake or not thank you thank you those are all the cards we have council any questions from any of the comments by members I mean miss Spice mayor yeah this came up for me as I was listening to comments do under 1482 this question is probably for you madam city attorney do the do the rebuilds count as built within the last 15 years or do they go back to when they were originally constructed they are I'm not sure of the answer with respect to whether they would go back to the original date of construction or whether they would be deemed new construction but I would note that they are single family homes so to the extent that they are owned by individuals owned by anything other than a real estate investment trust corporation or a limited liability company they would be exempt from the rent control and just cause eviction statute okay thank you any additional questions mr. sorry thank you mayor I'm the in these in the possibility that I'm not sure whether the council is going to go tonight of course and because there are a lot of things to consider but how quickly if if we were to repeal or make a change in our ordinance one way or another and we are still inside of our our proclamation of a local emergency and let's just say that that I don't believe this would happen because I think that many of the landlords are most of the landlords are not price gougers we know the ones we read about the ones we are concerned about the ones that don't play fairly um are the I believe are in the in the vast minority but how quickly if we needed to respond if the if the landlords started to react in a way to try to raise the rents quickly and as high as they could which I again I don't think would happen but how quickly could we declare a state of emergency and or re-institute price gouging ordinance let me start by the price gouging ordinance is the repeal would be perhaps introduced tonight and perhaps adopted next week it would go into effect on the 31st day after that so if you chose to act tonight or begin the process tonight the repeal would take effect in mid mid january the 396 again remains in effect and it remains in effect with respect to the 2017 fires and the 2017 date for as long as the council continues the declaration a proclamation of local emergency with respect to the 2017 fires we now have layered on that the declaration of emergency proclamation of emergency relative to the concaid fire so at the state level and the local level that would go to setting a baseline in 2019 so there would be a 10 cap starting in 2019 we could if you decide to terminate the price gouging at this point we can certainly track the numbers and also work with the district attorney's office to follow their numbers and to ask you know to the extent that it's that that the district attorney's numbers are looking back at 2017 or more recently to the 2019 fires in terms of re-instituting the price gouging ordinance we can start you know that can certainly be brought back the price gouging ordinance was initially adopted really in specific response to the impacts of the 2017 fire so the destruction of the 3000 homes in Santa Rosa the destruction of a couple thousand homes in the surrounding areas and in response to as I think one of the public speakers mentioned the insurance companies that were willing to pay quite extracurbitant rents and there was there were instances or at least we were getting reports of instances of landlords evicting existing tenants in order to be able to rent to a fire survivor with with insurance proceeds if you wanted to pursue another price gouging ordinance we would need to be looking at those kinds of elements price gouging ordinance is enacted under a different legal path than a rent control ordinance rent control ordinances have some state limitations so if you wanted to re-institute it we would have to look at kind of the factual basis of what conditions related to an emergency are we responding to I don't know if that answers your question or it does for the most part and I'll wait for more comment after we have a motion on the table thank you all right are there any additional questions seen then Mr. Allarders you have this item thank you mayor I will introduce an ordinance of the council city of senator repealing chapter 10-41 of the senator city code thereby terminating the temporary prohibition on rental housing price gouging originally enacted after the 2017 wildfires second and and if I make clear it clarified it's 10-44 chapter 10-44 okay we have a motion and second comments for me I feel that the ordinance has done what is intended to do I think it's run its course I think we have other avenues in place that can still provide some protections to renters it's not intended to be a solution to our housing crisis it was really in response to the fire issues that we had in 2017 so I think it's it's time I think we extended it a couple times and I think we've even talked about reviewing it in October even going past that date and I'm not hearing a significant information coming forward that we've had an onslaught of reports of price gouging related to rentals I think they were there they were there we can go out and look for them now but I think they were there they would be there but yeah we can go back historically and see how it's how it started out and how it potentially tapered off that may be valuable information to learn about or hear about later on but for now I'm confident in repealing the the ordinance. Mr. Shorty do you want to make any comments? Thank you mayor and I appreciate council member Oliver's comments and there was the one concern that I have is the quality of our housing stock as we move forward if we were to go another year the increases would be at three and a third percent I know that that landlords still need to maintain their properties and so if if if they don't have the if they've been keeping their rents low and many have and and I do and I had a repair that that required that I lost two and a half months of rent the repair wasn't that big but we keep our rents low and and like I said many landlords do their ability to make repair needed repairs dependent on the amount of rents that's coming the amount of rent that is coming in and I think that like council member Oliver said I think this this rent gouging ordinance has done its job and I'm ready to to move to the states to the state's position and in there in in the AB 1482 and then look for a great deal of success in that in that in those restrictions. Mr. Rogers. Thank you Mr. Mayor I want to start with the the low-hanging fruit and there was a comment that was made that wages are not related at all to the cost of housing and actually in fact it's that's opposite to me that that is the reason that we had the discussion about the minimum wage and increasing it is because we have seen the desire in our community of people to stay here who are particularly service industry workers who don't make enough to live here so I do I just wanted to start with that we do I think as a council need to have a all-encompassing conversation about what point are we no longer in an emergency because we are going to be dealing with issues whether it's price gouging or whether it is some of the things that we have done in the overlay district on rebuild that is going to look piecemeal if we don't have that conversation and I and I think depending on where you are in the recovery process or where you sit is whether or not you feel like we are still in an emergency if you've had a chance to have your insurance take care of you and get you back into a home you might feel like the emergency is over and if you're one of the people who are still struggling to build your house then you might still feel like the emergency is ongoing making that more difficult is the fact that we are layering on top of that additional emergencies within our community that were impacted by the wildfire but were there beforehand it will quite frankly continue to be there for the foreseeable future homelessness as well as our housing crisis and I think until we have the conversation about what metrics we're going to use to determine when we are no longer in an emergency we're going to keep running into this issue for me when I was approaching this this issue I can see both sides of it because I am a renter I do know what that's like to be sitting there and to be reliant on whether or not your rent is going to be increased I also do understand that there are good landlords out there who are trying to make investments in their property to be able to reach the standards that we are quite frankly trying to push as a council as it pertains to the rental inspection program so for me thinking about what was the best slowest wing walk approach to make sure that we get this right it was going to be to come to the desk and talk about some form of allowance for modest increase next year as well as a little bit in terms of investments and I'm seeing that a little bit in ab 1482 where I get a little bit squirrely on it as I do understand that doesn't apply to all rental units that 1482 doesn't and I'm curious to see what the impact on our local housing market is I'm going to listen to the rest of my colleagues but I want to make sure that this extends as the city attorney said through next year to at least make sure that at a minimum renters have the protections of 1482 and then to collect the data and see whether or not that's insufficient for what's happening in our rental market moving forward Mr. Timmons thank you mayor um for me this you know I actually came in here tonight wanting to to do away with the price gouging ordinance I I felt that 1482 was pretty sufficient I liked it from day one I always felt like that was where a rent control ordinance should have ended up and I'm glad that the state was able to convene both tenants and landlords and the respective advocacy groups and reach that agreement no matter what I want to do tonight I want to make sure that we we come up with a time when our ordinance will end because what I don't think is fair is that we just keep extending the goal cause goalpost but that goalpost isn't even in sight but here's where I where I what I was thinking you know we did just pass this minimum wage ordinance because it with the intention that it would help people pay for things like rent and goods and and things like that and uh one of the thoughts that crossed my mind and you know I just kick it out there to the council for consideration maybe the the motioner is to have our ordinance and effective August 1st that gives the the landlord real estate community a hard sunset date but it also gives renters a little bit of assurance that there's going to be some head room coming from their from their jobs because I do expect and good landlords and bad I do expect that people will increase the rents once they're enabled to because we have put a cap on them for the last couple of years so I think where I'm coming from I'm operating as though that will happen um and I just did a little math if you're making $14 an hour right now and it's going up to 15 that's 160 a month difference change for you if you are the current average rent is 1,916 across all classes of units in Santa Rosa a seven percent increase roughly consistent with the state is 134 so to me if you just kind of look at it that way it makes some sense if the council decides not to go this direction tonight I'm still supportive but then I like councilmember Rogers I really do want us to track what's going to happen personally I think that the outlook looks favorable for tenants right now given what the market's doing based on the three sources I looked up admittedly quickly but more information I would feel better with more information certainly down the road I am fearful though of the concept that we would stop a price gouging ordinance something happens to the market or another disaster happens it's now tight and we're talking about bringing in a price gouging ordinance back I think that would almost create more disruption than just extending it to when the minimum wage ordinance would take effect but those are those are my comments to the council and I appreciate I appreciate everyone's thoughtfulness on this issue and I appreciate that we did a price gouging ordinance to begin with because I do think it was effective. Thank you Mr. Rogers and Mr. Tibbet said 90% of what I was going to say but so with that I'd like to put a competing motion on the floor that we and the price gouging ordinance effective August 1 of 2020 and see if I can get a second since I brought that idea forward I will second it okay I wanted to respond to a couple of comments that I that I heard today one is that we weren't renters there's two of us who are renters and with further further looking at this I think that I'm getting gouged and it is really a tough thing to go to your landlord and it's also a tough thing to be a landowner it's landlord but the big difference is and I've said this before that that there it's not a choice to need housing it's a choice to be a landlord and I'm certainly would be open to some discussion about allowing for capital improvements and allowing for increases that match CPI over the past few years something that would be allowed for landlords to be able to remain in the black and for tenants to be able to move forward I understand that that's probably not tenable tonight but I'm certainly open to that going forward and as a matter of philosophy one of the reasons why I'm in support of this sunsetting in August is that in 2017 the voters are very clear that they do not support rent control and I do not think that we should use the emergency declaration as a method of avoiding the difficult conversations about the disparity between income and rental costs and that we need to as a council continue to have those conversations and deal with those difficult issues but I am as a matter of philosophy load the supersede the will of the voters outside of a state of emergency I'm generally not in support of government overlay and and I do hope that if we do move to repeal this next year that we'll have some streamlining in terms of our ordinances and give both our landlords and our tenants you know some some clarity and some time to prepare also I'm interested to know I did talk today with with uh with Shelley Clark of legal aid who mentioned that there was formally a program called scripts where both landlords and tenants could get information and I can just see going through this how difficult it is for landlords and tenants to decipher what is what is available to them and what they can do and and I think that if we're going to persist with overlay that we need to offer not just clear data collection from our legal and our housing and community services which is absolutely essential but that we also need to be clear about our support for for people who are in the market regardless of what side they're on to get to get straightforward information so I'm in support of a measured approach that would have this ordinance expire and hopefully my hope would be that this ordinance would sunset alongside the emergency ordinance so that we can have some fidelity in our messaging thank you thank you for those comments so I'm in support of what the first motion was reason being I really think it is duplicative I think the ordinance served its purpose why we originally passed it we've extended it and now with both 396 of the penal code and then 1482 I think those protectants are in place and so I think we should do it because if I heard you correct Madam City Attorney if it was we did the first repealing today it would still be in effect until 2021 both 396 would still be in effect and 1482 is in effect correct that that's correct it would be effective the 31st after the final adoption okay so Mr. Divots thanks so you know I'm I'm reading the votes here it's not like a promising but I do want to ask you Vice Mayor Fleming to clarify for assurity that the expiration date will be August 1st and I actually also wanted to add to it to exempt federally ren restricted properties as well again I don't expect it to pass but I just want to make sure should it that that's going into motion wherein the price gouging ordinance would sunset on August 1st regardless of this the state of emergency or the local state of emergency and the other question that or the other I accept the friendly amendment of exempting that that classification of housing okay thank you if I if I may through the mayor in terms of price gouging does need to be attached to a declaration of emergency so that would be the piece of them the motion that would be without basis so I will amend that to say whichever date is first the emergency declaration or August 1 2020 very good thank you mr. Rogers thank you mr. Mayor I was also going to throw out for a discussion with the council that perhaps weighing all of the interest one thing that we could do is allow the provisions on multifamily homes that the things that are covered in AB 1482 to go to the five percent plus cpi while also then extending the the price gouging ordinance on the homes that are not covered within 1482 to also that five percent plus cpi as sort of a middle ground to to move back into we won't see a huge lurch in the market but it will give landlords an opportunity to make those improvements to their home while also giving some maturity to the public with an end date as councilmember tidbits sort of suggested call it July 1st when we'll be at $15 an hour call it August 1st when we remove the declaration but but that seems to me like a prudent approach for us to still see the impacts while also giving landlords an opportunity to make those investments and their properties as well so I'll make that as a as a substitute motion excuse me mr. mayor please if I if I may step in we have two motions currently on the table this would be a third under Rosenberg's rules we unless you were you were asking it as a substitute amendment I'm asking as a friendly amendment okay vice mayor Fleming's motion and if I if I may just before we get too far down that that road the agenda item was really about whether the ordinance as it's currently written was either going to be extended or not and if we want to if the council desires to delve into shifts in the ordinance in terms of its coverage or its terms I would suggest that you ask us to bring that back at a at another date to get into the again the substance of the price coaching ordinance are you the mayor are you suggesting that if I were to accept this friendly amendment that it would go into that territory that's that's my concern is that we would be delving into territory that wasn't really part of the agenda which was really more of a continuation I think there's some flexibility but if we start carving up who's going to be subject to the ordinance and who's not in what percentages my I would be more comfortable if we brought that back as a separate item and for that reason I'll respectfully decline and if I can just get clarification also so we have these two we'll deal with them one at a time yes but what is the results of it if it's a three three vote with the six of us then the ordinance stays in effect until it gets four votes either to repeal or it'll stay in that that's correct okay mr. Goon did you have something you wanted to add or that's it assistant city manager goon was mentioning too that the motion does have the exemption for the rent limited that's I'm not as troubled by that as kind of the complete revamp of percentages so I think that's okay to have that as part of the motion that it would terminate on August 1st 2020 and wouldn't but that rent limited units would be released from its terms the order of consideration would be the second motion would be considered first the substitute motion that would vote and then if that does not pass we'd go back to the first motion that's on the table if that does not pass then the ordinance absent another alternative motion the ordinance would remain in effect and we can take your direction from there as to what what the next steps would be so does everyone on council understand what vice mayor Fleming's motion was for the vote because that'll be the first one we're voting on all right with that we've got a motion in a second by mr. Tibbet she votes please and that results in three eyes from miss Fleming mr. Rogers mr. Tibbet's the nose by myself mr. Alvarez and mr. Sawyer so do we automatically revert back to the first motion yes okay and so that motion mr. Alvarez could you restate it or just so we're clear as to what we're voting for now certainly move ordinance of the council of city of san rosa repealing chapter 10-44 of the san rosa city code thereby terminating the temporary prohibition on rental housing price gouging originally enacted after the 2017 wildfires and way further into the text and it was seconded by mr. Sawyer your votes please and that passes with five eyes one no vice mayor Fleming voting no mr. Yeah i just i'm sorry i just want to say that we did hear you and i'll take back the direction we heard about tracking this and bringing information back so that was heard and we got that written down all right thank you on to item 14.3 but item 14 item 14.3 is a report item it's a third amendment to professional services agreement f 01622a with beer of erotas north america ink at tascadera california waving the competitive selection process per council policy 600-1 extending the term of the agreement increasing compensation by three million forty five thousand dollars for a total not to exceed amount of thirteen million seven hundred and seventeen thousand three hundred ninety nine dollars for post fire recovery and rebuild services and amend the fiscal year 2019 2020 general fund budget by increased appropriations of two million four hundred twenty five thousand dollars and presenting um back for a second appearance is uh deputy director gay bosburn good evening mayor schwet homo members of the council as mentioned in the introduction the item before the council at this point in time is an amendment to the beer of erotas contract for fire rebuilding services uh this is actually our third amendment and we've used the amendment process as an opportunity to update the council on the status of the rebuild center some of the services that we've delivered since its opening and the financial stability of that so really looking at the revenue in regards to the expenditures so many of the slides we have today will be comparing some of our anticipated efforts early on in the process and how that's played out over the last two years so this slide was generated when we initially approved the budget for the center back in november of 2017 and at that point we really weren't sure what sort of services would be delivered out of the permit center we knew there would be a dedicated one stop shop we knew there would be dedicated staffing it would have to have some level of expedited plan review and there would be a variety different support resources and then outreach and educational material uh what we found it's fairly diverse we have dedicated staffing uh it topped out at six thousand peak monthly staff hours over 30 positions and it's it's height um there's expedited plan review process most minor plans or same house plans get approved in five day period uh there's 24 hour building inspections with no cap so that means whether we get two inspections or 150 we turn those around in 24 hours um there's landscaping design and consultations we found that the community struggled with meeting some state requirements on that so we we brought in more resources to help out um there's an average number of 3 000 building inspections per month um and we'll go with some total numbers and some future slides uh we also provided assistance to the water department there were storm water inspections and a hefty amount of right-of-way inspections and community engagement and we started up front and we continue that even today so when we look at the status of rebuilds this this chart really focuses on the number of parcels moving forward um we had 200 excuse me 2682 parcels that experienced the loss of a unit and the total unit count was 3123 so the pie chart to the right actually shows the parcels and as they're moving forward um so out of that total we've had 1 983 parcels that either finaled in the construction process or permitting that's 75 percent of the total parcels that were affected by the rebuild and that really tracks with the two-year period so that that data was generated in october 31st of this year when we initially came to council to develop the budget for the permit center we created this chart which was our anticipated revenue and expenditures so we broke out the cost of the contract services over two years so our initial cost up front we assumed about 4.6 million in the first year of the operation of the center in approximately 4.2 million in the second year and we we thought that that would be offset by revenue with year one of that revenue being about 6 million and year two with that revenue of being about 4.4 million behind that revenue there were some assumptions about the number of plan checks we assumed 1500 plan checks the first year and 750 inspections in the second year we assumed that that would drop off a bit we had 800 plan checks and a thousand inspections and behind that number is a per unit building permit fee of about 5000 so that's how we generate those totals so this shows our actuals so what we saw in year one and this slide was presented to council with the previous amendment is once again our estimate was 4.6 we saw an actual of 5.8 in expenditures so that was up a little over a million we also saw that same trend occur on the revenue side as well we assumed 6 million in revenue and we actually saw almost 7.2 where we saw 1500 plan checks in our initial estimate we got really close to that we had 1460 is the total plan checks we were a bit off on the inspections we thought 750 and we ended up with 15,000 so close but not quite there the estimate for the number of excuse me the total plan check fee per unit reduced a little bit and there were a few different factors we saw a lot of master plan concepts so instead of 5000 we were slightly under that 4733 if we extend that out for a second year we're seeing a little bit of a different trend so our estimate for the cost of the contract in our second year was 4.2 we were right around that with the actual what 4.5 so there's a slight difference there where we saw a bit of a change is on the number of permits coming through so our estimate of revenue coming in was 4.4 the actual revenue coming in was 3.1 so where we thought we had hit around 800 plan checks we actually hit around 498 so what's happened is a lot of those homes that we're going to rebuild are going to push into year three which means that revenue is going to push into year three what we did see increases the average cost per plan check that went over 5000 it's sitting around 6346 it's totally associated with the size of the home so as we see builder bigger homes the plan check fee increases so this chart will track the number of intakes of permits that we've seen in the number of inspections we've seen and this this will give a pretty good example of why we see the budget picture we do so over the last two years we saw a significant spike in the number of permits and that topped out at 220 in the peak month which was May of 2018 and that trend has been dropping since then but if we overlay the number of inspections we've performed is that really has topped out and it continues to stay there and it's mainly due to the fact that we have 1,100 homes under construction and they stayed in that period for a significant amount of time so we've had invest resources that are fairly costly because of the 24-hour inspection turnaround to the inspection process for a significant amount of time so that threw our projections off a bit so if we look at the totals on that so we have 1,983 permits submitted but in those those permits that's 50,000 56,000 excuse me documented inspections the total number of inspections probably doubles from that because we've had right-of-way inspections that are not documented through our permanent system so there was a hefty amount of effort to make sure that those those permits were moved through the construction process on the inspection side so this next chart we actually showed in the last amendment that we did it really tracks the revenue and the expenditures so the first line is the consultant expenditures so this is the amount of money that we dedicated to the process the next line shows the total expenditures through the permit center so there was some hard cost up front with the generation of documents the setting up of the permit center so that explains that gap and that gap will always follow through but what we saw in year one is a significant amount of revenue so it it showed that the lines actually crossed so if we look at where we started there was more of an investment from the general fund into the permit center and that that shifted pretty quick in about April of 18 where the revenue was higher than the expenditures and if we break that down in the first phase that was all about permit center development so we were developing outreach there was a hefty amount of documentation generation for as far as resource guides go there was major policy made of modification that's when we developed the rc ordinances and there was a significant amount of staff participation in that when we see the lines start to cross that was due to the fact that there was a significant amount of permits coming in so we started seeing more submittals around the first for quarter of 2018 at that point we're dealing with light building inspections that's not very heavy we're still very deep into outreach material we're still doing quite a bit of public outreach there's minor modifications to policies at that point but there's still significant staff participation when we see the significant gap in the additional revenue that's really full speed ahead on all fronts we're doing a significant ton of inspections towards the end of last year we're still seeing a high volume of permits outreach material and all those trends are really still playing out if we extend the same oh and excuse me and then at the end of the day that resulted in additional revenue above the expenditures of a million dollars and at that time we did it we thought that probably about 50 of that dedicated cost would have to hold back and go to future inspections because all of the revenue is brought in with the permit intake if we extend out the same chart into this previous year we hold the same line so the blue is still the cumulative excuse me the consultant expenditures the orange is still the total so that's the gap and then we saw a much different trend so due to the fact that we were seeing a slower intake of the permits that started to drop so essentially our operational costs and our revenue have matched at the end of the year in the permit center if we look at our total cost then it's running a slight bit of a deficit if we look at the trends that create that so right around the first of 2019 we're still seeing significant permits we have right away coordination and inspection stormwater inspections the same trends are holding true what we saw around may of 19 is things start to drop off a little bit on the permit intake so that's where we get the 1,100 homes under construction heavy amount of inspection services but what we see at that point is our average number of new permits per month which was sticking around 104 through most of 2019 and into 2018 dropped to 50 so we saw a reduction in the number of permits it's a little difficult to chill from the lines but there was also a drop in the costs around that time too because we started making staff reductions to account for the reductions in plan check so all along we've been preparing for this situation we knew it would be a potential to occur that the lines would cross from revenue and expenditures and we've developing a game plan to account for that in the permit center so when we look at the end of the year it is showing a deficit of 365,000 from the total expenditures from the consultant as well as the revenue that's coming in so excuse me there we go so what we've been trying to figure out is that instead of focusing on the overall rebuild area we wanted to boil it down to the problem we're trying to solve in year three so essentially we have 699 inactive parcels so as far as our year three service of delivery we wanted to focus on that set of parcels and determine what level of service they need to move forward and in that group it's a bit of a mixed bag as far as who controls the parcel we're still dealing with the initial fire victim in some situations and so we're documenting that and we also have got sales of properties and we now have spec home builders that are in the mix so that's more going to be developed and sold as a market rate home and it isn't really the individual property owner that controls the property anymore so we've been segmenting that out we've committed to provide the same level of service to the fire victims and we want to try to do that to our best of our ability and that's the purpose of breaking this off so the map you see to the right highlights that and we actually have this published currently it's in our resilient city maps it shows the number of parcels so as they get into the permit these go off the map so it starts framing the problem moving forward in year three year four and however long it takes to cover the rebuild area so when looking at that parcel number we're still seeing an anticipated revenue there from the rebuild of about five million now early on in the rebuild process there were a lot of people that came to me and said we'll never get to 100 recovery on the rebuild well amazingly enough in coffee park we're 95 percent there so i'm not totally sure i believe that i think there will be some sites that don't move forward so the reason our numbers are conservative is because they don't factor in the commercial so when the commercial comes in it's a much higher plan check fee so that'll offset any loss we have of residential units not going through so we still think that that's an accurate estimate for future revenue coming in and what we're actually seeing now is because of the size of the home that we are anticipating 7 000 per plan check fee for the residential units so what we've been doing is marking some of the trends of the permit intake to basically determine the amount of revenue and when it will come in fiscal year to fiscal year so this really shows the trend line on the number of permits so we've been tracking that to figure out if that carries forward what's an anticipated revenue in the next six months as we figure out the financial picture for the remainder of the fiscal year so our revenue is based on those sort of metrics where we're looking at trends and making decisions based on those so really where we're at now looking at those trends is we do assume that there will be continually a drop on the permit intake and until we start seeing a reduction in the number of inspections which will be a mass finalization of the permits that are currently under construction so when we start dropping services to account for their reduction in revenue so currently where we're standing and this is our projection looking at really the remainder of the fiscal year is we want to basically dedicate an additional 2 425 000 to the beer of Eritas contract where that is going to come from is 800 almost 900 000 from the general fund reserves the rest of it is really offset by the building cost now if we project that out into the next calendar year we do see that deficit recovering based on the trends so we think that deficit likely will take place when we get into more of a fiscal year discussion next year but we see a pretty quick recovery because we see a avenue where we can start reducing services incorporate some of this in-house we don't have the hefty experience of dealing with a consultant on that so we're going to start making smart financial decisions to reduce that deficit down knowing that we have that 5 million revenue coming in so the slide the next slide shows the really the three-year service delivery and what we're anticipating is part of that so we really want to attempt to maintain a consistent level of service so we did make commitments to those property owners that lost structures as part of the fire we want to try to maintain that to the best of our ability as we the volume shrinks the program really needs to shrink along with that and so we're trying to figure out the best way to do that and still meet those commitments so what we're trying to do as part of it is take those 699 parcels and engage the community and try to better understand how they're moving forward when they want to move forward what is really the wall that they're running into is why they're not going and what we can do to assist that's going to give us some better data to understand our projections from a revenue and expenditure standpoint and the next calendar year true or not so that part that process we are going through now we've engaged the coffee strong group about that and we're looking for other avenues to reach out to the remaining fire victims to see if we can better understand their situations we are going to continue staff reductions based on activity trends so a perfect example is when our average daily inspections which is currently 150 a day we can't seem to get away from that number when that reduces down to 100 on a regular basis we drop an inspector so we have data set up that when the services the reduction of services occurs with the need so we're tracking that and we have been for the last two years so some of it is going to be based on trends but right now we do see pretty much about 80 percent of the dedicated staff is supporting the inspection process right now in Bureau Veritas so there can be a dramatic reduction as those inspection needs decrease and then we're also developing a future closure plan for the center we're trying to make a determination as to when that can occur we're still seeing quite a bit of foot traffic in the center so when that reduces down what we'd be looking at is potentially incorporating that into the regular services planning economic development and still attempting to make those same commitments from a turnaround time from inspections and plan review process so that really highlights our year three service and I will conclude with the recommendations many of the item number two where the money is moving was highlighted in that slide I want to talk a little bit about item number one and that is waving the competitive selection procedure process and really the reason that's important in this situation is the permit center is very dialed in as we reduce staffing down it's very important that that expertise that that staff has gained over the last two years remains so that's it's very important to the delivery of services in year three and with that we can open it up to any questions you may have great thank you for your second presentation and I don't want you to reflect the lack of an audience with this presentation but it was excellent nothing personal it's just the topic though thank you for that council questions on that presentation see none do we have any cards no cards let's see mr rogers you have this item thank you mr mayor and I did want to make a comment as well that right after the fire we had a pretty substantial conversation about what that meant for the future of our city's budget and one of the things that this council had agreed upon was looking at how we spend our dollars as an investment in recovery and not shying away from spending dollars because of our financial straits and instead looking at where we could spend those dollars in a way that would come back to us and be beneficial to us and I think that more than anything when I tell that story to folks about what the immediate recovery from Santa Rosa was I think of the permit department and I think of the the staff bringing us eight million dollars over two years saying I know we have almost nothing left in our reserves but trust us if you spend this money you're going to see it coming back and it's going to expedite our recovery faster than what other cities have been able to do and so I appreciate the presentation from you I am trusting staff because you guys have done an incredible job you put a lot of work into those numbers and I hope that the public looks at this as an investment in continuing that recovery in a way that is going to allow Santa Rosa to come back stronger so with that I will move the resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa waving the competitive selection procedures in council policy 600-01 in the best interest of the city and approving the third amendment to professional services agreement number F-01 622a with bureau veritas north america ink atascadero california to increase compensation and extend the term of the agreement for post fire recovery and rebuilding services and wait for the reading of the text second any additional comments mr tibis thank you mayor I wanted to piggyback on what chris was saying and just thank you guys one of my favorite parts about being on the council is when I get an email from a frustrated citizen about their rebuild process and whatever that may entail and then I forward it either to david or somebody I think jessie I forward one to you at some point and your departments I mean just your pro activity in getting back to these folks to stellar never would I imagine that you know your respective roles in these organizations would actually drill down into detail of supporting somebody on such a you know close level close to home certainly for them and I just really thank you guys for that it's it's amazing the other thing I want to say is you know the I'm glad that we're drawing from the general fund and I hope that we will draw from the general fund in the future if you see need go up one thing I just hope that by downstaff sets downstaffing gosh it's getting late that we don't if we see an uptick and applications for whatever reason spring time I don't know getting ready for the building season that we we go back to that you bring it back to council and we staff back up and we make sure we keep those permits flowing so yeah I look forward to supporting this thank you guys yeah and I just want to add to when you I heard you say Gabe the tying in these two concepts of staff reductions tied into activity trends you guys have been walking the talk and you know that this is a lot of money but I'm very confident in your fiscal management and you're taking those two things you know the activity trends are going to drive the staff reductions so the full confidence you're going to continue to do what you've been doing since the fires so with that we have a motion a second your votes please and that passes unanimously thank you very much all righty we have two written communications we have the quarterly boards commission committee's attendance report and public safety power shut off grant application do we have any cards for item 17 with that no further items on the agenda meaning