 Giving everybody a moment to jump in. Go ahead and call to order and let's do a roll call vote. Mayor Rogers. Here. Member Fleming. Here. Member Sawyer. Here. Let the record reflect that all members of the subcommittee are present. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you and welcome to today's Economic Development subcommittee. We'll start with public comments for non-agenda items. If you're interested in providing a comment that is within the scope of this committee, but it's not on today's agenda, but hit the raise hand feature. I see we'll start. Go ahead. I will go ahead and pull up that screen. We do have a couple of members of the public who have comments. The first will be Troy natural Jello. If you would please introduce yourself and confirm that you are able to see the screen. That would be wonderful. Thank you. While Mr. natural Jello has been sent the message that he is allowed to unmute. It seems he may have stepped away for a moment. So I'm going to go to the next individual with their hand raised. I'll find just one moment. And if you would please confirm your ability to see the screen. I see the screen. Do you hear me? I do. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. So I'm going to go ahead and go ahead and introduce myself. I'm Chris. I'm a member of the city of Santa Rosa. I'm from the neighborhood of Santa Rosa. I've been identified out and Santa Rosa. Burbank gardens neighborhood. Also part time city. I see. Media but not working today. So these are my personal opinions. And I want to talk to you about economic development and. What the city could do to. Increase it and help it go move even more. So the thing about economic development right now in the USA. job growth, and also tech company growth and home values. And I got this from bestplaces.net who ranked the top three cities in 2022 for economic development and job growth. And that would be Boise, Idaho, population 749,000, Provo, Utah, population 648,000, and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, 165,000, which is similar to us. And all these cities have had people from California moving there because of the economic improvements. And so because job growth is the biggest area in the USA for pushing economic development factors, looked at CNBC for where is the biggest job growth, what sectors of the economy? And so the number one biggest area of job growth is in professional business services. So that means business consultants, accountants, software training, event planning, marketing, and all that. And so I'm suggesting that you invite people, managers, and HR directors of local companies to come to this subcommittee meeting and make a three-minute or five-minute presentation about what's working for them and what the city could do to help them to even grow more. So I'm suggesting you sort of go with the trends and help the areas of biggest growth have even more growth rather than focus on where it's not happening. So besides professional and business services after that comes transportation and warehousing and then manufacturing and then construction. So areas where there's been very little gain is leisure and hospitality, finance, wholesale trade, and then healthcare and social assistance. So you would think that they would be big growth, but they're not. And the areas that are having loss are utilities, information, mining, and logging. So I'm suggesting not putting too much energy into that. And the worst areas in the U.S. economy that are having the greatest job loss are retail trade. And the worst of all, government. So yeah, so I'm just saying, look at business service companies in the area, invite some of their managers to come make a presentation about how the city could help them with even more economic growth. Thank you. Thank you. And then while we're preset. And Mr. Nacho Angelo, if you could confirm your ability to see the screen and introduce yourself. Yes, are you taking comments on the agenda items? At this time we are taking comments on items not listed on the agenda. Okay, I will hold off on one then. Okay, thank you so much. And the third individual who had their hand raised has also lowered their hand. So that would be good. There are no additional comments for this item. All right, I really appreciate that. And thanks, Nick, for the suggestion. I think we can explore at some point through this committee as well. You go ahead and go on then to new business, item 3.1. Raisa, do you want to kick us off? Yeah, I think can you bring up the presentation? Absolutely, that'll just take one second. There we go, I apologize for the delay. Thanks. Alrighty, so this obviously is a discussion on project labor agreements. We just wanted to do a high level introduction to the elements of what will make up a project labor agreement, what could make up a project labor agreement given that we know that it will be each wing that we have on each element will be a robust discussion. So again, this first presentation and discussion is really an overview of the breadth of the details we'll be getting into over the next number of months. And on the staff side that we are talking about at this point is Jason Nutt, the assistant city manager who broadly covers operations and the projects any potential PLA will apply to. And then we also have two deputy directors of engineering we have Lori Urvanit from water and I apologize that water is not listed on this slide but also my prints from public works. And then lastly, besides me, we have the awesome assistant city attorney, Jessica Mullen. And so while Jason and I will lead us through the slides, any one of us may pop up to add clarity during the slides and obviously all of us are available during the discussion part. So next slide. Okay, so first up, we thought it would be good to confirm and set the intention for what we're looking to accomplish. This is really meant to be a neutral statement of intention that we can all look to while we're considering the policy elements we're gonna go through. Some of those policy elements will hash out in these public meetings or this is our thought that we'll do this. So we'll do it in public with you with research we'll have done prior and bring to the meetings. And then you'll see in a later slide that we have some elements that are sort of smaller components that we'll research and present to you for feedback. But basically this is the chance for council to weigh in if you have other intentions you want to direct us to consider that we didn't capture here. So basically, it is I think all of our intention to encourage the use and development of a local workforce to ensure projects are built on time, on budget and to specification without the laser cost overrun. And then also we're looking to have consistency with existing state and federal law grant requirements and the interests of the public. Next slide. Okay, so in preparing for today, we honed in on some examples of what other jurisdictions are considering or have already enacted. Obviously we looked at the county as a local reference given that from a policy standpoint of this nature, there we think would be an interest in seeking some level of consistency with them. But we also looked at those places on our complex cities list. If you remember that list where there are cities of similar size. And then lastly, in terms of examples, we looked at a couple of more recent models selecting San Jose and Galeta. And Galeta interestingly in 2021 started the very process works for now. So they have some really current relevant details and thoughts thought processes that they put into their study sessions. And then I want to note here that the size of the cities, in addition to the markets of the cities is relevant but it's not just the market of the specific cities but the adjacent markets that are relevant as we use them to as examples to explore what might be best for Santa Rosa. And then the other thing that we identified as needing to be considered are projects, funding sources and other issues that we would need to consider in alignment with the state and federal requirements and codes. So, namely what requirements exist or do not explicitly exist but have been noted related to federal state funding requirements especially given what we've gone through since 2017 and how we funded a number of our capital improvement projects. And then similarly, what contingencies might we need if a project includes other grant funding with specific requirements. And just a quick note on this. So we did ask Haggerty to do just super preliminary research on this for us and they found neither HUD nor FEMA policy guidelines that clearly demonstrate that PLAs are allowable or unallowable. So they've given us some guidelines on this but just so you know, there's not, we have started talking to Haggerty about it. Next slide. Okay, so from this point forward, I'm going to hand it over to Jason to guide us through a number of the issues that we identified because again, this really affects the departments that he oversees. So Jason, I'm going to give it to you. Thank you very much, Rice. Good morning council members and mayor. When we start talking about what a project labor agreement is and could be the primary purpose of these will be to really look at how we can pre-hire contractors in a way that from our local labor force in an effort to try to streamline and ensure all of those intentions that Rice mentioned in the first slide. The initial idea of a PLA is for larger projects. That's where the value and the benefit have typically and traditionally come from. And when we talk about projects, the question is what constitutes a project? Well, for the city of Santa Rosa, we have our capital improvement program that on an annual basis that council approves a list of projects that are identified for upcoming fiscal years and for funding in that current in that year. In this slide, you'll see we kind of categorize them in a couple of different ways. And there's a reason that we're showing it in this format as we get a little further into the conversation, there may be reasons why we would want to lump part of the discussion. And so this is our initial way of putting things together. So we have this public infrastructure predominantly road right of way type of issues where we're dealing with pavement or sidewalks, roadway landscaping and other safety equipment that may be occurring within that road right of way. We might also talk about facilities, facilities being city hall, our municipal service center, fire station and the systems and facilities that exist within or are pertinent to those. And those all have a, are kind of all paired together in a certain way that we would label as facilities. And then there's a concept of enterprise. We identify water projects, but there are other enterprises whether it's the parking or it's the transit, each of those have different funding sources and may have different components to a project that may be reasonable to contemplate. And in this case, we show water projects where we're really talking sewer, we're talking treatment plant, we're talking water and our pump stations, products like that, that we identify as individualized capital projects. And so it's with these lumping of our CIP that will help us discuss as we move forward into the criteria of what a project labor agreement or our current contract could provide us. And so next slide. Great slide that Raisa put together just kind of showing the breadth of what PLA could be, not just from the standpoint of the aspects of a project labor agreement, but the considerations that both staff and council will have to take in order to determine whether or not a PLA is the right approach. If a PLA is the right approach, what kind of concepts and aspects would you want to incorporate into that? And so when we think about all of the policy considerations, this is what staff wants to work on over the course of the next several weeks to months to try to better provide information to council members that will help frame the discussion around whether a project labor agreement is the right approach. And those circles that are colored tend to be the primary areas of conversation with the others being sort of aspects that we think we've heard from other agencies, we've heard from other organizations that are aspects of those primary consideration, our policy considerations that we think should be discussed. So when we talk about some of these and I'll just highlight a few of them, when we think about project and threshold, most agencies have established a threshold where if you've moved over the project labor agreement, those projects and project types that are above a certain dollar amount you would utilize your PLA policy in an effort to go and solicit for the right type of contractor and subcontractors. There are others when we talk about project types and method of delivery that we may want to consider. There are some organizations that evaluated whether or not the union halls in their particular area serve a certain project types. And in some they found that there were certain project types that there wasn't a union relative relation to and therefore they eliminated that or exempted that from the PLA policy because they felt that it would continue to X by programs and they focused their project labor agreements on specific project types because they know that that's where the value and the benefit for that particular region would be viewed. We think about local market. Rice has showed you this breadth of agencies not only in our area but throughout California that have looked at, contemplated and or adopted project labor agreements. Just because we may as staff really think the Galeta process or the Galeta case was great, their business market is totally different than ours. Or it may be different than ours. Just because Sonoma County adopted a PLA, their entire business model is very different than ours. They don't do the same project level. So we may find that there are aspects of their program that are inconsistent with ours. And so being able to look at and understand and contemplate the breadth of different policies that are out there so that we can bring you something that we think best fits not only our market condition but our community so that you can determine whether this is the right approach is definitely what we're talking about here. And this graphic really just highlights some of those key aspects. The other is when I think about something like the administrative cost and pilot approach, there may be value for us to try something to put a policy on the table to get something implemented. And to do an evaluation of that after a period of time to determine, did it make sense? Was it the right policy? Was it the right threshold? Were these other considerations adequately evaluated? Or was there some market shift that we need to take advantage of? And so creating a mechanism for us as we go through this to discuss whether or not there may be a review period is something we might wanna consider. Next slide. Thinking about our current contract codes, we are currently following requirements in the state of California relating to prevailing wage, our apprenticeship requirements, our liquidated damages. We have made efforts to ensure that we have a positive and well-paid workforce that's working for our current contracts in our capital improvement program. We recognize or we believe that a majority of the contractors that are currently conducting work are local with a local workforce. We think that some of these aspects may be things as we continue to work through those policy considerations, we wanna bring these to you as well to talk about, well, what does our current contract look like? Cause if we do choose to establish a project labor agreement and then do choose to create some type of threshold, there are gonna be other projects that are gonna be bid that don't conform to those policies, but maybe we wanna incorporate certain aspects into our current contract. Maybe we want to see if there's other things that we could consider. And so that's why we're gonna talk in parallel as we move forward. Here's what a PLA could potentially do and here's what our current contractor with enhancements could potentially do in an effort to try to ensure that we are doing all of those things that Raisa outlined in that first slide by being on time, on budget and to the best benefit of our community that we serve. Next slide. So kind of wrapping all of this up, process and timeline, we really believe as staff that we need to spend the time looking at all of those criteria, those policy considerations and bring those to you in groups to be able to really vet what a project labor agreement could be if council then chooses to move forward. But we wanna give you as much detail and information as we can, so that the decision is one that has the data behind it so that we can all feel comfortable with the process that we're moving forward with. And you can see some of the bullets that we've outlined here that kind of discuss the areas that we'd like to provide more detail and information on. When we talk about key parameters, there are definitely things that are different depending upon which agency you're looking at. And I think there's definitely work that we need to do in our community with our current unions and union halls to better understand what the world of labor looks like for Sonoma County and in relations to the type of work that the city of Santa Rosa contracts on an annual basis. And being able to understand that will help us provide the council with more detail. And so with that, I'll leave the recommendation and I'm gonna hand this back to Raisa to kind of leave the rest of the discussion which we wanted to frame this high level outline of what process we believe we'd like to bring back to you council so that you can make that proper decision. And so the recommendation is to provide us with direction on whether or not our process sounds appropriate and reasonable. And if there's anything additional that you'd like to see us incorporate that we didn't already discuss. And so with that, Raisa, let me hand that back to you. We wanna open it up for discussion and make sure we're on the right track. We also assume that there's gonna be quite a bit of public comment. And I think the last thing I wanna leave you with just because it's something that I've read in other staff reports, obviously the city is under no obligation to adopt a project labor agreement. We can incorporate things and the intention in other ways and means within policies within the city. But we believe we understand it is this subcommittee's interest to pursue the research and what it would take to get to a PLA. So we are fully on board to lead through in any direction you want to do or take this. So we have options and I just wanna make sure that those are on the table. And with that, we are done with our presentation and ready to start talking. All right, thanks, Rayisa and thanks, Jason. I'll see if there's any questions first and foremost from either John or Victoria. We'll start with you, John. One, two, one, mute. Just a process question. Is it, you know, the recommendation to have this body do some, give presentations to this body and ultimately make a recommendation to counsel or are we going to bring the counsel, we're going to have them as part of the beginning of this as opposed to kind of what, dropping it in their laps after we've done our analysis. What's the recommendation? How do you see this going forward? Yeah, we had, oh, go ahead. Yeah, sorry, Rayisa, I can jump in, John. So what this committee is gonna do is given if we give direction to staff, start to craft what it could look like. We also have our goal-setting check-in here in a couple of weeks where we'll be able to talk with counsel and say this is potentially the direction that we're headed. So it won't be a surprise to anybody, certainly. We'll want people to be as involved as possible given the limitations of the Brown Act, but there will be ample time for counsel to be able to participate even prior to it coming to the full counsel. So we'll do some of the project management here in the committee. If it gets the thumbs up, it'll also have a study session before the whole counsel to check in and make sure that we're not sending staff on a wild use chase before coming for potentially a full item before the counsel. Yeah, so we'll definitely have a study session, John. I mean, this is, but we wanna be able to get to a study session with something a little bit more completed or like more robust. Like we need to be able to nudge this thing in various ways before we get to the study session. Okay, thank you. That's the only question. Oh, did you say Victoria? Yeah, sorry, I was thinking you had anything. My concern is mostly hearing from staff and then hearing from the public. And then I'm sure that my questions will develop more over time, but this is really the listening phase for me. Well, you know, Susan, Chris, I'm curious to hear what you have to say, but I mean, we can sort of talk through where we think we wanna start and some of the considerations, if you want that, or we can go to public comment and they come back and sort of talk through some of those things, how do you wanna leave it? Yeah, let's go. If you can go back to the slide with, I think it was the second to last slide, where it had some of the considerations and the timeline. Maybe, oh, yeah. Yeah, slide five has like all of the, it looks like a sea creature. Yeah, cause this, yeah, this is my question. So from my perspective, I don't know that, oh no, no, sorry, you were on it correctly, the timeline one, slide seven. Yeah, from my perspective, it seems like seven months is a long time for us to discuss and to take these individually, the different items here, the threshold, the type, the cost. My interest would be in figuring out how we tackle each of these in a way that allows for the public input in the proper crafting, while also not having us spend seven months kind of checking in on this again and again and again. Can you walk us through sort of from the bullet points that you have here, the threshold, the type, the cost, where you see the potential differences going in different jurisdictions, or what sort of the consensus has been for cities that have pursued a PLA where they've sort of gone on some of these. And I know you haven't done all of that research yet, but to help us to kind of frame what are the main touch points in the discussion? And again, going back to, yes, we're unique, but we're not entirely unique. And there are lessons learned in certain areas, things that have worked and things that haven't worked. Yeah, and I welcome the other staff members to unmute and weigh in here. But I think what we're interested in first is beginning to break down threshold. And to be honest with you, we are very interested in the idea of a pilot approach because we've seen this work in some where they're like, okay, it's a five year thing or something. We are looking for a way to be able to come up with something and have the ability to tweak it based on what we're seeing or the actualities of what exists as we, because we won't know until we know. We can do a ton of research and understand our market, but we're interested in the ability to modify this as we go forward. But I believe based on our discussions that we're first interested in talking about threshold and we're looking at a threshold similar to the county where it's a minimum of $10 million. And then within that threshold discussion, we're talking about what kind of money we're talking about. Like is it just the bid itself or the full scope of the project and what funds within that are considered? So what comprises, am I saying that right, Jason? Yeah, and I think some of the conversations that we've had with other agencies and some of the other reports and policies that we've read have kind of led us to this, kind of what Rycen framed with that is we think there's a place for us to discuss timeline for us to discuss where the threshold should be as to what would constitute the need for it or the benefit of a PLA and what would constitute the benefit of remaining open labor. There's the potential for us to really think about where impacts could be. I mean, I'll give you an example. I talked with the county about their most recent project that they intended to use a PLA, but the FAA said no. And so they had to not utilize their own policy. So creating an administrative mechanism that allows the PLA policy based on certain criteria and conditions. We wanna go through that because Rycen mentioned that we've started the discussion with our federal lobbyists, with our federal partners out there. We don't see that there's a lot of conflict but we've also then talked with the county and there was conflict in their project. And so we wanna try to get a little bit more data so that when we bring those criteria to you, we can say, okay, here's the type of suggestion that we will make. We think it's okay, but we would like to see you put a clause in the policy that provides the city manager with the opportunity to exclude this particular project from the policy on the following basis, right? Or we want to do that outreach and engagement with the union hall, because if we find that flat work isn't necessarily where our local labor is, then we may say, then let's not bother with the, including that as part of a PLA. Let's talk about potentially excluding that work and allowing that to continue under a current program, but maybe with our contract, we wanna add this piece into it to ensure that we're continuing to push hard on the apprenticeship and work hard on the appropriate rates. So that's where I think Rice's idea, and I don't think she put the seven bullets out here to just simply assume it's gonna be a seven month process. I think she was just using this graphically to be able to say, we do think there's a two or three or four meetings, depending upon how the feedback loop is on the outreach and the research that we need to come back to this group, to this subcommittee and say, hey, look, here's areas that we really believe is a bundled area of consideration that we want to discuss with you in more detail so that we can outline the specifics of what a PLA policy could look like that meets the needs of this community. Hey, Jason, can you explain what flat work is? And then when we're talking about this, like, I mean, really specifically, it's like what kind of projects that we're talking about, we're talking about sidewalks, are we talking about roadways, are we talking about facilities? That what is flat work? Yeah, and I'll tell you, Mayor, council members, it depends on which policy you look at, right? So we looked at one policy that excluded anything in the road right of way because in their particular community, that was not where the strong union labor was was in the road right of way work. It was in the vertical work. It was in buildings. It was in structures. It was in mechanical and plumbing. It was in those areas. And so they focused their PLA that way. There are others like the county that doesn't have any exclusions. All projects are to be utilized within the concept of the PLA framework if it met that threshold and criteria. So when I say flat work, it was really work in the road right of way, paving, concrete, landscape work. It's that type of aspect. Okay, interesting. So we obviously, we have a lot of questions and public comments that'll be on this. I'll just say right off the top a $10 million threshold, that's not gonna work for me. My intention in having this conversation and I'll fully frame it is to couple the conversation around PLA with a conversation around local preference as well to hit this on both sides. So if the goals of the city are going to be to reduce the carbon impact and reduce climate change, that means local workforce. That means local businesses having investment in them. If the goal of the city is to increase diversity, equity and inclusion within our workforce and our businesses, that means investing in those workers and investing in those businesses. So that's what I'm trying to get out of this conversation is not a conversation about a one-off project that might be $10 million or another one-off project or a one-time investment in small businesses or another one. How do we create an actual economic driver with a policy both tailored towards workers and also one that's tailored towards businesses that invest locally and keeps people here? So we can talk about threshold, we can talk about the type, we can talk about the cost and the delivery model. But what I also wanna make sure that we're not losing sight of in this discussion and in the local preference discussion is that we're talking about an economic climate, not a specific project. So, Mayor, if I could ask you a quick question, would it make sense then for us to return to the subcommittee and talk about what our current contract environment looks like? Who our primary contractors are? Where are they sourcing their employees from? Would that be a benefit to help frame what you just said? Because, I mean, I think that's the heart of it, right? Is are we creating policy that doesn't necessarily add to the local workforce? Or do we need to create that policy because we are drawing from a broader region and we want to invest more here? I think that's one of the questions that I think staff is asking is, is there really a concern with the workforce that we're using? We haven't done the research. We have just gut feel, but I think it might benefit if we come back to the subcommittee and provide you with the demographic, basically, of our contractors and who we've been issuing contracts to. Yeah, I think that that data is gonna be really important. Like you and I've talked about before, Jason, it does nothing for our local economy if somebody is being driven in, makes minimum wage and then drives back out of the county. So what I'm really interested in is knowing where do the workers come from? What would the benefits of a PLA be in terms of creating not just individual jobs, but developing our local workforce for the jobs that we have to keep that work locally and keep that money circulating here locally? And then also, and this is a separate conversation and Ryce and I have talked about this, how do we also do our local preference policies to make sure that the local businesses that are situated here also can compete for these same contracts? So again, I wanna be really clear, we're gonna go after both sides of this in the conversation. It would also be helpful to see a bell curve distribution for the costs for our project. And again, if you're gonna create a local, a local driver for your workforce to be trained and to be here, you need to have more than just the one off project that happens. I think the county with their PLA policy, I think they might be currently discussing only the second time they've ever had to use it in the last 10 years. So how do we craft it in a way where the folks that were training to do the work have consistent enough work to where they're not driving out of county and increasing their greenhouse gas emissions as well? Victoria? I believe John had his hand up first. Okay, go ahead John. Here we go. Thank you. I'm curious about this kind of, it goes back to process a bit. First of all, I like the idea of analyzing the effect on our local economy. I think that's really important. It's going to be probably a difficult challenge, but then every element of PLAs, all the discussions of PLAs, none of it is easy and none of it is necessarily clear. It kind of depends, it's a battle of the experts and it depends on who you speak with. My concern is about being able to do something akin to a SWAT analysis of PLAs. Unfortunately, there are so many different elements to it. When we could do a SWAT analysis on each one of these, the threshold, the type of need, and to determine a good recommendation to the council, but I don't know that I could without that analysis, without that SWAT type of analysis. It would be hard for me to make a recommendation. Because in looking at the CIP agreements, which is actually, I think the first time I've heard that term, it doesn't surprise me that we have CIP agreements, but I think that being able to, these are some of the options, it has to do with options, options, compromises. It's just so multifaceted. And I think it's part of the reason that we have avoided the conversation in the past, is because it is very complex and very detailed and it oftentimes is based on who you're getting your information from. So having being able to do a SWAT analysis would help me know what to recommend to the council. I say you mentioned the concept of whether or not the PLA would have to do with the bid, which I think is the actual hammers to nails, as opposed to the soft costs, the planning, the permitting. I mean, how one might separate those two because it has a lot to do with the cost of a project. And so it just, that alone, there are so many unknowns to me about the intricacies of PLAs and also what we have been doing and what our own policies reflect and how they accomplish some or potentially all of the issues that are covered with PLAs, how that or not. And then that's the kind of information that I think I would need before I can make a well-informed recommendation to the council. So it's challenging. Yeah, and I think that that'd be helpful as we go through this conversation today when we wrap up. Let's make sure that we give a good lift to staff of the information that each of us thinks we would need to be able to make a recommendation. I think that that's a really good point, John, and would help frame things really well. And council member, I think part of the way that we can help alleviate some of the stress on this for council is what Jessica mentioned during our staff discussion is, the establishment of a circle back time, creation of either a sunset that could then be extended or establishing it as a pilot test because I think your comments were spot on. You go on the internet and you get half the comments are gonna come saying PLAs are not necessary, half the comments are gonna say PLAs are the way to go. I actually don't think that I've talked with anyone out there that can tell me with certainty one way or the other. And I know that there may be folks on the line that may provide comment afterward, but I think if we can get to a place where council, where the information we've brought you seems reasonable, there's no reason for us not to take it out for a spin. See what it looks like, try something out. We may make some suggestions on how best to do that like bid in parallel or establish this threshold here and let's just pick five projects over the next two years and see how that works. I think those are the types of things where we can try, we can create that trial balloon, put it on the street, see how it works, and then we have empirical data. Again, I'm an engineer, right? I'm linear, empirical data is the way I work. So, and that might help us create or adjust the policy to make it really fit and really work for our community and our city. Victoria? Thank you, Chris. So I have a few thoughts. I'll pick up where you left off, Jason, which is, I do think that data and information is gonna be really crucial to us moving forward, but there's gonna be some things that I'm often guilty of asking for data that's very difficult to measure. And that is the data on the impacts of what we do on the overall economy and also the impact of not taking that, the action not taken and the lost cost. And so, I totally agree that if you go to people who are pro PLA, they're gonna show you how much cost savings you're gonna get and how much smoother your project's gonna be. If you go to people who are against PLAs, they're gonna tell you about how much more expensive it is, how it's a rip-off and all these other things. And so what I think that we really need to do is focus on the benefit to the local economy and the determination of how do we want to spend our dollars? We're a public entity and one of the, for example, internally, one of the biggest benefits I say we provide besides all the great summer camps, if you can sign up for them, is we provide a thousand amazing jobs in one of the best places to work. I'd say the best place to work in the country. To get to work at the city of Santa Rosa, you're gonna get a pension, you're gonna get job stability and you're gonna get the best city council ever as your boss, I'm just kidding. But the point is, is that I know the mayor's new to our committee here, we're a little more informal, but. So what you're saying is once I've been here for a while, you'll instead talk trash about the council? Well, no, no, no, what I mean is like we're just a little bit more off the cuff here when we try to be rich in our play with both our staff and stuff like that. But yes, we could get to trash talking eventually, but here's the point, is that, I don't wanna have a disingenuous conversation about whether or not PLAs save money or whether they're more expensive or less expensive. I wanna have a genuine conversation about our economy, our workers, our community, and go from there because I think that if we get down in the weeds of it's more expensive, less expensive, we're gonna be in a circular situation which is probably not appropriate for recorded Zoom meetings. So to that end, I think that the local preference is a really great way to frame this because it is about keeping people from commuting in, keeping people from commuting out, but also developing our workforce. Like Jason, do your point around the flatwork. Now I know what flatwork is, very cool for me. I'm gonna throw that around a couple of times while at cocktail hour, but why aren't there a lot of union shops doing flatwork? Do we need to develop that part of our workforce? So unlike, I have a lot of respect for the County of Sonoma, but one of the things that I, when I look at their PLA, what I see is something akin to jurisdictions that have really high affordability requirements on their housing developments. And you say, oh, it's so wonderful that you wanna put 20% affordability requirement in your multi-family housing. But what that really means is they're not gonna build any of that. People are gonna do offsets and it's not gonna happen. I'm looking for a PLA that is easy to use for staff, easy to use for contractors, and that is used frequently, not reserved for the biggest projects and one that's not cumbersome for our building trades and for our local economy. So that's how I wanna frame this. I was hoping to wait to hear from people before really setting out, but I do appreciate the mayor and council member Sawyer just jumping in and giving you some feedback. And I'll try to save a few more thoughts until after I hear from people because I do wanna be able to respond to their concerns as well. Yeah, and I'll say, John's absolutely right. I think that this is part of the reason why this conversation's taken so long for Santa Rosa to have is depending on where your data source is, it's what you believe and what you think is the best direction. What I do know is that the economic multiplier effect of keeping your dollars local is a proven economic benefit to your community. And so I think particularly as this is the economic development subcommittee, I think the more information that we can gather about what benefits that could potentially have from a workforce development standpoint, from a business development standpoint, from a greenhouse gas emission reduction, I think the more that we understand that, the easier it'll be for this committee to make recommendations. And Chris, I may just quickly to that point say that I think that we also are gonna need to acknowledge the costs as well. And that way, I think that that will go a long way to having this conversation really bring in our business community and folks who are not necessarily pro PLA is not pretending that there aren't associated costs. Yeah, I think a very candid talk is important. Yeah. Yeah, I want to let Jessica get a chance because I know you've been waiting to say something and then I wanna circle back on that quick as well. So Jessica, go ahead. Thanks. And I'm getting used to kind of the jump in atmosphere. So I'm in the city attorney's office and I do appreciate that informality. I think that one thing I just wanted to highlight and build on is what Jason had mentioned is kind of this idea of revisit date, kind of where we're gathering that data. I think what that's driven by is when you look on slide seven with sort of the process and timeline criteria that we've set forth there. What I've, I think the mayor asked about how this compares to other jurisdictions. There's a lot of nuance and complexity here but other jurisdictions are kind of approaching it with these key factors in mind. And what I'm hearing from this discussion is actually very different than the way other jurisdictions are approaching this. I think that they are looking at those categories and kind of ticking the boxes and not taking like a step back and a slightly more holistic, how is this affecting cost? How is this affecting local workforce? And so what I think is important as we, I mean, as the lawyer here, I can draft it per council's direction and we have a lot of options and a lot of flexibility, which is great. But I think each of these levers that you see here will have a different effect on kind of that comprehensive global approach that you're looking to take. And so I think that that's the value of kind of the pre-work here at this economic development level to kind of gear it up for that study session because turning the dial a little bit this way or that way will really have an impact on that local factor, the cost factor and kind of those things. And then having an opportunity to revisit it at the backend I think is useful. So that was the reason for that suggestion. Yeah, and I think, I mean, I'd liken it to a couple of things like the really successful job we did in developing the cannabis policy, that was political, that was difficult, that was done in public, but I just want to double down on what Victoria said, which is like, what is the tone of this conversation? We've been successful with policy out of this committee because we've had those really difficult conversations and I just want to put it out not for you guys, but for anybody who's watching us, look, staff is neutral on this, we will do this. We work at the direction of what council wants, but we sometimes have to bring up things that feel political or that are difficult and it's to get to an answer, to iterate to better and to get to yes. So I just want to say it's flat out starting this conversation today as we go through however long it takes, and yes, Chris, I hear you, not nine months, not 10 months, we're not going to hopefully be before September, but it means that if we bring something up, it's not in the front, it is because we have angst from a lot of different areas, how do we do it well? So I just, I appreciate the tone setting of that because it has worked here. Yeah, I really appreciate that and especially when staff can say, you know what, we don't have an answer and really making sure that we understand when we're flying a little bit blind, when we're having to try something, when we might need to make tweaks, I think that's a really good marker to put in the ground. If John and Victoria, if it works for the two of you, how about we go to public comment and kind of hear, people have had a chance to listen to this discussion, they kind of understand sort of what we're looking for in terms of feedback, at least initially. And if folks have comments either broadly about PLA or about some of the questions that are being asked or about the way that it's being framed, you'll have three minutes, feel free. And then as you heard, this is gonna be a multi-conversation process, just hopefully not nine months. And we do have public comments, just one moment. I'm shocked to hear that. First individual will be Troy and Andrew Angelo. If you would confirm your ability to see the screen and introduce yourself, that would be wonderful. Thank you. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, thank you. Okay, yes, I just wanted to discuss PLA as far as local hires. If PLA is prioritizable, hire local tradesmen and women of our communities in Santa Rosa and Sonoma region, which will provide economic, social and environmental benefits and impacts. Local workers live here close to their workplace to travel less. This means fewer greenhouse gas emissions from commuting, which I think is something you guys been discussing. Long distance, their cars taking 10 to 20 hours per week on the road out of their lives. If you quantify that by the amount of people working on the project, the numbers are quite significant. By working locally, we can support efforts to building stronger families and communities. Kids can be helped with their homework. Parents don't have to choose between their job and time for extracurricular activities with their kids. They're home for dinner, they're able to assist their older family members or volunteer within the communities. When people are more present and active in their communities, our communities are stronger and healthier as we all know. Economic benefits allow us to stimulate and stabilize our economy. The dollars generated from the local community stay local, which means gas, groceries, real estate, rent, mortgages, other disposable income. And economic development multipliers is estimated to be about 12 times the number of times a dollar in wages will change hands. That means for each dollar we pay in wages is recycled back into the community on average 12 times and generates the ability for other local businesses to pay wages and further stimulate the economy. And with COVID multiple years of fire, snow accounting, easy ability to provide for itself as much as it can to drive the economic stability and keep our area not only thriving, but growing in a healthy and sustainable way. Housing costs are out of control and the roads are impacted from commuters. We can begin to drive change in many of these by focusing our economic strength inward and providing jobs and apprenticeship opportunities locally. So benefit our local residents and matriculate students first. All of this is what our community needs. And I ask for all of you for your support. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next speaker will be Kaito with Ananda Suite following. Mr. Kaito, if you would please confirm your ability to see the screen. Yes, I see the screen. Wonderful, thank you so much. Yes, I agree totally with the previous commentator. And yeah, obviously the benefits of local labor force are very important. And I totally support that. I know everybody on the council totally supports that. But I just wanted to help define the word local labor force. The previous commenter said Santa Rosa and Sonoma region, which is okay. But I would like to just bring up the fact that you know, people drive around a lot, not just work, but also shopping. And you have people from Petaluma who shop in Santa Rosa and people in Windsor who work in Rona Park. But it's not just within Sonoma County. The, I think you need to include the reality which is people from Marin, Napa, Lake County and Mendocino County all come into Sonoma County in Santa Rosa all the time to work or shop or so on. So I think the definition for local labor force should be Sonoma County, Marin County, Napa County, Lake County and Mendocino County. And then make that the border and that's it. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be Ananda Sweet followed by Sherry Cabral. Ananda, if you would please confirm your ability to see the screen and introduce yourself. Good morning Mayor Rogers, council members and staff and Ananda Sweet with the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce. First, I wanna say I appreciate the noted need in this morning's presentation for a data-driven approach. There are significant impacts that come from a project labor agreement policy. And as you explore this, it will be critical to have an honest discussion and a data-driven approach. This should include a thorough assessment of the impacts of PLA policy specific to how it would work in Santa Rosa. If you move forward in exploring this, it will be critical to be really clear on the desired goals of the PLA policy. Whether a PLA policy is the best way to achieve those goals and weighing the determined positive and negative impacts. One large impact to be clear on is that a policy, a PLA policy represents a choice to limit competition even among employers of a local skilled workforce and to spend more tax dollars to complete a project. If that is a policy you wanna explore, there's a clear responsibility to take the time to gain a deep understanding of that full impact, to be able to articulate to Santa Rosa taxpayers a clear and evidence-based reason to limit even among local options and to take on the increased project costs. Thank you. The next person to speak will be Sherry Cabral followed by Jared Mom. Sherry, if you would please confirm your ability to see the screen and introduce yourself. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, thank you. All right, so good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, staff and members of the council who sit on the committee. My name is Sherry Cabral. I'm the Secretary of Treasure of the North Bay Building and Construction Trades Council. I wanna thank the committee for consideration of the use of a project labor agreement and the discussion around its desired parameters. The building trade suggests that any PLA recommended by the subcommittee prioritized hiring local workers, creating opportunity for youth women and the underserved and the veterans of this community. Incorporating as many projects as possible by keeping your threshold in line with other agreements recently put into place in the county and focusing on successful apprenticeship pathways by partnering with state approved joint apprenticeship programs. PLA offers the City of Santa Rosa the ability to see that public dollars are used to build public projects, taxpayer assets with taxpayer dollars and taxpayer dollars have the capacity to do so much more when they're leveraged to build opportunity and equity. PLAs are merely one tool that a public agency has for building economic resiliency. And for this reason and their success, they've increased in excess of over 500% in the past decade in use. I did want to address kind of actually one of the things that the last speaker said, which is the issue over whether or not you're limiting competition. And I think there's a particular discussion that goes on there with addressing the fact that under public contract code section 2,500, a public PLA does not allow any deviation from a public agency being required to take whom they deem as the lowest responsible bidder. And an individual company that's bidding cannot be chosen or prioritized based on the status as a signatory contractor. So there is no cutting anyone out based on their union affiliation or not. I also think it's important to realize that this is not a newer novel idea PLAs. And so it doesn't something that requires extensive study and there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Cities in California contract the same types of services, the same types of projects across the state and those projects require the same types of resources and the same types of skills. And one of the things that is of concern is hearing things like maybe we should do parallel projects, maybe we should do pilot projects, maybe we should go ahead and utilize the ability to unilaterally exclude things or to take things off the table like what's being referred to as a vertical project as opposed to a horizontal project. I'm also concerned at hearing something such as, well, there's trades that don't build specific types of construction projects. The 18 affiliated trades of the North Bay Building and Construction Trades Council are just like all the rest. We build everything. There is nothing that we do not do and there's no part of the market that we are not in strongly in this county or anywhere else. So I would encourage you not to bite into that particular argument or that particular political play. So thank you for your consideration. Thank you. The next speaker will be Jared Mumm followed by Jack Bustorn. And Jared, if you would please confirm your ability to see the screen and introduce yourself. Yes, thank you. I can see the screen just fine. Thank you. My name is Jared Mumm. So good morning everybody and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you all today. Again, my name is Jared Mumm. I live here in Santa Rosa and I'm a trustee for your local joint apprenticeship program for electricians. And that's been a pretty cool experience for me because I graduated from that program almost 10 years ago now. If you've got a goal to train your local workforce then long story short, you need to have some language requiring contractors to do that or you can assume that some jobs are gonna use apprentices and others are not. There was a question earlier or some discussion earlier about what training looks like here in Sonoma County and I'd like to share some of my experience with you all about that. I am a business rep for the local electricians union and it's basically my job to talk to electricians so I do quite a bit of that. Everybody assumes that because contractors are and I'm using my finger quotes here, right? Required to use apprentices on prevailing wage work then they are, right? 100% of course. But there's always a way around it and there's more to it than just that. I know of at least one contractor here in the area that does a lot of prevailing wage work that doesn't even have workers' comp insurance and they send in their paperwork like they have to but they do it known full and well that no responsible program is going to send them an apprentice when they're not even legally allowed to have employees. I've seen contractors do work that don't employ apprentices at all ever. There's one job in particular that I'm talking to a young man there. He's got a couple of years of experience but there's nobody else around, it's just him. He's got no supervision. No one watching his back, certainly no one training him and somebody had to pay this young man journeyment rate because it was prevailing wage work and he's not an apprentice but I'm walking around because I feel bad for the guy, I point out, hey kid, don't forget like your pipe fell apart up there make sure you go back and put that together. I follow up with contractors who legally have to send us the paperwork requesting apprentices and I call them and we talk and man half the time they tell me, no, do not send anybody. We don't want to use apprentices. You got contractors bringing apprentices from anywhere but here. You've got people coming here bringing an entire crew with them from anywhere but here doing the work, claiming this isn't even electrical work. It isn't prevailing wage. We aren't required to use apprentices so we won't and we're talking to the guys and they're paying the guys 14 to 18 bucks an hour. So I mean, long story short if your goal is to train the local workforce then you've got to put it in writing somewhere that people are required to utilize apprentices and you can do that with a PLA. Thank you for your time. Thank you. The next individual to speak will be Jack Buckhorn. Jack, if you would confirm your ability to see the screen and introduce yourself. Sure, I can see the screen. My name is Jack Buckhorn. I'm the executive director of the North Bay Labor Council but today I want to speak as a commissioner or in my role as a commissioner on the California Apprenticeship Council. And I'm really thankful to hear that the city council would like to make recommendations based on data. So I want to share some data with you about apprenticeships in California and Sonoma County. California is by far the largest apprenticeship training model in the nation with over 90,000 apprentices. 68.4% of those apprentices are minorities or people of color. And of that in the construction industry women represent 7.5% of all active apprentices. There are over 230 union sponsored apprenticeship programs in California and these programs invest over $100 million a year in apprenticeship training. 92% of all construction apprentices are enrolled in union programs and that holds true for Sonoma County as well. As a matter of fact, in Sonoma County there are only two programs that are not union that train in do any training at all. 95% of apprentices are graduates of union programs and 68% of those, as I mentioned, are people of color. This is important. 96% of all women in state approved apprenticeship training programs are in union programs and programs of those surveyed over half are expecting to increase apprentices over the next two years. So let me look at this a little bit, let's look at this. If you want to hire carpenters there are no non-union apprentice carpenters available. If you want to train plumbers there are no plumbing apprentices available in Sonoma County, they don't train. Same with sheet metal workers, laborers, operating engineers, plasterers, teamsters, these there are no, the only ones that train in those areas are the union programs as well as electrical workers. So I think this is a really important equity issue. If we want to provide opportunity to local workers to get into the middle class through building trades apprenticeship program over 90% of those will come through union programs. So I would ask that you really look at the data on apprenticeship when you consider this PLA policy and also I would ask that you include as many people as possible that would mean putting the threshold as low as possible to provide the maximum opportunity. And I want to thank you for your time this morning. Thank you. We have no additional raised hands at this time nor do we have any email or phone comments for this item. Oh, I apologize. We do have an additional hand raised just one moment. The next speaker will be Keith Diaz. Keith, if you would please confirm your ability to see the screen and introduce yourself. That would be wonderful. Thank you. I can see the screen. Thank you council members for letting me speak. My name is Keith Diaz. I'm a business rep for Sheep Mental Workers Local 104 and also a former training coordinator for our apprenticeship program. I'm here today to speak on the language that are hopefully will be discussing or we are discussing today. And I would like to ask the council to look kind of piggyback off of what the last speaker said about the apprenticeship program that I want to specifically add in the joint apprenticeship language into the PLA. With the joint apprenticeship language, the apprentices have equal say in their apprenticeship along with management. And the other programs, apprentices don't have any representation. So they don't have anything, any say on how their apprenticeship program works. Our apprenticeship program, I was a training coordinator for 11 years and I'm a trustee and I've been involved for over 20 years. So I've had the pleasure of training thousands of apprentices over my tenure. But with that said, I mean, just kind of narrowing it down to Santa Rosa. We have a boatload of apprentices that live in Santa Rosa and this PLA will benefit them greatly. So I just can't reiterate enough how much and how important it is to have a joint apprenticeship program written into this language because it will help those people with bona fide state approved apprenticeship programs. And it will be a shot in the arm because my apprentices I hear every day, they're tired of driving to San Francisco or the East Bay or whatever to find work. They're spending two, three, four, five hours a day on the road. They wanna work local and this PLA will help them immensely. So I just, as our apprenticeship program grows, we're gonna build the infrastructure for the next, I don't know, umpteen years to rebuild California, bad roads, buildings, everything. So they're gonna have an opportunity and this PLA will help with that opportunity. And again, I just ask you to put the joint apprenticeship language into the PLA. Thank you for your time. Thank you. There are no additional hands raised at this time. All right, thank you. I'm gonna go ahead and bring it back then. So I was trying to take some notes both during our discussion and during public comment and so I'll kick it off. What I heard was interest in data or follow-up on a couple of different items. So if I can enumerate them and make sure that it's what staff heard as well before we get into more comments from other council members. But so far I've heard some data on where do workers come from? What's their demographic breakdown if we can figure that out and wage and benefit? And primarily for me, I wanna know are the people who are driving in, are they making a wage that would allow them to live in the area that they're working? That to me is the important question. I'd like to see a bell curve on city projects. How much each project on average that we do cost? A cost comparison it sounds like and maybe there are studies that are out there that you can point council to. A cost comparison on similar projects in cities that have a PLA and cities that don't have a PLA. So we can have the conversation around cost. And I wanna make sure that that includes change orders, that it's the total cost to deliver the project, not the approved cost, but what the ultimate cost was. I wanna know if there are any jurisdictions that have revoked the PLA once they had passed it and what the reasoning might have been. John asked for a SWAT analysis on some of the different things like threshold. I think that that's a great idea. And then just some more information around the economic multiplier and what that could mean locally. But I think that for our next conversation, I think particularly around what those numbers kind of look like. I think for me, as I mentioned, I'm really looking at how do we develop a policy that invest locally and create that economic driver and allows people to work and live here and cultivate the workers that live here. What's up? I think I've said my piece. I'll see John, Victoria, either of you have anything to add? Go ahead, Victoria, go ahead. You gave me the opportunity before your turn. Okay. Well, I think that the mayor covered most of it. The comments that I hear, I thought fell into two buckets mostly. I mean, there was a lot of things that I heard, but one is a great concern around developing apprenticeships and developing our local workforce and having a steady stream of work that is local. And so that's something that I'll be looking for as we look at what other cities have done and how we can do that most effectively. And then I did hear concerns around limitations. And I also heard counter ideas around that. And so what I want to, again, I mentioned this earlier, but I think it really bears repeating that we ought to have an honest conversation. And I brought up the point earlier about the city of Santa Rosa, we have these jobs here. And I didn't finish the point by saying, we pay more than the average amount here and we have more benefits than the average employer here. And we do so because we recognize the importance of our local economy and we justify this to our taxpayers. And so what I'm looking for with this is something similar where we acknowledge that there may be associated costs, but we also say here are the benefits taxpayers and business owners for whatever difficulties or troubles you may perceive or may actually encounter around this. And then here is a pathway to engaging in this process and accepting, being able to accept and apprentices and apply for these PLA applicable projects so that we are in constant conversation and we're developing not just our employees, but our businesses that are gonna be taking on this work. And the part that's most salient for me, I'll be honest is the piece about people coming in from hours and hours. I recently took a road trip where I was in outside of Tracy at five in the morning and the traffic was backed up for miles for people coming out of the Central Valley to get here, nearly all pickup trucks, people coming in to work. And as a parent, what I think about is is this person gonna be home in time for soccer or dinner time or bedtime or are they gonna make it home tonight? Or are they gonna stay in a hotel in San Francisco or Santa Rosa? And so that's what I'm coming at this from is our local economy, working families and making sure that people don't have to suffer in those ways and justifying the costs that it may bring to businesses in that similar to how we do with minimum wage that most business, I never hear any complaints about this anymore. Up front there was a lot of concerns but now there's an understanding that the local economy has benefited and our local business owners have benefited by having more dollars in the hands of people who are gonna spend them. And so I think if we continue down that path we will encounter challenges but hopefully there'll be challenges that help us to make this policy more effective for more people. Thank you, John, your turn. Thanks, Victoria. You know, there's no mystery out there in the community for those that have been watching over the last number of years about my attitudes toward PLAs and a lot of it has to do with philosophy. Philosophically, or anyone's philosophy is difficult to change. And that's why I am really looking forward to data-driven decisions and really looking forward to options and compromises. Because I think that that is, if we are going to go down the road of a PLA I think that having some flexibility whether it be required or put in by just our own language is really important. And then let me jump into my philosophy because I really don't believe the taxpayer's dollars used for a project should be restricted under any circumstances to Union labor. If the private sector wants to have a project that a PLA by all means go for, it's not taxpayer dollars. And I heard a comment that one has to consider the benefits of a PLA using taxpayer dollars. And this is part of why it's so important to have the conversation that we're having and why it's so important to be able to have a lot of input like we did with the cannabis subcommittee that made for a much better product. So having the input from the community is going to be vital both to substantiate the data and to deal with people like me who are philosophically troubled by the concept of PLAs. I don't believe it's good public policy for agencies to be married to unions. And that's a little firm, that's a little strong language. And I believe that there are those out there that would suggest that you don't have to be married to unions to support PLAs. But that's what it feels like to me. And I do, I'll skip the things that I disagree with as far as, well, it goes back to depends on who you talk to about costs, quality, timing, all of those things that we're going to be discussing. And I look forward to the having those conversations. I think that the prevailing wage and our CIP agreements go a long way to level the playing field. And I think that leveling that playing field is elemental to free enterprise and fair competition. So there's a lot of, I have a lot of learning to do about PLAs on both sides. And I'm sure that, and that's why it's gonna probably take longer than Chris would like. I would love to have this conversation behind us because it has been going on too long. We need to come up with some really well-written policies around PLAs. It's not a matter of if it is a matter of when. And the sooner we start and the sooner we take that data-driven approach, the better the product will be. I'm kind of like the idea of doing a test. I'm not sure what that would look like or if other communities have done some kind of test or trying it out, a trial run, if you will. But I'd be interested in seeing how that might be done because it would give us an opportunity to at least with the chosen project give us some real data and see what happens. But I'm not sure, like I said, I'm not sure how that works if other communities have done it and how they did it. But it would certainly be interesting to see the end result of both PLA and then a non-PLA. But it's going back to my philosophy. I am reticent to embrace PLAs on a number of levels. But give me a reason to change my mind. Thank you. And I appreciate the comments, John. John and I have talked over the last couple of years a number of different times about the reticence from the council to even have this discussion. And so I'm really just grateful to staff for the work that you have done and will do on it. I'm grateful to the community for having a really thoughtful approach in this conversation. And I know I don't need to say the same thing about my colleagues because we've seen it time and time again the ability to have difficult conversations and work with one another and find a path forward. I think the data is gonna be really important. I also wanna make sure that we continue to link things back to what our council goals are and having that discussion. Because my philosophy, John, is we spend our taxpayer dollars to make sure that we're crafting the type of city that we know that we need to make. And so let's have the conversation about how these policies could impact diversity, equity, and inclusion, how it could impact our climate change goals, how it could impact our housing goals. One of the questions I have is by developing the local workforce, will that actually make construction and housing projects cheaper? Because that workforce is here. It's available for contractors. Let's have that conversation on all of the city's goals and how this would impact the city. Again, hopefully not nine months, but let's have an honest conversation about it. The good, the bad, the ugly, the unknown. And I just wanna thank staff for this first step here. Mayor, just to jump in quickly, I hope you come to enjoy the less formal environment that Victoria and I have created over the many months. John, it works really well. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it. It is really fun for this environment because we just get in and we end up having discussions. It's not for today to discuss, get into the back and forth on philosophy of tax dollars and unions, but we will have that conversation. It'll be robust and it'll be a great conversation. I did wanna, one thing that you mentioned, Chris, that I didn't think got resolved and brought up a few times, which is the timeline. And do you wanna have amend the timeline? Do we wanna try to not have it take until September or do we wanna come back next time or does staff feel like that's the only option? I mean, I had to say the timeline wasn't like a set timeline. I was just putting it out there saying, look, this might take some time. Sure, it's gonna take some time. I was just wondering if it might be attached to events like the subcommittee meeting and the study session. If it works for the committee, do you mind if I just work with Raeza to both not overburden staff so that they are completely burnt out and not able to work on anything else, but also move this conversation at a swift enough pace where we don't lose thread and have to redo some of the work we're doing? Does that work for you all? And I just had to say, and Jessica, you're gonna jump in here because I can see it, but I will say that like our intention was to have this be at every meeting and even to ask if we need special meetings at some point. So these meetings are set at once a month. We do need some time to do the work in between, but there might be times when we need special meetings as well. Jessica, what were you gonna say? Well, I just, you know, I think that the county had an ad hoc that operated for like a year and that's slightly on the longer end. And then I know Glido was a kind of more of a six months track. So I like the idea of kind of periodic check-ins with feedback, but then also let someone who's gonna be doing some of the legwork on the agreements and bid documents, et cetera, et cetera, I think having a little staff time in the interim is helpful as well. Yeah, and we'll continue to reach out, obviously, to both labor and to our local contractors. So we'll have those, we'd rather have the conversation or like hear the comments through this process than setting up additional meetings where we have them all in the same way the county did. We're kind of not interested in that model because we have some really good examples and can learn from what they did. So I think that way we can move it forward. Sorry, John. That's okay. I'm just gonna say that, you know, when Chris and you are talking about how we move forward if there's something, if there are items on our plate that we might need to push off a little bit because of the gravity of this conversation and the need to come to finish the product, if you need to compromise some things, you know, let's talk about it if necessary to be able to accommodate the timeline. Almost everything that we deal with but have been dealing with is really important and it'd be hard maybe to let go of some things or even one thing, but it might be necessary to get the product done on a reasonable timeline. So just, you know, be, you know, if you need to come back to us, then, you know, we're easy to talk to. Right, and to that point, I just wanna say that, you know, I think one of the things that's worked for us in the past is using this as a working group that does convene more frequently than once a month. So at your, you know, convenience, I know that I'll speak on behalf of me and John, you know, we'll meet with you as frequently as you want and we'll drag Chris with us. Yeah, I mean, I think some of the big things that we did, it was like, oh man, it was weekly. Oh yeah, we used to meet every week. Yeah, and I don't know if we have the capacity to do the research and get there, but we may as we start to compress the information as we get closer to something of substance in advance of the, you know, the study session is what you recall it, I was talking about. So I do wanna point out that I think what we're gonna do is loop Sakura in because we do, did hear the interest in diversity and equity considerations from the get go. So this has been our core group just to get to this point and we'll bring Sakura in for that. We've got, we've already started thinking about where our data sources are. So obviously we'll reject the units really interested to understand from their perspective what the data is as well as from like the construction coalition the chambers to hear, you know, so we wanna be able to compare data. The other thing that we need to do is just make sure that we're talking about city bid projects. We're not saying that we're doing a broader thing. This is restricted to city bid projects. And I think what we're gonna do is look to moving forward is to be clear about what level of contracts we're talking about, you know, designed to build is what, you know, the interest versus like others. I think that we're gonna start building our parameters in addition to coming back with the data and the interest that we heard today. And I think that will frame the breadth of the discussion next month, because I think we need the next three weeks to do that. Yeah, and I also will say just for council members one thing that I'm gonna start to think about and I hope you two will also come to the table with not just what data do we need to make the decision, but long-term what type of data are we gonna ask to show whether our intended policy goals are being met? I think that's an important component to build in as well. Okay, this is great. Any last thoughts? Anybody? No, I think we have our marching orders and it was super helpful. Super helpful. Yeah. Thank you, everybody. Oh, sorry, I have one last question. They're just saying thank you. Oh, okay, you're welcome. Me too, thank you. I have one last item for if I can just move directly to that, Chris. Yeah, if there's no other comments on this one, let's go ahead and jump to department report. Yeah, I just have one report just to say, because I reported that last time on UNAM and what the decision was. So when we were looking at, I see you laughing, not funny. When we were going through, we had a request from two members who were not present at the meeting. So we have six members on the Art and Public Places Committee. It's a seven member board. We just placed, Eddie just appointed his person, at least temporarily, because he's looking for somebody from within his district, district one. And we got somebody actually, Victoria from your district as a temporary replacement. But when we were looking at that, we had six members seated out of a seven member board. And at the request of two of the members who weren't present, they wanted to know how they could revisit it. So we're in the process of looking at what the parliamentary procedures were for that. It became apparent that the vote that was taken with three members voting was not legal or I don't know what the word is. It wasn't, it didn't follow the, it nulled the vote. So we're going back on February 22nd, it's a special meeting of our public places committee. And I just wanna be super clear that we're able to bring forward a new recommendation that is fully based on the intent and interest of the original process to select languages for that UNAM thing. So it's not to decide new languages without process based on public opinion at all. This is based on the process by which the languages that were identified in the first place. And so we're going back with a new recommendation to expand the list that exists from 15 to 30. It just means that words won't be repeated as frequently but we can include more. And this seems to be a compromise between those who weren't present and those who were present and the intention of both the committee, the community advisory board and the decision that the public places committee made at the last meeting. So that's where we are with it. It's going forward on the 22nd. And we hope to, we need four votes to for it to pass and we hope to move forward from there. That's cool. I appreciate that, Ray. I appreciate that, Ray. So I'm chuckling because saved by bureaucracy it's not something that you're used to. Who knew? Who knew? Yeah. But a super fan of process at this point. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for your work on that. Yeah. Curious to know how much public comment you're gonna get. I think you're gonna have a hefty meeting. I think it will be hefty but I really have to say and I think it came out a little bit in the, what's it called the article in the press Democrat. The thing that was really interesting to me is when people are talking about fairness they're talking from such a singular area. And when every time we're like, who do you think it's not fair to you for this reason? What about XYZ? And it just started this really interesting conversation and we're now going through a process that we have three sessions set up through the Art Public Places standing committees where we're looking at equity, inclusion, diversity because it cannot ever be from a single person's point of view. And honestly, and this was my knee jerk reaction we couldn't be elite at the back end of deciding, re-deciding a process that was really intentional at the front end. What is the purpose of this statue? What are the considerations of the really diverse community advisory group that we had? So we didn't want a small group of people to be able to sway what the voice of the many was over the two year process. And I think that's where it came down to like some of our members on the committee where they're like, no, I mean, we've done, we do this every single time is here, a small group of people at the very last minute decide that an entirely public process is not right. And it doesn't mean that we can't make it better but we need to understand what the process is so that it is fair from the start. So that's where we are with it. And that's my high horse and I'll get off of him. All the best of luck. And it's, you know, art can, it just, it points out one of the sometimes less obvious issues around art and selection of pieces. And it can be a very rewarding experience and it can be a very painful one. So that's part of the nature of art. It can be quite provocative. And government. And government. And this is kind of my standard. I tell people all the time, you don't want me involved in art in any way where you'll get squiggly lines and stick figures. And so I'm glad that the process will play out in a way that has people feel heard. And also, I'm glad that we don't have to bring it to council for any type of discussion from here on out. Yes, thank you. Yeah. We've got it going. All right, with that, we'll see if there's any public comment on our staff report, departmental report. I see no raised hands at this time. And we have no email or phone messages for this item. Great. Well, thank you everybody for participating. John, Victoria, I'll see you guys at City Hall in just a little bit for our council meeting later today. Thanks, Raiisa, and thanks to the whole team. And with that, we're adjourned. Thank you.