 All right, Member Sawyer, I just want to confirm that you're able to, we can hear you. Yes, thank you. Perfect, thank you so much. Tara Oliveras, if you could just confirm that we're able to hear you, that would be wonderful. Yes, I think I'm here and I will get my video started here shortly. Wonderful, thanks so much. Good morning, John. Good morning, Raquel. How are you? Good. Hey, Ernesto. How are you, man? I'm good. Okay, I think we're ready to get started. No other than coming on. Vice Mayor Fleming will hopefully be joining us at 9 o'clock by audio. She's got some daycare issues to deal with. So let's go ahead and call the meeting to order. And with me today is Council Member Sawyer. Again, this is our second Zoom meeting for the Downtown Subcommittee. So I do need to remind you of the process here for us this morning. So again, due to the provisions of the Governor's Executive Orders on the N2520 and N2920, which is spent in certain requirements of the Brown Act, and the order of the Health Officer, I'm sorry, the Health Officer from the county to shelter in place to minimize the spread of COVID-19, the Downtown Subcommittee will be conducting today's meeting in a virtual setting using Zoom webinar. Subcommittee members and staff are participating from remote locations and or practicing appropriate social distancing. Members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and as noted on the agenda. Members of the public wishing to speak during item three, public comment, or during our public hearing items will be able to do so by utilizing the raised hand feature of their Zoom or pressing star nine on their phone. And it will be given the ability to address the subcommittee. So do I have any announcements for today? Chair Malavarez, I just want to let you know that Council Member Fleming will be joining, or Vice Mayor Fleming will be joining shortly? Yes, she sent me a text that she would hopefully join us by 9 o'clock. She actually just sent some message to us once that, you know, she was about to join. Oh, OK, good. Good. Thank you. That's great. That's great. OK, so let's go ahead and open up public comments on items not on today's agenda. So again, if you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please select the raise hand button. If you're dialing by phone, press dial. I guess I guess we press nobody dials, but star nine to raise your hand. Each speaker will have three minutes, but, you know, we're very informal here, so we'll do the best we can to accommodate everybody. And a countdown timer will appear for your convenience. And you will also be notified by telephone. So let's go ahead. Anybody wishing to have to make any public comment on items not on today's agenda. Chair Malavarez, we do not have any raised hands at this time. We do not. No, we don't. OK, good. So we'll move on to our agenda day. We'll begin with our new business with item 4.1, permitted events in public art. Tara, you're on. Hello, Chair Malavarez and Council Member Sawyer. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. I'm Tara Thompson, the city's arts and culture coordinator, and I am going to provide an update on special event permits as well as public art. Since this last committee meeting, there has been a slight development. I think I shared that working with city staff from a variety of departments that would traditionally review all special event permits for San Rosa. We have been working with that group to make a recommendation and have now made that recommendation and are moving forward with implementing it to suspend all special event permits through the end of 2020, at the least. So we have now notified all of those appending permit holders that we are not able to issue permits through the end of 2020. This is also an alignment with the County of Sonoma's suspension of special event permits indefinitely. So we are working with them to be kind of consistent with our messaging out to events. The other update really relates to Ironman. It was determined through conversations with the county and the CHP that given the nature of our ongoing health orders and restrictions here in the county as well as in the state that we would not be permitting the Ironman event in October as they were trying to move forward with that as their rescheduled date from both the May and July events. So we have now notified Ironman as well that we are not able to issue that permit and that there will not be an Ironman event in San Rosa this year. That's really the special event update that I have. I'm happy to answer any questions on that or I can move directly on to the public art update. Drawing questions? Okay, let's go ahead and move on. Okay. So for public art, I wanted to share that the Courthouse Square public art project called Imagine Art in Courthouse Square was on hold obviously during the first part of our shelter in place situation. But we restarted the project about a month ago. The delay has put us back about six months in kind of the total overall timeline. But where we are at today is the five finalists that were selected for the project have actually submitted their final proposals this week to us. So we are planning on putting those proposals up on our website next week and starting a public outreach campaign to solicit input from the general public on those five designs. There will be an extensive kind of open review period for the general community to look at those, give us input, then a selection panel will meet and decide which one of those based on our selection criteria as well as the input from the community should be awarded the project. So over the next week or so please go to srcity.org slash imagine art and you can see those five proposals and there'll be a way for you to give us your input. And we will be installing that final piece probably in early 2022. So that is our current timeline for that project. I'm sure that Cadence when she provides the downtown action organization update will share more about open and out but I did want to share that the Art and Public Places Committee had previously allocated some funding towards temporary public art in the square in advance of the permanent piece going in and last month they approved allocating that funding towards the open and out program to increase the art budget for artistic installations throughout the open and out footprint including in courthouse square. So that combined with some grant funding that was secured through Creative Sonoma, I believe the art budget is over a hundred thousand dollars for a variety of art installations now as a part of that program. So happy to answer any questions but I'll leave I'll leave it there. Thank you. Great John. No good thank you. Okay any members of the public wishing to comment on item 4.1? There are no hands raised at this time. There are none okay thank you. We'll move on to item 4.2 the downtown stationary specific plan Amy Lyle. Good morning this is Amy Lyle supervising planner with the advanced planning team and I don't have a ton of stuff to update you on since your last meeting but for everyone's benefit I'll just note that we are in the final months of the downtown specific plan in the planning process and the plan was released on July 15th for a 45-day period of time with the environmental impact report so those are out available for review. We would love comments, we would love feedback, suggestions and we are doing a fair amount of outreach this month to neighborhoods, business owners and a lot of the organizations that are prevalent downtown. So far the comments have been very positive but it is somewhat quiet so we want to make sure in this virtual environment that we're doing the best robust outreach that we can. So the next step for us is the public hearing process and the most notable is happening next week so we do have a public hearing plan with the planning commission on the 13th and that will be a public hearing on the environmental impact report. We also have a joint designer view board cultural heritage board meeting scheduled for the 19th and then bike and pedestrian committee on the 20th and then the final public hearing process will start in September and then concluding with the city council what we're hoping is in October. So that's the report I have I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you John, questions? No questions, thank you. And Vice Mayor Fleming just joins us as well and I'm not sure if you caught any of that. I did, I've been listening all along, thank you. I don't have any questions, I don't have any questions, I do appreciate that date. Thank you, thank you very much. Any members of the public wishing to comment on item 4.2? Chair Oliver, we do not have any raised hands at this time. Thank you, okay let's move on to item 4.3 downtown Ashton organization, Caden's welcome, good morning. Thank you, good morning Terrell Varis and council member Sawyer and Vice Mayor Fleming. Thank you for having us give you a quick update today. I'm going to focus mainly on the open and out program as that's been the biggest thing happening downtown. Our Street Plus team is still working very hard doing their regular activities as well as supporting open and out and our businesses now as they're kind of adapting to their new business models. So I've been getting a lot of great feedback from our business owners around them and their support which is great to hear. They're also continuing to engage with capital charities and the city around homeless issues and trying to help support those experiencing homelessness downtown. So for open and out I'll share some updates around where we are with the program and then talk about our survey and the responses we've been getting so far. We were about four weeks in and I think at our last meeting we were just deciding whether or not to begin the program since we were on the verge of joining the watch list but our restaurants overwhelmingly wanted to move forward and some retailers as well and so far we've had 12 or 13 parklets installed by a Bayside Church that was a huge generous project they took on to support our downtown businesses and it's really made quite a difference for those who are operating outdoors. We have a lighting project going in at JG Way and that I think is happening for later this week or sorry we've got some dark and working dogs. It's going in early next week so we're excited about that and we're working to safely wrap the barricades and add a little more signage as well so that it becomes a little more festive. We've gotten quite a few comments on the orange barricades so hopefully it'll be a little more fun but still a safe traffic barrier and still allow access for deliveries and streets sweeping as it happens. As Tara mentioned we have a very significant art budget we have a hundred thousand dollars to spend on temporary art and promoting that art and it's been we had a call for artists open for about a month and we received 51 applicants to join the artist pool which is pretty exciting. We've gotten a lot of good feedback from the first two installations that have happened over the past few weeks so we have a labyrinth on the block in front of Barnes & Noble and we have a tiny gallery where artists can switch their art in and out so if you're a member of the public you can walk past the tiny gallery which is located right between the florist and FedEx and you can see different art every day and if you're an artist you can put something in there and have your art displayed just a pretty fun program that was sponsored by Creative Sonoma. We have another installation going in today in the window between live and beer barren and three more that are moving forward pretty quickly with possibility for installation this weekend and starting next week. Timelines are a little bit rough at this point but we have I think five we've contracted with and three that are actively moving toward installation and then it's looking like we'll probably have another 10 temporary works installed so looking about 16 visual pieces visual installations three to four community engagement pieces so those will run the gamut from one weekend to a couple hours to an entire month of ways to kind of engage the community in discussion engage the community in in art and really fun ways to build that sense of community that we've all been missing and all of the projects are looking at them. Social distancing is the first thing that we're discussing so we're only considering projects where that is possible so it's exciting that we're creating these very safe opportunities for the community to connect with each other. We also have live musicians on Friday Saturday and Sunday night so we've scheduled musicians from now and through the final weekend we're scheduled to be happening in October and they're not amplified it's quiet music so it's not drawing the crowd but it's providing really nice ambiance and we're getting good feedback on that as well. We will likely have some other ways some other performance type art but working through the logistics around that too to make sure that again social distancing is possible as we're thinking about what we can offer the public. So we we committed where the city asked for us to do a bi-weekly survey of the businesses to make sure that this was supporting them as they're working through this really difficult time of whiskers and closures and we've conducted our first survey on July 24th so our next one will open up tomorrow and we had 23 of I think 35 or 36 businesses respond about 50 percent have taken advantage of opening out seeing a positive benefit and want the program to move forward and then one quarter think it's too soon to tell and one quarter are still not supportive of the program so we'll we'll keep an eye on the survey results I know you're eager to see those as you determine how the program should operate but I'll continue to provide those and if anyone is interested in seeing the survey itself I'm happy to to share the summary response from that too. Our retailers we still have a handful who are opposed to the program and want the streets to open and we have some who kind of are acknowledging that there are other circumstances affecting their business like for instance the county's placement on the watch list the age of their clientele the price of their product during such an uncertain financial time but some definitely believe that the street closures are solely responsible for any drop in sales that they're experiencing we know that the current circumstances are very challenging so trying to work very closely with retailers on creative solutions to attract more customers and to take advantage of the foot traffic that's downtown I think anyone who's been downtown over the past couple weeks has has seen the increased foot traffic you know it's not overcrowded but it's it's lively which is really nice to see and we're trying to help some of our retailers figure out how they can tap into that a little bit more. Some are getting creative on their own to attract customers and I love that. I'll use a quick example of kindred I don't know if anyone has been down to kindred in the last couple Sundays but they're doing safari Sundays and had a lot of fun with that people are loving the live animals and I think it's been helping Julie's sales there as well so kind of love that creative attitude and and wanting to take advantage of the opportunity that's being put before them so that's that's a fun one to share but we're also talking with others who felt that their sales have gone up since the street closure you know boutiques located close to restaurants are definitely taking advantage of those eating at restaurants or those waiting to eat at restaurants we're getting a lot of feedback that there are long waits to eat which is not surprising but it's nice that we have shops that are open to essentially entertain people as they are waiting to waiting to dine so we there's still others we really want to continue to work with but we're definitely making progress on the retail side and I'm I'm excited about that because it's definitely a big challenge our restaurants by and large very positive comments from a number of restaurant owners of summer are still just getting up and running or have only been up and running for a couple days at this point so they're trying to figure out how to make it work and support their staff and stay open and stay open different hours and different days and seeing a lot of flexibility from our business owners right now which is great um one one comment I did get from a restaurant owner they wanted to share is she said that they're experiencing one and a half to two hour wait times for outdoor tables and still doing a ton of takeout business the forced free closure has ended up being a lifesaver for both us and our employees without it we would end up laying off an additional six to ten employees so that's that's great it's not the only person who shared that information sorry what oh I was just asking if I could post the picture of a gravy on page um so we're getting we're getting very good feedback from the restaurants um by and large very happy with how it's operating and how they're able to keep going during during the current situation and then members of the public as well so you know we operate a couple downtown Santa Rosa social media accounts and we're getting really good feedback there lots of people making comments like it should always be like this and this art is great so even though we only have two pieces installed people are loving it and so it's very fun to see that kind of positivity and interaction coming through online right now and I did want to say really quickly this is a really collaborative effort between a lot of different groups and you know I know it was the city's idea and creativity to kind of push this forward and the um the support across all city departments has been really fantastic so I just want to say thank you for that as I'm kind of helping to navigate the needs of our business owners the city's been very responsive to helping with moving things around and adjusting to accommodate the businesses that are you know trying to trying to stay alive so I just want to say thank you to all the city staff for their support and help around that any questions for me uh no okay it's I just want to extend my appreciation for your work and helping to make this happen again we had made we made a tough decision last time I think it was a good decision uh you know anticipating that really what was going to happen as far as the watch list we were put on the watch list of that I think there was an impact there but in spite of all that I have been downtown and taking advantage of what's going on down there and I love seeing the people coming down there so thank you for that a quick question what what are your streets uh plus team reporting out related to uh the social distancing use of masks are there you know as far as the public coming downtown how's that going yeah they feel like it's been um it's been going well you know they love seeing people down there and I think it was quiet for them for a long time so they're getting a lot of interaction now um definitely seeing a lot of mask wearing you know at restaurants people don't wear masks and I think that concerns some people but the reality is you can't um so it so far I think it's the social distancing aspects have have seemed to be going well good thank you uh Mr. Sawyer uh Vice Mayor Fleming questions yes I do I do have a question and first of all a comment thank you very much Candice for everything you're doing you've got a lot of pokers in the fire that I it's I appreciate you your awareness of the the need for not only the fiscal health of the businesses downtown and we can't unfortunately um we knew there would be some fallout from from the decision to close the street but it sounds like it is for the for the most part had been a successful experiment in a way that was forced upon us but I think we've learned some things about how our downtown functions under situations like this and I while at the same time protecting the health of the customer so I really appreciate that my my question is just a is a request that you reiterate the website or the the um on our on the city's website the imagine art um access what is the could you repeat that in either if you don't know it Candice Tarr could weigh in but I just would like you to repeat that that website address so that people can weigh in on those five um uh installations or five possible the the installation that we're looking at for the future sure I can provide that this is Tara Thompson again um so the website is srcity.org slash imagine art thank you and uh wait give us until next week um to update that with the five proposals thank you great Westmore um thank you so much for all that you're doing and my questions have already been answered I'm just really excited to hear about how it's helping our businesses downtown and look forward to seeing more of the art come in so thanks again thank you do we have uh any questions from members of the public yes we do um hold on just one moment thank you and um Mr. Frazier I'm going to unmute you if you would like to introduce yourself you were able to speak at this time are you able to see the timer on the screen yes I am okay thank you uh Eric Frazier uh just in the adjacent neighborhood so before I begin I would like to say that of course my observations are my opinion and while we have research uh that buttresses our opinion uh they are our opinion so on the one hand yeah we love seeing the economic vitality of downtown we want to do everything that we can to help businesses survive these very difficult times uh we have two concerns one is that there seems to be business owners that don't feel the same way that this was in their best interest to proceed and one thing that we've noticed with activities that are sponsored by the chamber and the dao as well as the city is sometimes the minority voices really get rolled over and they don't really take into consideration what other people are saying uh we've seen situations of course where the city will come forward with a predetermined outcome or agenda and ask public involvement knowing that it's a foregone conclusion and so people in the minority or people that have other information that might be important uh tend to be excluded right from the beginning purposely and that's not fair and that's not right and so i hope you guys double down when people have alternative points of view to take them to heart and to consideration secondly well again we enjoy the massive amount of activity downtown at the restaurants in the evening something about it feels unsafe the way that this is set up doesn't allow for safe distancing between the people that are congregated on the other side of the palates to enjoy their meals outside without mass and those that are just walking down the street or waiting for a table or or whatever the case may be in fact the ingress into the areas seems to be not properly situated for people that are on walkers or have some sort of disability or so on and so forth and so um our question certainly would be whether the uh the layout of this and the precautions and everything that goes into it are really coordinated with the county over their concerns about a pandemic that still is not in control in our county and so while we can celebrate the party downtown we certainly don't want to ignore the fact that there may be splash over uh two citizens in general adjacent citizens people that are just enjoying the town downtown as pedestrians and that doesn't feel right that doesn't seem right so appreciate your enthusiasm we want healthy businesses nothing wrong but i would say that you have a commitment to the public to double down on the public health aspects of this thank you very much appreciate your time thank you very much we have no further hands raised at this time thank you very much uh mr soyer vice mayor fleming any additional comments no thank you thank you no thank you we'll move on to item 4.4 railroad square association and community benefit district uh rafael yes uh buenos dias council member olivares council member soyer vice mayor fleming uh great to see your names and basis so i have a brief update regarding the railroad square association um i wanted to let you know that on august 12 um the city will facilitate a brown out training to their newly created board so they're looking forward to that and i reported back in at the previous meeting we held uh that they had been the hiring of a security company for railroad square uh this is just happening in the evening or at night they were a couple of break-ins in early july so what i plan to do is get more of information regarding what the activities are from this security company and then come and report here at this downtown subcommittee the board held a a meeting on july 16th and at that meeting there were discussions regarding uh daytime maintenance crew consideration for a group to be hired to provide the maintenance and cleanup in addition to what the city provides a couple of entities that they're looking at are becoming independent railroad gospel mission and a few others there's also an interest in hiring a daytime security company as well and i don't know if it'll be the same one that provides the security in the evening uh there was also a discussion regarding the place replacement of the old banners that've been there for many years so coming up with a new new new banners a total of 22 or 25 or something like that i've conducted a survey of banners given that uh that's been a little side project that i've coordinated these past couple of months and then there's also there was also a discussion about hiring a part-time community benefit district coordinator they would it would be ideal to also secure the office space most likely at the visitor center however the visitor center continues to be closed so they're having discussions on where this individual could be working or perhaps if the person will do the work remotely during his current time there were some breakout sessions in terms of or assignation of assignment of various committees that will concentrate on beautification marketing and the historic self-guided tour so there's some further discussions related to that as well and the graffiti continues to be addressed there was some graffiti that appeared on various buildings during the month of June some of that was removed by the city more graffiti in july this was some private properties some of these owner property owners are having difficulties already with removing the graffiti so i reached out to a group the junior college got some support from a kiwanis key club they decided to come help so i drove over to the yard got some supplies and equipment and then we tackle graffiti removal last wednesday we spent a couple hours over at the warehouse on west third the arlene frances center mary's pizza gave us some gift cards to feed the kids or the youth i mean or the students actually they're not necessarily kids and we accomplished a lot we beautified the area so the railroad square association was very pleased with this outcome and just you know this is how we're doing things just thinking out of the box and being creative and putting a little effort here and there to continue to alleviate the the burden of the current situation lastly at the last meeting a reporter of the ac maryat was slated to open at the end of july that date has changed however our planning department has given a temporary occupancy permit to the maryat to begin occupation on august 13th so that will be happening in the next couple of days or so so we're excited for that looking forward to it the hotel looks beautiful and again we're going to continue moving forward and the last item i have is there are six part parklets uh in railroad square so there is some discussion about the possibility of closing that section of four street or maybe uh perhaps considering going back to the concept that was presented uh some of our previous meetings and that would be uh some sort of a closure around the depot park making that some sort of a temporary temporary plaza calling it a piazza or whatnot and then uh just providing an opportunity for people to come out and in a safely manner and with social distancing distancing to to come out and enjoy the park and the area as well that is my report that's it okay thank you thank you very much and i don't want to sidetrack you but you also been doing some work out there related to the census as well yes yes so definitely we wanted to definitely do a drive-thru through a drive-thru by the hotels that are in the area so i teamed up with various organizations community action partnership center is a tourism bureau and the census the u.s census and i think i saw you too during that caravan so in addition to downtown we headed out to apple valley went through cutting town there are at least 30 vehicles caravan science and just reminding people to fill out their fill out their census very very important but we definitely wanted to target us those uh employees that work in the hotel industry as well that they need to be counted so thank you for your money thank you uh vice mayor fleminger customer soldier questions no questions appreciate thanks for the report good report in your film thanks all for all your work thank you any questions remember to the public yes we do mr frazier hold on just one moment please and mr frazier are you able to see the timer yes i am please proceed okay thank you uh this is just a brief comment this is Eric frazier again in the adjacent neighborhood uh we're busy working to understand the county the cdc's role in acquiring hotels for their um homelessness assistance programs there's a i don't remember the name of the program but it's funded by the state some emergency money to purchase hotels and my question is whether or not rumor is true that there's been an offer to buy the marriott the new marriott for that program and i know there's a couple uh there's at least one downtown hotel that's in the pipeline uh the azura uh and um i wasn't sure if the rumor was true that the marriott was also being considered thank you that's all my comment thank you mr frazier thank you any other comments no there are no additional hands raised at this time thank you and i'm sorry i i can't handle your rumors i really don't know uh i don't have any information for you uh so move on to our parking program kim nadeau morning this is kim nadeau parking manager nice to be speaking with you today i have just a brief update we are quite um involved in the installation of our new parks equipment in the garages that's the computer gated revenue control system for the garages which the system we have right now is 20 years old and we're just crossing our fingers every day that it keeps working so we're really excited about getting this new equipment uh it's been ordered it's in configuration stage right now and we hope to begin the installation uh end of september beginning of october so i'll have further updates for you at future meetings so we've completed our our first month of the resumption of paid parking which resumed on july 1st our revenue for the month of july is down 50 percent from the year prior which is much better than we expected as as we were trying to project what the recovery was going to look like particularly taking into consideration that we're offering free parking in the garages on weekends free parking in the garages in the evenings offering the first hour free in all of the garages and we lowered the rate in the value zone to 75 cents an hour so having that 50 percent reduction in revenue is actually much better than i had hoped for and i think it is a testament to the fact that people are coming downtown and um you know visiting businesses so i found that to be encouraging and then the last thing i wanted to do was just put out a reminder that we do have a promotion offering one free validated metered parking session when using the passport app so people can it would be for their first use of the app for one time session and it's has a value of three dollars and 15 cents so that would get you two hours in the premium zone or four hours in the value zone and the validation code that you would enter when using the passport app is park sr so i just want to every chance we get we want to try to get that word out because we haven't seen very much utilization of that we've been promoting it with social media on the city's web pages we we worked with adrian and her team to have rack cards made with promotional information and so we're distributing those to the extent possible so just wanted to reiterate and get the word out that we're excited about that promotion which allows people to park at a meter and not have to touch a meter which we thought would be something that folks would be interested in and that's all i've got happy to answer any questions you might have great how's the utilization going of our garages downtown um it's still low but it's it's okay you know i mean i think i haven't really to be perfectly honest i haven't been able to drill down yet into the the um success of the first hour free and we don't have data for the weekends because we've raised the gates so we don't you know i have staff who are who are visually doing estimates of of occupancy but we don't have hard data because we we raised the gates so we have some gaps in our in our occupancy but i would say better than expected good good vice-president flamie and council member flayer no questions thanks kim no questions as well thank you thank you members of the public wishing to comment or i have a question are you do we have a comment yes okay thank you eric frazier again in the adjacent neighborhood thank you for taking the time to listen to our opinions during the last planning session we submitted the idea that the parking department needs some reform we see that they're already stepping towards the idea that the parking structures should be free of charge to the motoring public to use within the time limit constraints and in fact the metered parking the paid parking scheme that the city has subjected the mostly the residents of the city of santa rosa too we find to be structurally deficient one thing that's never mentioned these conversations about paid parking is the enforcement aspect and we see that the enforcement aspect of the parking department which isn't um the facts are presented in the reports but we see that as a as a money-making profit center for the city i know that miss may may do may quibble with that but our research is our research certainly it doesn't apply to this pro-covid era but just the same the idea of paid parking in a parking zone that has such low usage that basically subjects mostly residents to enforcement is way out of hand and it also is a retardant to business uh during this covet period we feel that this is a good opportunity to reset some of these defective structures that the city supports and parking being one of them uh i don't know were my comments listened to i think the timer was screwed up here i'm not sure if you're following my thoughts can somebody tell me if i'm yes yes take it please okay thank you so uh so there is this issue and whether you know you're encouraging people to use an app on their phone you know most of the citizens in santa rosa that want to come downtown are not 20 somethings or 30 somethings a lot of them are no question about it but the tremendous number of people that hold a grudge against parking in downtown santa rosa throughout the county uh are average age 50 i would guess and that's just a guess that's not a research point of view but i would say that you need to have a comprehensive look at your parking and remove those barriers not only from public perception but those things that are systemic that expose our residents to outrageous enforcement costs and uh hand in hand with that our recommendation was also to provide amnesty for anybody who has an outstanding ticket regarding expired meters uh and furthermore we would expect that uh you would continue to enforce the time allotment in a zone whether it's 15 minutes 20 minutes an hour two hours three hours outside of the use of meters and this paid parking scheme which is a tremendous burden to the public i think i've used my time up thank you very much that's what i have to say thank you thank you very much do we have other hands raised there are no additional hands raised at this time thank you very much let's move on to public safety uh sergeant wolf good morning John Gumbel from the police department can you hear me all right all right hello sergeant wolf it's difficult to hear you okay uh is this any better nope no it's not any better sergeant why don't you try to why don't you try to fix that up and we'll move on to the next item we'll come back to you if that's okay okay wonderful thank you thank you thank you let's go to maintenance of quartile square or a dean um uh charles um yes stop able to join just yet but Kelly Kaikendale is on the phone or on the call perfect perfect let's take Kelly good morning everyone can you hear me yes thank you yes Kelly thank you okay good um so yeah Kelly Kaikendale with housing and community services i'm the city's homeless service manager and i'm going to give a brief update on what the city's been doing around homelessness and we've been very busy i think as you all know but there's three key areas i'm going to give an update on to start of our general response to homelessness during COVID-19 uh we had a July seventh study session at city council provide an update on that and then um a topic of interest for everybody i think on the call would be the homeless encampment at for my work so jumping right into our homeless response during COVID-19 like i said we've been very busy um we have a lot of information up on our website i want to point you in that direction it's srcity.org slash COVID-19 homeless support but just to highlight some of the things that we've been doing since um you know in response to COVID and homelessness we've provided sanitary facilities we worked with the county to provide portable and toilet portable toilets and hand washing stations throughout sonoma county and uh sanarosa we've also provided the tell rooms for our most at-risk sheltered and unsheltered individuals um those that are 65 years and older or who have existing um health conditions that put the most at risk of COVID-19 we opened a managed camp at the finley community center that's our safe social distancing program for people living in encampments and then um we've also been very busy with encampments throughout the city as you know at Doyle park um in the downtown area the 101 underpins and college avenue at corporate center parkway and now at fremont so the next item to update you on is our study session that staff provided to city council on july 7th we provided an overview of our existing programs um our COVID response which i just talked about some new programming ideas including um an expanded safe parking program for individuals living in RVs and vehicles and we discussed work plan priorities sort tier one and tier two priorities and as many as as many of you probably know on this call council earlier this week set their council goals and homelessness remains one of their top priorities so staff will be revisiting our work plan priorities that were discussed with city council on 7th i can tell you right now our current focus is as i mentioned on our COVID response and that includes a lot of work going into encampments um also restoring our shelter bed capacity at sam jones hall we lost about 50 beds at the shelter due to uh social distancing requirements so we're currently working to restore that capacity and we're looking at putting up a prefab structure something like a sprung structure in the parking lot at sam jones hall um i believe that design build contract is going to council on august 18th and we're hoping to restore capacity at the shelter so that we can ramp down some of the programs that we've implemented in response to COVID-19 so that includes some of the hotel rooms that we're currently using and the program that we've set up at the finley community center and lastly uh fremont i was hoping that sergeant wolf would be able to provide a public safety update on that but i understand he's having some issues some technical issues so i'll do my best to do that um many of you know and an update went out in our city connections newsletter last week that the city took action to address the fire threat and hazards on the eastern section um sorry the western side of fremont park our fire department did a fire assessment and determined that we needed to take immediate action so that happened last week and notice was provided to the individuals and host was out there to engage people a number of them came into services and as you know a number of them decided to relocate to the eastern side of the park so we are working on that right now host will continue to engage those individuals in the interim we've provided additional sanitary facilities so two additional portable toilets and a hand washing station and a debris box there to try and provide access to sanitary facilities for the individuals in the park and mitigate some of the impacts to the surrounding area so where we're at with that we'll be evaluating and monitoring that particular camp at fremont park over the next couple weeks and developing a plan to resolve that encampment i anticipate we'll have you know ongoing updates about that and those typically come out via our city connections newsletter which which happens every thursday let me see just want to touch briefly on some of the challenges that we're faced with in address in addressing encampments right now so pre-covid many of you know that the city was involved with the county in a lawsuit for efforts to resolve encampments along the gerrodota trail this is going back a few years as a result of that lawsuit we're in the middle of a preliminary injunction and that requires the city to take certain steps prior to clearing an encampment one of the key factors is that we have to have enough shelter capacity before we ask people to move along and there are other requirements as well like noticing storage of personal belongings and accommodating any disabilities right now we're faced with limited shelter capacity due to covid also we have to balance our response with guidance coming out from the cdc regarding you know how to address encampments in the middle of a pandemic as well as our health officer orders and then also evaluating health and safety concerns within the camps and you know managing impacts to the surrounding community so there's a lot we have to balance in our encampment response and it is very challenging for us to address it and I also understand very challenging for our neighbors around the camps businesses around the camps as well as people living in the camp so I think that I've provided enough of an opportunity to take any questions again just want to highlight that we are pushing out a lot of information about our efforts on our website and that's srcity.org slash covid-19 homeless support thank you thank you uh vice-president flamie do you have any questions I do not thank you thank you soldier no thank you thanks for the report thank you I have none uh any members of the public wish to comment on this item hello there is um there are no hands raised however I did want to let you know um that sergeant wolf um should be able to provide an update at this time thank you let's go ahead and move on to item 4.6 with public safety and sergeant wolf if you would unmute there we go uh so again sergeant wolf from san rosa apartment can you hear me uh better now absolutely okay good I apologize for the technical difficulties um so just to cover a few things um obviously the underpasses have been cleared we're maintaining an eye on that uh because of the location we still periodically have one or two people hanging out but uh it was cleared it has remained relatively clear um fremont park and the prince memorial greenway are continuing to be areas of concern I think kelly uh handle pretty much everything's fremont the greenway uh I know I've talked about this at a lot of other meetings last friday we went out with freaks and what was supposed to be just a portion of the day we spent the entire day there significant amounts of trash were removed um it's an ongoing struggle there but trying to stay on top of that as well um in the downtown corridor as preach plus people could attest to we're having some issues with just a handful of people with some pretty severe mental health concerns uh I've brought them to the attention of project hope and it won't be an immediate it won't be an immediate solution but we're going to be working with a number of nonprofits and other services to try and get that a better place and hanging out downtown with any questions yeah any other activity types in the downtown area since we started with the park list everything downtown what sorry since we started with what with with with the closure of four street and the park this downtown house how's the little activity for your guys um it's sporadic there aren't many consistent problems um some of the people I've discussed that fall into the mental health category unfortunately have been relieving themselves at inappropriate places the different downtown locations sometimes including in front of the businesses um we do run into some issues as well where people are more difficult simply because the jail population has been reduced and most of the crimes we're enforcing in the downtown area are considered no bail now which means if we when we do book people there will be within about two to three hours so it is possible and we have had times where we um arrest someone two or three times the same day and we see them back downtown um like I said it's sporadic there are some days where it's better and some days where thank you vice versa let me uh thank you for that date I don't have any questions thank you mr. Sawyer I don't have questions I appreciate uh and feel for you the the challenges of dealing with the restrictions that you that you are currently facing as far as dealing with those individuals that are um experiencing mental health issues it's it must be very challenging for you and I'm pleased you're getting a hold of the organizations that can help you deal with that and I'm looking for a speedy not necessarily solution but a reduction in in those challenges thank you thank you thank you thank you any members of the public questions on on this item yes there is one more member mr. Frazier hold on just one moment please thank you very much can you hear me yes okay all right thank you very much so uh yes thank you very much to the Santa Rosa police department for um the interface with the homeless and mentally challenged population that are on our streets there's been a discussion for quite some time about whether the srpd is the appropriate agency to handle those types of calls and so I know at the public safety subcommittee meeting coming up later this week that there will be some part of a discussion about that my concern is that when we look at the issue one of the things that really stands out is that the data that we're getting from the srpd is not reliable it's just not dependable and i'm we're not sure why that is whether it's confusion over a call into the srpd from a citizen uh is considered a call or not in the call reports uh in other words they may be describing a call that an officer makes to an issue or to a person or to a situation uh the the data is a mass and the chief says the data is a mess and so we know anecdotally that the impacts of homeless individuals and criminally minded and perpetually uh criminal people on the streets as well as the immensely are drug influenced people is problematic but i'm hoping that there will be a um pressure applied to the system to be sure that the data sets that emerge in these discussions are dependable and so that is certainly a concern one of the other issues that was brought up by our neighborhood is that the if you were to read next door you would see that there was been a handful of people that have been victims of property crimes bikes being stolen or camping gear or people going into their garages or possibly even their homes and also auto crime and they're able to trace it effectively by seeing those their goods basically in the encampment at cancer survivors park and so my question for the srpd so i can convey it to my neighbors is what should they do should they go and confront people i know on this day of covid it's very risky but people who have their bikes ripped off and then they see their bike within a homeless population how should they engage and um that's a big concern because we we have seen like i said a handful of those happen already um not necessarily within the last couple days but over the past several weeks certainly and so that would be our question we want to keep everybody safe and again i appreciate the uh the opportunity to be part of the solution a comprehensive solution thank you very much thank you any other hands raised no not at this time thank you and i would ask you mr frazier to advise your neighbors to do what we've always done even before covid is that if they see they're still on property call the police and have them handle it is mr hamlin on the on the lineup he is not okay so we have no other items on our on our agenda for today uh i want to thank everybody for their participation today good reports and we look forward to seeing you all again next month okay meeting adjourned thank you