 Thanks for everybody. Can we call the roll? Yes. Council Member Fleming, Mayor Rogers, Chair Rogers. Here. Let the record reflect that all subcommittee members are present with the exception of Council Member Fleming. Excellent. So two constitutes quorum. We'll start with our approval for minutes. We have the November 1st draft minutes for presentation. Do you have any changes to the mayor? Let's see if there's any public comment on it. All right. Seeing none, we'll bring it back and show them adopted if there's no objection. We're good. Cool. We'll go on to our department reports then. And I do not have anything for you today. Perfect. We'll go to new business item 5.1 development of the city's comprehensive integrated pest management policy. Do you pull it up? Is it in here? You should be able to share from there. And we have Sean McNeil presenting on this today, Deputy Director of Environmental Services for Santa Rosa Water. Is it loaded on? It's loaded. So afternoon, Chair Rogers and Mayor Rogers. I'm excited to be here for our second installment of the citywide integrated pest management. Since we last talked, there were a number of questions that we received from the committee. So we did a little bit of research and brought some of that information back. And our hope is to next bring this to full council to get greater feedback. And eventually a second reading for a final adoption of a policy. So today's outline is just to kind of talk a little bit about the goal of integrated pest management. Just make sure we're in alignment there. Share the existing guidance. Did go back and look at previous guidance from council and from our Board of Public Utilities. So I'll just summarize what we've had so far. And then go through some of the impacts that we've put together that if we do have product bands on our operations, so we'll kind of go through those. Also then talk about a typical integrated pest management program as they're designed just to make sure that you're familiar with that process. Because it is, I think it is intended to meet similar goals to banning pesticides, but it's just a different approach. And then we have some staff recommendations that were open for feedback on and then move on to next steps. So just want to make sure because this is kind of come up as other people have reviewed the presentation that we're very clear when we use the term pesticide. Pesticide really is any chemical that's used to eradicate pests. And so it includes herbicides that kill plants, insecticides that are designed to kill or control insects, fungicides that kill fungi and such. So just want to make sure when we use pesticide we're talking about the overall. But in particular, a lot of the information that we've gotten or direction that we've received from council has really been about one active compound, well two, neonicotinoids, which is a group of compounds as well as glyphosate. So glyphosate is the active ingredient and the common weed removal roundup. And there was some discussion last time about how the chemical names keep changing and this is what doesn't change. Glyphosate doesn't change. They will reformulate different herbicides to affect different types of plants or to meet environmental criteria in different types of habitats. So for an example, glyphosate when it's put in roundup, that's for use on terrestrial habitats. When it's put in a product called rodeo, that's used for aquatic habitats to go after aquatic weeds. So same compound is still glyphosate. So even if the trade names or if the name of the product changes, the functional ingredient is still glyphosate. Then just kind of launch into integrated pest management. Our goal is really to develop a citywide integrated pest management policy. Right now parks has a department procedure. The water department has something a little bit different. So we just don't have something that's this is what we do here in the city. So that's one of the goals of this policy. And it is designed to provide guidance to staff and contractors who are working on city property to ensure that these landscapes are designed and maintained in a manner that reduces the need for both fossil fuels, power, you know, fossil fuel powered equipment, herbicides, insecticides, and other anthropomorphic inputs that have an ability to exacerbate climate change. And that's why we're bringing this first to this committee. And then it ensures that the policy supports the city's ability to protect against increased fire severity due to invasive species and climate change. And so Paul is going to be here. He'll talk about a little bit of that. We just want to make sure that we understand the implications of any changes that we make in our integrated pest management and how that's going to fit with some of the other things we're trying to do to protect our community from fire. So the citywide applicability, this was a question that came up. It would only apply on city owned properties or properties that are managed by the city. It's not a building code. So it doesn't dictate personal use that that would potentially could be covered through building codes. It's more problematic when dealing with personal use chemicals on private property. But that this is not going to cover that. And it does not have any control over county, state, federal or school district owned properties. So it really would just be related to our properties. When looking at the county parks, new IPM that they just passed, I think what we're proposing today is very much in alignment with what the county has approved. And they've put in some bands state and federal. They're all over the place. In school districts in general, I think we would be pretty much in alignment with at least their practices as far as what we're proposing for noticing and things like that, which are above and beyond the minimum requirements. So we have looking around at a study. And this is something that has been difficult to find. But UC Davis extension office did a study on various herbicides in a golf course. And what you see here is a bunch of pictures through time taken on five foot by five foot square pieces where they applied different treatments and took pictures on the day of control. And then, you know, before the control day after and all the way out to 35 days. And then they looked at a bunch of different products. And what you can see is the red line, these are all the different kinds of organic sprays. These are considered what they call our burn down chemicals, meaning that they burn they basically burn the vegetation doesn't necessarily kill it at the root, but it burns it down from the top. And this is in alignment with some of the experiments that we've done in our style is that when we spray with some of these organic sprays, we're not getting effective kills. And you can see after day 14, on many of these, they're starting to look closer and closer to the control all the way out to day 35. So it's showing glyphosate as a as an effective tool at taking care of vegetation, this this type of vegetation here. And so just wanted to just show that to you that you hadn't understand when we start talking about the impacts to our operations, you know, there's there's a level of service we're trying to attain. At the same time, if we don't have all of the tools to attain it, that's why we're going to start coming into, you know, greater amounts of spraying, greater amounts of time dedicated towards that activity. So the feedback that we've received from policymakers so far is in city council over a number of different years have required that in our landscape contracts, that there would be no use of glyphosate active ingredient, which is the active ingredient roundup as we talked about for eradicating plants, and also the no use of neonicotinoid insecticides. And the reason for that is these are are broad insecticides, meaning they kill beyond the target species. And so it was determined that the threat to butterflies and bees was too great. And so we didn't want that being used. And so that's what's happened since I think 2018 when that first came in. So we haven't used that. And then the Board of Public Utilities for our landscape contracts and almost all of our properties are are maintained by an outside landscaper developed Russian river friendly landscape guidelines, which isn't necessarily an outright ban on glyphosate. But it is a way of thinking about managing a landscape that moves you away from chemicals. And I can say that so far, we've had no, we've used no glyphosate on our landscape property since this occurred. And I'll talk a little bit more about what we've learned from that activity since then. So in the parks landscapes, some of the issues with a pesticide ban is that we'd have less control, potentially greater infestations, potential fire fuels could accumulate on these properties. We have seen in 2018 when we didn't have a ban on glyphosate, we saw that the landscape contract went from $549,000 per year up to a little over a million dollars per year with the no glyphosate ban included to manage weeds. So that has some cost implications there. And we have seen increased weeds in our ball fields and some of our civic landscapes and our street medians as this ban has taken place. In Santa Rosa water, some of the issues that we've seen is while we can't ascribe this cost increase 100% to a pesticide ban, our cost went up $300,000 because but it was a more holistic way of approaching the landscape. So that just costs more. And it also could just be, you know, also time has gone on. So we can't ascribe that $300,000 100% to glyphosate, but we have seen we're 100% mechanical removal. And so where we really struggle with managing weeds are in those hard escaped areas, those little cracks has been difficult for us. We have had to rely on, and this is not a negative at all, increased use of grazing on our levees. What's different about our properties is our properties are in the ag community. So we have cows right next door. So really, all we have to do to put cows on our property is to open a gate, which is a little bit different than in the urban areas to bring grazing in. But that's what we've done. And we have a number of separate contracts to manage that grazing. If that were exported to other properties in the city, we would expect there to be a considerable cost for the farmer to move those animals in and out as needed to provide the control. And we have had a slight increase in weeds in our restoration areas. In particular, we have restoration along some of our creeks. And one of the problems we have out in the Laguna is we have this invasive plant called perennial pepperweed. And that has kind of spread. And that's a very difficult, that's a difficult plant to control without the use of glyphosate. So the impact of pesticide bands on our parking properties. So this would be increased weeds and lots in our landscape areas and sidewalks where single space multi space or meters are installed this once again, those little crack areas between hardscape. It's very difficult to get mechanical equipment in there. The parking group has opted out of the citywide landscape contract and is doing all that work in house since 2022. And if they were required to maintain these places without weeds, they estimate they would probably need two additional FTEs, which would come up to an increase of $250,000 per year to meet the no weed standard on those properties. And that parking currently, they're not spraying now, they currently are using two stroke engines to manage this, which also has impacts to the environment. So here's Fountain Grove Parkway. And you can just see this is one of the things that we're concerned about on our traffic medians is that these are some of the most dangerous areas to work. The number one reason for workplace mortality is vehicle accidents. And so when we put staff in the middle of a road, we are putting them in harm's way. So if we're looking at treating these mechanically, we either have this frequency, a high frequency of going out there, or if we're using the burn down chemicals, then we'd have to be going out once every week or two weeks to maintain pests in these medians. Or if we leave the weeds in the medians, it gives an appearance, the landscapes are not well maintained. And so this is an area, and we'll talk about that in our suggestions. Since people don't spend a lot of time in these areas, this might be an area where we would allow something like life is safe compared to other environments. And then I'm going to pass this over to Paul, a couple of slides to talk about. Good evening, Paul Montvalde. This is Vivian Cifar Marshall with the fire department, co-presenting on the next two slides. So kind of carrying where we left off last night with the passage of at least the first reading of the new ordinance around our vegetation management program, our recommendations that initially came from us starting back in 2019 with the development of the community wildfire protection plan. That plan obviously as part of what is required of the process is a lot of community involvement. And one of the action items and objectives of the policy and the, sorry, of the plan itself was to explore the use of what this policy is intended to target to specifically mitigate some of the fire risks. The community during that time was roughly I believe about 66% that were surveyed were in favor of using it for targeted applications to reduce the risk. And right now it primarily is tied to the objective that improves our evacuation routes. The evacuation routes that we have primarily in the city have both medians, right-of-ways, as well as open space alongside of them. What we're seeing which is outlined in this is the change of ecology in our burn scars. Areas within our wildland urban interface primarily before 2017 used to be oak and grass woodlands as we know that's what made Fountain Grove beautiful. Unfortunately with the fire effects that we saw up there it killed off our canopy. So our ordinance right now is targeting the results of what happened when we lost the canopy to try and reduce some of the fuel associated with a lot of the dead trees. But without the canopy the sun that's penetrating the soil is changing what's growing and that growth of Scotch broom French broom is is spreading at a rate that is out of control and it's created in an environment that is more dangerous today than it was in 2017. As part of our exploration of where this policy may go we engaged with Cal Fire through our vegetation management program and started a project on the Thomas Lake Harris open space where we used funds from council, a line item from the PGD settlement that went towards the vegetation management program to actually do field treatment on that property. And it was actually Cal Fire's recommendation that that be used as a example of coming in, reducing the fuel mechanically. The Scotch broom in that location, as we mentioned last night is upwards of about 14 to 15 feet in height. The goal is to do a low intensity burn of a lot of the fuels that are left after we do the mechanical treatment. And then their recommendation, which was to actually then follow up with a spray application on a property like that. That's our goal is to continue to use the community wildfire protection plan as again that framework to where appropriate take steps and meet our objections and actions that we bring forward to council annually to mitigate that risk. And we're not just doing just spraying. Part of what we're continuing to do is also mechanical treatment through both our funds through the vegetation management program, but also grant opportunities. So we're not saying that spraying is the answer but it's one of many tools in the toolbox that we find would make our community safer and reduce the spread of fire and provide for safer evacuation. The policy can also align again with what we talked about the new ordinance. The ordinance kind of starting from the bottom up as we saw will require the defensible space inspections and compliance with all those properties within the wild end of an interface that makes up roughly 9,000 properties. It will also prohibit the mulch around the structures, that fiber of squirrel hair mulch that was causing a lot of problems. As we just mentioned removes certain dead and down trees, but then the other piece of it that is kind of why all four of these are working together is without all four of them, it's just not completing all of our objectives. And the fourth one is getting rid of that invasive species of vegetation that we specifically spelled out as Scotch from a French broom. It also does give us the authority to identify others. Right now we're looking at Bay, but we feel that this policy has the potential to help mitigate that spread and reduce some of the risks within our wild end of an interface. Thank you, Paul. So moving on from the impacts of pesticide vans, just kind of like to make sure that everyone's understanding what a typical integrated pest management policy is, really starts with pest identification. So you have to be knowledgeable about what you're trying to control. And then you do research in the least toxic methods to address and impacts to pests. And least toxic is typically in an integrated pest management policy from the focus of the individual applicator. Right. So it's really kind of like an OSHA protection. So the individual who's doing the pesticide application, so least toxic is what's going to be least toxic to them, typically. And so as you move up and I'll talk a little bit more about it, there's different types of protective equipment you have to wear as you move up in the hierarchy of dangerous chemicals. And then if action is needed to manage the pest, because many pests come in and go and we don't do anything about them, apply at least at least toxic methods first, and then evaluate if that's effective, and then you move up the chain. And that's just basically how an integrated pest management policy works. That's, you know, there's going to be a lot of details. We typically will break down each of the different environments where we're acting. So we're not leaving it to the person in the field making these decisions. We're actually saying in this environment, this is how we're going to start with this. And there's a process that an individual person maintaining a property would go through before making a decision. Always start with non pesticide actions first, I think that's clear. Like if you can set up a landscape in a way that doesn't foster the growth of weeds and invasive plants, like was discussed earlier, that, you know, when we had a nice oak canopy over many of the landscapes, we didn't have as much broom growing up in the undergrowth. And once the oak canopy was gone, we got a lot of broom. So in the built environment, we also have that same issue, we can have dense plantings. So if we densely plant an area, it makes it very difficult for weeds to grow. I'm not going to advocate IV, but you can look at the IV out front as an example. There's no weeds growing in that IV is there's just no room. That's basically the concept of a dense planting, a lot of lawns fulfill that as well. So less of an open space, that's a way of designing landscapes, doing mechanical removal where possible should always be your first step, if that's a possibility. And it's easy to get at, then that's the way to go. If you have specific plants, or that you're using that they're problematic, like they're more, they get more diseases and things like that, consider replacing those. If there are plants that require a lot of care, try to use plants that don't so that you're not wasting a bunch of time fighting a battle that eventually is only handled with chemicals. And then you use pesticides as the last resort. This is how standard integrated pest management works. Integrated pest management was designed to get people and landscape managers to move away from pesticides, move away from simple solutions, and think about the system and how to break that up. And so that's the process that we're proposing in the integrated pest management process. So here's a picture of Depot Park and these are mulched areas around signage to prevent weeds. And these will need to be remulched each year. Going to the pesticide labels, their signal words, caution starting from the bottom, caution is the lowest. So anytime you go to a store, well, when if you went to a store, you would most likely only see caution. And I believe you could see warning labels. You won't see danger labels. You will have to go to a special chemical supplier to get a danger label. One of the things with glyphosate is glyphosate is listed as a caution. It has a caution label. And the reason why it has a caution label is because its active ingredient targets the plant's ability to store starch. So it's a chemical process that we don't actually do in our bodies. It's a chemical process that's specific to plants. So the active ingredient isn't necessarily targeting our biology. Compare that to an insecticide where animals to or were classified as animals to and that, you know, anything that might affect an insect might have some difference to our body. One thing that's interesting is many of the burned down organic chemicals come with a warning label. And the reason why is they're acidic. They're almost always an acid of some type and that'll cause burns and rashes. So they're more dangerous to staff who are applying them compared to glyphosate. So you might see in an integrated pest management policy that you would start with glyphosate before you would start with a burned down chemical because once again that's focused on the safety of the individual who's applying the pesticide. So some of the pest management solutions that we propose in our policy is the with insects is number one is to tolerate. Is this an insect infestation that you can tolerate? Like it's not really, yeah, there's an insect there. Do we need to kill it? No. Then move on. If it is something that's causing disease and pathology to the plant, you need to identify it to make sure that you're, if you're going to start to control it, that you know which control methods to work. So say you identified it with spider mites. Spider mites are going to occur on plants in areas that have poor circulation. So you could probably just prune that out, get rid of it. And if the spider mites don't go away immediately, then you might spray. You'd use a lot less spray because you've gotten most of the infestation out of the area. So there's just a common sense approach in an integrated pest management that's all geared towards reducing the amount of spray used. And if this plant species is just subject to these pests and you can't get rid of these pests, maybe it's time to consider removing them. And because we're talking about a city-wide integrated pest management, we have to think about all of our users and all of our needs for pest management. And so one of the concerns that we're going to bring up a couple of times is the Luther Burbank gardens. There are specific species there that we are protecting because they are heirloom varieties developed by Luther Burbank. And so there is a need to protect those species in perpetuity. I will say most Luther Burbank species are well adapted to this climate, which means that they don't tend to need a lot of pesticides to manage them. And that's been some of the strength of his breeding program. But it is something where we can't just say, oh, well, we're not going to grow the Luther Burbank rose because it gets too much disease and we have to spray it. For us to maintain that heritage, we would need to have some avenue to protect those species. So in pest management solutions for weeds, and I think this is something that has come up as most of concern to City Council is the management of weeds, right? Because glyphosate is solely for management of weeds. And your choices are to tolerate the weeds. Some weeds are more pleasurable than others. They might have pretty flowers. Once again, high density plantings and mulch and mechanical removal. We're also looking at grazing in some areas. And then as a last resort, we would use herbicides to control weeds. So we do manage some of our infields in a number of ways. We have mechanical removal and grooming of these areas. These are high weed infestation areas because you have grass right there and you need to have not grass right next to it. And to keep that border as clean as possible and keep them from starting, it is much more beneficial to apply an herbicide before grooming the course or grooming the fields so that you kill the plants at the root and then cover them. And so we'll talk a little bit about that in our recommendations. Pest management solutions for plant diseases that we didn't talk about this. There hasn't been any bans on any other chemicals other than glyphosate and an insecticide. But when looking at fungus diseases or other kinds of diseases, there's different types of things that you might do. So can you tolerate the disease? Can the plant survive with that disease? If not, you need to identify the disease and make sure that you're doing the appropriate disease control. So in this case, in this picture, that's rust on a rose leaf. You can mechanically remove the infected leaves, get them out of the garden. That would be a way if you're trying to get award-winning roses, most likely you're going to need to spray with some sort of fungicide and that can be copper sulfate, sulfur, or other product. Many of those are organic. There's a lot of organic solutions there. If you have something like fire blight, which will kill a tree, looks like somebody torched it, you have to cut it out immediately. There's really not an effective spray for that. So it's really important when you have a disease that you know what you're targeting before you make a management action. And that's what we're trying to convey through this integrated pest management policy, that in addition to any product bans we're talking about, we're trying to also cover all these common sense ways of addressing managing the landscape with the least amount of chemicals possible. So I'll go through a couple of slides on our staff suggestions on pesticide bans. We do believe a complete ban of neonicotinoids is appropriate. It's just the right decision to make. We hardly use any insects. It has insecticides. It really wouldn't affect our operations in any ways that we can see, but it would also put a really good first foot forward to make sure that we aren't just using these blanket insecticides that we are targeting our pests better by being knowledgeable about what the issue is. We also are suggesting that we minimize the use of all pesticides throughout the city through the integrated pest management policy and that if we are applying or anybody is applying pesticides on our behalf, that we would require a certified pesticide applicator to be on site to supervise those individuals to make sure that all of the appropriate protections for the worker and the environment are taken while applying pesticides. We are also proposing to ban glyphosate use in most sensitive areas, and we've identified those as playgrounds, public gathering spaces, picnic areas where people might be eating, and other areas that are identified as sensitive receptors that we hadn't thought of at the time of this, but it makes a lot of sense where we're going to have a lot of human contact with that, the concern about glyphosate. Let's make sure in the areas where people are really integrating with the landscape that we're not putting it in there, but then we also would ask for a few specific exemptions, and I'll go through that, exceptions, and I'll go through that. So the exceptions to the glyphosate ban would be, as Paul was just talking about, allowing cases of public health and safety. So if it is determined, if in any of these areas that we need to have effective control above what we're able to do mechanically, and the best management practices are to use glyphosate, that in the name of public health and safety, we would be allowed to do that. We would also ask that we'd be allowed to use them in road medians and parking structures, since these aren't areas of a lot of hands and mouths touching and putting things in our mouths, that it would be safe to the environment to be safe for the workers to use a chemical that would get the job done in a single application compared to a weekly or bi-weekly applications. We would also request to allow the glyphosate use on ball fields, but only when they're closed for renovations and the public is kept out. And not during active fields, we'd only use mechanical removal during the active season and also allow use on invasive plants. And so this is straight from the county's ordinance, which I think is a very well done, is it's a non-routine activity. And that's really what an integrated pest management program is about, is saying, let's get, we'll use herbicides when it's non-routine, but let's make sure that there isn't a need for routine use of herbicides. And so if we can target invasive plants and have a control program designed to control those plants, as was outlined with the broom, that we have a very specific regimen, you know, mowing, get rid of a bunch of the above ground biomass first and burning it, and then just treating the sprouts as they come up. Instead of spraying on a 15 foot tall canopy, you're spraying on six inch shoots. That's a whole heck of a lot less herbicide that's used. So it's not a ban in that case. It's a significant reduction getting closer to zero. And then once we have achieved the control objectives, we can decrease or eliminate any herbicide use for those things. But it's one thing for staff to stand in front of you and give you a presentation that we promise will do the best that we can and ask you to trust us. But we're also trying to unlock transparency to what we're doing so that council has an ability to take a look and say, hey, they said they were going to reduce pesticide use, but I'm not feeling that's what's happening. Well, let's get out of feelings. We'll report the data annually. We'll create a website to highlight the activities that we're doing to prevent pesticide use. And on that website, we'll have our IPM policy so the public is aware of what our policy is. We'll have tips for people on how they could manage pests without pesticides, the same things that we're doing, and then provide an annual report of our pesticide use on all our city properties. All pesticide applications, part of this transparency, would be posted prior to when we're spraying and listing the date of the application. This is above them beyond what's required by law, but this gives the public a right to know of what we're doing on these properties so that they can make a decision for themselves. But it also allows us to protect the environment and our employees. And then when planning to apply pesticides, close the area to the public and post these signs about the pesticide application. A good example of the city of Davis, I'm not going to read everything on this slide about that, but I just took a screenshot of their pesticide integrated pest management policy. They have it up. They have all the information and it's incredibly transparent. And I would urge you if you wanted to look at things, this is kind of a model that we would be looking at to develop our webpage that would share our use of pesticides. And so really the next steps would be to hear your feedback on what we've proposed today, make some modifications to our proposals to the full council based on your feedback and try to move through with the full council to getting a good guidance so that we can bring a full integrated pest management policy before the council for review and helpful adoption. All right, let's go ahead and start with public comment then before we give feedback. Anybody here for comment? All right, we'll bring it back. So first of all, I really appreciate you're trying to thread the needle between a phenomenally complicated issue and the impact of the issue. I will say one of the things that's noticeable in the presentation is it focuses primarily on cost and outcome. When part of why we brought this in the first place was concerns from the public about their waterways, about the way that when we use pesticides in an area it creates almost a self-fulfilling prophecy about then you need more pesticides to actually manage the area than if you use other types and you give a nod to a proper design and mechanical. I'm fine with us, this is the subcommittee level, I'm fine with us sending this to the council for discussion. I imagine what you're going to hear from council members, probably myself and many folks in the public, is that it's a good attempt but somewhat misses the mark on what we're trying to achieve in terms of looking at health and safety and ecology. Like for instance, we don't talk at all about the impact that pesticides have on the bugs in the area, the good bugs or the good types of plants. I think that there will be more of a discussion that folks are going to want to have around those impacts, not just what the impact on the city budget is, not just yes, there are more weeds with organics but really looking at it kind of holistically. I appreciate the nod also to workers. I think that was a substantial part of why we moved this direction too was concerned that we were hearing from folks about the actual individuals that were applying the pesticides broadly and making sure that we weren't setting them as well as our kids playing in parks and whatnot up for success. I do think what we'll hear from the public is while that part looks like we've done a lot with it, even when we close parks, kids are going to play in it. And so how do we help navigate that as well? I love the transparency aspect and I think that that's really important and we've heard that from folks. And I will say one thing that I'd like to see come with the recommendation is you laid out in the very beginning what we can do on our properties, what we can't do on others, but what we certainly can do is request that the county, that the state, especially Caltrans has been a big part of the discussion, request that they follow our plans in our area. I know, for instance, Damon Connolly, our newest assembly member that represents the south portion of the city, he had legislation last year to require Caltrans to follow what the Board of Supervisors has said as their IPMs. I'm very interested in seeing us follow the Russian River model since that seems to be the one that's the best, but I do want to give an opportunity for experts to actually weigh in at council on what they are seeing is the impact. And we'll see where the where the discussion goes. Erin? Starting with non-pesticide actions first, I had a question I think you answered it, but in a situation where you already know non-pesticides is not going to work like all the weeds that you have to take care of. Yeah, where you know it's not going to work. You don't still have to go through, to me it's a waste of time. You don't still have to go through the process. No, can I just address that question? Okay, because I also want to get to some of your Yeah, absolutely. But no, the plan would be that so there's a lot of we're not going to be experimenters, right? There's a lot of literature out there. The California Invasive Pest Council puts out a whole bunch of information on how to manage weeds. The California Native Plant Society does as well. And there's a lot of information on how to handle and manage individual pests. So once you identify that, then you go to the resources and utilize that a playbook and you see how that works in your area. And so in the case of Broom, relying on the expertise of Cal Fire that they found that that woody species, it'll resprout after you burn it. That's why it does so well after fires. It's a common, and when a fire comes through, if you have Broom anywhere around, it's going to seed that area and it's going to grow up like a fresh, you know, green carpet. That 15 feet tall is pretty, that's pretty good habitat for that Broom. So, you know, there's, we would use tried and true techniques for that. Invasive species, that's the key. And that's like why I mentioned pepperweed earlier. That is a very specific weed. There's other plants that okay, they're going to grow, they're not going to become a problem. Some plants become problems. Pepperweed will create a monoclonal population and just be a dense patch that nothing but pepperweed will grow. And Broom will do much the same thing. Choka, it'll prevent oaks from getting re-established. And so the approach they're talking about is really one targeted that allows the oak trees to come back. And it's really about when you talk about the environment and integrated pest management is all about protecting the environment. It's about minimizing the amount of pesticide that it's used so that there's not as much runoff, you know, and there's not as much of an impact on the environment. So if you reduce it by 90% by doing the mechanism, they're not spraying standing. They're spending a lot of energy and time cutting, burning, and then treating, right? So that's so that they are reducing the amount of pesticides that they're spraying. So I think it's a good point that you made that we haven't talked enough in our presentation about the need to limit spraying. And it sounds like all we're asking is to spray, spray, spray. And I think it's because I came from an assumption of a, we're at this agreement point and we haven't made the argument for why we're already there. But I think it would be good for the full council to bring that in. And to be clear, you didn't come across like you just want to spray, spray, spray. I thought you did a really good job and everything was really balanced. I just wanted to make sure we didn't lose sight of the reasons why people asked us to move in this direction, which was not cost, right? Right. So it is so great to say it's not cost, but cost is always a factor. And so I'm happy that you put that in. And I would also like to know, like, if we don't, how much time does it take? Or what would be the cost if we don't do something? Or what are the consequences of not having, of not having this? Right. So would it be, so we're talking about staff, right? So would it be that our medians are going to be, look like a field? Like, is that, is that what we want? I can answer that question on behalf of the parks. I think I'm up there to answer it. I have a deal from the back. Okay. Just in the, in the world of parks when we talk about the amount of increase by not spraying, we look at it as a 58% increase. So for labor hours associated with that, for parks specifically, that's 31,000 hours a year that we have to put back into managing the weeds if we don't have the ability to spray. Like you were saying, cost is always a factor. And I appreciate the, that that's not what was brought forward. But in our world, cost is the factor. And this is a tool that we had and we were able to use for a long time. I'm not, I don't have the luxury of being able to say whether we should or shouldn't based on my opinion, but you've taken a tool away from us that now equates to almost 15 FTEs. So there's got to be a give somewhere. It's not, you're not given a staff, but you're also taking the tool away. So yeah, for us, it's, it's, it's 58% increase in labor. And so I think you see in our proposal is, is kind of targeting the, the safety aspects of it. So I think median is one of the challenges. There, there, there could be medians that are, are more important than others, right? Like the, um, yeah, and all the valuation routes, right? And along what James was talking about, they're taking on additional staff to deal with the medians, but also because the city continues to take on more and more land when the development takes place and they essentially give land over, it takes more people to manage that. One of the struggles that we deal with is every typically every year is we set priorities and we discuss in between whether it's public works, whether it's parks, whether it's fire, the priorities of the city, right? And so the more time that park staff is spending on medians, the less time they're able to spend on other priorities that we've set as a city to address the fire risk. And quite honestly, sometimes it feels like we're just rolling the dice that when, whether it's, whether it's streets, crews, whether it's parks, crews are focusing on those priority areas that could be addressed by spraying. They're not dealing with other areas that may be of a less priority, but can cause more damage if, if not an equal amount of damage. So there really is some true benefits to being able to, to, to take that off of their plate and spray it because we, we get regrowth, right? One of the things that we keep asking for in Santa Rosa is more and more rain. We sometimes cringe because it's like that happy balance, right? We don't want drought because then we've got the increased fire risk. We get more and more rain. What happens? Yeah, our fire risk goes down, but our regrowth takes place. And then we have this window of opportunity typically every September, October, we're battling with that regrowth, drying back out, trying to shift those crews around when, when they can be used somewhere else. So I would suggest that you be ready with that information because I think that it is going to, to come up. I really feel council can't have it both all the ways, right? If there, if we're going to take away a tool, then we need to be able to, to give you something to replace the tool. I would, because I don't know very much about pesticides and stuff, I would like to see what it does to the environment. I think that that is a good learning tool for people that don't know. So not like 20 slides on what it does for the environment, but like a, don't tell me to look it up. No, I was going to laugh because for a climate action committee, I saw we had a dozen people listening to the presentation. So I'm pretty sure you'll get emails from people. It's a very active group of folks who have been working on this. And I think what we will hear is give them 15 more FTEs to be able to manage. Yeah. And I'm not saying to not do, to not, to not get rid of pesticides. What I'm saying is I think that if we take away a tool that the council needs to step up to the plate and be willing to look at tools that we can give you, whether that's FTEs or that's something else, because we can't keep taking away and not help you to do a job that we're asking to do. That's not manageable. So I do look at the staff and I also look at the environment and I look at how it's affecting the public. And I get emails from people that don't like the medians high because that does not, they don't feel like that is a good reflection of the beautiful city that we live in. So it's a mixed bag and we're, we're trying to juggle, but we have to give them tools is my opinion. So come with background on things like how many FTEs and how this is managed and if they're doing medians, if they're not going to be able to do the stuff that we need them to do, that could pose a greater risk to our city. So I am hearing, throw this to the full council. And I know that the mayor will work to get that on at a time that's, that's appropriate here. And thank you so much for the work as the mayor said it's not an easy balance to strike. There's a lot of opinions and a lot of strong opinions on it and a lot of experts and a lot of non-experts who are still interested. So we'll see where the conversation goes with the full council for sure. Do you feel like you received that because I know I was all over the place as it kind of is. I think I'd like to, you know, maybe hear some specifics on our, our suggestions, the staff suggestions, if there are some concerns that you had. Is it okay if I bring this back up? If we go back to, I think it's 15, slide 15, I would just say like who has the authority to say that pesticides is the last resort. Like who, who has that authority? Would it be a manager or would it be like who makes that decision? I think would probably be a big thing too. It's not just this is too hard. We're going to go to pesticides. Well, that's a great question. We don't, it would be, it would be informed by the licensed pesticide applicator. So, and I would assume that it would be made by the manager of the group that would be managing. So in parking, the parking manager in parks, probably either supervisor or deputy director, you know, but that, that could be at the direction of the council. It would be awkward if, if it went to council. It would make it very difficult to, to manage. And it might be too much in the weeds, you know, for a good pun. But you're right up Chris's alley with that one. I was ripping for the joke. You're right up Chris's alley with that one. That was, that was something. For, for a city manager, but, but it's, it's really the policy lays out a procedure. And that's what staff are following. And that's why we want to develop a policy that lays out a procedure and a logic that we can get behind. And then if when we're doing our annual reporting and we're gathering up all that information, put together the annual report, there's cause for concern, then direction can be provided to make changes in how those decisions are being made or a justification can be made for why are, why did our pesticide use go up so much this year? Maybe it is because we just had a fire and we got fire fuels and that they needed to be meant, you know, that there's specific reasons for that, that, you know, one of the things I find interesting is I think there's a public perception that we're spraying a lot. And the reality is we don't spray hardly at all. We haven't sprayed in years. And even when we could spray, we hardly ever sprayed, you know, so it isn't, there's this perception that there's like a lot of use when there really isn't. And sometimes when you see somebody spraying something, the assumption is that must be the worst thing that they could be spraying. It could be a fertilizer, it could be, you know, a whole host of things are applied through a spray. So I don't know what, oh, there's a slide number. So what would be some of the other things that you think people would be concerned about when it comes to what they present it? Yeah, I think, and this is why it probably it's it's hard for us to get into back and forth too much about it without it being a council and make sure that folks have a chance to actually digest what we've talked about. And I think the number one thing that I hear from folks is not zero, that they understand that there are some applications that make sense. Like I imagine some of the folks that I've worked with would have absolutely no problem with it being in the wooey where you have less involvement of people, right, and understanding that ecologically it could help to bring back the region to make it more sustainable long term. I think that they are concerned about the transparency, they're concerned about the amount, particularly as I mentioned that the Caltrans issue has been a particular thorn in the thorn in the craw because they get told how much was spent, but they don't get told where and they don't have any say over what, right? So I think that'll go over really well with folks. And I think until they can kind of look at it and I think what we're always going to hear is exactly that trade off. Why don't you just have more people who can do mechanical removal? So that's that's why I'm a little bit hesitant to get into too much of the back and forth is what I think you're presenting here is a really thoughtful approach to try to navigate those two didn't mean to sound as critical as I was, I just want to make sure we don't lose sight of the human aspect of why we're doing this when we present to the full council and perhaps some information and data around that would be important. But I do think that you're trying to strike a balance between ideal versus possible. Yeah. And I will say that after the last meeting, I did go and read the county parks integrated pest management policy that they recently passed in the board of supervisors passed a ban on on glyphosate use. But then they had this list of exceptions that are very much in align alignment with what we're proposing. You know that it is really targeted towards a minimization more than an outright ban. But providing this kind of guidance like we have here has been very helpful. And we just want to make sure that as the, you know, we've become so much, I mean, I don't think I knew about the wildland urban interface. Sorry, before 2017, I wasn't really aware of that. And I'm a person who pays a lot of attention to things around vegetation and plants. Just thought that we was what you yelled on a roller coaster. Yeah. Goodness. Sorry. Right. Well, it was so so I think I have enough information from from your statements. And it sounds like we're, yeah, we're ready for bringing this to council. So I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you for the change. Yeah. Just really quickly in terms of next steps, you are targeting a January council meeting for study sessions. Perfect. And it'll be very similar to this presentation. Yeah, a little bit of input from your, you know, a few additional slides with your input. Hopefully we keep getting rain until then so that we can have a more full conversation about what it looks like. He's like, right? Yeah. All right. Thank you, everybody. This is the right time for a terrain, right, Paul? Exactly. All right. We'll take a look at future agenda items that 6.1. We have the upcoming meetings list that folks can click on and can check out. One thing that I will mention is I've gotten a lot of feedback from folks in the Bourbon Gardens area in particular, that they're interested in ways to make tree canopy easier for them to bring in. So I have mentioned that to the city manager, and that might be one that I can work with staff on, but specifically around making it easier for them to get the permits to put in proper size tree boxes in front of their homes. And so we can talk about what that looks like for creating more of an urban canopy, not just for that neighborhood, but that's where the conversation is coming from, but really around the entire city, especially in areas where there's not much for you to walk under. And it increases the heat island effect. So, but I'll work with staff on that. I just wanted to acknowledge that I've met with a number of neighbors that they're very interested in this. And I think for the most part, we can all agree more trees is usually a good thing. Anything else? Pass for this, that's the one. Yeah, pass for this. Cool. All right. Thanks, everybody. Sure. Before we adjourn, could we do public comment on non-agenda items? Oh yeah, great call. I'm sorry, I missed that on our agenda. Let's go ahead and call for it and see if there's anybody here to give comment. Looks like no. Thank you. And we're adjourned.