 Let's go ahead and start our City Council meeting for today. Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll? Yes, thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Tibbets. Councilmember Schwedhelm. Here. Councilmember Sawyer. Councilmember Fleming. Here. Councilmember Alvarez. Vice Mayor Rogers. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of councilmembers Alvarez. Councilmember Sawyer and Councilmember Tibbets. We do have a quorum, so we'll begin public comment for item 2.1. That's our first closed session item for our regular Council meeting today. If anybody would like to make comments on item 2.1, go ahead and go up to the podium. You'll have an option to speak there. Madam Deputy City Clerk, can you also please facilitate any public comment via Zoom? Certainly, Mayor. For those participating via Zoom and wishing to make a public comment, please raise your hand. If dialing in by telephone, please dial star 9. Mayor, I've not seen any hands be raised in Zoom, nor am I seeing anyone in Council Chamber wishing to make a public comment. Okay. Additionally, we receive no written or voice message public comments on this item. No additional public comment from the sands? Okay. We'll go ahead and recess and close session then and we'll be back for the additional parts of our meeting later. Good afternoon, Charles and Pablo. Thank you for joining us to provide interpretation services today. Can we do a quick mic check? For those just joining the meeting live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in your Zoom toolbar. It may look like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the translation in Spanish. Pablo, will you please restate this in Spanish? For those who just joined the meeting live interpretation in Spanish is available. And the members who wish to listen in Spanish can join the channel. To join, click on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar that now looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the interpretation in Spanish. Thank you, Pablo. I'll put you over in the Spanish channel with Charles. It's still on the slide. Let's go ahead and bring it back from closed session. Madam City Clerk, if you could please call the roll. Thank you. Council Member Tibbet. Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Fleming. Present. Council Member Alvarez. Present. Vice Mayor Rogers. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of Council Member Tibbetts. All right, let's start with Item 3.1, Mr. City Manager. Mayor Rogers. Excuse me. Mayor Rogers is members of the City Council. Item 3.1 is a study session item regarding options in ambulance service delivery. Scott Westrup, our fire chief, will be giving the staff presentation on this item. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. And good afternoon, Mayor Rogers, members of the Council. Scott Westrup, fire chief of the City of Santa Rosa. Next slide, please. So in this study session, we're going to be looking at three different things. We're going to be looking at an update on the current request for proposal or RFP being managed by Sonoma County. I'm looking at the award of the exclusive operating area award for ambulance service in Sonoma County. We're going to provide the anticipated options for potential ambulance service delivery, specifically comparing an anecdotal look at private versus public entities for the franchise award. And then we'll be discussing options for City Council to consider. Next slide, please. So some background on the RFP. We're going to provide an update on where the RFP is at. And it's being managed by Sonoma County, more specifically Coast to Bally's EMSA. And it's related to the contract award of the EOA Ambulance Service. It's slated to be awarded April 5th of 2022 and implemented October 1st of 2022. This will provide an emergency ambulance service for Santa Rosa and EOA 1 for the next five years with potential extension for the next 10 years. Next slide, please. For some additional background, on July 1st of 2009, American Meadow Corresponds or AMR was awarded the contract for emergency ambulance service in Sonoma County EOA 1. EOA 1 consists of Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Sebastopol, Kenwood and the unincorporated areas within and we have a map of that on the next slide. On July 1st of 2019, the contract with AMR was extended for another three years, which reached the maximum extension legal for this contract, which times Sonoma County consulted with Endpoint Consulting LLC to look at the current EMS system or emergency medical services system and identify opportunities for the next 911 ambulance RFP with the goal to ensure the highest quality emergency medical care to the residents and visitors of Sonoma County. Next slide, please. Well, briefly, this is a map of EOA 1 is highlighted in yellow. The one thing that's changed on here is the in the West County of very health is no longer a service provider so that that piece has changed but EOA 1 remains the same. You'll see Santa Rosa right in the middle and Santa Rosa certainly holds the highest call volume with about 85% of the service delivery within EOA 1. Next slide, please. And just another graphic number one, it points out the now eight ambulance providers, ambulance transport providers in Sonoma County, and there's just sort of a heat map showing where the calls are really generated in the 911 system. So, particularly around Santa Rosa and Ronald Park is where we see most calls for service in the ambulance. Next slide, please. A quick update on the RFP, and this is where we've been involved in the process. And so it started in December of 2019 with stakeholder meetings on the county was taking a holistic approach to the development of the RFP. Our staff participated in all nine of the RFP development listening sessions between December 16 2019, and that's supposed to say July 20 2020. And then we participated in a survey used by endpoint consulting to obtain additional stakeholder data. After July 2020, the development of the RFP was taken back to internal development by Sonoma County and endpoint consulting. Then on March 16 2021, the draft RFP was placed on the March 23rd County Board of Supervisors agenda. It was delayed until April 13 of 2021, at which time the draft RFP was accepted by the Board of Supervisors and sent to the state of California emergency medical services agency or EMSA for short for approval. Next slide, please. So at some point the draft RFP came back from the state. And on October 26 2021 was placed on the November 2 2021 Board of Supervisors agenda. The updated draft back from the state was accepted by the Board of Supervisors at this meeting and returned to you the EMSA for final authorization. The RFP was released to all potential bidders on November 9 2021 so it's currently on the streets. While we still have some concerns regarding the equity and the requirements for bidders on the contract, ultimately both public and private entities which we'll explain more in detail shortly can apply with the accepted RFP in Sonoma County. Next slide, please. So, we're going to do is go through and compare what a private entity looks like and what a public entity looks like as far as providing the ambulance service. A couple of things to keep in mind this is this is very anecdotal and the reason it is is due to lack of data on either side of the equation. On one side a lot of the data is considered proprietary. And we don't have raw data to compare numbers with on one side on the public side because this model is not existed in Sonoma County we we don't have the data to do a qualitative analysis between the two with good data set so it is anecdotal. So it's not conceptual come so it's theoretical and as much as I hate to bring that to you that's just the point we find ourselves in right now. So a private entity, that's the current system we have now. That's where the ambulance franchise is operated by a private ambulance provider, meaning it's privately owned it's not a public entity. It's not a public service delivery but so it's private but it's also publicly traded so that it can be a little nuanced and confusing there. This response ALS which is shortened to frauds the services subcontracted to the city of Santa Rosa fire department currently pays for seven or seven of our engines to be advanced life support so phase for seven paramedics and all 12 ALS resources technically stop the clock under contract for for the current provider. So a public entity and this is not going to be Santa Rosa would be another fire department in the in the region. And this is also referred to as an alliance model it's being used very successfully in Contra Costa County. The ambulance franchise is operated by a public entity meaning a public facing independent district who in turn contracts the service delivery with a public ambulance provider. There is a third option to this which we're not really talking about as if Santa Rosa was making it been on the contract in the city of Santa Rosa ran the ambulance plan franchise but we're not in that place right now so this is the public entity that is is this model where the ambulance franchise is operated by a by another independent district and then subconscious or service back to a public provider for actually providing the ambulances and personnel. Under this model with the current RFP first response ALS service would still be continued to be operated by the city of Santa Rosa fire department it would just be building a new contract with the new service provider if the public entity was elected. Next slide please. So we'll kind of break this down into into three phases we'll look at service delivery first. And again, down the left hand column and service delivery as far as a private entity would go and on the right it's anecdotally what a public entity would look like. So looking at a private entity. We're not really sure exactly on a day to day basis how many ambulances are on the street and dedicated to 911 service service. We estimate you know just by looking at CAD data six to eight on day to day basis but obviously this can surge it increases and decreases based on the business model and off the service delivery demand that the system seeing so. So this number is not set in stone this is just our estimate looking at it at the computer at a dispatching system and what's what's present on a day to day basis so again it's anecdotal in that we don't have that true raw data to work with. So it's our best estimate. Response times again this data is proprietary in nature to the private provider. But response times are contractually obligated by the contract through Sonoma County to the provider. We're not really sure exactly what they are public or private entities are not pretty to PRA requests. And while the information is translated to report that goes to the county, we're not able to obtain the raw data to do a pure analysis of the system. So we can look at if we're trying to we were trying to find any data set we could bring to the council to make this as fair and equitable as possible. We can look at our fire resource on scene times. So this is based out of our report management system in calendar 2020, for instance, Santa Rosa fire department units were first on scene 72.6% of the time. And then our engines were on scene waiting for an ambulance over six minutes 1646 times and waiting for an ambulance over 15 minutes 122 times the calendar year 2020. Looking year to date in 2021. Our units have been on scene for 76.6% of the time. Our engines have waited for an ambulance drive on scene for over six minutes 2300 times and over 15 minutes 149 times so that's that's one piece of data that we can present. On the public service delivery side, the number of proposed ambulance to be on duty is right now proposed to be somewhere around 12 to 13 ambulances. And those would be dedicated to the 911 system. The response times were made contractually obligated under the contract sign with some accounting and being that it's a public model PR information would be available to obtain. And fire department on scene times again this is conceptual in that the system doesn't exist yet conceptually they would be lower because there would be more ambulances on the street on a daily basis in the 911 system so we can we can estimate the conceptually those numbers of ambulance to be on duty. And those times were waiting six minutes or longer or 15 minutes or longer would go down. Next slide please. The next thing we'll look at and compare private to public is system controls as the control that the city or the Santa Rosa fire department has over the EMS system. So we broke this down into looking at the ability to obtain and retain data. Again, currently under the private system, a lot of the data is proprietary and we're not able to extract fraud data so we can do a true system analysis. And in management, we really do have a solid foundational relationship they are and with their employees. They provide a great service however there is, in our opinion and in equity and decision making and system control. So it's just that we don't have a voting seat a lot of the tables. A lot of times it's listen and advise, but at the end of the day we don't have any really decision making powers when it comes to the system design. We don't have any policy procedure and oversight that's very broad I understand, but we feel there's a lack of equity and that means equity and decision making equity and, you know, having a seat at the table or voted the table on a lot of different issues as far as policy development procedural oversight and system control under the private model. Again, it's anecdotal that in that it doesn't exist, but our ability to obtain and retain raw data is available due to the PRA availability of a public entity. System design and management would be complete equity and decision making system control and policy procedure and oversight would also have complete equity in these elements we would have an equal voting right equal seat at the table, and the ability to control the system a little bit more. Next slide please. So lastly we'll look at the business model private versus public under the private model financial obligations. In this case the the private entity is a publicly traded corporation that has shell shareholder obligations. That's not to say that another private entity that's a smaller operation that isn't publicly traded couldn't apply for the contract. Just looking at the current model we have right now. The application resources are spread between both the 911 system and other contracts and obligations instead of just straight dedication to the 911 system. So ambulances will flow in and out of the the EMS system. And then GMT and IGT funds which is federal funding, essentially provided to local resources to local or public entities to offset the cost of medical reimbursements. And these are not eligible for GMT and IGT funding, whereas public entities are on the business model on the public side, because it's a public entity they're not allowed to realize a profit. So any additional revenue that's that's obtained through the ambulance contract will be reinvested into the local system and resource allocation. Right now that the ambulances dedicated to the streets will remain in the 911 system and other contracts obligations would be handled by other ambulances. And again going back to GMT and IGT funding public entities are eligible to receive this funding. And those funds also must remain in the local system. Next slide please. So closing is a point of advisory for this analysis the fire departments looked at the current state of the EMS system, the current RFP and the anticipated options for ambulance service available on this contract. And based on this analysis the city council may provide direction to staff to bring the item back to council if if council likes to take any one of these actions. Those actions may include taking no action and a wait for the bid results from Sonoma County and the current RFP process. The council could opt to take a position of support for one model over the other private versus public. Or the council can begin the process to withdraw the city of Santa Rosa from the way one and seek a direct contract with a service provider for ambulance service within the confines of the city of Santa Rosa city limits. And with that, I will be available to answer any questions that they may have. Thank you chief. I think we also have representative from the county who was interested in making a couple of comments about this item as well. Adam city attorney. Do you know who was going to speak on behalf of the county. I do not know. Mr. County, Mr. passive. Okay, we will promote him. Good afternoon, city council members. My name is Ken passive I'm with the department health services with county Sonoma. And we are here. I have a couple of representatives from staff at the county to be here to answer any questions that the city may have. We don't have any prepared presentation or any prepared comments. We just want to be available to answer any questions and clarify any information that may be presented here. Thank you so much. And can, if we still have can is Terry one of those folks. Yes, Terry right and James so long to James so long to is from our EMS agency and Terry right is from the county administrator's office. Okay, Terry's got Terry has the hand up so I'll go ahead and go to Terry for a brief moment. Thank you, Mayor Rogers. I just wanted to agree with Ken in terms of staff's here to if you have any questions, I would generally say if you had questions about the RFP process in terms of the county's undertaken. Ken can kind of speak to you what that processes looks like and what we've done. So James Solvante, it works for Coastal Valley EMS if there's any technical questions that you have about in terms of how the ambulance system works in the county to if there's questions related to that he can answer questions for you. And then if you had questions, you know in terms of process some of the decision making that the board of supervisors made and or the work that the emergency medical services at Hawk which is made up of supervisors Hopkins and rabbit. They were the policy at Hawk on this matter. I can assist with that one thing that I would maybe just want to leave with you in terms of there is in the RFP proposal that's an attachment for you exhibit three beginning on page 49. I think it provides the sentiment the ad hoc had staff in particular create what we're calling sort of a preamble of what what was the values in the sentiment that the county was seeking in terms of doing this new RFP. And I would just if you have questions about maybe just the overall policy sentiment that the board of supervisors was trying to do I think you would find value in looking on that page page 49 of the RFP. Thank you very much. Thank you. We are available for if you have any additional questions that we consist with. Thanks so much. Thank you, Terry. Madam City Attorney. Did you want to go over with us before we start our questions sort of what's expected out of this study session in terms of direction and what types of options are permissible for council members. Yes, I'd be happy to do that. Mr. Mayor. Thank you. As the fire chief indicated there are three options before the council. One is to take no action and to await the bid results that will go from from the Sonoma County through that RFP process. The second would be to take a position to support either the private model or the public model to weigh in on that. The third option is to begin the process to withdraw the city of Santa Rosa from the EO A1. And I will note on that third option there has been recent case law which has created some legal concerns regarding that third option. There may be a path to do that through health and safety code section 1795.224. If the council is interested in pursuing that we would ask for additional time to do a deeper dive into the legal issues. And also just the process issues, the time cost of doing that would involve asking the EMS agency to consider creating a new EO A in the area. We don't know the willingness of the EMS agency even to consider that option. So if the council is inclined to want to look further into that we would ask for additional time to come back with more information on that option. So and today is a study session. It's a study session only so we'll be asking for general direction. The council will not be taking any final formal action. Great, thank you. Council, we'll see who wants to start with questions. Council Member Fleming. Yes, thank you for your presentation. Chief, you mentioned there's some equity issues and the but you didn't elaborate. Could you describe what you perceive those to be? For the main one, the inequity that we saw within the within the RFP was that there's essentially 45 days from date of award to date of implementation of the contract. So if you can look at this from any business perspective standing up a new business and 45 days including infrastructure apparatus personnel equipment. And standing up your own business bottom 45 days is extremely challenging. So a new provider coming in regardless of if they were a public or private franchise would have a very difficult time in standing up a brand new business and 45 days. And so in our opinion, that would be the most inequitable facet of the RP that we see. Okay, thank you. And then my question is for Madam City Attorney. Can you elaborate on the nature of the legal concerns about the potential of extracting the City of Santa Rosa from the contract? Certainly, Council Member Fleming. The new case law that just came out this last week is the action of City of Oxnard versus County of Ventura in which the City of Oxnard attempted to contract direct take itself out of the EOA contract and contract separately for ambulance services. The court rejected that finding it improper under the EMS law. We have looked at that there is they were relying on a section that grandfathered in certain cities to be able to continue private ambulance service or their own city and city based ambulance services based on that they were already in that process back in 1980. What we're looking at is the possibility, again, if the Council is interested in us looking at it, whether there's a path under a different code section. That different code section would require that the EMS agency itself create another EOA just for the city to encompass just the city limits. Again, we need to do a deeper dive on the legality and what is required under that alternative section also would need to be looking at whether the EMS agency is even interested in considering that option, looking at the cost, the process, the timing. So we would be asking for additional time on that. But those are our legal concerns. I think that's a number of cases that have been decided in the past that have suggested that under the general framework of the EMS law, a city can't simply decide on its own to go off and contract separately for ambulance services. Thank you. And my last question is for the chief. You mentioned, I believe, on slide nine, saying that we just quite aren't quite there yet with doing this in-house. Can you elaborate on that? Or maybe clarify if I misunderstood. So the city of Santa Rosa taking on its own ambulance service, quite frankly, is extremely costly and extremely time consuming. So considering all the factors that go on throughout the city and throughout the fire department where we're at, being able to come up with that capital investment and the time and the bandwidth to stand up around ambulance franchise is just not something that we see as a possibility at this point in time. So it could be something that we have to long range plan for for the next ambulance franchise contract that comes to bear. But at this point it was, it was not something that we could take on considering the recovery from the fires and all the other facets of that going on. And if we were to consider that in a future round, is that something that ultimately, once the initial investment is made, is it bears fruit in terms of cost savings? It does. It would definitely bring in additional revenue and it would offset the costs in the long term. So it would be a long term investment into the system and it would definitely be cost beneficial just at an initial glance would be cost beneficial for us in the future. Okay. And last question is what's the rough estimate of the initial capital investment? I'd have to get back to that. I'm not even sure. It's in the it's in the multi millions of dollars. Thank you. Vice mayor. So, in looking at this, I see a lot of figures of, you know, about the private and public. One of the concerns that I have, and I'm hoping that we're looking at some other areas that possibly need to be addressed, especially with Santa Rosa having one of the highest population of unhoused and dual diagnosis is that. And when we look at equity and from the equity lens is that the the BLS services that are currently being provided to our like our CSUs and our local eds are compacted. So in order for people to get out of our local emergency rooms. They take up beds that could be used for medical reasons, because we can't get them placed into psychiatric hospitals or transported to psychiatric hospitals due to not having transportation from for BLS. So they take up those those beds so people that are in the eds for medical reasons are not able to get hospital rooms are not able to get the beds, because the psychiatric patients need the hospital rooms. So I'm hoping that we're looking at it from a. I know we're looking like private public but we're looking at it from a systems perspective, because it definitely is impacting the whole system, what what providers we we choose in and how we go about that who we have servicing the city of Santa Rosa. And we definitely need to be educated on that if we're going to make a choice about that it's not just about what is being presented to us right now there's so much more to the story. So I would like to see more of that. And I guess I'm requesting that and hoping that we get more of that information also. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A couple questions for the chief first chief you had mentioned the engagement that the city had in this collaborative process up through July of 2020. And then went to the board. April of 21 what involvement or engagement or feedback was city of Santa Rosa offered an opportunity between July of 2020 and the nine months later one went before the board. We had, and thanks for the question council member, the opportunity that we had was in March and April. When it went to the board, we were, we worked with the former city manager, Shawn McGlynn and County Administrator shall write to to communicate some of our concerns with the RFP process and the RFP itself. We did make public comment as well as long along with our partners and local 14 01. But it was really, it was really behind closed doors and we didn't have any input into the process during that time span. And, you know, to be fair a lot of it was because of COVID but also there was a there's some information that apparently can't be public facing during the contractual process. Thanks and then on slide 12 regarding the public business model, the financial obligations. It's noted in the presentation is not allowed to realize a profit. What about the other ends of the spectrum. And I'm specifically interested in understanding how this would work if all the resources are dedicated to the 911 system only. I mean, having never operated an ambulance company before, but some of the cost benefit analysis you have other contracts and obligations to help get funding that may support the response 911 calls if that is something that the public model would not be doing. How would we deal with the potential loss of this service. Under the proposed model of having a public entity running the franchise. It would be Santa Rosa be a subcontractor so Santa Rosa technically wouldn't be in the risk matrix for if there was a loss. That's obviously built into the business plan that would be provided. And really where there's a benefit to the public model is that the GMT and IGT funding provides quite a bit of capacity if there was a loss that money is still coming in from the federal government. And so it provides a cushion if there is a loss but but the good news is under this model compared to if the city on the franchise is we wouldn't be at the risk of the loss. Good news for Santa Rosa regarding that those federal funds and having had some experience with federal reimbursement. Do you know how this fund works? Is it similar to the FEMA model or is it a little bit more rapid funding? It's much more rapid. It's an established system. It's an intergovernmental transfer. So essentially the federal government, there's a law within the federal government and I can't quote it to you off the top of my head. But essentially if they're unable to provide a service to in this case Medi-Cal patients, they have to pay local entity, a local public entity to provide that service. So if a public entity is transporting patients to the hospital that are Medi-Cal patients, they get reimbursed at a federal rate. And so we looked at it years ago back when I was the EMS chief and we were trying to earmark ourselves in for if it ever moved to first response ALS. And a very conservative estimate at the time is the city of Santa Rosa gained to bring in about $4 million a year out of these funds. But it's being used very widely across the nation. So it's an in-depth system that's already very well ingrained in the federal system. So it's not the delay that you see out of some of the other federal processes. Great. Thank you. And then I have a couple of questions for either Ken or Terry. I just want to be that in the presentation indicated in 2009 is when the AMR contract was first designated to AMR. Did the city of Santa Rosa have any involvement in that selection process? I'm going to defer to James Salwanti. James, were you here in 2009 when that occurred? Thank you, Ken. Let me just check and make sure I'm audible. We can hear you, James. Very good. Thank you. No, I can't speak to the exact input that the city of Santa Rosa had. I'm aware that there were a number of stakeholder meetings that occurred that involved both city representatives and representatives from other organizations within the county. But I can't speak to the exact content that was shared back and forth. I wasn't engaged in the process. It was too new at the agency at that time. Great. Thank you. And then according to the RFP, it said that the proposal review committee will be setting the priorities and do the interviews. Is that accurate? The proposal review committee won't be setting the priorities. The priorities are set in the RFP. However, they will be assessing the proposals based on their professional discretion and will be point scoring those proposals based on the content. Right. So then they make the reference and I think the RFP says the highest scoring will be selected. So my question is who establishes the proposal review committee? That will be the EMS agency. Well, the approval of the committee will be by the director of health services. Right. I get that. My question is who actually are going to be those members of the proposal review committee or who selects those members if they're not individually? I don't need names. Who selects that committee? That would be a group of the individuals, including myself. James Salvante, I suspect will be part of it. I think the council will be part of that decision making process and our consultants will end point consulting will be part of that process. And what interest or opportunity would there be for additional city of Santa Rosa involvement in that, especially given the fact that I heard 85% of those calls are generated from city limits. I'd have to defer to our council to know the answer to that. I apologize. I don't have an answer to you for you on that. Councilmember Schwab. If I could get James Salvante to explain that there's the ordinance prescribes exactly who some of the raters are and why don't we start with a high level of understanding what it says in the ordinance and then remind or remind Ken myself as well to answer your questions start there. If you don't mind. Absolutely. Thank you very much. And again, thanks again to, to achieve Westrop and to his staff who did in addition to participating in those listening sessions for the RFP also worked with us over a several year period on developing the county EMS ambulance ordinance. And one of the things that was really important to that stakeholder group was looking at how we would establish in the ordinance and very specific practices for how we review EMS RFPs and how we conduct them. It was really important to everyone in the group, including ourselves to have an unbiased panel of experts, because EMS ambulance service takes in so many different parts of the healthcare system. We felt it important to put into that system that the types of folks that we'd be doing the evaluating. So with there is a requirement for there to be a fire chief of an organization or a fire officer at the chief level that has an ALS transport operation. A requirement for there to be an EMS position a requirement for there to be someone at the county executive level requirement for there to be someone of financial expert CPA to evaluate the stability of the provider since that's critically important to all of us. Another stipulation in the ordinance is that those individuals are from outside the county, and that's because there are so many ties between city people county people, the providers of service. It was really important to look outside the county to avoid local bias. In addition to the folks that would be taking part in the selection. It wouldn't be the EMS agency we do have to take ourselves out of that mix we don't do any part of that judging, but we do try to assist in providing a list of names, but we also run those through the EMS ad hoc committee. So that our our county leadership has an opportunity to make sure that there's some impartial vetting and and some assistance in getting some of those county level folks. So it's a pretty involved process, but we do our best to spread out the decision making so that we can try to limit the bias as much as we possibly can. Thank you for that response and I would ask if if you could just send that ordinance that you just made reference to our staff so that we could take a look at that just again it's all about it's a process question for me but I really appreciate your responses. Those are all the questions I have right now. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate the report. I do have one question if if the RFP was presented on November 9 and it will be awarded on April 5 to be implemented on October 1 would what would be the lapse of service that the city of Santa Rosa would see. And I believe that might be a question for for for Chief Weschel. Thank you, Council Member Alvarez. There would be no lapse in service and it's built into that so we would not see a lapse in ambulance service. Either it's going to be the incumbent provider or new providers going to come in and they have to meet those guidelines. So, so the county is very cautious and then they wouldn't they wouldn't put any cause on there that would create a lapse in service. Thank you. Council Member Sawyer or Tibbets? Any questions? No questions. Thank you, Mayor. At this time, not now, Mayor. I have a couple for you, Chief, if you don't mind. If Santa Rosa was to move in the direction of having a private model, how would that integrate? And I guess I should also ask if we don't, how does that integrate with our in response system that we are about to launch? So we're currently operated under a private model. We currently have a private entity running the franchise. And so it wouldn't be any change and in response is going to integrate with the system, no matter what. So we built in responses and independent resource. They can respond with with or without either fire engines or an ambulance. So I don't see any gaps in delivery service with that. You know, I think the benefit to, you know, we've had these conversations with both the private side and the public side. Different funding opportunities for in response or similar models to really regionalize and make in response a stronger program. And I think there's opportunities on both sides is just when you look at the public franchise. And the ability to bring in GMT, IGT funds and the reinvestment back into the community. There's obviously going to be, there's going to be more meat on that bone to provide additional services to the community. So I think there's a greater opportunity there, but that's not to say that both, both either side of the franchise isn't interested in being a partner in the response program. All right, and have has the fire department has the union, have they had an opportunity to have a discussion. And do we know what the opinion is of our workers who are currently doing this who are 76.6% of the time, getting to a call for service first. I wouldn't speak for the union. President Thomas is listening somewhere. But from, from my opinion, and from what I hear and that's where it's sort of anecdotal, you know, I'd rather come to you with a data driven, a raw data driven analysis but a lot of this is from things that you hear on the streets where where our employees are frustrated with their, the times that they're on scene, how many times that the units are switched to try to get an ambulance there. So there's a general frustration in ambulance response times but again it's it turns into anecdotal information when we don't have the raw data to present so I'm hearing some frustrations. They just want you know at the end of the day that's the nice thing about where we sit is that you know we're just looking to provide the best service possible to the community and that's what our employees do as well. And I've heard frustration a number of times over lack of data does the new RFP help us with that lack of data. Does it build in any requirements where we would have access to what we need to be able to make informed decisions. It does not and that's where it comes down to, you know, a private entity that has proprietary information versus a public entity, where we can carry in the information if we had to, we just don't have that ability right now. I would say that to be fair that there's in the new RFP there is a section that talks about the relationship and the contract the center as a fire as a subcontractor and I think there's opportunities and threats with with that language. And we can go in and rewrite our contract to make sure that we're being paid for all 12 or resources that data is shared. But at the end of the day the private entity could also walk away for either and you can walk away from that conversation. You know as part of negotiations. And then there's a threat that they either do walk away or it's just it's a hard no on present presenting raw data. So, I think there's there's a there's a window there it's just it's just a matter of who's selected and what their opinion on it is. But we wouldn't be in a position center as a fire wouldn't be in a position to take over as the public entity. Who would the proposed partnership be with, and are we certain that they would be able to be in a position to take over. Question being if we were to withdraw from the way one. Yes. So it's my understanding and talking to city attorneys about this you know we could withdraw from the ELA. Theoretically, you know there's, there's a varying. You know this is where we run into a bit of a problem there's varying case law varying decisions. Chico's moving through the process where Oxnard jammed up now in court on the process so. There's a lot of opinions on the reality of it and what the cost benefit and time analysis is on that. But we can go into a direct award and it would be the snow accounting fire district who has the ability to stand up that service relatively quickly. So, they would be the interested party, or we could go to our process and take the best better based on what we see is providing service to the city of Santa Rosa. So, in the Contra Costa model. Are there any other jurisdictions that have a similar or adaptable model for for us if we go that direction. Contra Costa is definitely the most ingrained it's been around for the longest. For instance, I know that previous members of Department of Public Health Coastal Valleys and our organization went down and visited Contra Costa and looked at the model and saw that it was a successful model so it's definitely the crown jewel of a public alliance model. There's others that are, they're attempting it and getting down that path, but that really cost is the best model to look at and happens to be close and relevant to us as well. What are the biggest risks for Santa Rosa if we go that direction in which if we go if we go in the direction of the Contra Costa model, the alliance model. There's certainly great risks to that in fact it's you know really in looking at if you look that analysis even though it's anecdotal. You know the even the anecdotal look at it shows that the public model the alliance model. There's a lot more benefits to it. I don't see a lot of negatives to it, we're going to we're going to work with whatever system comes into play, you know the RP plays out we're going to, you know, we're going to adapt and overcome and provide the best service we can to the community but I definitely think there's a lot of benefits on the public side versus the private side in looking at this at this analysis as we have it right now. All right, thanks chief counsel any additional comments before our questions before we go to public comment. Okay, if you're interested in providing. And I do see I have a hand from James James did you want to jump in really fast before I go to public comment. Thank you very much sir I just wanted to weigh in on the data issue, because it seems concerning that we're at a place where there's discussions happening and our partners don't have the data they need to sort of provide leadership with the right tools to make decisions. And I think, you know want to commit to working with chief Westrop and his staff to ensure that they've got access to the kinds of data that they feel they need to PRA to get things like compliance with response times by the ambulance service provider that should be available to them it's not a problem to get it. All the response times from any unit that's dispatched by red com whether that's amr, Santa Rosa fire any other entity that's being dispatched, that is public record and should be available through red com. So I think we do have some numbers that are there we have numbers that can be looked at for the current franchisee staffing in terms of what they schedule and then what they, they actually put up. That's information that should be withheld from you just need to ask for it and make sure that we get it. All right, thank you. Chief piggybacking up on that I hear a commitment from the county to help us to get that data. Have we requested that data before and did we request that that be a requirement of the RFP. We requested the data, many times both through amr and through red com red com is managed by amr. And they, they have the current contract with it so we run into the same problems there where it comes proprietary information. I'm happy to work with James on a different route to, to make sure that we're getting what we need but again it's that it's the raw data that we're looking for this. There's no numbers that are skewed and we can actually provide a fair and equitable analysis of the system so we have it, we do all the time and. And so it's, it's just something that is commonplace for us is to not be able to extract data and, but very happy to work with both devalues on trying to resolve that, no matter what the case and to my knowledge it was not requested to be part of the RFP. And would you feel fairly confident as the RFP has written now that we'd have access to that information or we could build that in as a requirement to have access to that information. I'm fairly confident that whatever the new provider is when we set down to have the contract for first response ALS that that would be my number one goal and priorities to make sure that data was shared both ways equally as part of the process. Okay, thank you. Public comment done on the item. So for folks who would like to provide comment here in the chambers, I go ahead we'll have you one at a time at the podium. If you are participating via zoom, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your zoom. Go ahead, sir. Good morning, Councilman. Good morning, Council members. My name is John Ray Hasson. Let's get your microphone turned on. The mic is turned on. I just need to raise the podium up a little bit so that it's closer to you. You pretty much have to eat the microphone. Technology. Thank you. Good afternoon, Council members. My name is John Ray Hasson, and I'm the regional director for American metaphor sponsor in Sonoma County. AMR is a company which is deeply committed to providing quality responsive and transparent patient care services to all residents and visitors of Sonoma County and within the city of Santa Rosa. I just want to thank Chief Westra for taking my call yesterday when I called to express that AMR had some pretty significant concerns about the accuracy of some of the information that was just presented in the presentation. Specifically with regards to what a public model really is as presented. This is really one public entity contracting with another public entity who is in turn still contracting with a private company to actually provide and operate the service. The only difference is that second public entity is now fully at risk for the success or failure financially of that model, which really places the taxpayers in the situation of being at risk for a fire department experimenting and running an ambulance service. Second is some of the comments on slide 10. There were some numbers that the number of ambulances in the county is actually unknown and estimated to be at six to eight. In reality that current number peaks at 18 ambulances per day. And this information is provided monthly as part of the system status compliance committee meeting of which the city of Santa Rosa fire department has representation on. Additionally, the city of Santa Rosa fire department and all agencies have access in real time to how many ambulances are on the road through both mobile data computers. The computer a dispatch terminals and through PRA request, which do go to red com and this data is reported monthly to close the value of the MS agencies and it is PRA able and frequently does get PRA. Secondly is the comment that response times are really unknown. Once again, this is simply not the case response times are reported to close the value of the MS monthly. They are subject to PRA request. They are frequently PRA. And they're also reported quarterly at the emergency medical care committee meetings, as well as monthly at the system status committee meetings. And for the record, the average ambulance response time for a lights and sirens response in the city of Santa Rosa is five minutes and 55 seconds. And the requirement for am or to be on scene of the city of Santa Rosa for a lights and sirens call is 10 minutes and 59 seconds. As for the point about equity, we believe that we certainly want to make all decisions in a fair and equitable fashion. And the county has processes in place with the emergency medical care committee, the system status committee meeting and multiple other avenues to ensure that decisions are made in a collaborative fashion. And at times that means that that one provider doesn't always get their wish. So in conclusion, I'd like to ask that the city council recognizes there's been a lot of time and energy and effort on the part of the county and on part of multiple stakeholders to develop a fair and equitable RFP process. And I respectfully request that in the interest of public safety and the interest to provide a good quality patient care center service that the city council allows the county process to proceed. Thank you, sir. And I suspect council members might have a couple of questions for you. But when we're done with public comment, not at the moment though. Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to provide comment in the chambers? Go ahead. Testing. Can you hear me? I would ask that the people who are making public comment that you speak right into the microphone. It's very hard to hear if you don't. And our recording of the meeting is not as robust as it could be. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor Rogers and members of the council. Thank you. My name is Matt Cox. And I am the assistant chief shop steward for you. You EMS w local for 911. And we represent the paramedics and EMTs of snow life support and are here in Santa Rosa and the surrounding area. We are your boots on the ground who are currently providing your 911 EMS services to Santa Rosa's basketball runner park Katadi Kenwood and Oakmont. We come to you today to express our support for AMR and maintain the current service model that's been in place for the past 30 years. We express this support for a number of reasons. AMR has been delivering excellent clinical care that is patient community focused for decades. They've been very successful in this. We're proud to say that snow life support has a well known reputation for being a stable operation that's committed to providing excellent pre hospital care. That reputation precedes us. We are well known in the EMS community. We also cannot support the bid by the Sonoma County fire department to take over the ambulance transport contract. After Sonoma County fire released their RFQ to try and get an interested party to partner with them. We were approached by chief hind to talk about possibly endorsing their effort. One of the things we communicated in that meeting was that we could not support their partnership with another ambulance provider that was not patient focused with the same commitment to clinical excellence. One operation that we named explicitly that we would not support was medic ambulance. They have a negative reputation that precedes them just as we feel that we have a positive one that precedes us. They're well known in the EMS community for being a less desirable employer. People who have worked for them have advised people others not to. After this meeting Sonoma County fire partnered with medic ambulance to be the subcontractor for them. And when we're talking about the public private model I want to echo this echo the sentiments of John Ray. What we're talking about here is not a public model. It is a public private partnership and again one of the risks of that partnership is that if they take a loss financially the taxpayers are on the hook. Whereas with the current model if AMR takes a loss it's on AMR and not the taxpayers. The attempt by Sonoma County fire as we see it as union is a purchase cheap unit hours to bill patients and then use the resulting profit not to improve the EMS system. Certainly not to reinvest in the workforce but to further the expansionist efforts of Sonoma County fire district which has been growing throughout the county. Again we believe that they see this opportunity as a way to generate an additional revenue stream. And just to speak to the contra cost a model being a crown jewel shiny example of the public private partnership. If I may just have just a moment longer. Just wrap up really quickly please. Yes. The union leadership with Contra Costa which is partnered with AMR advised to stay away from the alliance model as it was detrimental to the entire workforce on the ground. It's our hope today that you do not endorse the public model instead wait for the bid results and in fact we would actually ask you to endorse AMR in their efforts. Thank you sir. There are any other comments from folks in the chamber. Okay. Let's go to our attendees via zoom. We had a hand and it disappeared. Let's see if it pops back up. I'll go ahead and bring it back to council members. I don't see or let's see if we have any pre recorded voicemails. We do not mayor. Right. All right then I will bring it back to council members for discussion. Are there any additional questions? Chief, I was hoping you could respond a little bit to some of the comments about accessible data and including we heard that there's a peak of 18 ambulances that the data is available in real time. Could you respond to some of that for us? Sure. So, I'm hearing lies the problem. This comes down to a matter of opinion. And for us, the accessibility to data is not where we want to see it. You know, we can call AMR on a daily basis and ask how many ambulances on the street and we can't get a straight answer. So we have to count off of CAD and off the AVL. You know, a bit of its matter of opinion and some of the information that is being transferred over to the county is it's a report, but the numbers have been have been not massaged or skewed, but you know, we're looking for the raw data where we can we can come up with our own analysis, we can come up with our own data sets and get a pure look at it. And so it's not where another entity has worked the numbers around. So to that end, you know, we're not seeing the availability of the data if it was I would be coming to you with a data driven decision here so I'm not enjoying bringing you an anecdotal comparison by any means. So if I have the data and the data was available in the form and fashion that suits this type of conversation I'd be bringing it to you so that's where I'm at. Alright, thanks chief. And if I could just ask a quick question. How often are how often are there no ambulances running in Santa Rosa? I don't have that number off the top. Is that a good speaking to the mic if you would. I don't have the number off the top of my head. My apologies. It would be an extremely rare rare situation. Sonoma County runs a dynamic deployment ambulance system, meaning that as the calls for ambulances move as well. But given the tight response times in the city of Santa Rosa, and given the high number of calls here in the city of Santa Rosa, ensuring that Santa Rosa has prompt and responsive ambulances is always a top priority. So you have a peak you said of 18. Yes, sir. Are there times then where the the the valley is zero. There are times there are times in any ambulance system across the country where the number of calls exceed the number of available resources. I don't know what that exact number here is off the top of my head, but it's incredibly low. And it's one of the reasons why we've consistently been responsible and compliant over our nearly 30 years. Okay, and you mentioned that there is a requirement. I think you said 10 minutes response time for 10 minutes. And what percentage of calls do the Santa Rosa Fire Department stop your clock versus your ambulance getting there to stop the clock? Great question. So the Santa Rosa Fire Department doesn't actually stop the clock. It extends the clock. So without a first responder ALS contract in place, which we have with the city of Santa Rosa fire, currently a little over $600,000 a year. Because of that contract, we would be required to have an ambulance there in six minutes and 59 seconds. Because that contract is in place with the city of Santa Rosa fire, we're required to have an ambulance on scene within 10 minutes and 59 seconds. We received that extension on all calls. Okay, so your average I think he said was 555. So what percentage of your responses fall outside of the 659 or within the range of the extension as a result of the partnership with Santa Rosa? I don't have the number off the top of my head. I'd have to go back and do some research and I'm certainly glad to try and provide that. Okay, and do you know what percentage of your calls extend beyond the 10 minutes 59 seconds? It's less than 10% of the calls. Okay, so under 10%. Yes, sir. Okay. Are there any other questions? All right, let's go ahead and get some comments then Council Member Sawyer. Will you kick us off? Thanks, Mayor. I'm not prepared to take any action this afternoon. I'm waiting for more information, which I expect in the future, but I'm not prepared to make a decision this evening. All right, Council Member Tibbets. Thank you, Mayor. Similar to Council Member Sawyer, I'm looking at the bullet points here provided in the slides, but I'd like to take no action and receive those big results. So we have more of kind of a comprehensive look at what these proposals look like. You know, I take a position of support for one model over the other Eileen towards private contracting. I just imagine that it's going to be more cost efficient. But again, that's something that I'd probably rather dive into further in the future. So I'll just leave it at that. Thanks. Okay, Council Member Alvarez. Thank you, Mayor. And I also feel that we should, that I will not be taking a position today. I do wish to wait for those bits to come back and see what direction the county takes. Thank you. Council Member Schwedhelm. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would want to just proceed with the county process, although I do have an interest in understanding a little bit more about the proposal review committee, because these are sub-matter experts. And I know recent history has shown us that the cities and counties are collaborating much more, and so I would want to have a voice in that selection. So I say take no action, but I would want some engagement in the selection process of the next service provider, because for me, both the public model and the private model can participate in this RFP. Thanks. Thank you, Council Member. Vice Mayor. Through the Mayor, may I make my comments, or would you like me to hold them until after the Vice Mayor? Go ahead, Council Member Fleming. Yeah, I don't think that we have adequate data to make a decision today. However, I would lead toward in the future, looking toward a Santa Rosa model. And I think that the investment would be well worth the returns. If we had our fire staffing study done when I was new on Council, I want to say in early 2019, the independent contractor, when I asked, you know, is there anything we can do to reduce our costs? He said, you know, get out of, as soon as you have an opportunity to get out of this system that you're in now, run. And he had no incentive to say that unprovoked. That was what he said to me. So I have great concerns about status quo. But I can see what direction the council is going today. All right. Thank you, Council Member. Vice Mayor. I definitely think it's something that we should explore and look at. But I think that we need additional information. And like I stated earlier, I think that there is a full picture. I really don't think as a as a council that we have the full picture, but I would like to see what's going on with the county. I just hope that we don't wait too late if we are going to do something. Because we do have to give adequate time if we're going to make a move other than the county's move. So I just want everyone to keep that keep that in mind. All right. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So I'll be I guess a little bit of the outlier. I think that there's a catch 22 that happens when council members are saying I don't have enough data and I don't have enough information to make a decision. And then we're also hearing from our chief that we're not being provided the data even though we're requesting it that we would like. I hope is that there's a sincere commitment from the county and from our potential partner in the future when this RFP goes forward to getting us that data to be able to make an informed decision. In talking with council members and other jurisdictions that do have the public model, they are much happier with it than when they were with the private model. So I think that we're up against a tight timeline. I'm not going to ask staff to do a lot of extra work to beat their head against a wall if this is the direction that it's going. But I am disappointed that we haven't had more time to be able to have this conversation because I do think that it is a better model from what I've been able to read and ascertain about it over the last couple of months. So chief, it sounds like the direction from council is keep providing information if you can, but let's see how the RFP process plays out with the county as they move forward. Understood. Thank you. All right, Mr. City Manager, our next study session please. Mayor Rogers, members of the City Council, our second study session this afternoon is item 3.2 on one-time monies at the October 26, 2021 study session. The council received a presentation on potential programs using 34.4 million of American Rescue Plan Act funds and the remaining $7 million of PG&E settlement funds. The council provided feedback to staff to either return with more information or to find ways to redirect funding to projects initially not receiving funding. Alan Alton, our Acting Chief Financial Officer, is going to be sharing a presentation with the council this afternoon along with some recommendations for allocation of the remaining funding. Mayor Rogers and members of the council, we are here to present potential uses of the approximately 34 million of American Rescue Plan or ARPA funds and $7 million of the PG&E settlement funds. I've structured this presentation in the following way. I'll provide a brief background for context. Next, I'll highlight those PG&E settlement funded and ARPA funded programs and projects, pointing out those that had little to no comments from the council at the last session and those requiring further discussion. Then I'll walk through some programs specifically called out for review and potential inclusion into the spending plans that you've seen before, also including some identifying programs that could be reprogrammed. Based on some of the comments from the last presentation, staff has also provided new programs for consideration, especially through reprogrammed ARPA funds. And finally, I'll discuss next steps. I plan on moving through this presentation at a rather high level, but we have a number of subject matter experts on the panel who will be able to answer more in depth questions after the presentation. Next slide, please. For background, we have four previous study sessions discussing the use of one-time money from the PG&E settlement and from the American Rescue Plan Act. Those four study sessions we had two in November or November and December. And those primarily focused on the PG&E settlement funded projects. And then we had one on July 13, and then October 26 of this year, and those included ARPA funded programs as well. Council has committed $88 million of the $95 million PG&E settlement fund. Staff has a working group that was available or that worked from, let's say, August to the current time on reviewing the programs under criteria that included sustainability, economic and equity and equity lenses, ranking those programs and then coming up with the programs that you saw on the 26th and we'll see today. Next slide, please. And the next one. So these are the PG&E settlement fund programs that we presented to you at the last meeting. And those included in green, those programs that receive little or no discussion from the council. And then those in yellow are those that either would serve as a source of funds for reprogramming or require further discussion. The funds that were in green came up to about $4.8 million and we're looking at about $2,175,000 of programs that would require that we think would require further discussion. Then next slide, please. And for the same thing for the ARPA programs. We have about $23 million of those that were in the green that seemed to have very few questions, if any. And then those in yellow that had more questions or that required some further in depth look through this presentation. So next slide. As I said, the working group, I got together after the October session, reviewed our notes and then tried to come up with a way over the next few slides to address some of the questions that came up. Whether they were just purely informational or if we need to go into the larger or longer discussion over how the program would actually work or if their availability of funding. So, next slide. So the youth immigration attorney, this was under ARPA funding request for two years, the total of $100,000 so we were looking at $50,000 for each year. We'd be for an immigration attorney specializing in assisting children navigating through the immigration system, ensuring due process for unaccompanied children. The question that came up from council was why it was a we were calling it a youth immigration attorney and this is exactly why that the attorney would specialize in youth issues with integration. And just to be clear, the funding would go to your family's co-operative who would then work with legal aid and legal aid would hire the part-time attorney. Next slide please. So there are two programs that are related to children and childcare that are in our proposed ARPA spending plan. The childcare facility fund and the children savings account, which was we called it baby bonds as we were going through, but we further refined it as the children's savings account. And then there's one new proposed program that I'll discuss later. But one of the things that we tried to do is to combine those programs just for understanding, needs of understanding those that had to deal with children and childcare support issues. So, next slide please. So the children savings account is the funding request is $1,000,000 or $575,000 with $1.5 million program funds and the remaining amount with the admin costs. We would partner with first five to administer the program. And what it essentially is, not essentially what it is, is a 529 program. So it allows the savings for post-secondary educational expenses, which could be college or junior college or vocational school or trade school. Basically, any where if the institution is recognized for federal student aid, it generally is recognized to be eligible for 529 funding. The 529 plans paid for tuition, supplies, room and board, etc. And it's transferable to another family member for those similar educational expenses. So if there's money left over, it can be used by another family member. Next slide please. The childcare facility funds. So this is to provide assistance to improve childcare facilities through tenant improvement grants. We're looking at $2.9 million of that, about 2.8 million would be program funds. Again, we would partner with first five to know the county. It would allow new facility shell build out, including fixtures and finishes. Diffing facility preservation. The administrative fees cover a portion of previously funded 1.4 million of tenant improvement program, revolving loan program that is funded through another source of funds. Next slide. The guaranteed basic income. This is a partnership with Sonoma County. The proposed county program has monthly income payments of $500 per adult plus $100 per child for 500 adults and 1000 children for 24 months. Our city proposed program is for $400 per family times 100 families equaling about $960. There's an admin fees that would be added to it. I think the final program costs approximately because just a little over a million dollars. This would, we would work with the human services department. In the county's guaranteed basic income program to increase the number of Santa Rosa residents that in benefiting from their program, you would ensure return to source. And considerations for those who move out. Next slide. So, this just kind of illustrates the, the guaranteed basic income partnership that we have with the county. So the program costs of $960,000 plus $48,000. That may cost about 1. Or $1 million, a little over a million dollars. So we would start up contracts with criteria procedures. The outreach through the first half of the 2022 calendar year. From July to June 2024. We would have the eligibility, the enrollment payments and then evaluation program and file report at the end of calendar year 2024. So, there were some specific programs on the next slide that we required or requested further review. And that was the California Tiger salamander mitigation. The down payment assistance program. Vegetation management and the hot operation. Next slide. The habitat conversation or conservation plan. Through the county. What we would do is partner with the county. The benefits of this would be a federally permitted. Habitat conservation plan. To update the distinct scenarios of plain. Conservation strategy. The predictable mitigation costs. For. Covered activities. Reduce project level mitigation costs. To streamline the resource. Agency permitting and programmatic. And conservation. Fund pooling to implement larger scale. High priority action. So pulling together a number of different jurisdictions into. This one large pool. The order supervisors are meeting at the February of 2022. To divine. Project scope. To minimum of three years until the. Full project is completed. Projected within the. 2025 to 2026 range. So the cost of $300,000 is a partnership contribution. From Santa Rosa. Would be. There would be a multi jurisdictional effort. And future contributions. Maybe necessary from that from the city. The county is still developing the scope of the project. So. As we. As that gets further refined, we'll have more information on. Cost and. And. That for next year. Next slide. Down payment assistance program. So the, the down payment assistance program. We were looking at $2 million to this approximately. 25 households. It would be moderate income first time home buyers within the city. We would be able to. 30 years. The first payment loans. Administrative by housing and community. Services staff. We would be able to initiate the program in 2022. We would require the applicants to. Complete a home buyer education. Of course. The funds would be first come first served. We would be able to do that. We would be able to do that. We would be able to do that. We would be able to purchase a home. And it would be a revolving program with payments. Repayments becoming available. For future loans. So part of the issue with this was whether it would be. Arpa. Funding eligible. And while the program itself. At least most of the program. Would be our funding eligible. The part that. We would be able to purchase a home buyer education. And the other one that we would be able to purchase is the. Revolving loan part. The part that we would be able to purchase from Treasury on. Is the revolving loan part. As you recall. Arpa funds. Must be fully spent by December 31st of. Twenty. Twenty-six. So. To. If that would not work with the revolving loan program. able to move the money to a subrecipient, say the housing authority or some other entity, the subrecipient would be under the same ARPA rules as we would be. So, again, the program would not be able to perpetuate past 2026. That way, I think for the revolving loan part of this, we'd need to be funded out of the PG&E funds. That would be the guidance that we currently have. It's possible that Treasury could provide additional guidance. We do have questions into them regarding this, not only from us, but also other agencies that asked this question just don't have the guidance yet. Next slide. The visitation management and the Hadiya Emergency Operations Center, EOC. So, both of these were not on the initial list for PG&E funding. So, and the request came from Council to add that it would be one point, almost one point $3 million of PG&E funds that would represent a local match for additional vegetation management grants going forward. There is the potential to partner with an employment program to work on that. Those funds would need to come from other areas within the PG&E list that we have for reprogramming in order to do that if we were to use the PG&E funds. And with the Hadiya EOC, I need to clarify some information on this slide. So, we are requesting $1.4 million of PG&E settlement funds. They would convert and allow us to construct at the site of a fully operational, hot 24-7 EOC. We believe the project is scalable and would be able to work under a million dollars or within a million dollars, which is requested in some federal legislation. The part I need to clear up is where it says that, where I stated that the funding is included in the recently signed Federal Infrastructure Bill. It is not in that bill, I misstated that. So, what it is included is then the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill, both in the House and Senate, and it's been championed by our legislative partners with that. However, the funding for it is while moving forward and we feel that we're well positioned for that funding to be approved with those bills. Right now it is not currently funded. So, next slide please. So, as I mentioned, potential funding reprogramming. So, one of the things that was brought up during the last meeting was the COVID-19 testing. We have programmed $1.2 million for that. We have developed a project for our city testing using FEMA public assistance reimbursement through the end of the calendar year. FEMA will reimburse 100% of the cost for our city employee COVID-19 testing. And then we could, so what the plan would be is to take $1 million from the program or from what we currently have programmed, leave $200,000 of ARPA to cover any local match that would happen after January. So, we anticipate, we get to hear from FEMA that they will extend their 100% reimbursement. So, we expect becoming, or starting January 1st for the reimbursement from FEMA to go down to 75%. So, the $200,000 would be used to pick up that 25% local match until our testing program is done. The fiber backbone on the west side was $8.6 million. This program is not fully developed. So, it made sense that while it could be a worthwhile endeavor, we simply don't have even a proposal to move forward in that direction. So, this seems to be an easily reprogrammable source of funds. Also, you have, we have local grant funds coming in that would help offset some of the costs of the in-response program. So, we may be able to lower that initial ask by about $400,000. So, all of those combined, we come up with about $10 million of funding that could be reprogrammed out of our ARPA proposed spending plan. On the PG&E slide, our side on the next slide, we, two areas were mentioned, which was the specific plan at $600,000. And then the Rosalind Creek Park of $1.5 million. And again, worthwhile programs, but I think it came down to the ability to free up funds. Again, looking at these funds going towards, say the downtown or the down payment assistance program. So, just a different priority that we have thought we heard coming from the council. I would also state that I looked at, or I highlighted in yellow on PG&E funding plan slide, $75,000 for board and council members stipend. What we had heard, I think from the council, although those $75,000 could be reprogrammed or at least tightened up to only be used for childcare expenses for the Board and Commission. That was a discussion from council, but we may want further clarity on that moving forward. So there are some new programs on the next slide that we, in light of that, the $10 million of potential ARPA funds for reprogramming staff and one outside agency, we have some ideas that could be used for those funds. So the child and or family childcare share services alliance, that would provide a third element to the programs designed to support childcare and children, those other two that I talked about earlier. There was a request for the Boys and Girls Club to create a club center in Roseland that came right about at the time of the October study session. The city also is looking at or put forward the idea of a city community center at Southwest Community Park that would include a pool, the community center, and also the library. That could go into that same complex. Or there could be the creation of outreach programs through the community engagement and parking recreation departments that could target the Roseland community. So next slide. So the family childcare shared services alliance. This would provide a pathway for business ownership focusing on bilingual and bi-cultural home-based infant to toddler childcare. So again, like I mentioned, the three kind of legs of the childcare and children-related funding. The request would be a million dollars program funds, plus about $50,000 in admin costs. Again, we would partner with First Five Sonoma. The program would be $50,000 per business to assist them in developing home-based infant to toddler care businesses. Each business would create approximately four slots for infant and toddler childcare. The goal is to create a yearly cohort of 10 new micro-business startups for two years, creating a minimum of 80 new childcare slots. The cohort would operate as part of a collective and shared services across the cohort to maximize purchasing power, affordability, and promote professional networking and mutual support. Next slide. So this sort of illustrates where we are looking at the three programs for childcare and children services. So looking at a facility fund of $2.9 million, as I mentioned before, and the children savings account with a little over $1.5 million. And then this new shared service alliance of a little over $1 million. Again, we would look at the first half of 2022 to develop model and program funding. And then beginning in July, running through June of 2024, implement the program and provide, do some ongoing evaluations of it and then provide a final evaluation report during the last half of calendar year 2024. Next slide. As I mentioned before, there was a funding request from the Boys and Girls Club. The request happened right before the October 26th session and they're requesting $10 million of our funds to construct the facility in Roseland. Funds will be, from what I can tell, funds will be pooled along with other fundraising contributions. I should note that the Boys and Girls Club were not the only community organization requesting funds through the process. So if we were to go that route, we should probably go through a formal process to allow a more equitable access to the transparency of the allocations of funds just to kind of even the playing field as we go through. Then on the next slide, we have the Roseland Community Center. So we look at what resources City could put forward this program. So looking at the community needs that we're aware of. It's culturally safe, because of belonging, community driven and available public safety. And providing the infrastructure space for both the youth and elderly and vulnerable populations and providing not only a community space, but also working with including a library in a pool area. Next slide. So the library would be the funds for that. Council has committed $10 million for the Roseland Library. We have reached out to the Sonoma County Library if they would be willing to locate that at Southwest Community Park. And right now that they're open to that. What we have here as a match from them is merely a placeholder. There's a lot more discussion that needs to take place. And it's possible that there could be an additional ask from the City relative to that match. What we would do with this is program the $10 million towards that. So combine it with the PG&E, $10 million to the library. We have the ARPA funds. We feel that $35 million would be able to get us to a facility. Again, preliminary numbers, so work to be done. And then whatever the match would come from the library, we may need to fill in that gap with City funds. And then finally, on the next slide, if looking at if none of those would work, what are some alternative options that could happen? And one of the things that staff came up with was a collaborative community outreach. And so it would provide an alternative approach to a Roseland Community Center collaborating between violence prevention partnership, recreation, and local nonprofits to provide street outreach and community bridge building, programming, and looking at things through the diversity and equity planning for under-invested youth communities. So we're looking at about $7.5 million part of which would be the outreach team and the other part would be community grant support. I would note on this is that while the grants may be of a limited duration, the idea would be to create a team that would be new positions and that would be an ongoing cost of $4.5 million. So once the ARPA funding is used up, the City would need to find another funding source for this program. Next slide. So one of the other things that we're looking at is a business support program. This would be about $2.4 million of ARPA funds. The program is not ongoing. The work would be performed mainly by contractors and existing staff. We would look at in the qualified census tracts, micro-entrepreneurial business support, consisting of data analysis and development tracking platforms to help understand black, indigenous people of color or by-products owned, business needs, opportunities and challenges, including immigrant and undocumented entrepreneurs, real estate support to relocate, grow and model the Mercadito with the goal of encouraging micro-entrepreneurial business ownership for by-products and immigrant communities. Provide business literacy programs and QCT-focused startup grants in partnership with the Small Business Development Center and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Then finally, a QCT-placed marketing facade for improvement programs coordinated through the City Public Arts Program. So in summary, on the next slide, again, looking at $10 million of ARPA funding identified as potential reprogramming, we have several programs that could be funded through those funds. That's not all of them. So again, you have the Family Child Care Support Alliance, which would develop the home-based infant and toddler care businesses at $1,050,000. You have the Request for the Boys and Girls Club at $10 million. We have the potential of using ARPA funds in conjunction with the Roseland Library Committee Fund and potential support from the Sonoma County Library District to build a Roseland Community Center. So the $10 million would fit that part of that, only part of the funding, but part of it. We've created a community outreach team to provide that outreach on the street for under-invested youth. Again, this would be an ongoing program, but it's one that would at least be able to operate as a pilot under this scenario. And then the Business Support Program to help micro-visitors at $2.4 million. Next slide, please. So our next steps, a lot of information. Again, what they tried to do was to, I think in the last meeting I mentioned that we had, I believe there were 67 programs. So I tried to put together those that were that seemed to have approval to move forward and then let us kind of dive into those where there needed to be more discussion. We're hoping to receive direction on what programs may be able to move forward. We would still need to come back and actually formally adopt the program through a report item. And at that time, we would appropriate the funds for those programs that we're moving over. Not all of the programs we've talked about now need to move forward at this point. We can have more discussion. We need to obligate our funding programs by December 31st of 2024. So we have some time to have this additional discussion, future study sessions, if you so choose, or go through a formal proposal process for some of the things that were mentioned. And again, like I said, if we do move forward, we would come back as a report item and actually establish the spending accounts and the spending plan for that. So like I said before, we have a number of subject matter experts that can help answer questions. I'm also available for questions. All right, thank you so much, Alan. Who wants to start? Council Member Tibbets. Thanks, Mayor. I've got a laundry list of questions here, so I hope you all bear with me. I guess my first question is, has to do with the broadband. Alan, Jeff, anybody who might be tracking it? One of the things I noticed that was listed in Biden's Build Back Better legislation was significant investment in broadband at the civil. Do we know much about that? Do we know if that funding is guaranteed? I think the reason why I'm asking here and also listen to comments from Victoria who brought this forward because I don't want to step on her toes, but is there robust opportunities for broadband funding from that program at that time? Does anybody have any information there? I agree that broadband is a good investment. I want to make it. I'm just wondering if we don't have a plan now, would it make sense to kind of expect funds to be forthcoming? Alan, would you like me to try and hop in since I've been tracking this more? So, Council Member Tibbets, there are two significant initiatives that are moving forward, one at the federal level under Biden's plan and also one at the state level under Newsom's plan. Both have substantial investment in broadband. Both are anticipating significant broadband deployment, especially in underserved populations throughout the state and the country. So, there's definitely going to be financial opportunity moving forward. What we don't know right now is how are those funds going to be distributed? We don't know what the local match component is going to be if any is required. It was our hope that we would have a partnership with Sonoma County. They are actively soliciting for a vendor to assist them in the development of what looks like a municipal broadband program. When they did an RFP, they were not successful in getting any proposals back. And that was unfortunately what I had to report out when we did this presentation back in October, that what we had hoped would actually have something in front of us that would give a path of attack. We really don't right now. And so, we're still working with the county to try to get that process underway and to better understand where they're going. But we are also going to be scheduling a meeting with both our lobbyists at the state and federal level to better understand both Biden and Newsom's plans for broadband financing as well. So hopefully that helps. Yeah, it does. Thanks. Council Member Fleming, I'll let you listen to your comments on that. The other, I guess this is more of a comment having to do with the youth attorney. You know, I'm glad that we're considering doing this. This was one of the things that I was a big proponent of when I was elected in 2016. And Trump was also being elected at the same time and there were tremendous fear around deportation. I do want to pose a question to the council and that is should we actually be looking at four years instead of two? The thought being that there would be overlap with potentially a new presidential administration and recognizing why we brought this youth attorney forward in the past might be a reason to make sure that we have a youth attorney available in the future at the most appropriate time. So I would support adding another hundred thousand of the reprogrammed ARPA money towards this and this would all be spent before December 31st, 2026. So it should be an eligible use. So I'm just posing that question to the council. I for one would support doing that. When it comes to the college, the baby bonds, the 529 plan, you know, I how did we come to choose the organization that we did? I didn't get the last study session. I didn't give a lot of thought to all these organizations. We were listing as essentially sole source providers for these services. And what I'm realizing now is with more information today, I saw a 5% administration fee associated with the baby bonds and I might be oversimplifying things, but you know, vetting applications and essentially buying a 529 plan and then releasing it maybe 18 years later. I'm trying to figure out, you know, it's 5% a reasonable amount. And which then makes me think, should this be going out to bid? And I think it should. We talked about bids during the kind of boys and girls club center discussion. And I think we just, it's something that we need to be in the practice of when it comes to things like this. Let's see. I'm going to go back to the, I'm going to go back to the data collection for universal basic income. At the last study session, I had asked kind of what data points we were going to be collecting. I support the mayor's direction here with UBI, but my, my support was qualified based on providing the data points to the federal government about the successes and failures of UBI since this is going to be one time funding and there's not an ongoing funding source. And I think that's something that we need to be aware of. And I think that's something that we need to be aware of. And I think that we need to be aware of the data points that the county give any indication or direction about what data points they'd be collecting and how. Good afternoon, so a couple of things to clarify in the guaranteed basic income. Partnership with the county. I did speak with deputy director Chavez yesterday. And I think that's part of which is that the, the amounts that were in the county proposal are not set. We would take if council chooses to move ahead with this, we would work with the county with human services department. To come up with the right amount, but also to set the parameters, the focus, the criteria, the data that the city is interested in collecting. And I think that there are a number of reports out. There are some good models for what has been tracked. And we would look to those and then come back to council. With the proposal that we would move forward with probably in July, should you choose to fund it? Okay. So what we'd be doing today is just kind of cutting up the pie. So to speak, setting aside the money for UBI and then do further program approval at a later date. That's correct. We would have to also get into a MOU or an agreement with the county to have them to have human services department, the human services department run the program. Awesome. Well, thank you. This question has to do with the step or this for the staff person knowledgeable about the down payment assistance program. One of the things listed there was the education course about this program. I'm not in disagreement with it. I think it's a cool thing to go with that program. But one of the concerns that I've heard from staff about this program was just the impact on staff time for essentially underwriting loans for home acquisitions. So I'm kind of just wondering, is this actually something that's a necessity or, or something that we could get rid of and just focus on, on the loan part. Can we get Megan promoted, please? I'm listening, but I'm going to plug in my computer because my, my sleep thing came on. Excuse me. Good afternoon. Megan messenger interim director of housing and community services. And the incorporation of home buyer counseling was one of the items that I heard from council at the October study session as an interest. If this is to be incorporated into the final program, I would anticipate we would reach out to a nonprofit provider to provide these services. So it would be provided outside of city staff. I'd be happy to answer any other questions related to this. No, that's fine. Megan, I think that's great. I just was kind of worried that one of you would be essentially chaperoning some kind of educational video in a corner of one of our offices and I thought that might not be a good use of time. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The family childcare collaborative program. Did I understand this right from the presentation that $50,000 in childcare business supports would result in four slots for four children? Yes. Yeah, this is the chorus. So yes, that is the cost to build the business, right? So it would be the creation of the business, owner, both in childcare and in new business, small startup business development and the facility funds for making sure that their home base center does meet the necessary qualifications and restrictions for home base childcare. Thanks. So is this something like the baby bonds that will come back to the council with a fully fleshed out program, a budget showing everything that you just said before ratification? Terrific. Thanks. And I wanted to follow up if you don't mind on the baby bonds just so, so because I didn't jump in at that time. So I apologize, but you first five is an independent public agency through a statewide initiative. And so they are caring at the statewide level. The child care savings program and in partnership with student federal aid. So it's an already existing program at the state level. And we would be partnering with them to make sure we're targeting Santa Rosa families in need. Just so you know. That's great. And I like that they're a public agency, but I've still, and this is something that I guess we'll come back. So I can ask my questions at that time, but I'd really like to understand the logic behind the non-profit provider. I think it's important that we really drill down on that, that percentage and potentially open it up to other nonprofit providers. Because when I really think about, okay, if I was implementing that program. And again, I'm not trying to sound like a no at all. I probably am coming up way short on what it would be about the non-profit provider. I think it's important that we, I think it's important that we really drill down on that, that percentage and potentially open it up to other nonprofit providers. I think it's important that we really, I think it's important that we really, I think it's important that we really, I'm coming up way short on what it would take to actually implement a program like that. But, you know, basically investing in a Vanguard 529 account or whichever one you choose and then vetting the necessary applications. I don't think it's a $78,000 a year job. Once the money is put in the 529 accounts for 18 years. The only reporting required is just, you know, to drill into that a little bit further. Certainly I appreciate your stewardship. The one little clarification I want to make is that they're not a non-profit for first five. I certainly understand and I see your logic with the assignment of how much for the administrative costs, certainly, and we would certainly make that transparent and open, but I just want to make it clear that that's not a non-profit that they're a government agency. Again, that's why I'm thinking maybe that kind of request for proposals would help, but I'll be more nitpicky when the appropriate time comes. Thank you. But I do support this program to support us. So thanks. And then I think my last question might be a comment and just a general thought that I have. If we are going to end up reprogramming $10 million of ARPA funds, I'm not as supportive of just saying, Hey, let's give that to the boys and girls club. That's in my opinion way too much money to be giving away to anybody without any kind of a process. Or is this the best use of the money for organizations? Somebody brought up that there's a lot of other organizational requests. And I think that those need to be studied closely by the council. I would be supportive of making some form of a contribution to the B and G club to help them continue their fundraising efforts for what I do see as a meanwhile program. But you know, I wouldn't be supportive of doing $10 million today. The other thing that I'm thinking is that, you know, the one thing being on this council for five years has taught me is that about every six months we have a new crisis that requires money. And that's a long timeline. Sometimes it's 90 days. And if we don't have to commit this ARPA money until December, I think it was of 2024, I think it would probably really be wise of us to say, you know what, we're going to set five million of this aside if they're into our reserve or ear market for future uses, just to be ready for whatever those kind of public needs are in the next two years. I would be more supportive of that than anything else in terms of some of the other alternatives that I saw pop up. So I'll just air that thought out there for the council. And those are my questions. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Council member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. I'm feeling quite overwhelmed. There's a lot of information that has been presented on it. I very much appreciate further detail that we have received today and it had to come with a great deal of staff work to come up with these options of which there are many. I think that we have probably spent more time on these funds, these one time dollars. Then we do normally on an entire city budget. And we take at least a couple of days when we're dealing with priorities and budgets. And there's a, I know probably no one's going to want to hear this. There's a part of me that would like to dedicate. And I think that we have a lot of time. Half a day. To making decisions that are very, very important to some of these organizations. And these concepts. I have lots of questions. The. I'm in reviewing the presentation and then getting at times completely lost in the staff report because there's so much more to come up with. I don't know if you'll be there. But being able to come up with recommendations. Given the number of slides that were presented today. I'm just, I'm feeling. Conflicted. And it's hard for me to, it's, it's like what, what Jack just said. Ten million dollars for the boys and girls club. I have, I do have a problem with, with 10 million dollars. And I'm looking at a possibility. Have we considered the concept of a community center and a library and a boys and boys and girls club on the same site? Does the boys and girls club have to buy a site to put with their building and their, their, their programs on. Can they be, could they be combined? Has that, has that concept been floating? Is, is, is, is keeping them separate? Is that really necessary? Is it the best way to go forward? Could they combine, could they work together to, to create a, a center, a youth center that deal and a community center that deals with many aspects of the community, not unlike our Finley center, which grew into the, which also added the senior center ultimately, which was not as far as I know, not at the original plan. So I'm feeling, I'm just feeling overwhelmed with these, with these decisions at this time, especially given the amount of, of freedom that we have. And that's not, that two years can go by really fast. I understand that. But I am having a little difficulty in making what I consider, consider a fully informed decision on how to spend these really important one-time dollars that we have never had before. It just doesn't happen. This is, this is a rare and unique situation that I have to, I have to believe is going to require more time than I have and more energy and thoughtfulness and consideration that I have today. So, but I do have one question and this is, because it goes back to the conversation that we've had in the past and that had to do with the baby bonds. It's the one thing that I kind of zeroed in on. I'm still wondering how, how the money, and if I'm not mistaken, the 529 plan takes care of this. If I'm, if I'm, if my memory serves, that the investment of these dollars, given that they were not going to be given out until the recipient is of age and in, in going to college, how are they invested? How, how does that, how does, and this is just one, one of the many questions that I, that I developed in looking at these slides. How are those, how are those monies invested? And I do have another couple of questions, but could someone just tell me how, how that works, how the investments work, and how they grow over time to, to continue that program and to expand the program? Yeah, there's a statewide program called Scholar Share and they're all run California funds and the 529 are run through that program. And so they administer them at a statewide level. The intricacies of how they invest, I mean, it's kind of like retirement systems. I'm not quite sure, but, but it is part of the program that they have. I don't know, Alan. If you have more information. Yeah. So, I, uh, council member, I have a, I actually have a 529 plan for my daughter. Uh, it operates a lot like a mutual fund in that, uh, I set up, uh, the, uh, risk level that I wanted with it with the dollars that, that I initially invested in there and continued to invest in. And then, uh, um, so the way I would imagine this would go since it's a one-time investment in there, those dollars would go in and then the returns would just continue to move that forward and, and would either hopefully grow the amount. It just depends on what you set your risk factor out. So that's how it works with mine. I would imagine that it would be very similar to that. I appreciate that. And if she decided that she did not want to go to college, um, at the end of the day, what happens? Well, that's, that's the thing that the, the funds do need to be used for educational expense, expenses. However, you can transfer that to another person in the town. So, uh, so let's say, uh, you know, the, you know, she had a brother that, that decided that they were going to go. You could, uh, uh, I think it's through changing the beneficiary to have that go to that person. So in other words, that the high level of it is, it is transferable, can only be used for those types of expenses. So you couldn't roll it into any other type of a mutual fund. You couldn't just, you know, it needs to go within those types of expenditures, but you can transfer it within the family. And, and I don't mean to belabor this concept, but if a family with an only child, then child decides not to go to college and this money is sitting here. Does it go back to the parents or does it go back into the fund or what happens to the money? I mean, and maybe, maybe you can't answer that today. Um, this is part of what part of the, my concern is not having a full picture of, of some of these allotments. It is for all just a nuanced clarification. It is for all post-secondary education. So you do not have to go to college. You could go to trade school. You could go to a lot of different, um, post-secondary learning opportunities. And it not only applies to tuition, but also food and housing and all of those things that are required to support a person through that post-secondary period of their life, but it does require a post-secondary enrollment of something somewhere. That's helpful. Thank you very much. And then, um, regarding the down payment assistance program, um, person AA receive the family receive the, the family receives money for, for a down payment on a home. Um, is there any requirement that they keep that home for any period of time, or does it just become like any other, um, assistance where they, they buy the home, they got some assistance on the down payment. Um, two years later, uh, they move out of the area and they want to sell the home. Um, is there any requirement that they keep the home for any period of time or does it just become a grant? So the way we have structured, uh, similar loans in the past, and then also what I've learned from other surrounding communities is we would, uh, secure these with a data trust. So the funds would be secured against the property. They would be accruing interests. In the event the homeowner sells the property, they would repay the principal and accrued interest. And then that could be relent to another home buyer in Santa Rosa. We also, as part of our compliance process here in housing and community services, verify annual owner occupancy. So we want to make sure that the properties are actually being inhabited by the individuals that we lent the funds to. Okay. That's excellent. I'm pleased to hear that. Um, has there going back to the concept of the Rosen community center and the, the variety of services, not services, but programs that may be included in that community center. Has there been conversation about, um, co-joining, uh, several of these concepts, uh, to take advantage to kind of parlay these multimillion dollar investments from the city, uh, into a different model that, that, that I'm not seeing represented here today has, has, has that conversation taken place? In other words, so they, they thought about having the community center and the boys and girls club and the, um, the library, um, in a, in a, in one site as opposed to, um, two different sites, for instance, has the, has it, has it, has a conversation taken place about that, about that use, the, that kind of use of these millions. Council member, let me start. And then I see that, and I see Sakura and Jeff are also, uh, have also been talking about this. The initial conversations really in the partnerships have been between the city and the, and the library district that, that is, uh, that is the organization that we are working closest with to try to find them a home. Um, we've looked at a number of different sites as we've looked at the, uh, the city and the city council, uh, appraised of over the course of the last several months. Um, we feel that the partnership is a good one. And given the opportunity to combine all of those activities into a larger community center, uh, could, could be hugely beneficial, not only to the library, but to the staff that run the city operation as well as the community. We have not specifically reached out to the boys and girls club. Um, we've looked at a number of, uh, we've looked at a number of places that they would show interest, but it's all going to be conditioned upon the nature of the license agreement that we would enter into with them. That allows them to utilize the facility. Um, I think what Jeff is likely going to say, and I'll leave this to him to elaborate on is more than likely the city's programming would want to be, to take precedent and would likely utilize the majority of the facility and majority of the time, but I'll leave the programming aspects to Jeff to talk about how the city's programming would work. Um, and if I could just clarify one thing, um, the issue with the boys and girls club is they have purchased their land. They're looking to now build on that land. So I think they're further down the process. So this is a new concept that, um, was not, uh, a part of their initial, uh, boys and girls clubs initial conception. Sure. I appreciate that. Um, because it's kind of a little late in the game to be at that particular, that model. So I think so. That clarification. Good afternoon, Jeff to its interim deputy director for recreation. Um, and I think, you know, a little too late, but I would say not a little too late. Um, if we invest in it as, as a city, um, amenity, uh, city owned and operated amenity is, we can always look at who we're collaborating with and who we're working with. Um, to Jason's point, uh, I'm, I'm in recreation. Obviously I'd be interested in programming a recreation facility like that, but how we program that, um, when we own the facility is something that we then own how we program it. I can tell you from experience of other agreements where we have not been the owner. Um, the city usually ends up on the short end of that stick of a use agreement where, um, you know, we help to create gym space for schools and then we get used when they're not using it. And that's a Tuesday at 10 o'clock at night and we can't run our youth programs because they've been using it for all their youth sports and those types of things. So having a facility where, where we would be the primary user and then we can decide and not to change in five years, 10 years, 20 years. Uh, what that uses and how we're serving the community and who we partner with. Yeah. Thank you for that. It kind of supports my concern about drilling down into further into more information that helps me make a decision going in one direction or another. Um, I'll just ask this one last question because I know there are, we have other council members that have, I'm sure lots of questions. Um, the collaborative community outreach and the ongoing, I believe it's the 4.5 million that we would need to find on an annual basis after the initial. Uh, is it a couple of years? Um, correct me if I'm wrong. Alan, the, is that what it is? We would need to find additional funds that are not necessarily available that we don't have a source for at this time. Yeah. And I can speak directly to the funding part of it. I know Macaulay is, uh, Knows that program a lot. But better than I do, um, or at least the, the concept of it, but the way I said that it was a finite source of funds. This is, these are ARPA dollars, right? So ARPA dollars run out at, um, 20, 26 at the very latest, like 20, 24, uh, essentially. So, uh, if the program continues beyond the ARPA period, then that is where we would have to, um, uh, that's what we would have to find the additional source. And that, and that is one of those, those details, an important detail that concerns me is taking one time dollars that obligates us to the future. And, um, as great as a pro of a program as this is, um, to have in a couple of years or a few years to have a, I have to have a conversation about, well, the money's gone and, and we don't have it anymore. And then we, we lose a, you know, a real beneficial program because we can't afford it anymore. Um, that, that kind of conversation, that this kind of recommendation concerns me for that reason because there will be an expectation. I would expect that this, this program because of its importance would continue and future councils would have to be looking, um, and finding money that was the, that we in 2021 are committing them to, um, in the future. And that, that kind of commitment does concern me. Um, I'll stop there. And I can go on and on. I mean, there, again, there's, there's so much information here and so many really important vital decisions to be made. Um, I, I am frankly feeling a little overwhelmed. Can I just answer that question super quick. Um, so part of the, um, essentially 4.2, uh, that would be part of staff and operating budget. So part of that staff plan would be to have somebody who would help identify us, identify grant opportunities, right? So, um, that would be part of the mechanism is to find outside funding to keep it going because we do recognize that we don't want, we wouldn't want to put that, um, sort of responsibility on, on, uh, you know, on the city, because we have no idea what the budget will look like, um, by then, but that, that would be integrated in the plan is to find other outside resources to help, uh, keep it going. Thanks. We got like really appreciate that. Council member Fleming. Thank you, mayor. It is quite a lot of information to take in. And yet I feel like we've been sitting here for how many study sessions trying to get this money out the door. So, uh, it is a tension between trying to figure out how to do this thoughtfully and also how to do it expeditiously as, uh, we are sitting on a fair amount of money that, uh, while we, we probably should wait on some of it. There, I do have concerns about waiting on all of it because some of these things, you know, I was talking with, um, somebody who recently had a baby who told me that, uh, that he and his wife were looking at infant child care and had been looking for quite a while and we're hoping if they were lucky to get one day a week come the new year or April or some sometime in the spring. And, um, so my concern is that, that we don't, we don't wait too long to make sure that we solve some of our most pressing problems. There's things, there's these big visions pie in the sky and I'll save some of my comments for later. But what I did want to ask to that end about some of these things, we do have emergencies around infant care. And, um, I was curious to know if Ms. Delarosa or Ms. Shields or Ms. Tejas had done any analysis and provided us, we're able to provide us with anything that might speak to the equity impacts and the economic impacts that some of these initiatives might have relative to one another. Um, yeah, I can start with this. I'm sure Sakura has some additional information, but, um, this, uh, very issue is why we're trying to bundle some of the children and childcare support programs. Um, so, you know, it's really a three legged stool that we're trying to address its, um, accessibility and, um, affordability for the parents, the facilities, the actual structures that are needed, but it's also the wages and resources of the providers. So we're lacking in all three legs of the stool. Uh, and so, um, the Charter Facility Fund, which I think is one of the ones that we're hoping we'll just simply move forward, um, we'll address one piece of it. Um, but the, uh, Family Child Care, uh, Shared Services Alliance, um, this one, because it's home-based and it's really targeted, uh, to smaller home-based, usually minority-owned businesses is the area where we see the greatest potential for entry in not just infant-toddler childcare, which we have, uh, so little, uh, of, um, and it's in peril in part because during, uh, the pandemic, people have not put their infants in. And so, um, even those programs that we have are not seeing, um, the, uh, there's the slots that they have being taken. Um, and so the, the positions that do exist currently are in peril through the pandemic or as a result partly of that. Um, but what this would do is not just provide those infant-toddler care, um, uh, slots, but we're also looking for, um, alternative hour slots to accommodate the workforce that is not standard nine to five kind of, uh, thing or eight, seven to six, I guess is what it is these days. Um, so it provides the opportunity for swing shift and nighttime, um, uh, service providers for infant and childcare as well as, um, the older ages. Um, so that's one thing. Um, the other thing that we're seeing in some of the research that has, we've done just cursory research on guaranteed basic income, for example, is that, um, that income also supports childcare and the parent's ability to afford childcare and re-enter the workforce. And so, uh, again, in that bundling, I hope this is answering your question. Those types of programs, the things that you see in the Children's Child Care Support Program slide are the things that we're bundling to address that very question. Yeah, thank you. And I think therein lies the one-two punch between the mayor's, um, initiative around the, you know, universal basic income and my passion around this infrastructure. Um, Miss Shields, it looked like you were interested in commenting. Well, I was just going to share, and this is probably already no knowledge. And while we don't have specific city data, the data around who the pandemic has had the most impact on is clearly women. Women in the workforce have left in high numbers. We know that is in part to childcare and issues and other issues. And I think at, to strengthen race's point, we were looking at all sides of that equation, not simply just the slots, but also the economic development in qualified census tract areas, in areas that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic. Again, key components of the ARPA investment dollars are that they go to where people have been the hardest hit. And so the two-fold approach, really, we saw as a powerful opportunity to change the economic trajectory of families, like we're doing with the proposal for the guaranteed income and the children's savings fund. I mean, those are trajectory-changing investments, as is the small business ownership, not only having the slot, but having the businesses in parts of the community that have business scarcity, that are owned by members of the community. So that, again, multi-pronged approach, I mentioned the stool with all of those things, thinking about wages, thinking about childcare options, and again really honing in on, we heard from the Economic Development Board and Dr. Marlene Orozco, the power of building the economy in communities of color, particularly women of color, that that will have the greatest, it will have an incredible impact on the economic vitality of this region. Thank you. I do appreciate that. And I do have a question for staff and just for the Council to ponder, which is, as far as like a 24-hour facility, which some communities do have, and our Sonoma County is sorely lacking, which would benefit both women in the workforce, as well as men, in addition to employers who need people to work evenings and swing shifts and graveyard shifts, have we considered doing this macro or sort of monster Roseland Community Center and having a shell that we could contract with an operator to do various types of childcare? You know, something like a Finley, but that would also include the library, a childcare facility, you know, for 24 hours, but also after school care. So I'd be looking for something like that, potentially coming forward as a long-range investment in our most underserved. And frankly, it's not even about being underserved. These are the, this is the community where we have the greatest opportunity for growth and the greatest opportunity to see the people who can have the most to offer. And all that is really needed in this situation is the conditions to be appropriate and beneficial for those offerings to come forward. So I think that if we consider something like that, we would really be looking at a long term financial stability, not just for our families, but for our community. Thank you for your analysis. I do appreciate it. Any other questions? Council? Council Member Svettel. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Coupling, first with Rhys is some of the things that Council Member Tibbets brought up about the guaranteed basic income. It may just be another data point unless you have it now. What would the metrics for success be for this? You know, there's what needle are we trying to move that we can show this investment. Here's our return on that investment. I don't have the data points off the top of my head. I know that there were a number of things that were put into the Human Services Department's proposal to the Board of Supervisors. And I can share that proposal because it outlines a lot of the research and data that they've tracked nationwide. But I don't have it off the top of my head. Great. And that's the information I want. I mean, if we're trying to remove the poverty line, fewer people in poverty, whatever that is, that would be very helpful for me to support this idea. And I know, Alan, you had mentioned stipends and I know it was discussed at the 26th. Sorry, it wasn't there. I am supportive of the stipends for boards and commissions, except not just for childcare. Treat them all equally more of an inclusive policy. So that's just my feedback on that one. Regarding the childcare support programs, one of the things that I don't want to say missing for me, but maybe another opportunity, something that I know of an existing program similar to a parent choice vouchers. So we heard from another council member about some people can only afford one day of childcare a month. What if we modeled a program that is currently in existence now where, again, it was a parent choice voucher. You've got the voucher to find the childcare provider of your choice at the time that's convenient for you. I know we were talking a little bit about, I'm working graveyard anywhere in the city. It's tough to find childcare, especially if we're only doing these brick and mortar things, which are great. But I just think a more comprehensive approach might include a parent choice voucher program that I believe is currently in existence. Is there, have you heard about that, Riza? Or has that been considered? We considered it for this, it would be difficult. What we're looking to do is from more of a, as an entry point to reduce the cost to the provider, so the provider could pass those savings on. So that's one way we were looking at it. We were not able to consider a voucher program for this at this time, but it continues to be in conversation because there are additional funding sources that are being discussed at the federal and state level. And we might have some opportunities to sort of integrate that program in the next phase. Thank you. Because I would be very supportive of that type of program. And I also really appreciate the partnership with different organizations, specifically in the childcare area. And I really ask that Four Seas is engaged in every conversation. Because I know First Five has got a role in the community. We're partnering with them as is Four Seas. And we partner with them. I would just ask again, making sure that we're not missing any other perspectives. And I think Four Seas might have a little bit better parent feedback about what their clients needs are. So we're going to say something. Okay. Well, no, I was just going to say they are, they have been historically part of the conversation in, in putting this together. We were focused on the, our ability to work with, with First Five for the implementation of the program. And we've frankly, and we actually mentioned this to Melanie Dodson, that we have, we're modeling some of the programs that we're proposing off of the programs that she runs. And so it would be, what's the word I'm looking for? Symbiotic to, they will be, continue to be a part of the conversation. Should it get funded? Great. Because my expectation would be complimentary programs. We're not duplicating what someone else is doing. So efficiency and effectiveness. And I know we're all in front of our minds. And with some of the council member Sawyer's comments, specifically about baby bonds, I share them as, what's the return of investment to Santa Rosas? And just as a thought, I'm all for this education, secondary education. If we actually put that as the geographic thing, whether it be scholarships to any local post secondary education opportunity from anyone currently living in a qualified census track, that might be for me a little bit easier way rather than give someone from the baby bond they move away. And I don't know how the state of California does that. But I'm imagining some of it needs to stay in the state of California. They've got a little bit bigger territory than us in Santa Rosa, but I would be very supportive of something like that for that post secondary education anywhere in our region. So just some feedback on that. And lastly, one of the things that I'm really was looking for regarding all this funding opportunities are transformational investments. And the one that really stands out for me is the transformational investment is the Roseland Community Center. We could really move the needle on so many different areas with that. So very supportive of it. And the collaboration is outlined in this presentation, getting a lot of those key stakeholders there. I'd be very supportive of that. Thanks. Council Member Alvarez. Thank you, Mayor. First and foremost, I want to thank staff for taking account the lack of services and how ARPA funds can help lift the most marginalized community of Santa Rosa. So thank you. In regards to the councilman tidbits comment regarding the 100,000 additional to youth attorney, I think that's very forward thinking and I would absolutely support such an investment. In regards to councilman Sawyer's comment regarding how much information we have to process and how important it is to achieve the most from our investments, I definitely see why that is so important. And saying so, it's because I'm seeing the Southwest community stepping forward, whether it be the library, whether it be the speaking of the need for a community center. And I would love to see the community get the most out of that investment. But it's obvious to me that, well, as I know that we're committed to seeing things through an equity lens, that whether it be the community center, a youth organization such as the Boys and Girls, for as an example, and community-based childcare, those are definitely services that I know that the community needs. We're looking at working closely with the Sonoma County Library. I see sites that can serve more than just district one. I know that there's potential sites that are mere 100 feet away from district five, our mayor's district, or from the Jota Redota Trail, district seven. But I guess ultimately what I'm trying to say is, this is a great opportunity for us to produce an upstream investment and I would love to hear people phone in and call in and state their position and their wants as I know that we've been receiving the letters from our community, stating the wants and needs of the community. And I can't wait to hear from them. But in short, I definitely do appreciate staff for having recognized the need of Southwest Santa Rosa. Thank you. Vice Mayor, any questions? Nope. All right, we'll go to public comment on this item. If you're interested, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. Or go ahead and approach the microphone. We'll start here in the chambers. Make sure to get right up against the microphone so that way people can hear you. Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for your time. My name is Emmanuel Morales. I actually grew up in Rosland and I've devoted my professional career to working with youth in Rosland. I'm here to voice the demands of the Rosland community with me. I have the signatures we are actively collecting to demand that the city, the Central City Council reject the proposed cannabis dispensary at the former RUP campus. That's a 100 to last for road. And so, sir, we're actually talking about a specific item on use of one-time funds. There'll be an opportunity to talk about non-agenda items later in the meeting. So I'll ask you to hold your comments until then. I understand. But this is related to the ARPA funds, the allocation of the funds. Okay, go ahead. Thank you. So yeah, so I have with me the signatures that we've been actively collecting for the former to reject the cannabis dispensary at the former RUP campus and instead fund the creation of a permanent public library, a multicultural center, community center, or resiliency hub. Your staff reporter states that you have earmarked $10 million to go towards a community library in Roseland. We know that the funds are your disposal and the students and the community urge you to do Roseland justice by meeting these long-awaited demands. We don't need another dispensary in Roseland, at least not at the former learning center for young people. We need resources for the community, not further gentrification. We want Roseland for Roseland, Roseland for Roseland. With that, I forfeit my time and I thank you for your time and I'll also urge your consideration. All right, thank you so much. Let's go ahead and see on Zoom. We'll start with Angie, followed by Gregory. Thank you. My name is Angie Dillon Shore. I'm the executive director of First Five Sonoma County. First, I want to emphasize how critical it is that the county spend the ARPA funds through an authentic equity lens in a manner that addresses the disparate negative impacts of the pandemic on communities of color and historically disenfranchised communities. And as you know, this is a federal requirement for expending ARPA funds and, in my opinion, a moral imperative. Although these are one-time funds, the city does have an awesome opportunity to strategically direct the ARPA funding to both mitigate the impacts of the pandemic and lay the foundation for a more equitable future for individuals, families, and children in the city of Santa Rosa by leveraging other funding streams, including the ARPA funds coming to the county and leveraging the existing infrastructure of local nonprofit orgs who are our trusted providers in Roseland and other neighborhoods, the city can maximize the ARPA funds to get the greatest possible impact into the future long after the ARPA dollars are spent. Specifically, I strongly support the proposals to build on the city's upstream investments in children and childcare. You're all well aware of the impact of the pandemic on the childcare industry, a sector that's been historically undervalued, primarily operated by women, especially women of color, and thus has always been chronically underfunded. I encourage the council to act on all of the excellent staff recommendations to dedicate funds for childcare facilities and to invest in building and strengthening culturally responsive small family childcare businesses for infants and toddlers. These are all critical needs for working families and our local economy just cannot recover from the impacts of COVID-19 without deeper investments in the childcare sector. As you heard, there is the recommendation to fund 529 Child Savings Accounts for 3,000, two, three, and four-year-olds. This is an amazing opportunity for the council to literally shift the trajectory for many young children, and research is bearing this out not only to increase their readiness to succeed in school based on changed parental expectations for the future, but assuring that they have the opportunity to enroll in post-secondary education. This is the most powerful tool to disrupt intergenerational poverty that I'm aware of. I want to also express my support for dedicating 10 million for the Rosalind Community Center, ensuring that that process of selecting providers reflects the voices of the Rosalind community. This has been an ongoing, unfulfilled promise and the need for the Rosalind community for many years. A culturally reflective, safe neighborhood-based space where community groups and families can gather, convene, celebrate, educate, empower, and connect residents with the resources that they themselves have prioritized and strengthened an overall sense of belonging. Thanks so much for listening, and thank you for your public service. Thank you, Angie. We'll go to Gregory, followed by Peter. Thank you, Mayor and members of the council. I am honored to double down. My name is Gregory Farron. I'm honored to double down on what Angie just said. As some of you know, I serve on the county community board, which has spent the month and a half, almost two months trying to figure out how to spend the county money. And I honestly, in the beginning I didn't think that none of you ever read the bill or the final rule from the Treasury. It's all about trying to figure out remedying the impact of the coronavirus and providing equity. And I didn't think you used that kind of a filter on most of the things that you're trying to fund. Now, having said that, I want to raise above all the individual requests. I have served on the board and on the board of most of the agencies asking for money. So I am not here to say that any of them deserve the money. What I am here to say is that you're going to miss a big opportunity if you don't try to collaborate with the county. The county has a lot more money than you've got and is trying to do some of the same things you're trying to do and is heavily emphasizing data and evaluation and all the things you want to do. So I admire you're getting out in front of this, but I think you ought to wait a little bit and try to figure out a way of getting your staff and their staff to work together to include the community as much as possible. Even more than right now we're going to do a whole lot more and we're going to try and make it so that this is a different way of spending money, a different approach to how you decide to do it and that we change the institutions that we in the county and you at the city have to make decisions about equity and about trying to help in my mind alleviate some issues of poverty, issues of inequity and if you don't use that in ARPA, you're going to miss out entirely on Build Back Better because it's got four times as much money and it's coming down the chute and if you don't get good at being able to spend the ARPA money in ways to do what you're trying to do, then when Build Back Better comes down and says to the county especially, here's a whole lot more money, you're going to be left out and I don't want my city left out. All right, thank you very much. I yield the rest of my time. I agree. We'll go to Peter, followed by April. Good afternoon, council. My name is Peter Rumble from the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce and I want to thank you for taking up such important issues in your decision making process on ARPA and other resources. There are some really amazing investment opportunities before you today and as you go forward and develop all of the program details. We all hear from the community, be it from our friends and from our neighbors and constituents in your case from members and small businesses in mine and I'm sure we all hear consistent themes over the last couple years and that people are struggling through the pandemic and in many cases working desperately to keep their personal dreams alive and a lifetime of work alive and my colleagues from the chamber have provided input to date and we've provided letters and I certainly echo those general themes today about the desperate need of supporting our small business community to further ease the process of building housing and to support innovative investments in kids and child care capacity and in child care quality and I want to call out something today one specific proposal that we haven't spoken to directly and not at the expense of or as opposed to some of the other quality areas investment but in addition to them and one of the reasons for calling it out now is that it's among the few proposals that isn't time limited and it's among the few that have proven generational impact and that's the development of a down payment assistance program that's focused on connecting individuals and families in our community who have been historically disconnected from home ownership opportunities and access to housing capital the development of such a program both begins to correct and justices as well as sets up current and future generations with one of the strongest financial safety nets we have in our country and just as much as we continue to urge you to provide support for small businesses for kids and our child care community for housing development we urge you to help families stay in Santa Rosa and build generational wealth for their own benefit as well as our collective benefit so I really encourage you to move forward with that program and look forward to seeing the details at a future meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you Peter we'll go to April followed by Daisy. Hello everyone good afternoon I just want to say thank you for having this meeting and for being open and present to hearing public comment I do have a question my question is if the presentation that was given earlier if that is available to the public can you provide how we can access that presentation I also want to add to my comment that the fact that Emmanuel spoke earlier about the cannabis dispensary in Roseland I think you know we're talking about being equitable and we're talking about getting community input and it's important that we practice what we're talking about so making space for people to give their comments in a respectful way is very important and I would like to add that if this these ARPA funds are focused on doing that and we have to listen to what the public says the public is saying they do not want this dispensary and actually what Roseland has been saying since 2016 according to the Roseland final specific report is that they do want a public library they want a cultural center and in 2016 in that report the library was estimated at 5 million a cultural center was estimated at 5 million so that is definitely within the reach of the reprogrammed funds and it's something that can be done I also want to add that it is important to take in community input I think if more time was spent gathering this input these funds would actually find a way to reach the needs the actual needs that the community has in more creative ways for example there are things such as a TANDA that already exists amongst the community and that is a form of sharing funds over a course of time it's very similar to the idea of time banking except it's done with funds there's also the concept of the YANGES which is a micro business model and it's something that is very relative to the community of Roseland and all they need is just a space so I would just suggest before making any final decisions set aside some more time to be able to approach the community in an equitable and respectful way to listen to their input thank you very much Thank you April we'll move on to Daisy Yes Good afternoon my name is Daisy I'm a resident of Roseland and I'm active in the community of Roseland to start I totally reject that the dispensary in the community of Roseland since Roseland needs to be culturally educational I think the ARPA funds should be used to help the COVID-19 impacts and that means that our children don't need a place as a dispensary but a community center what has been mentioned as children's care programs educational programs cultural programs as a mother of teenagers my daughters graduated from Roseland University and that building would be a perfect place for a community center if you're looking for a place to leave that building as a representative to go ahead I know this is a very difficult challenge but you as representatives should be doing is looking for samples in our community to find out what are the needs that we really have as a COVID impact we've been emotionally damaged and we need our children to leave the pressures they have and the ways they would have the assets in forms and programs they don't need to be in a center of a dispensary so close please listen to the community of Roseland and do a survey with the people who live in Roseland and that way you can decide how to use those funds you have to live within the community of Roseland to know what are the needs that we really have thank you Charles would you please be able to restate that in Spanish or in English thank you good afternoon my name is Daisy I'm a resident of Roseland and as an active MUNDER in the community I just wanted to begin by saying that I reject completely the idea of the dispensary the community needs to be one of education and educational programs and I think that ARPA should be used in the areas that are impacted most by COVID-19 the kids do not need a dispensary nearby but instead a community center something that contains everything that was spoken of already including educational programs childcare programs cultural programs and as a MUNDER of the teenagers my daughters graduated from went to Roseland University Prep and I think that would be a perfect location for community center if you are looking for one I think that we need to make this as a representative as representatives for our communities I think it is up to you guys to create a place for our kids to get ahead in life and while I do understand this is a difficult challenge you as representatives should look for information from the community feedback from the community polls to know what we really do need and to see what kind of emotional impact COVID has had we need help getting our kids out of the depression that they are in and one of these ways is through programs we do not need a dispensary so close by and it is important to listen to Roseland to see how we really feel you should use the funds and I think that you must live in Roseland to truly understand the real needs of the community Thank you so much Charles Rafael Thank you my name is Rafael Vasquez I am here to represent MECHA the S.R.J.C. that is MECHA of Santa Rosa Junior College and we are here 100% to support the movement to stop the cannabis center that nobody asked for in the Roseland area it is a job of the city the community to provide for the community and as a result of that the community has been asking for over a decade now for a cultural center among the many plans that have existed for the last about 10 to 15 years in the Roseland area is where now they are building where the all Albertsons center used to be shopping center used to be Santa Rosa Junior College was to have some classroom space and then there was supposed to be an opportunity in the space for a cultural center and when it was no longer convenient for the county that idea went away Santa Rosa Junior College now is located at the end of Sebastopol Road and there is almost nothing available for the community of Roseland to call their own in the Latinx community and I come to you now as a professor in the Latinx community the most important thing that we have is a cultural center what we need is a cultural center where we can educate our children about language and cultural history if we don't have that then we are going to end up with children that unfortunately end up in the streets because they don't know their culture and their language and their history as a result of that a cultural center is what is necessary now more than ever in order to be able to be healthy and welcome in space for a community where we can teach anything from cultural dances and again language training in multiple indigenous languages that is what is needed when we talk about fires now in Sonoma County one of the things that is necessary is a cultural center where people can go and receive support in their own language which at this moment the county and the city of Santa Rosa have failed since 2017 to this community with that it is important to again remember that the area of Roseland which is now part of the city of Santa Rosa never asked for a cannabis dispensary that is going to benefit outsiders economically many of the individuals in this community have been found guilty of possession of body one in the past now that it is legal outsiders are coming in to extract the funding that this community doesn't even have so once again no to the cannabis center yes to the cultural center thank you for your time thank you professor the last hand that I see let's go on to pre-recorded voicemail public comments 3.2 Duane DeWitt from Roseland regarding one-time monies it would be best a few folks would reach out to the community and have some community forums in person where the taxpayers could talk about what would help their neighborhoods best having a top-down bureaucrat driven approach is going to end up having that money go towards things the bureaucrats like but not necessarily making the neighborhoods better it's especially important for disadvantaged underserved and overburdened areas such as Roseland that funds go in to perhaps just providing the basics sidewalks, curbs and gutters on land that was supposed to have been improved 25 years ago next to Southwest Community Park with the rebuilding of Hearn Avenue many other streets South Avenue Boyd they need help too we need you folks to look to where the people want to see this funding spent not just the bureaucrats thank you for your time Hi this is Jennifer Weiss the CEO of Boys and Girls Clubs of Sonoma Marin calling to comment on item 3.2 one-time monies I just wanted to really urge you to support our project to bring a full-scale child care center to Roseland it'll be the only one of its kind and we've got thousands of kids outside with their nose on the glass waiting to get into the Boys and Girls Club and we will be able to help their parents go to work to make life better for their families but we'll also be able to bring hope and opportunity and a bright future to those kids and we all know that if we get to do that we all in Sonoma County and Santa Rosa specifically will be better off for that this couldn't be a better use for the ARPA funds in our opinion if you give us 10 million dollars we will turn it into many many millions of dollars in prosperity for the whole community thank you for your consideration bye bye I'm calling about the 3.2 one-time monies I'm calling to urge the council to support fully funding the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with the ARPA funds it's been a very hard year for this community who lacks support and the Boys and Girls Club will absolutely help kids thrive I'm a parent and I know how hard it is to find child care in Santa Rosa with 10 million dollars will change thousands of lives over a generation and this is exactly what ARP monies are for, please invest in it Hello, my name is Corny Beaman and I'm calling in regards to item number 3.2 one-time monies I live in Santa Rosa and I am a parent of kids that go to Santa Rosa City Schools and I am urging the city council to please please please fully fund the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with the ARPA funds this would mean so much to my kids and the kids in our community we would really really really appreciate it thank you so much Hello, my name is Isabella and I live in the Santa Rosa well actually in the city of Santa Rosa not just the Santa Rosa area I'm calling to comment on item 3.2 one-time monies I'm calling to urge the council to support fully funding the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with ARPA funds it's been made very evident this has been a very hard year for those in our community who lack support and need help finding child care and the Boys and Girls Club will provide that support for them the Boys and Girls Club is this spot where kids can thrive and this 10 million will change the lives of thousands of kids in the Roseland area over the course of a generation this is exactly what ARPA monies are intended for and I urge you to invest in our children and in our future thank you very much Hello, my name is Dana McCann and I live in Santa Rosa and I'm calling to comment on the 3.2 one-time monies I'm calling to urge the council to support fully funded the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with the ARPA funds as you guys know that this has been a very tough year and I do find quality care and as a single parent I can only imagine that there's a large population of us that need this clubhouse so please go ahead and support the Boys and Girls Club and the Roseland kids, thank you My name is Zuleisha Morales I live in Santa Rosa and I'm calling to comment on item 3.2 on time monies I'm calling to urge the council to support fully funding the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with ARPA funds I am a parent in Santa Rosa and I also have looked for after school for a while and I know that our kids really need it called the Hi, my name is Katie and I live in Santa Rosa I'm calling to comment on item 3.2 one-time monies I'm calling to urge the council to support fully funding the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club ARPA funds This has been a very, very hard year for those in our community who lack support and the Boys and Girls Club will absolutely help kids thrive This 10 million will change thousands of lives over a generation This is exactly what ARPA monies are for Please invest in our kids Thank you Hi, my name is Grace Amaral and I live in Santa Rosa I'm calling to comment on item 3.2 one-time monies I'm calling to urge the council to support fully funding the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with the ARPA funds This has been a very hard year for those in our community who lack support and the Boys and Girls Club will absolutely help the kids thrive This 10 million will change thousands of lives over a generation This is exactly what our community needs and what these monies are meant for Please invest in the children Hello, my name is Frankie Montes and I live here in Santa Rosa, California I'm calling to comment on item action item 3.2 one-time monies and I'm calling to urge the council to fully funding the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with ARPA funds I've lived here in this community for a long time and I know the Boys and Girls Club does amazing work to fund and keep our kids in after-school programs learning and thriving Please invest in them This is Santa Rosa ARPA funds I urge the council to support funding the Roseland Boys and Girls Club This project is important to me because I was once a child in need of an environment after school in the Roseland area Luckily I was able to attend Shepard Elementary Boys and Girls Club and Roseland Accelerated Middle School Boys and Girls Club which these clubs allowed me to have the opportunity to build a greater future for myself As a former foster care youth word of the court and a low income Roseland community member the odds of a greater future were against me Boys and Girls Club Providing me with the skills, support and comfort I needed in order to discover my full potential Easy to say I would not be here without the Roseland Club I grew up in As a former struggling adolescent to a now after-school program director at Boys and Girls Club I cannot thank Boys and Girls Club enough for everything they have taught me along the years With this in mind I was a few Roseland members who was privileged enough to receive the benefits Boys and Girls Club brings to many other kids I know without a doubt this new child care center in Roseland will allow every child to have the same opportunity as I myself did Thank you for your time Hi, my name is Katrina Durkey and I work in Santa Rosa I'm calling to comment on item 3.2 one-time moneys I'm calling to urge the council to support fully funding the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with ARPA funds This has been a very hard year for those in our community who lack support and a Boys and Girls Club will absolutely help kids thrive This 10 million will change thousands of lives over a generation and this is exactly what ARPA moneys are for Please help us and help invest in kids Thank you so much Hi there, my name is Jason Weiss and I work in Santa Rosa and specifically work in the Roseland area as well and I'm just calling to comment on item 3.2 one-time moneys and just calling in support of and hopefully urging the council to fully support the funding of the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with ARPA funds As we all know this has been a challenging year but it's always been a challenging year for people living in the Roseland area and I think the Boys and Girls Club facility and location will be a much needed resource in the community that has had a lack of resources for many years and the kids deserve it the families deserve it and the community deserves it So once again, in full support of the Roseland Boys and Girls Club being a recipient of ARPA funds Thank you. I'm leaving a comment on the non-agenda item related to Santa Rosa ARPA funds I urge the council to support funding the Roseland Boys and Girls Club When I had nowhere to go after school the Roseland Village was always an option It was the place where I found most at home and I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way Thank you. My name is Diana and I live in Santa Rosa I'm calling to comment on item 3.2 I'm calling to urge the council to support funding the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with ARPA funds This has been a very hard year for those in our community who like support and the Boys and Girls Club will absolutely help kids thrive This 10 million will change thousands of lives over a generation This is exactly what ARPA monies are for Please invest in the kids Thank you. I am calling regarding the funding of ARPA monies and I am for those monies going to Boys and Girls Clubs Sonoma Marin and their Roseland campaign project that they have going on to build a new facility a new club in the Roseland community which for so many in that community is needed and lacks so much support and to be able to have the money to be able to build this new club is exactly where those monies should go in full support of that as a Santa Rosa resident and helping that the city council passes to approve this funding and be able to allow so many lives to be changed and just to be able to support especially after a year where so many people lost their jobs in child care and so many families didn't have anywhere for their kids to go and to be able to build a new facility where kids have a safe place to learn and grow would be absolutely perfect use of the monies so definitely in for that project and hopefully that will get passed thank you, bye Hi, my name is Abby and I live in Santa Rosa I'm calling to comment on the 3.2 one-time monies and I'm calling because I urge the council to support the Roseland Boys and Girls Club with the ARPA son I think throughout COVID it's been really hard on the community in Santa Rosa as a whole but especially Roseland and the money would benefit the kids so much by giving them the opportunity to have support after school and just overall having support in general and it would be amazing to give these struggling families that opportunity thank you so much Hi, my name is Sandra and I live in Santa Rosa I'm calling to comment on the article 3.2 one-time monies I'm calling to advise that they support the funding complete of the new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with ARPA funds it's been a very difficult year for families in our community and a club would absolutely help the kids to prosper ahead that's why I'm calling to comment on the article 3.2 one-time monies I'm calling to advise that you support the complete funding of a new Roseland Boys and Girls Club with ARPA funds this has been a very difficult year for families and families and families and families and families This has been a very difficult year for families in our community and the club would absolutely help the children prosper moving forward. Those 10 million dollars would change thousands of lives throughout a generation. This is exactly what the funds are for invest in the children. Thank you. Evelyn and I live in Santa Rosa. I'm calling to comment on item 3.0 one time monies and I'm calling to urge the council to support fully founded for the new rules and boys and girls with ARPA sound. I believe this Roslyn community will be really helpful for everyone as boys and girls have already provided me and my kids support safety and I feel really safe knowing that my kids are boys and girls from after school and having that opportunity to help me. To an early for more people and within a bit with a bigger facility, it will be a really awesome thing to have. Thank you. Hi, my name is Bonnie and I live in Santa Rosa. I'm just calling to comment on item 3.2 one time monies. I'm going to urge the council to support fully funding the new Roslyn boys and girls club with ARPA funds. This has been a very hard year for these in our community to lack support and the boys and girls club will absolutely help kids drive. This 10 million will change thousands of lives over a generation. This is exactly what ARPA monies are for. Please invest in the kids. Thank you. Hello, my name is Anne Adelman and I'm living in common on a non-agenda ARP fund. I urge the council to support the findings of the Roslyn boys and girls club and these are the reasons why. My child has been a part of the boys and girls club for two years now and one of the things that I really enjoy about the program is that he gets extra support with his homework and also enriching activities are provided at the club such as sports, arts, and the opportunity to socialize with other children. It's important. Your support is important. It's very important to the community as well as a teacher of the Roslyn district. I have students that are part of the program and it's great to know that when they are there, they're able to get support with their homework with extracurricular activities. And they also get different life skills and social skills. I also feel that it's important to the community such as parents. Parents benefit from the program. There's a lot of parents who work late at night or in the evenings and they rely on the boys and girls clubs for these reasons. Parents know that their children are in a safe environment. Overall, the Roslyn community will benefit from having a center in which our young kids will have a place to learn, make friends and be somewhere so well at not in school. Please support our neighborhood by funding this club. Hi, I'm calling to comment on item 3.2 one time money. And my name is Danny and I'm calling to just call in support of the Roslyn boys and girls club project with the ARPA funds. As someone with a young child, I know how difficult finding childcare can be. And I just think it's a major hurdle for getting people back to their workforce and setting people up for success to be able to contribute to their community and provide for their families. And I think the boys and girls club does a great job of making that possible for families. And that's really what I think funds like this should be used for is for uplifting the community and building a nice community building. Thank you. Comment on a non agenda item related to Santa Rosa ARPA funds. I urge that council to support funding to Roslyn boys and girls club. Here is why my kids have gone to Roslyn to the Roslyn club for five years. My name is Christian and I live in Santa Rosa. I'm calling to comment on item 3.2 one time money. I'm calling to urge the council to support fully funding the new Roslyn boys and girls club with ARPA funds. This has been a very hard year for those in our community who lack support and a boys and girls club will absolutely help kids thrive. This 10 million will change thousands of lives over a generation is exactly what ARPA monies are for. Please invest in kids. Hi my name is Scott and I live in Santa Rosa. I'm calling to comment on item 3.2 one time money. I'm calling to urge the council to support fully funding the new Roslyn boys and girls club with ARPA funds. This has been a very hard year for those in our community who lack support and boys and girls club will absolutely help kids thrive. This 10 million dollars will change thousands of our lives over a generation. This is exactly what ARPA monies are for. Please invest in kids. Hi my name is Jamie and I live in Santa Rosa. I'm calling to comment on the 3.2 one time money. I'm calling to urge you to the council to support fully funding the new Roslyn boys and girls club with ARPA funds. And this has been a very hard year for this community who lack support and the boys and girls clubs will absolutely help those kids thrive. This 10 million dollars will change thousands of lives over a generation. This is exactly what ARPA monies are for. Please invest in our kids. They mean the world and I know that having the opportunity to be in a new club and have opportunities that aren't usually offered to them would be amazing. Thank you. Hi my name is David Busey and I live in Santa Rosa and I'm calling about agenda item 3.2 one time monies. I am calling to plea with the council to fully support funding the new boys and girls club in Roslyn with ARPA funds. I've been involved in this organization for quite some time and certainly recognize how much need we have in our community in particular in the Roslyn community. And I think this year has been hard for many but particularly those who don't have a boys and girls club and who would thrive in this environment. This money will truly change the lives of so many of those in need and that's what we need now and that's what the money is for. So please, please invest in our kids and the boys and girls club in Roslyn. Thank you. My name is Carly and I've lived in the Roslyn area my entire life. I'm calling to comment on item 3.2 one time monies. I'm calling to urge the council to support fully funding the new Roslyn boys and girls club with ARPA funds. I'm a parent in the Roslyn district and have struggled to find childcare in Santa Rosa for many years. This Roslyn based community center, this club is going to help families like mine, which you know is a priority for the city. Please find the boys and girls club and help Roslyn kids. It's going to mean a lot to them and we just know it. Thank you. Hi, my name is Katie Welch and I'm calling to comment on 3.2 one time monies. I'm calling because boys and girls club is such a valuable experience for our kids. Any kind of childcare in Sonoma County right now is so needed. There are so many families struggling and I know firsthand from talking with many, many parents, including myself as a parent. If we didn't have boys and girls club, I don't know what we would do. And we need to make this available to as many people as possible as fast as we can. If there's any hesitation, please just go ahead and vote to allow childcare in general. Thank you so much. I do have a lot of members that much of boys and girls but any support we can do for working families right now, please we're counting on you to make it happen. Thank you so much. That concludes voice message public comments. All right. Thank you so much. I'll go ahead and bring it back. for us what kind of direction coming out of council today would be helpful as we move this forward and what the timeline looks like from here. Mayor Rogers I'd be happy to take a first stab at that. I guess the first question that we'd like you to address is are you comfortable with slides four and five the PG&E settlement funds programs and the ARPA programs slides with the programs that are shaded in green are you comfortable with us moving forward with those programs and by moving forward what I mean is we would bring those back in a future agenda item and recommend appropriation of the funding for those programs and Alan's put up the PG&E settlement program slides and so those are the green shaded ones at the top area of the slide similarly we've recommended some programs under the ARPA program shown on this slide and we would like to know if you're comfortable in us moving to the next step in in returning with a follow-up agenda item to appropriate those funds. You'll also note that on one of the PG&E slides I believe the Asawa fountain is recommended for funding. We have an agenda item on tonight's agenda to move forward with that contract since there's some timing related to the cost of the bronzing for the project and getting it completed in time to be installed with the other work on the fountain. So that's the first question. Um the second is that uh under the PG&E settlement funds we've identified reprogramming opportunities for the Mendocino Avenue South Santa Rosa specific plan project the Rosalind Creek Park project and the board and committee stipend programs. We've suggested that those could be applied to the down payment assistance program and a revolving loan fund in the amount of uh I think it was two million or 2.1 million. We'd like feedback on whether you agree with that option and recommendation and if so we would move forward with that. The part where I think we have much less clarity is on the reprogramming of the ARPA funds. That totals approximately 10 million dollars. Staff has outlined a number of different approaches and proposals as has the community um that far out the total the 10 million dollars available and so if you can just give us some collective guidance uh as to which way or what process you want to pursue to determine how to allocate that final 10 million dollars that would be helpful tonight as well. All right thank you Mr. City Manager um so I'll actually kick things off on this one uh and and I hear the concern from from some council members about uh wanting more information wanting more data wanting to understand better the process uh what I would just say is that this is our fourth study session and we know who is impacted by the pandemic and we know how we can make a difference in the community that we serve based on not just this conversation but every year's conversation we have around uh Santa Rosa's biggest issues so I'm I'm going to ask council try to if you can get to a place on some of this where we can get to yes so that staff can start working on those specifics um because even if it's for example the targeted income project uh giving staff an opportunity to start crafting that policy to bring back to us is going to take time and the intent of the ARPA funds is to have an immediate impact in your community addressing the issues around the pandemic so that's going to be sort of what you're going to hear from me uh starting with the PGD settlement funds I am supportive of everything that's in green uh that does leave room then within those funds for us to do the down payment assistance program uh with obviously some of the the specifics coming back uh and I would prefer to have the down payment assistance come from the PG&E funds as opposed to ARPA funds for the reason that was stated last time and was confirmed again this time uh by Allen that if it is intended to be a revolving fund and I think that that is how we should have it then that needs to be from PG&E as opposed to ARPA because at the end of the ARPA cycle four years in we'd have to give that money back and so I think creating that space with those yellow programs that you have at the bottom of slide four um creates more than two million dollars worth of room for us to be able to do the down payment assistance program I also want to make sure whether it's from some ARPA sourcing or from some PGD sourcing that we do still have that fifth year for vegetation management and I know that I've been harping on it a little bit but uh I think that everybody has expressed an interest in making sure that the community feels safe uh going into every fire season from here on out uh and I would not want to see us short change our vegetation management program and our uh five-year plan around wildfire preparedness by not funding the fifth year so I want to make sure that that's included as well moving on to page five with the ARPA programs I am supportive of everything that's that's in green I'm supportive of the secure family fund and the baby bonds and I do think that the fiber backbone and the COVID the portion of the COVID testing that we can can be repurposed for other more immediate and impactful needs across our city um the child care facility fund I've been very supportive of and I do like this conversation uh around uh enhancing the program and doing partnerships the family child care shared services alliance I would also just ask that we make sure that we are working hand in hand with four C's who have been doing this work through the pandemic and have innovative programs that are similar to what is being proposed here I don't want them to just be symbiotic I want them to actually be enhancing one another and so I'd ask that we make sure that they are a um listed or named partner for that program for us um one of the things that I brought up last time and I think that the council needs to even if we don't end up repurposing or determining tonight how we're going to repurpose uh this potentially 10 million I think one of the things that we need to keep in the back of our minds uh and have in the discussion is the investment in our infrastructure that we have so long talked about and in particular I'm talking about our parking district as we did negotiations with the county one of the things that we agreed to do was to fund some of the parking assets or make available some of those parking assets for free for three years the council also talked about how that would inevitably mean that we were underperforming that asset that protect perhaps we would be discussing backfilling those funds with some of our economic development dollars or some of our ARPA funds we also will be hearing a request here later this year as the free parking downtown that we have previously assigned runs out and talking with business owners downtown the pandemic is obviously not over and they're going to be coming back to us with a request to continue our parking uh alleviation if we'll call it that the free parking in the garages particularly at night and on the weekends to try to support them economically I think that the council should continue to consider whether to set aside some of that 10 million in room that we've made with ARPA to be able to support economic development with those businesses through the parking district while also not losing ground on the infrastructure that we need long term in the parking department we also have talked about programming throughout our community in roseland in downtown giving people a reason to get together safely and act as that economic driver I think we need to continue to have that conversation as well and then absent that we know what our priorities are in this community when we talk with an equity lens and when we talk where the need is I am absolutely supportive of us moving forward with some of the additional funds and perhaps not all 10 million given that there's some other priorities as well but I do think that the the council needs to walk its talk and I'm supportive of a community center in roseland that concept that staff is bringing forward particularly if there's partnerships to be had there with the library with the boys and girls club with other organizations that are doing good work in that community already councilmember tidbits thanks mayor I have one question for staff um and I'm sorry I didn't ask it earlier but what is the seat amount that we're putting into the baby bonds in the 529 or do we not know that yet good afternoon I'm I don't have it right in front of me I know I believe it was in the item if not I'll get it to you it is an initial amount of several hundred dollars and then they're incremental incentives to do different things because remember it's not only the money but it is also the parents um engagement and education and about changing the culture of the home to be college going to think about post-secondary options and so their incentives along the way I'm sorry a hundred a hundred dollars per child with incentive payments to that max out at four hundred dollars and those incentives fifty dollars a hundred dollars to attend different trainings and events that really are meant to again change the culture in the house about thinking about what'll happen after school and then the money will follow okay I mean I'm definitely eager to learn more about that that's not very uh clear to me yet but I'm sure it will be in due time so thank you Sakura um I I guess um where I'm at is similar to the mayor and that I think that we have to move this conversation on to the next step um I am fine with the proposals from staff listing the items in green as well as the items in yellow um I'm sure it comes as no surprise I'm really supportive of repurposing the PG&E funds for down payment assistance um to me that just you know when we talk about equity I've heard a lot of great stuff about child care tonight but I don't think anything is going to be more economically powerful for a family or for a child than helping them uh discontinue being a renter and becoming a homeowner uh you know I was just running preliminary numbers but after 18 years somebody buys a $500,000 house with $100,000 down just counting the principal pay down not the appreciating value of real estate in Santa Rosa they could do an 80% loan to value line of credit worth $240,000 which they could you know use for any number of things starting a business buying another property putting both kids through school um so I I'm you know happy I'm really grateful to staff that they had identified some funds to repurpose so that we can explore that possibility um I'm also supportive of repurposing funds for the California Tiger Salamander conversation I just feel that if this is going at the county level for us not to participate and include Santa Rosa and a lot of our key development areas would just be a really big missed opportunity for us and for the future of housing in Santa Rosa um the last thing I will say is uh I am you know it's I guess awaiting more information on broadband and future funding sources I am supportive of repurposing those funds if we're confident that there will be future funding opportunities down the road and specifically uh using well I'd like to actually set that money aside and just explore it further as kind of I think what John was alluding to earlier and maybe making that part of a broader conversation of what needs are but I think where I'm really supportive of is is supporting kind of the the the library coalition's vision of a shared library and community center space and um to kind of address the elephant in the room I you know you heard me at the last meeting be supportive of making about a million dollar contribution to the Boys and Girls Club and I would probably stand by that tonight however I just feel like any amount above that we're doing a disservice to the taxpayers by not putting that through a notice of funding availability process or some sort of process where we're exploring all the needs of all the worthy organizations out there in the community that said however if we want to invest that 10 million into a city-owned space whereas the other Mr. Tibbets, Jeff Tibbets said earlier where we have the ability to program various nonprofits to use that space to fulfill the needs of Southwest Santa Rosa and the broader cultural community that's really where our money should go. I'm a little bit less enthused about taking on more property knowing our growing deferred maintenance needs but in this situation that is obviously I think us putting our best foot forward for the city in the future of programming whether it's child care today or something else tomorrow or a bunch of shared space that week it's important that the city owns that asset and doesn't just give that 10 million dollar value away. Vegetation management also I would like to see vegetation management move forward because that's going to obviously be an ongoing need so many thanks to the staff who've obviously spent an extraordinary amount of time on this. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you Mayor. I'm just going to list off a few things and I didn't put the numbers next to them so I'm just going to throw these out and see if they get majority reaction ultimately. I am in favor of the Universal Basic Income program although I'm sure that we'll be hearing getting more detail about how that works. The Family Child Care Shared Services Alliance. I don't believe there's anything more upstream investment than investing in our infants and in those very early ages. I just it is it is the epitome of upstream investment. Baby Bonds. Yes vegetation management program. Yes down payment assistance fund. Yes the board and committee stipend I think is something in the right direction. It doesn't seem to be getting a lot of support but we are asking our people to volunteer a lot of time on some very important issues and I think they deserve at least some nod in the way of a stipend to not only to those that are already giving of their time but also to encourage those that may want to give of their time so that they don't have to make difficult choices to volunteer. A Roseland Community Center. I love the idea it is it is I think of it as very broad based and can affect people of all ages in the in the Roseland community and I think that's really important. I mentioned the Child Care Facility Fund and Jack mentioned holding back some cash $5 million. Now I actually am in favor of holding back some funding for for a rainy day. Unfortunately it does have a time limit and what concerns me about it the the positive is that we would have a bit of a slush fund for those unexpected expenses and programs that people come to us and say hey this is a great program and then we oftentimes have to say yes but we don't have any money it could it could allow us not to have to say that. On the the downside is as we as we approach the the deadline for spending it we may we could conceivably end up having having to find ways to spend it. So I like the idea I'm not sure how it would work but I think that holding back some some funding would not be I think it would be prudent. I'm just not sure how it would how it would work if we were to approach our deadline and I will I will leave it at that. Let me actually let me go back to the the original question that Jeff asked about the green. I think I may have already answered it on slide four. I think I touched on those on slide five. Yes two of the two top yellow lines and the rest of the green I am I'm good with. So I'll just I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you Council Member. We'll go on to Council Member Alvarez. Thank you Mayor. I do have a question on slide four the Rosen Creek Park. I believe I've asked this question before just for clarification. The the one million and a half would not stop the removal of concrete or the path that traverses the property. Is that correct? Council Member Alvarez this is Jason the assistant city manager. The currently the Rosen Creek community park has only enough funding to construct the pathway that will connect McMinn and Burbank as well as remediate and eliminate the remaining features from the three homes that were on the property. Outside of that there's no additional funding specifically designated which includes the restoration of the creek itself. The one point five million dollar request that was here was to construct additional pathways as designed or as outlined in the master plan and begin to do creek restoration. It likely wouldn't complete the creek restoration but it might get us to the start. Thank you sir and that does to clarify and reinforces what I what I believe was the situation and speaking with my constituents they believe that and something that we've all heard is that nature and preserving restoring nature was the number one priority so this definitely is aligned with the wants of the community. In regards to the greens I am fine with that and the yellows as well especially after clarification in regards to the Rosen Creek project. On slide five anything to and actually four as well anything to do with youth babies as correctly stated by one of my colleagues it should and and be at the top of our list so I'm very happy to see that that continues to be the focus. I do want to point out that since 2020 and really since 2017 since district elections since just the district map was presented we've seen an increase of participation from southwest San Rosa. I believe this is due to the investments that we're making. I believe that we have momentum on our side and I will love for us to continue the momentum and continue to to give the voiceless a voice and I think we're on the right path and I really want to commend not only this council but past council for putting us on that trajectory. In regards to vegetation management we don't want to see that happen again. We're having discussions over funds and we know where those funds some of those funds came from and it was through the PG&E funds and we deserve we we owe it to the community to make sure that they don't have to relive what they experienced in the last fires. I would like to see focus on the Tiger Salamander as it affects southwest San Rosa this would open a lot of investment a lot of opportunity for an area that that when it comes to to taxes home ownership we could definitely see something great happen in the area. In regards to the fiber the broadband I believe one of the callers stated that that we should pay attention observe what the county is doing with their funds. I'm hoping that we're doing that and we continue to do that. In regards to the the money that we heard a lot of our callers state for the Boys and Girls Club I will love to see an RFP put out and something to incorporate a community center that that spoke of youth services, senior services and and daycare services and you know it's it's also the the luxury but we've spoken and I've seen a swimming pool or pool center you know not a must especially during a drought but nonetheless I would like to see something that for for transparency for for those who who watch how we spend our money and I believe it's proper and respectful that we do have a process in order to award those monies. Thank you. Council member Fleming. Thank you and I'm in agreement with the mayor that we need to work on getting these dollars out the door and I also agree with the caller who said that there's likely more money coming and we need to collaborate with the county and not sit on this especially when sitting on it means that we're depriving our residents of investments that are really vital to them. There are so many questions asked and so many proposals on the table I will endeavor to to answer as many questions as I can. The way that I conceptualize this is it's a balance between direct investment to individuals, children and families and structural investments in the physical infrastructure of the community. Both are essential in that the investments for example the baby bonds allow a family to dream bigger and plan and expect great things out of their children and that's what differentiates a baby bond from for say a scholarship and so that's one aspect of this and then the other is the physical infrastructure that allows our most disinvested areas to flourish and so those are the things like the investment in a community center in southwest Santa Rosa specifically in Roseland and so that's the lens that I look at these things from so if you hear me tweak a couple of the things from what my colleague said it's not so much that I disagree with them in fact I agree with 95% of what I've heard it's more that I think that we need to be really thoughtful about managing the physical infrastructure and then the financial and social infrastructure and make sure that we do our utmost to achieve an effective balance for the economic and social determinants of health that will come from these initiatives so starting with slide four I agree with everything in green however when it came forward that we had been considering uh Mendocino Avenue specific plans something that would be very important to my district I didn't say anything when it went off the table during our last meeting because from my perspective as a social worker and a social justice advocate the south Santa Rosa Avenue specific plan was of greater importance and to see that fall off I find greatly disappointing and I'd like to see us add that on that's a particular area that would not just add to the benefit of south Santa Rosa but also be part of completing our downtown specific plan even if it it may lie just outside of it but it's essential to the functioning of our downtown and the overall economic well-being of our city and I think it would be a major missed opportunity and I think that our down payment assistance plan is really essential and important but I think that that's one area that we could maybe be flexible and see a compromise there so moving on to slide five I support everything there and with the addition of the the baby bonds that with the universal basic income will allow families to to start to feel like they can plan for their future rather than survive the day and I think that's really what's guiding this council today then let me move to my notes here I like also one thing that I haven't heard too much from my colleagues is the investment in small business and the qualified census tracts I know that we can't do it all and so I'm trying to figure out today if we're going to go forward with an investment in a facility in Roseland if it's the case that we don't I would like to see an emphasis in the small business assistance plan the child care alliance to me is a non-negotiable this is a service that will provide business owners with employees parents with child care and then the ability to provide for their families vegetation management we can't live without vegetation management in this community we actually have evidence that that it's deadly to neglect that so that's that's a hard hard yes right there I think that we need to be I've said it before I'm going to say it again we need to be doing all of this in conjunction with the county and back to the child care alliance four C's did reach out and I do agree that they're an essential partner I'd like them to be a named partner in these efforts we worked hand-in-glove with them to with them in first five so that to me is really really important and then did I miss any I probably did miss something here this is one of those where at the end of the day I'm going to be laying down and I'm going to be thinking about all the extra things that I want but I'm going to take a moment to share one thing that did not make it on the list but I hope that one day we consider as a council and maybe it'll be a budget session and then to and then I'll end with how I hope the community center looks because I do dream about that one frequently I think it would be well worth our council's time and consideration to one day fund a planner dedicated to affordable housing and housing that's specifically transit oriented I think that that could accelerate some of those projects and move things forward I know our planning department does a great job of moving our priorities forward but I think that if we had resources dedicated to that we would achieve some of our equity goals our housing goals our climate goals all of the goals that we have would be be really helpful and not not for too too much of an investment and then for the what what I imagine for rosalind would be a center where people can come for both things that they need and things that they want and things that they enjoy a vibrant center for people who live in rosalind but other people as well to come and enjoy all of the wonderful culture art and music that comes out of this really special part of our community a place for children to play I don't see a pool as a luxury I see it as a necessity if children can't exercise in ways that are helpful we we know the things that happen and they're not good and we would I would never consider a healthy exercise as as anything but absolutely essential and so I imagine a pool a library a place to get tutoring a place to get babysitting and there's this wonderful center in Bend Oregon called the juniper center where you can go in and they have two separate pools one for lane swimming and another one for small children and then another splash pad connected with that they have childcare available so that adults can adults both seniors and other adults can access computers but also can work out in their gym or take a yoga class I'd like to see a place like that and if we can work with the boys and girls club that would be wonderful but I want to leave you with this thought that our our parks and recreation department has worked so hard throughout this pandemic alongside with every employee of this city and when it comes to investments in our future in this city when we do have these one-time monies and these windfalls I want our our employees to know how much we value them and how much we believe in them and so I think it's essential that we spend this money in partnerships but also in partnerships that resource our city employees and let them know that we believe that they're the best at what they do and and we believe in them so thank you so much for all the work that you put into this I love giving away money but I hope that we don't have to do too many more study sessions all right thanks councilmember Swedham thank you Mr. Mayor I want to echo a lot of the comments from my colleagues and we really appreciate staff hanging there with us because although it does seem I also like providing different funding opportunities to community members it's making some difficult decisions about a variety of wonderful programs so in response to mr. colin's question I am supportive of the on page for the PG&E funds all in green I would like to keep the board committee members stipend program it seems like a relatively minor amount of money and it would send a huge message for those community members that we ask so much for I'm also in agreement for the down payment assistance program to come out of the PG&E funds because I think that can be transformational and it's that should be the funding source for it because of the questions of ARPA funding on the ARPA slide five I am supportive of all that in green and as I mentioned earlier I'm really looking forward to an opportunity for transformational investment and for me that is the roseland community center as outlined by the staff presentation thanks and vice mayor last word okay bear myth bear with me when you don't let me talk for five hours I have notes everywhere and I have like five pages yeah I do so just bear with me first I would like to thank the staff for all their hard work um in dedication and trying to figure out what we want when I think sometimes we don't know what we want so thank you very much for your hard work everyone knows how much I love the boys and girls club but I do believe that a formal request for proposal is the best process and it shouldn't I mean it's a necessity to ensure equity to access and transparent transparency so that is something that we have to do it's not something that we should do if we're going to do what we say is important and that is to be equitable and transparent but I do love the boys and girls club okay so um in the name of equity everything does not need to be named roseland I understand that everyone loves roseland but district seven does not have a swimming pool either and I don't hear you guys naming anything d7 or natalie or anything else so southwest santa rosa there's a community in southwest santa rosa it is not all roseland um everything does not have to be named roseland thank you councilman alvarez and uh for the guaranteed basic income um I I kind of feel like and this is a reoccurring theme throughout my notes but uh that's I know it wasn't it was kind of like the county's idea but a stipend program for like jobs that we need done throughout the city work experience training getting people back out there like that way they're establishing daycare that we're providing they're already connected to appropriate services that they may need um they're back in the workforce they're working on their resumes I am such a big proponent of uh teaching a man how to fish and not just giving them fish um because I feel like we're we give stuff away which is great but at the end of the day when these programs are over where does it leave I'll say where does it where does it leave my people like where does it leave people when these programs are over when the handout is over where does it leave the people when the $400 or the $500 or six or the federal government is giving people $750 a month now right when that is over and they're dependent on the $750 where are these people left that are now dependent on the $750 so I I just think that when we look at this we need to start thinking of ways that is mutually beneficial but definitely beneficial um to people working on their resumes and and getting training and establishing things that we know that they're going to need for a longer term success than just the 24 months so I would much rather have my my childcare established and all that stuff done because I know that I'm getting a stipend from working with the city and then I can my resume is up to par and already done and I can go out and find a job in the community then just being at home and not all that stuff done and I'm getting cash but that that's just me um in addition to the youth uh immigration attorney just for clarification if I recall correctly that was um they needed help with the the funding for a couple more years and then once they were able to show that they could get that funding for a few years um that they would actually be able to get funding elsewhere and so I think that they they already had like one or two years under their belt and they only needed like one or two years left and then once they were able to show that they had that funding then they would be able to sustain that program which is a really good program especially within our community and I think when we're looking at like uh side shows and things like that and we're trying to get youth off the street um and and get them to work and you know this is the way that we that we do that right we we want them to legally be able to work and do this and that so um definitely just like investing in that way um because I've heard far far too much where they it's like I get through high school I do all this and then what like then what do I do and just feeling hopeless they're not able to to continue um and not knowing like why to why to continue um and this gives them an out right and they have someone to support them and somewhere to go and that is so so very important um the five to nine plan I think is great but I kind of like the scholarship idea honestly because my son has a five to nine but I have eight kids so and the oldest has the five to nine so if he doesn't go then it can kind of trickle down right but um if if someone doesn't go and they only have a limited number of children and there's so many different uh means to to now provide a living so we are strong proponents of union right and and labor and so there's different ways of making a living so then what does happen to those funds um so my understanding of the five to nine is that you lose you lose those funds well I I wouldn't want the the city to invest in uh funds that then the family loses because it they don't have someone to then take over the funds and I know someone in the family can get it but does it have to be a brother or sister can it be a a cousin can it be a great great cousin or like where does it stop as far as family is concerned that would be a question um that I have with the five to nine um and then Megan spoke about um the down payment assistant assistance plan and um that my question was who who must reside in the home so uh to me when you own a home um if if I move out of the home or I want to to upgrade um which a lot of people do they start off with a smaller home then who exactly must reside in the home if it's one of my children that reside in the home is that okay to maintain that the down payment assistance and not have to repay that or do I myself have to reside in the home because culturally um that does happen a lot where the the parent may or may you know may move out but the children themselves will stay in the home maybe with their children and and that's why it's important to have the home ownership to have that that staple and that stability um within the family so that would be a um a question that I would have um and also speaking about the um down payment assistance um and it probably is in response to to jack's question um about the education to me if you don't have education it's not equitable and it's not inclusive so different families have different things and I'll I'll speak for myself is that I had to teach myself a lot about home ownership and some people don't have that experience or they're not able to do that so that is why education is so important for me because people need to be taught and so if you come from a family where you're taught about money and you're taught about home ownership and you're taught about business and you're taught about all these things that is great but if you're not and the the city is handing out money and we're talking about equity inclusion and diversity then yes it is up to us to teach people if that's a program that we're going to have so education is a must not just handing out money because I can give you again money all day long but how is that going to help you to keep that home that I'm helping you to get in the idea is to help people to keep the home not just to get in the home um I told you guys I have five pages I'm almost done I'm on like page four okay and then also the collaborative community outreach it seems to me that our office of community engagement does a lot of the things that were outlined in that slide so I'm wondering why we cannot incorporate or expand our office of community engagement and give some of that money instead of creating a whole nother um what is it department or what would that be Jeff is that another department collaborative community outreach no I think this is a program proposal from community engagement where they would add this program to their scope of services so that is them oh great because I was like it seems like that's like what they do just a very buffed up budget like so that that's great because I feel like that's what they do they just don't have a budget for it so that would be awesome um and then the family child care shared service alliance um I don't think that can wait I know that a lot of us want to sit and wait and not make decisions but that need is now I mean not even now it probably was yesterday or the day before or like five months ago 80 new child care slots can make such a difference in our our community and I think that if we can I heard someone mention it but if we can possibly create an incentive to expand the hours to non-traditional hours if we could have something for these home providers to expand their hours to non-traditional like nurses get incentive for working off peak hours but do something to incentivize child care providers to expand their hours that would be great even if it's temporary just to see how that works out um and then when people were talking about like four C's in different programs I love four C's it helped me um to establish myself the the only caveat I have with that is when I made a I won't say a dollar I'll say ten dollars over the threshold I went from making ten dollars over the threshold to paying a thousand dollars more in daycare I had a problem with that that means I was not allowed to better myself without feeling like I was being punished for wanting to be better um so I was I was either I stay down here or um or I pay way more and so I hope that if we do have a program it does not punish people for wanting better for for their families and for themselves that to me is not a program that wants people to excel and to do better um that is a program that punishes people for wanting to do better to get out of the system and that is not a program that I can get behind um so almost done almost done almost done let me see uh business support program um I would like to add a north bay black chamber of commerce I know that we specifically uh have hispanic chamber of commerce I understand that blacks are only less than two percent um but yet we are still in my note minority here in Sonoma County so I would like to add the north bay black chamber of commerce uh in the business support program that is important to me uh children's savings account um I like that we have the educational component and I already did down payment assistance oh vegetation management um definitely think it's important the hot spot um the hot emergency fire mitigation and making sure that we do what we need to do because we don't know when we're going to have monies like this again um in order to do that and slide number four uh city manager Collins uh for the interns only if council members get an intern will I back up that intern uh thing right there there was a thing that said do you want me to read it to you on two three four it said intern program it looks very nice says $80,000 and I think since we don't get staff but we get a lot of emails and we have a lot of stuff we have to do I think Eddie quit laughing I think we should get an intern Jeff and then I also lastly I also want to point out that uh I did see the the planner uh for a year and maybe it's my reading but I'm hoping that uh we not only have the planner but uh the planner in conjunction with the fire that they get the support that they need to um get our our timely building our permits and stuff in a timely manner um since that is one of the council's goals is to build and thank you guys for humoring me but that's what you get when the mayor calls on me last all right thanks vice mayor uh and the vice mayor triggered for me what I mentioned the vegetation management to my previous uh support on that that also included the EOC uh that I was hammering on last time so I just want to make sure that for count who are for staff who are counting votes that that was included uh council member tidbits thanks mayor I I actually just wanted to lend my support for something that Natalie brought up and that had to do with and and I think we actually mayor to your credit one of your initial rollouts was kind of a ready to work or back to work program uh where we could provide hiring opportunities for particularly folks who are homeless and I know at 1.2 uh assistant city manager nut was working on developing uh a program to that effect and so you know I know that they're counting votes and they may only be hearing two at this point but I think it would be great that when we bring back the UBI proposal that uh it includes what would it cost to and what would it take to put people to work as well I'm not talking about necessarily in lieu of UBI but maybe it could uh you know some of those funds could be cut up to try to achieve both because I agree with everything Natalie said I support UBI right now but I'm um I'm kind of justifying it in my own mind that it's providing uh the greater government with important data points um but when it really comes down to it when I look at it from my constituents and what they would probably think I'm sure I've got a handful that would say yeah sure let's give away money uh no questions asked to people who need it but then I'm gonna have others that are going to be scratching their heads going what are you doing but I think all of those people would collectively agree that if there are people who need money uh if there are people who uh can do some part-time type work uh cleaning up our parks and beautifying our city I think that would be pretty universally agreed upon so I like that idea all right thanks councilmember mr cd manager do you have enough direction I think I do that there seems to be strong consensus for moving forward with the items in green on both slides four and five uh and additionally uh on the ARPA slide including the children's savings account program and the secure family fund youth immigration attorney where I think we're going to need to come back is on the reprogramming of the COVID testing resources and a fiber backbone that's the 10 million dollars um there's still quite a list of proposed programs and in some cases some of those I don't believe are going to be ARPA eligible and so I think when we come back to you next time we'll try to identify those that are and aren't and um if they are high enough priority we'll need to look at general fund funding sources for some of those additional projects and programs all right thank you and I think um for our next discussion I think that that was really the only intent was to move most of these items that we could that after four study sessions we have consensus around move those forward and then obviously some of the reprogrammed I wasn't expecting us to get there tonight on them but it is good that we have been able to sort of filter them a little bit for our next discussion okay so council I know we've been at it for a while uh I'm going to ask you to keep at it for a little bit uh we have now hit where we're supposed to be four o'clock on our agenda which is when we go into our normal uh regular session I'm going to ask us to push through most of our procedural things up until we get to our report items uh I think that the auditor report item 14.1 is of particular significance for the community and so what I'd like to do is have us push through the procedural aspects until we get to item 14.1 take a dinner break because I know we have been going for a long time and then come back with fresh eyes for item 14.1 if that works for folks uh with that madam city clerk can you uh call the roll so that we can officially move into our regular session yes thank you mayor council member tidbits here council member schwedhelm here council member Sawyer here council member Fleming council member alvarez president vice mayor rogers president mayor rogers here let the record show that all council members are present all right I don't think we need a report on our study sessions we just moved into it but we did have a closed session earlier so madam city attorney can you give a brief report out uh yes council met in closed session on item 2.1 a conference with labor negotiators um they heard from uh the the negotiation team I got uh update on some of the matters gave direction to the negotiation team and took no final action thank you all right let's go on to our staff briefing item 7.1 mr city manager here rogers and members the city council our COVID-19 update the county has reported 1080 active COVID-19 cases and the total of 412 deaths since the start of the pandemic federal state and local officials are closely monitoring the rapidly evolving situation related to the new variant of concern omicron as labeled by the world health organization health officials are still learning about the new variant including how it spreads and infects individuals as well as how it responds to vaccines there are currently no cases in the united states or california however based on other variants it is only a matter of time before omicron is detected in the united states the new variants will continue to evolve as long as there are large proportions of unvaccinated people it is not yet known that this new variant causes more severe COVID-19 illness than other variants or how it might impact response to treatment public health officials remind the public that vaccines continue to be the best way through the pandemic by safely protecting against severe illness from COVID-19 and its variants as a reminder all california residents age 5 and older are eligible for vaccination against COVID-19 additionally anyone 18 years and older can receive a Pfizer or Moderna booster six months after their last dose those who got the single dose johnson and johnson vaccine can receive a booster two months after the dose the pediatric vaccine campaign is off to an encouraging start 23 percent of the eligible children ages 5 to 11 in sonoma county have received their first dose since vaccines became available in early november second doses will begin by the end of this week vaccine clinic information is available at sonoma county emergency dot org forward slash vaccine we also encourage everyone to continue to wear vaccines when they're in groups of people particularly indoors and to practice social distancing thank you thank you counselor are there any questions see if there's any public comment on item 7.1 i see no hands raised on zoom go ahead you have a switch on your right hand side that'll help lower the podium so this is public comment for the staff briefing on COVID-19 City staff and the people of the zoom world my name is Anna Lee Anna Diaz and for somebody that's always lived in the same area code the 9507 i strongly have to disagree with you vice mayor this is the first time rosalind's ever been acknowledged and actually actually brought forward as in importance so i have strongly have to disagree with you so we're taking public comment on the COVID-19 update if you'd like there is a section on the agenda in just a little bit for items that are not on the current agenda so no no it's all good can we come back to you in just a little bit let's do the public comments on COVID-19 first right go ahead nice to see everybody here again cactus peat often bitter sometimes sweet you want to fix uh you want those living cactus fences in there so regarding COVID you know i believe that the last president we really had was john f kennedy and he was taken out so was his brother so we're one or two different sons and other relatives and now robert kennedy who has uh spent the last three years discussing and disclosing the reality of vaccines with hundreds of doctors in europe and hundreds of doctors in this country have been completely muted from the uh what's that called uh cia mockingbird media press that controls this entire thing this is the same group of people that run agenda 21 that control your situation which i'm going to set you free from um so robert kennedy stopped the crime.net dr. deagle there's so many hundred for every one of these doctors that's telling you to take a vaccine they can't seem to fix the common cold and just for fun i will tell you that the anagram for omicron make sure you spell the lord spell it out it's moronic okay um we have turned into bullies that are bullying our own children with this ridiculous situation and um it is also a retro virus just like age age was a retro virus so there were thousands of varieties of it but they did not need to uh inject people with it because it was dispersed through uh sexual activities mosquitoes and uh and other blood-borne uh arenas so what they're doing with these vaccines is you're actually weaponizing yourself in the community against each other and that'll create more and more variable mutations that will not be able to be controlled by any uh a former vaccine so they'll continue doing more and more vaccines so the bottom line is we're being pushed around with an insane agenda that's the agenda 21 run by the united nations which are the biggest child traffickers in the world and protect all this stuff and i'm a patriot and i am a constitutionalist and so i say to you to honor yourselves honor your higher power and embrace common sense and permission is granted to remove that masochistic lease or the face diaper as you please i mean please look around we all know that what i'm saying is true you all know it all it is is it's virus with with uh that's been weaponized that all it does is uh is like a regular flu with a 40 more problem to the respiratory thank you sir all right thank you cactus peak good to see you do we have any voicemail public comments before item 7.1 we do not mayor okay we'll keep moving we'll go on to item 8 that's our city manager and city attorney reports mr city manager no report this evening and madam city attorney also no report this evening great we'll keep moving then do we have any statements of abstention from council members saying none how about mayors and council member reports who wants to start go for it vice mayor i'll have you go first this time it's not long okay so first things first this saturday december fourth we have our huh okay we have our drive through food drive uh we are partnering partnering with redwood empire food bank and um that is at place to play and it is from 10 to 2 very very excited we have a little competition going between the council members uh and council members also have links for a fun drive so that is pretty exciting to see who can raise the most money for the the food bank and whoever raises the least amount of money will be getting a pie in the face and that will be broadcasted on our uh city site so i'm pretty excited about that i am trying to raise the most amount of money so i do not get that pie in the face um in addition to i was able to spend some time with uh councilman alvarez this uh this past weekend um with the project that we have giving away some trees some christmas trees so uh it's nice to see councilman alvarez out in the community and thank you very much for your community service councilman alvarez and i look forward to working with you again in the future thank you council member council member alvarez for southwest san rosa whatever we need uh i i did want to report something that happened a few weeks ago on russo avenue in san rosa where our fire department went well above and beyond the call of duty uh i want a business there on russo avenue and i've gotten to know a lot of the residents personally we had an individual who was involved in a home invasion as well as stabbing anyone within close proximity of of him allegedly of course and i want to commend the crew of engine 3b from the san rosa fire department and the crew that forms engine 3b are captain scott burn engineer teddy day firefighter paramedic matt stova it's thanks to their heroic actions that they were able to stop not only a home invasion in progress but also what i believe save countless lives in the process so a big round of applause and and beyond for for their heroic actions on that day thank you thank you councilmember councilmember spuddle thank you mr mayor um just want to share that i attended the winter nights festival in downtown san rosa on friday a fabulous event mr colin police thanks to all the city staff that helped present that and also a special thanks to the metro chamber uh visit san rosa in the downtown district they've got the glyceis arena there and it was just a wonderful community event which again it just pays dividends are reuniting the square when you see hundreds of local community members enjoying the space together it was just a wonderful evening thanks councilmember timmits thanks mayor i just wanted to notify all of you the clerk and the public that unfortunately in about 20 minutes i have to jump to the sabbatical city council meeting for a work related item but i will return as quickly as i can okay councilmember fleming yes thank you i wanted to take this opportunity to um share my love of christmaca with everybody i too was able to join councilmember schwetholmen soyer at winter lights where my daughter got to sit on santa's lap apparently santa is uh can you um he's six a member of district six and very active in the coffee strong movement and where she said that she well it's embarrassing she said that she wants more time with her family for christmas which a little sad but adorable at the same time but i wanted to share that tonight is the sixth night of hanukkah holiday that's near and dear to my family for those of you who don't know it's a symbol of resistance of cultural and social pressures on the jewish people and uh you know the miracle is that the oil lasted for eight eight days and so um i invite anybody who's interested to to look up more information and to um join in solidarity with the the jewish people of the north bay you can look at iamhere.org and um the the jewish cultural resource center i can post some links on my facebook page additionally the public safety subcommittee of the city of santa rosa will be meeting on the eighth of december at nine a.m. and i invite anybody who's interested in making our community a safer and and um better place to live or can play to join us then thank you very much thank you council member i have one very brief update yesterday we had our sonoma county transportation authority ad hoc committee that is focused on uh consolidation and better coordination between our transit agencies it's our future of transit agency ad hoc and it was reported by one of our staff members that at this point we're at about 85 percent of our service levels for santa rosa city bus and about 61 percent of our ridership numbers and about a hundred percent of the students who pre-pandemic rode the bus have returned to riding the bus since then so obviously trying to continue to grow that number and and trying to make sure that we get our ridership numbers back up here in the future also more is coming uh on that front this council received a study session update from rachel and yuri and and everybody else at the the team who's been working so hard on this project and it really is paying dividends and the coordination that's going on between santa rosa city bus petaluma transit and santa mccounty transit has just been great to watch so we'll continue to monitor that as we move on with that we'll see if there's any public comment on council member staff reports and seeing then we'll keep moving through our agenda let's move on to we have no approved no minutes to approve tonight uh mr city manager can you please do the consent calendar mayor rogers and members of the city council we have three items on the consent calendar this evening beginning with item 12.1 a resolution for adoption of a memorandum of understanding for unit 14 the police civilian technical unit represented by se i u local 1021 effective july 1 2021 through june 30th 2024 item 12.2 also a resolution um approving a waiver of competitive bid allocation and appropriation of funds for the ruth asawa art panels and approval of a professional services agreement with artworks foundry llc for bronze casting and installation of art panels item 12.3 an ordinance adoption an ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa amending sections 14-04.010 and 14-04.140 of title 14 of the santa rosa city code to modify definitions related to monthly water and sewer bills and eliminating the requirement the city issue 12 bills per year thank you there are any questions on the consent calendar seeing none from council members we'll go to public comment on those items if you're interested go ahead approach the podium or hit the raise hand feature on zoom this is the consent calendar okay seeing none i'll bring it back vice mayor would you like to make a motion i move items 12.1 through 12.3 and waive for the reading of the text i'll second motion by the vice mayor and a second from councilmember alvarez let's call the vote thank you ma'am councilmember tibbetz councilmember schwedhelm hi councilmember soyer hi councilmember flaming yes councilmember alvarez hi vice mayor rogers hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with six eyes with councilmember tibbetz absent great we'll go on to item 13 that's public comment for non-agenda items if you're interested go ahead approach the podium or hit the raise hand feature on zoom and thank you for your patience with us hi anadias again um so so as somebody who's always lived in the 9507 area code um this is roseland's first time ever being acknowledged so i really want to thank all you guys from the bottom of my heart and all my people from my area town can honestly strongly agree with this i also do want to um bring this up again the people from the southwest area i live off of wild bill which is off of her avenue i wasn't able to vote for mr eddie alvarez even though me and my neighbors all really really like to because we are from the roseland area and we prefer to say that we're from the roseland area so i also wanted to bring that up as a major factor um i do acknowledge the fact that bringing up a swimming pool would be extremely beneficial for our area however if you guys ever have ever sat on um el royes or just el farvarito or just any taco truck if you're sitting there and you're just looking around you see a bunch of kids on their bikes i honestly think living living in roseland and being a part of boys and girls club staff for five years these kids desperately want a skate park and um as somebody who grew up in the system i can honestly say with pride is that our area very much lacks on our youth meaning our teens so by that i'm saying um there's not a lot of programs for our teens so most of the most of the teams that we have they're up and down running up on up and down the streets and i would really really like to see more investment in our teens thank you thank you so much and i can honestly say el royes is one of my favorite places to meet with constituents cactus pete don't start that clock so the 40-day freedom strike has already begun all manner of rainbow warriors uniting as one yet in most every group there be the deceivers who by lies and stealth undermine true believers the stone temple pilots be america's air force every deceiver identified by those upon an almighty's horse longstanding rainbow warriors in the audience find it funny how certain corporate religio political vermin think they remain protected by connections and money specifically addressing those in northern california region comes now your appointment with nemesis the furies and the angels of legion the reckoning the reckoning that's been beckoning has arrived as mainstream media continues vomiting deceptions quite contrived such a beautiful day as we have witnessed sufficient facts all warriors arisen deploying artistic acts a shout out to our military veterans and cops united yet unseen with un american ronan clubs and gangs now pulling out all the stops towards the usurus bankers that sunk the titanic as surely is the anagram for omicron be moronic the final battle between light and dark forces from out of the shadows upon almighty horses i am peter i am asking tasking i am commanding join me in this prayer with flair as you dare yes as you care to put forth all my strength and love supported from beyond and above supporting the veterans longshoremen and truckers who have frozen american ports airlines and unions to fulfill the freedom prophecy releasing lennar peltier and our us constitution into the promise of america freeing the earth the animals our children and ourselves into the promise of america i am binding all corruptions and abuses of the innocent with ferocity as i am releasing almighty's love and power to freeze the economy fulfilling the prophecy as all true warriors now off the fence as of this moment pay no mortgages no rents no water no utilities no cable internet or cell phone bills this righteous action as an almighty faction requiring more than faith yes the personal elbow grease all mammon to cease unto the promised peace and i will say also that these swabs that they put up next to your children's brain are coated with nanotechnology there's a lot of information out there that's true and for everybody that's on tv that's allowed to say that they got to take a a a vaccine or a swab there's probably 400 doctors that will tell you otherwise they're just not allowed to speak most of you listening know that this is true i say it you hear it so be it so mode it be amen a mean a ho thank you peak do we have any pre-recorded voicemail public comments we do mayor item 13 public comment on non-agenda matters dwayne d width from roseland thank you to council member natalie rogers and eddy alvarez for speaking up during a hearing on november 16th about the needs for roseland and the west the right neighborhoods off a stony point road where the infrastructure is not keeping up with all the housing that's being pushed in thank goodness they didn't just go along to get along and they actually spoke up about what the neighborhood people are talking about it's really important that one of the highly paid city planners didn't know the number of housing units that were in the works right now and this is after hundreds of housing units have been built in the roseland and western area since after the tubs fire so it's almost like a shell game with you folks not miss rogers or mr alvarez but the staff and the development driven majority on the council who say that oh we can't look a gift for us for affordable housing in the mouth actually you folks have torn down housing demolished 17 units to widen stony point road recently demolished four units in roseland just because you could do it while not demolishing a unit at howard park that had been moved there so this whole thing seems to be a bit disingenuous is the way to put it and thank goodness that miss rogers and mr alvarez are paying attention because the infrastructure is definitely needed and we need you to fix the roads improve with sidewalks gutters this is something that was talked about 25 years ago when you formed roseland county island part of the poorest planning anyone could ever imagine but you did it on purpose you inflicted your pain on roseland and now you continue to do it please help us in the future by slowing up these housing projects until you actually have the infrastructure near that concludes public comment on non-agent matters great thank you so much so as i mentioned a little bit ago item 14.1 is of high public importance and interest so we're going to take a dinner break first because council has been going since one o'clock and we'll come back at 6 30 with item 14.1 before we get into our public hearings all right madam clerk i recognize a quorum of the council can we please call the roll and re-establish quorum okay thank you mayor mayor can you please restate that uh i had the mics muted so thank you so we're calling the meeting to order oh yeah i apologize thank you uh councilmember tibbet councilmember schwedhelm here councilmember soyer here councilmember fleming here councilmember alvarez present vice mayor rogers as a mayor rogers here let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of councilmember tidbits thank you so much stefany mr city manager let's do item 14.1 mayor rogers and members of the council item 14.1 is a report item the matter before the council is a professional service agreement with oir group llc for independent auditor to review the police department um i will be presenting this item along with michael genoco and brian core of the oir group next slide please the city of santa rosa desires to retain a qualified firm to conduct police auditor services the requests were proposals for the independent police auditor was issued on june 17th 2021 and closed on july 12th 2021 two proposals were received and were scored independently by a selection committee who determined that both proposers move forward to be uh to an interview process to provide additional information the selection committee determined unanimously to move forward with the oir group due to their expertise and past performance next slide please as you may recall the city previously contracted with the oir group in 2020 to provide an independent report on the santa rosa police department's internal investigations related to protest activities that occurred in may and june of 2020 the city found the firm to be professional and thorough in the final report that was presented to the city council in may of 2021 the oir group has 15 years of experience evaluating police shootings in custody deaths and other critical incidents oir group has conducted high-profile internal investigations including the kelly thomas internal affairs investigation in folerton california and several internal investigations of the oakland police department in which the subject officers were supervisors and are members of command staff the oir group consists of a team of five principles the team is led by a formal former federal rights uh civil prosecutor um michael jenako who is a nationally recognized expert on law enforcement reform and accountability systems he was the chief attorney of the office of independent review for los angeles county and is a founding principal of the oir group teresa mogul began her work in oversight with the inspector general's office of the los angeles police department and has been with the oir group since 2017 samara marion recently joined the oir group after retiring from a career with the san francisco department of police accountability the oversight entity for the san francisco police department steven connelly uh has been a principal with the oir group oir group since 2001 and was an original member of the los angeles county office of independent review julie roulin has been a principal with the oir group since 2006 and was a deputy deputy chief attorney for the los angeles county office of independent review the scope of work proposed for the oir group includes reviewing santa rosa police department internal investigations and citizen complaints which includes a review of participation in all administrative investigations and officer involved shootings auditing santa rosa police department misconduct complaints discipline process and policies procedures and training the audit is designed to ensure the best equitable policing environment it also includes producing an annual written report summarizing the independent police auditors evaluation of internal investigations and suggestions for improvements to policies procedures and training next slide please the scope of work also includes conducting community outreach with various city and community stakeholders community meetings twice a year that will be facilitated by the chief's community ambassador team uh they also will be required to contract with an equity consultant to demonstrate understanding in the areas of diversity equity and inclusion oir group has worked closely with brian core and community engagement projects in san osa and san liandro as an equity consultant and community engagement facilitator the oir group under this contract will be reporting to the city manager regularly regarding any recommendations for improvement and they'll be presenting their annual auditor's report to the public safety committee and the city council for discussion the city will also provide spanish language translation for these meetings it is recommended by the city manager's office that the council by resolution approve the professional services agreement with the oir group llc in an amount not to exceed 270 000 total not to exceed 90 000 per year for a period of three years i'd be happy to answer any questions the council may have and uh mr genoco and mr core are also available and may wish to address the council as well all right thank you council who wants to start with questions councilmember alvarez alvarez thank you mayor i'm seeing that that in this in this uh presentation the only area where i see community involvement is a report out to them and that's done through the chief's uh task force is that correct it will be through the chief's community advisory task force but um brian core with the oir group will also be in attendance and these will be kind of a town hall process and uh i can have uh chief navarro and mr core address that a little bit further if you'd like councilmember oh yes please so if you could um promote chief navarro as well coming up well mr michael uh genoco be here as well yes very well and what we're waiting for the chief to be promoted uh mr genoco why don't you give a little bit of uh introductory comments and a little bit on your background as well of course um thank you mr city manager for the uh introductory uh presentation um we are pleased to be here this evening at least with you virtually um which is unfortunately the story of much of my life the past two years and probably yours um we are um in the business of oversight and i'm pleased to have uh with me this evening uh one of our one of our individuals that we love to partner with and brian can talk about his background um but he has a national uh background as a result of his um position as head of the oversight national oversight group for a couple years as president um but um we're the independent police auditor for a number of cities um and counties in northern california we currently have a responsibility to provide that service to the cities of palo Alto davis santa claire county and santa cruz where the interim independent police auditor for the city of vallejo and we are currently doing an audit for the city of vacaville so we are very familiar with with the area um and um as uh your city manager indicated uh we were heavily involved in the investigation and review of the force incidents that occurred um in conjunction with the protests after some of the protesters um engaged in inappropriate activity um there were some issues though with that use of force and we set those out in our public report that was presented to you um earlier this year um i will um turn this over to brian just so he can say hello to you if if that's okay um mr mayor please do right well thank you mr mayor thank you say council and thank you mike um i am brian core i am zooming into from cambridge massachusetts where i uh work and have lived in and around cambridge since 1987 i am originally from detroit michigan grew up there went to school in an arbor and as i said came out to cambridge in the late eighties my background for you know probably about 25 years was really in nonprofits working on social justice and my last job before i started working in municipal government here in cambridge was at the aco u of massachusetts as its first organizer um part of my work include work on police misconduct in the city of warrants massachusetts uh heavily latino primarily dominican community where there were serious issues of police misconduct and after that came to work for the city of cambridge where i still work for my day job and in that role i do two things i'm director of the state's peace commission which is broadly around community building response to traumatic events and building community and resiliency and i also am responsible for civilian oversight of our police department so through that work i got involved in naked the national association for civilian oversight law enforcement served on the board from 2010 until uh just a couple of months ago when i basically turned out three of those years i was elected each year as president and so in that work i've done work with communities across the country as well as some work up in canada and also down in mexico so i'll just say quickly because i probably have a chance to say a bit more i really do work with this lens of social justice and equity deep inclusion i see my work as both a public servant and as a volunteer and in other work i do really is one of servant leadership so i have the opportunity to work with the oir group this year in san liandro and san jose as you heard and also in the past year i've done similar community engagement sessions all via zoom in places as varied as bennington vermont and cedar rapids iowa and of course right here where i am in my city of cambridge so i i can say more later but just wanted to give you a sense of who i am and the lens i bring to this work and i'm very excited to be part of this meeting today because what you're doing is deeply important so thank you for the opportunity and councilmember alvarez the scope of work in paragraph nine explains the community outreach provisions in within the contract requires ip a to be responsible for meeting with various city and community stakeholders in an effort to seek input on policing issues that may arise they'll be available to receive respond and assist with complaints from community members they'll have a publicly available email address and telephone number where members of the public can reach ip a to address their concerns we recommend or ipa should complete ride-alongs with the police department staff to increase police department awareness and promote engagement with the community and city staff members and this is in addition to the work that they would do with the chief's community ambassador team at least twice a year let me take one step back in regards to and actually this would be more of a question what obstacles impediments is there for having community involved in the in the process to work with an auditor opposed to receiving reports from a member of our agency and the reason I ask the question I remember that when we had a discussion in regards to police auditor we we were presented with different options a hybrid I remember being the word being used where it was a community based structure that reported and work with the auditor who did work with the police department because of union as well as privacy issues and I'm not seeing that aspect or that option in the presentation your observation is correct there is not a formal community policing advisory board or commission recommended the approach recommended here is to employ a professional firm that has extensive experience in conducting police audits and reviews of internal investigations police procedures and policies in that way they have much greater access to body worn camera footage I think during their work with the city in 2020 in May and June they built up the ability to have interactions with police the police department really shared fully and gave them full access to both the individuals the interviews the internal investigation records etc and we felt this approach was demonstrated to be successful not only in our prior experience with them but also in our review and investigation of their work in other communities who forms the selection committee that that elected the president from that was made up of our two assistant city managers Jason nut and claire hartman as well as uh our captain uh in the police department and um um Magali tell us and if I could ask uh brian you stated the word inclusion and equity what is your perception of how we could we could use an i oir firm to increase inclusion and equity without having the community directly involved in the process well thank you for that question council member I guess what I would say is I think that it has to involve community in that process in some way and part of my task as part of this team will be to help the the broader oir group and really the city of santa rosa figure out how to do that within the scope of this work so community outreach with different stakeholders community meetings twice a year that those are important steps that you have to do but they're not they're not sufficient I would say and it's also very important how you do those it's really necessary that a process like this where you don't have say a civilian oversight board of some type but you do have this community engagement process you have to make sure that you are reaching all stakeholders and you really have to make sure that in those meetings you are doing everything you can to hear all voices I often go back to the principles of procedural justice it comes up a lot in policing but for me it's really what any government entity or really an entity that has institutional power has to be doing you have to make sure that people in the community have a voice that they are treated with and perceive they're treated with dignity and respect that you the people doing that process whether it's the city broadly or just this team are neutral and transparent in our work and that we're trustworthy that people believe that we have their interests of heart and we're doing this for the right reasons for the benefit of the entire community so I won't say that it's always easy I think that in my own day work you know my day job in government we are constantly trying to figure out better ways and working on new approaches to really engage the entire community and so as the work of the auditor proceeds as reports come out as trends appear and also as we hear feedback directly from the community that all has to feed into those sessions and then those sessions you have to present what you've been hearing present your work but then stop and really listen make sure that people know what you're doing but then stop and listen and let people know that they're heard make sure that we're reflecting back to the community what they're saying make sure that the reports that we are issuing reflect those community thoughts needs and perceptions and there are two pieces to it there are the facts there are the things that you have to do around what happened what were the violations of policy if there were any what are the training needs that will improve things but then there's also the human side what are people feeling what's their perception what's their lived experience and so it's a complicated task but again it's a kind of a long-winded answer but to your question council member Alvarez I would say that we have to include the community and whatever structure Santa Rosa presents and decides on you know it will be our task as we implement it to make sure the community voice and community presence is there all through the process thank you now one of the things is the community being heard and involved in the process I take great pride in our current council because not only do we hear the community but if you were present for our early deliberations you see that there's action that follows it to my question to you once again sir is what are you going to do with that information that you are hearing from the community how will it be implemented where it goes beyond just hearing all right well I'm going to turn this part of this answer over to Mike because Mike is really the principal on this I'm working with them and with him but I will say that part of my commitment is to make sure that the OIR group is actually doing that that we are listening that information that we're figuring out how does it fit in with recommendations how does it fit in with the things that we're seeing in the community and how do we make sure that whatever happens around policing is leading to more legitimacy is leading to more trust and and again I don't want to pretend I'm an expert on Santa Rosa you know I've been reviewing materials I've read the various reports from of course the OIR group Hillard Hines from the Sonoma County Human Rights Commission and also I've been very impressed with what I've seen from the C's community engagement plan and their work so in the end it would be partnering with the city staff with the community engagement folks making sure that we know what their approach is and again it seems very positive and again I just have to make sure that the work I'm doing both externally in your community and internally in the OI group is you know kind of holding our own feet to the fire to make sure that we are doing that and I don't want to come up with saying it's going to be these five things or it's going to look like this because it's really going to depend on what I and we discover as this work unfolds but I can tell you that I'm deeply committed to ensuring that it is real it's meaningful and it's actionable that it doesn't just go into report but it actually helps to transform policing and ultimately I think open hearts and minds to transformational change again not an easy thing to do it's you know easy to say but that's clearly what needs to happen in the city of Santa Rosa. I do appreciate that Brian. You're very welcome councilmember. Councilmember Fleming. Yeah my question has to do with the report out to the chief's community advisory team and it's my understanding chief that these members are selected by yourself and advise you. Thank you councilmember Fleming so the chief's community ambassador team is it has been set up they were selected by myself and one of my lieutenants we we did set up a process where we requested people throughout the community to be a part of the community ambassador team. We utilized the office of community engagement to make sure that we were pushing that information out to networks and groups that don't normally speak with the police department. We've chosen a what I believe and what others have told me is a very diverse group of people to be part of that team and so as they would as they work with the independent auditor with these two community meetings at least two community meetings throughout the year they're really going to be helping with facilitating the process and and it's not just going to be the community ambassador team these you know we'll work with the office of community engagement for the city to to to push out this information and so it's not just 15 individuals hearing from the the police auditor it's going to be again like the city manager said a town hall meeting where our community ambassador team will be involved and they'll be they'll be part of that process. And to me that sounds wonderful what I was wondering is if you would consider also presenting this information to the community advisory board as the you know a key differential is that our community advisory board you know while it sounds like you've gone to great lengths to ensure that this is fair and balanced and and all that at the end of the day they serve at your pleasure whereas the community advisory board could offer an additional level of community engagement and an opportunity for the community to feel like there's an independent group of people who are receiving the information would you be open to that? Yes I will in fact we've in the past we have we have provided updates to the community advisory board on on several different topics topics from our department so that's that's something that is very normal for us and I don't mind I don't mind providing information to additional groups. Thank you for your openness. Any other questions from council? Councilmember Schwedum. Thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you Mr. Sidney for this report. I have a couple questions on the scope of service and let me just start with Mr. Cohn you made a comment about doing the ride-alongs and I know the model that our previous auditor was doing it seemed like that was a big thing he wanted to build a relationship between himself and the officers. On page 16 of the scope of work it says the independent police auditor should complete ride-alongs. I'm a little uncomfortable with should I'm in a world of shall versus should can you explain a little bit more why that word was chosen if it's our expectation they will do ride-alongs? I think we wanted to communicate the importance of it while giving them some flexibility there may be periods of time where they're focusing on other activities but to allow the flexibility I think the team probably is willing to consider that language change if that's something that's important to the council to have that incorporated or I'd be interested here would they think those words mean and what the interest is and I don't know what previously ORI has done with the other communities that they've already mentioned regarding ride-alongs with officers to understand the culture of the organization. Council member I Mr. Mayor if I can respond to the council member's question I'd be happy to do that. Please do. So yeah I mean should shall I mean we're going to do ride-alongs we find that they're helpful we find that you know spending you know hours with few hours with line officers or sergeants for several supervisors is highly important and and educational and we do learn a lot about the culture of of any particular police department through that activity but we're not going to stop at that hopefully when you know travel is easier and even when it's not we'll figure out a way to get up there and and take a look at the training that's being conducted take a look at other aspects of the of the all the police officers do but focusing on training I think is also an important piece in another city in which we were engaged we just spent a day watching them on use of force training and running through scenarios and and being part of that process so that's not foreign to us and it's something that we would be very we think it's an important part of our of our work and responsibilities. Great thank you for that because I share your concerns and comments on that topic so also on the regarding citizen complaints when it talks about an independent investigation if the independent police order believes that either an investigation should be done or additional needs be done who would conduct that independent investigation and I know section eight also talks about an independent investigation. Does ORI actually do that or do they contract with someone else or do you recommend the city manager contract with another independent investigator? How does that work? I think it could I think it could be sliced and diced a couple ways but we'd certainly have the investigative chops to do that so we were you know in in the in the protest use as a force that occurred over the protest activity after the George Floyd murder one of the ORI members was heavily involved in that investigation was actually involved in being part of the interviewing team because of the interest in having an independent individual part of that investigative team so we paired up with the police department on that one but I think that what is complete here is that there's a conflict or it's a highly controversial or if it involves a high ranking member of the department there's a whole lot of reasons why you may want to have it an investigation done outside of the police department itself for certain unique cases that we would have the ability to do that and we would work with obviously the chief and the city manager before we even ventured there but we would certainly be available to do that and we have a lot of investigative ability and and experience on the team. Great thank you for that and in the world of the OIR if we talk about an independent investigation would that potentially also include another local law enforcement agency is that would that agency be considered an independent investigation from your perspective or the ORI perspective? I know there are times in which agencies have asked sister agencies to help and do an investigation for them I think that has gone a bit out of vogue although you know the way in which investigations are done is a continually changing and evolving situation so for example as a result of state law council member if there are officer-involved shootings in the state in no matter who gets involved in them and it turns out that the individual who was shot ended up not having a weapon under state law the attorney general now takes over those investigations so there are all kinds of permutations that are going on and we'll continue with that trend but I think the idea of the scope of work was to provide some flexibility and in cases in which there is a potential conflict we'd be available to fill in that gap. Okay and then regards section D there talks about the access to information and I know previous iterations that someone outside the chief of police doesn't have access to all the personnel records but in reading the scope of work it sounds like you have access to all that information is that a correct interpretation? Not only is it a correct interpretation council member but it is an essential part of our work without the access to the information our reports would not have the same meaning so that's one of the things we insist on in order to engage effectively with with the department and also provide the transparency to your public to your community to your constituents that we believe is critical in our role. Great and does ORI participate in the Scali hearings and is that your choice or the chief of police choice? I've actually been a Scali officer in other concepts but ordinarily no but we certainly would be reviewing what happens in the Scali hearings and commenting about them if we found that there was something wanting. Thank you and then the last question I had was on page 14 annual audits in subsection C said SRPD enforcement action with regards to bias I'm not exactly sure what that means could you share a little bit more information as to the intent behind that enforcement actions with regards to bias? Sure state law also requires or it depends on the size of the agency but it's starting to require agencies to report to the attorney general the racial breakdown of stops of searches of seizures and by that information one can determine whether there's disparate treatment so that would be something that the IPA would be looking at as well and commenting about but if there are allegations or complaints of bias those are some things that we would be reviewing and making sure that the the police department did a thorough and fair objective investigation into those complaints and that the outcomes were based on evidence and were principled and we you know go so far if it was a pedestrian stop or a vehicle stop go so far as to be reviewing those body camera footage which is you know a game changer for us as auditors because now we have an independent unvarnished record of what occurred based on that body camera interaction. So I'm trying to get my arms around will this be a complaint driven action I get the bigger assessment of the demographics with the new state law tracking the demographics of who have been stopped in contact by SRPD but I'm still a little bit unclear about the enforcement actions with regard to bias because some people might argue every stop has got some bias involved with it so I'm trying to see what the scope of your review would be and what would be the product from that evaluation. Yeah I mean so the audit you know could look into enforcement actions apart from the RIPA data but maybe using the RIPA data as a start to see whether there is more going on there. The stats only gets you so far the data only gets you so far you have to really dig into the individual cases and interactions but for example what we've done in other jurisdictions is we will look at not necessarily a complaint driven incident or sets of incidents but just look at you know 10 stops by one officer and see whether or not there's any indicia of any kind of racial bias or bias going on with regard to who the officer stopping who the officer searching and and and doing an audit based sort of examination that way. Great thank you. Vice Mayor. I had a question so when you when a police officer makes a stop what is the vehicle stop what is the initial question that they ask? Do either of you know what's the question? Yes council member you know there's no script I think every officer sort of develops sort of a way of doing business a way of approaching individuals but that is something that is really important when we look at the way in which interactions are begun by police officers who are detaining an individual in a vehicle stop. So for example there are some jurisdictions in which we have seen some officers particularly officers who have been on the department for a long period of time whose first question out of the box is are you on probation or parole and if you want to find a way to output an individual by asking that question you know along with driver license and registration that's a good way of doing it and so those are the kinds of things that we get into the weeds about to see whether or not there is a pattern of doing that. I'm not suggesting that Santa Rosa patrol officers do that all I'm suggesting is that I've seen that in other jurisdictions so those are the kinds of things we'll be we'll be examining. So in your examination of that would that be an example of biased in your opinion? Not in and of itself but it's certainly if in fact those questions are only being asked of people of color or disproportionately asked of people of color now we're starting to get somewhere with regard to concerns right so um I think the question in and of itself is not really a great question at least not a question that one would ask right off the bat if you're trying to develop a positive relationship with the individual being detained who is not going to be happy about being detained obviously. But if it's if it appears to be that that is a pattern that is more heavily focusing on individuals who are who are black or Latino or of color then that's a problem and those are the kinds of things we through our auditing would would would detect and uncover. And when you look at officers um and like you said you'll look at an officer and the 10 stops um if an officer has a certain beat depending on that beat they may encounter a certain group or the same type of people if they're in the same you know a neighborhood right so um wouldn't you kind of see the same type of way that they stop people like you don't you wouldn't really see a change so much right yeah um so you're absolutely right in in you have to compare apples and apples as opposed to apples and oranges so what we what we generally do is we look at a squad or a shift um and see whether or not there are any outliers with regard to that kind of activity right so why you would expect to see the same kind of interactions by officers you know that are working that shift working that beat sometimes you don't and so if if you have an officer that is conducting him or herself in a way in which people are unhappy with the way in which they interactions begun and often with the way in which the interactions ended or that officer gets an ordered number of complaints compared to the rest of his colleagues or her colleagues on the shift then you do have an outlier and that's when you know something some sort of remediation needs to be done and do you see the same number of complaints per se from communities of color as you do from communities that are not of color to to to generalize unfortunately for a whole lot of reasons uh cities or neighborhoods or communities of color you tend to generate fewer complaints over in my experience than than neighborhoods that are are white or more affluent some of that I think particularly for our Latino communities some of that has a language has to do with a language issue or hurdle or challenge but but more freak more I think more that's going on there council member is that in some communities there is some lost confidence and lost faith in the process right and so people give up they don't think that making a complaint is going to do any good and and that's where you know brian comes in and his outreach component but that's also where we come in to to sort of indicate now we have an independent police auditor that's not a fill a police department and it's going to be reviewing these things and going to take a look at the body camera independent of the police department and make an independent assessment and tell the community what we're finding so that's the value of this auditing program in my view and in a sense that and and this has been our experience so we've been working with Palo Alto for a dozen years and I think that now there is a greater confidence in that intake process because they've had an auditor as long as they've had and quite frankly if complaints go up that's not necessarily a bad thing if complaints go up that suggests that there's more confidence in the process and that's something appropriate will be done when an officer is stepped over the line and vice mayor this this is also part of our community engagement program as well that will continue and complement the efforts of the OIR group with their outreach efforts and community engagement and involvement activities so there there will be a lot of collaboration and cooperation between those two elements so you said that you've been doing this for quite some time in my experience is that when people do something for quite some time things begin to be normalized so as a mother of eight beautiful brown children what what makes you different your group what makes you guys different why should the community interest you to be different from everyone else in the past to complete this this task and to see right from right and wrong from wrong and to actually say something about it if our community member I would say the jury would be out and and show us your work and show us what you're finding and show us our reports you know that that I think will be the first test for us is is the kind of reporting we do but you know I have been a lawyer for for quite a while now all of my legal career before that I was a school teacher for a few years and really appreciated that all of my legal career has been devoted to civil rights enforcement so I prosecuted police officers when I was a federal prosecutor I have been working in misconduct and oversight field for 20 more years after my years as a prosecutor of police officers so and and if people look at our reports which I'm sure your selection committee did in your city did their hard hitting reports we don't you know if something is a problem or something needs to be addressed or remedied or fixed or something needs to be identified we're not shy about talking about it because it's all we have is our credibility and we want to continue with that and if I may add a little bit council member to your question I do think that from my experience having known the OIR group since I got involved in NACOL in 2012 and seen their continued presence part of what we have in sort of the NACOL family is a very broad range of stakeholders we have people with backgrounds like Mike and the rest of the OIR team we have community activists we have people who have come directly out of policing who worked on issues of police misconduct we have journalists and academics and so NACOL really helps us to constantly be thinking about how do we do things differently what are effective practices and I would say that seeing how the OIR group over the years has continued to bring in new people if it were stuck in the past it would probably be a group of attorneys that are looking at how to prosecute misconduct but over the years they brought in different people now including myself who have different perspectives you know I'm not an attorney I really come out of peace and justice organizing and have that perspective so again I think the jury is out to an extent for what the community will see but for the purposes of your city council making this decision please just know that I am committed to this and I really see this work with the OIR group as an extension of work I've done before so I am very committed to ensuring that those different lenses are present and that all of those voices that aren't normally heard are part of the discussion and that their needs are met to the extent possible again not an easy task but it's what I'm deeply committed to. Thank you guys for taking the time to answer the questions although they may not be the normal conventional questions that you would normally get I think that they needed to be answered and the community needed to hear the answers to the questions thank you. Any other questions from council members? Council Member Alvarez? Thank you. The principal sir how are you Michael? I believe we spoke a little bit back when we were discussing the protests that we had here in the city of Santa Rosa and one of my questions to you was how long have you been involved in the process but you just went over your experience in regards with prosecution and the school teacher as well so thank you for both of those services. In regards to the process that happened during the protests were you able to communicate with the Human Rights Commission when you gave your report when you created your report? We were certainly a council member we were certainly aware of the report that they had done and we certainly used the information that they had produced in the report that they had prepared prior to our report and it informed some of the findings that we you know we looked at so while we didn't while our scope didn't give us the opportunity to address them as a body we certainly learned from what what they had uncovered in their own independent process. Were you able to interview any of the protesters who brought about litigation? Yeah there was an attempt to reach out to those individuals but because of the litigation piece my recollection is that they were not interested in pursuing interviews through the internal affairs investigation but they still have their own you know litigation that they ended up settling but we did reach out to them and attempt to interview them yes. Very well and I hope you understand that this is going back to my original question of how can we get the public's trust to assure them not only of transparency that the reports are actually thorough when we say that they're being thorough and if we falter and we fall a little bit short of that line I feel that we are losing the progress that is made thus far and and and I'm I'm definitely being tough with my questions because I'm I'm coming from the citizen aspect of it and I'm trying to get to a yes which I really want to get to especially after hearing how committed you are to the process so I'm extremely happy to hear about that and this is a city of San Rosa that has a police chief that knelt with his people when someone else knelt on a neck that's the pride that I take in San Rosa with that being said I definitely want to see inclusion I want to see participation I want to see transparency and I'm hoping that you can provide that for us thank you thank you council member and and and that's my commitment and I think Brian would agree with us with absolutely that's our commitment all right thank you Michael I'm going to build a little bit off of some of the questions that council member alvarez asked because what he's really asking is to what extent is the community going to be involved and to what extent is the community going to have oversight and that's one of the ongoing and lingering conversations that is still out there hiring an independent auditor will further our goals of providing additional transparency and accountability within our existing structures and yet we also then have a public safety subcommittee that will at some time have a conversation around civilian oversight board or to what extent of civilian oversight would work and make sense for Santa Rosa if that's a direction we even want to go we have a charter review committee where one of the recommendations that could come out is a civilian oversight measure p type type measure that was supported in Santa Rosa what's your experience working in communities that either have these types of structures or have been in the process of figuring out whether they make sense for their community and how to move into them that's an excellent question and and we have worked as independent police auditors with cities that don't have a formal review board or accountability group different names for for for these for these bodies but no community facing group but we have also worked with cities that do have a police accountability commission or a police review board or or some you know different names for example in the city of Davis from its from our inception as the independent police auditor which we've been for three years now we have worked with the police accountability commission in the city of Santa Clara County we have a community facing county of Santa Clara we have a community facing group that we work with and in cities that have decided to form those review boards or commissions we have provided a role as a liaison to those individuals so we attend the meetings we present we tell them what we're learning they tell us what we they assign us projects at times you know they assign us auditing projects to do and that ends up being a pretty good symbiosis so and and we have actually transitioned to cities that are going in that direction and have helped train the commissioners of the review board members with regard to police practices so that they can be equipped and be talking from a position of more knowledge in addition to their community experience that they bring to the table so we are we are certainly and we and we find that you know in cities that have decided to go that way that that community board or group or commission uh can end up being helpful to our work as well because they're they're the eyes and ears of the community they live in the city we don't and so they bring that experience and um and knowledge to us as individuals who have that expertise and the accessibility to information but we don't have that community component so I know that's a longer winded answer you might ask for but that is something that you know we have worked with um and continue to do and if I may appreciate the answer go ahead Brian I'm sorry no not at all my apologies Mr. Mayor so I'll just say very quickly now and again I'm very aware there's a specific scope of work in a contract that's being discussed but just so you know um in my role at makehold and just other work I've done I have done lots of work with communities all over the United States that are looking at creating civilian oversight uh whether it's counties looking at some sort of countywide mechanism and that's every place from you know Fairfax Virginia to Arlington Virginia to places like as I mentioned Cedar Rapids Iowa places pretty much all over the United States communities large and small that are in that process of thinking about oversight so it's not totally clear to me how that will play out in this particular situation but just know that that is a level of expertise that I have and again I enjoy doing that work so to the extent it's appropriate part of that outreach can be thinking about listening to hearing from the community about what they're looking for what the needs of the community are and then that ties in with what is being found in audits and investigations the longer term history and not just in Santa Rosa but really in Sonoma County because I know there's a complicated interplay between the sheriff's department the city police department and things that happen in other communities like Roner Park still affect people in Santa Rosa so I think that to the extent this comes up in outreach I believe I can play a helpful role in facilitating those conversations and bringing to the surface needs and things that people are looking for as they might consider what type of civilian oversight would be appropriate for Santa Rosa going forward thank you great thank you I really appreciate the thoughtful answers any other questions from council all right let's go to public comment on this item I'll start with folks in the chamber if anybody is interested in providing comment go ahead head to the podium not seeing anyone we've got a couple of hands via zoom we'll start with Evan and then we'll move to resident 0694 are you able to hear me yep go ahead okay I appreciate very much the line of questioning from the council members and I also very much appreciate the responses here from OIR I find them both encouraging but what we're talking about is not just efficacy but also efficacy and credibility and credibility means nothing without trust so OIR is limited by the restrictions of their contract and while I'm really encouraged to hear Brian and Michael speak I hope you can hear me in saying that the community was severely disappointed in OIR's report but we don't necessarily hold you accountable for that because an investigator is only as good as the information they have and I'm letting you know that the trust is so fractured in this community between law enforcement and the civilians that there are so many people that did not come forward even including in the human rights commission reports that you can't look past that so also the selection committee I'm not suggesting that OIR is the wrong group to use as this auditor it sounds like there could be a great outstanding group for the community but the fact that you have two unelected and the center was a police department representing the majority of a selection process even though it's unanimous is already creating more distrust in this community and in a contractional status for a contract that's going to be held over their head you know both of those unelected assistant city managers work in conjunction with the police department and you have the police department suggesting who should have oversight on the police department that is inherently not oversight by definition so the process has been flawed even if we've arrived to the right group and now you have it sounds like this is an extension of the professional standards which is what the police department like that's not what it is they can work that out internally this is for the community and it is critical to the credibility and trust this community that not only do we have this auditor and that this contract provide true autonomy and independence for true oversight which it seems like they're more than capable of doing if the scope of work is defined as such but it has to work in conjunction with the civilian review board which yet is still to be determined what that looks like but it is totally critical right now that that scope of work is telling us that you're going to have two reports with the chief ambassador committee that the police have chosen which you know Mayor Fleming pointed out the the oddity to that I'll just tell you right now someone who was attempted to be recruited for that I'm not saying that they didn't land some good candidates I'm telling you that most of the good candidates want nothing to do with that and I'm not suggesting that it shouldn't work or that the police department's not trying their best to do something positive but if you think that's the voices of the community for community outreach you are greatly mistaken and this is one of the inherent problems of using people who are not localized to the community which is again not OIR's fault but they don't understand the nuances the concerns the priorities of the community so they might have the professional chops to do this but you have to have people from the community who live in this community intimately involved in this process and I have concerns about OIR's effectiveness when there could potentially be spread thin if unless I misunderstood seems like there's only five of you and you have all these contracts and you're going to give us an annual report thank you Evan I need you to wrap up if you would yeah look I'm saying OIR is is is totally required but is insufficient and I hope that City Council you will do something that formally leaves the door open for a formal independent civilian review board to work in conjunction with them thank you thank you Evan we'll go to resident 0694 followed by Kathleen Mayor Roger members of the City Council my name is Jim Duffy I'm a neighbor in Runner Park I am a NACOL member and also a NACOL certified practitioner of oversight and thank you for hearing my comments this evening there's lots of really good sections in this contract that you're looking at including the full and unfettered access to materials for complaint audits and the systemic audits of complaints and discipline policies procedures and training so I want to start off saying congratulations on being so thorough in those particular areas there are some things that absolutely need to be fixed first and foremost the chief's community ambassador team also called CCAT is illegitimate and you need to remove any language that refers to it from the contract it violates the very first principle of effective independent oversight as it lacks any sense of independence all its members serve at the pleasure of the chief do not solely the great work that you did putting this contract together by including CCAT in this process the chief can have it you can do it but it's certainly not should not be related to oversight OIR should establish an alternative location independent of SRPD to accept complaints SRPD likely has a wide discretion on classifying communications from the public as something other than an official complaint which then triggers investigations reporting and tracking and we need to close that loophole so there needs to be a place for people to report a complaint that is not directly to SRPD and as lastly just as we established due to its lack of independence from SRPD CCAT is an illegitimate body so the city council will need to eventually establish a legitimate community body to help you satisfy the stakeholder support and community engagement principles of effective civilian oversight OIR and Brian core are more than qualified to help you accomplish that goal when you choose to finally and seriously pursue it thank you for taking my comments thank you Jim we'll go to Kathleen followed by Lee there we go good evening everybody I have two brilliant speakers as predecessors here it's a pretty hard act to follow and they've pretty much said everything that needs to be said I would say that I welcome at long last that we're going to have an independent auditor and I stress independent the structure I think has been pointed out need has some some serious flaws I think is a problem to only have reports in from OIR twice a year I think it should be monthly or at least at minimum quarterly OIR should report to the city council as well as to the city manager not just to the city to the city manager and then I think you know the most important point I think has already been stressed and let me stress it again there is an inherent conflict built in to any kind of advisory body appointed by the chief of police it's nothing personal it is just a fact it has to be changed this kind of consulting team body whatever you want to call it should be appointed by none other than the members of the city council so I assert you to use your powers to change this provision in the agreement because it is unacceptable as it stands it it simply can't and does not represent any measure of independence so let's start let's not play that game let's really do it let's really have the independence with the the community input with its diverse interests and really really well represented then we have a real shot at having a great independent auditor thank you thank you Kathleen we'll go to Lee followed by Kelsey hi thank you for taking my call I just want to take a minute to say that I am in favor of a completely independent community review committee I believe that it's important to have um independent auditors that are not appointed by the police um it it it I'm sorry but it just doesn't make sense to me I'm a former educator and I can't imagine somebody coming into my classroom only when I unlocked the door um it really doesn't make sense I don't think there's any opposition are you hearing it anyway I'm gonna try again yeah we'll give you a couple extra seconds here okay no problem um basically what I am I'm I'm really just saying is I um I want the council to establish an independent community review committee it just has to be independent and the time needs to be taken to to to to to make sure that the the the the focus and the the the understanding by a community oversight committee like it feels to me that it needs to be independent and it also needs there takes time so um to to establish such such a thing um I am going to yield my time but again I don't understand how somebody who is the needs to be audited can say but this is the guy I want to audit me and I'm going to repeat it as a school teacher if I were to say I only want the people that I want to come in here to check to see if I'm doing a good job as a teacher and I'm going to tell you exactly who they are and I'm not going to unlock the door unless those are the people reviewing me it just literally makes no sense it feels gaslighting it feels uncomfortable and it just just please consider that please consider that it needs to not be the person who needs to be audited to say who's going to do the auditing thank you for your time and I yield mine thank you Lee we'll go to Kelsey followed by Michael hi can you hear me yep go ahead hi um my name is Kelsey Barrow and uh been listening for hours but we managed to nail the time I'm nursing a baby to sleep so here we go um so uh I I absolutely agree with everything that's been said um everyone who's been following this who looked immediately caught the chief's advisory board part um really that's all you need to know about it to know that that has to be changed it has to be changed first you cannot sign the contract and change it later I don't know if you can do it in real time or it has to come back to the agenda to be changed but um the the independent civilian body that we've been asking for um is not optional um the discussion around um creating something that is measure p like maybe it takes more time um ways we can empower them with real you know things that they can do rather than even just advise uh and that would take time but I think it's entirely possible that we can um make the body now from the beginning and work on how to empower them with more things over time or with the public safety subcommittee that kind of thing um I just uh haven't heard it said yet necessarily that I was on the meeting listening in about the the protests and the OIR report I'd never heard of them before so uh this isn't our first meeting with the community we've met and I didn't go well um uh many of us including those who had been at those protests who were injured who had settlements later felt extremely frustrated and angry and even traumatized in terms of listening to somebody talk about the injuries and the traumatic experiences they've had um you know as as in such a sanitized way and the contrast to the human rights commission was extremely apparent and so you it they've talked a good game in this meeting and I like what I'm hearing but it's a firm and it's he said it's the business of oversight and it's not local and that's why that civilian body um has to be empowered this is there is no trust um we heard that report um we hated it at the time um basically and I know there were limitations on the contract and that's why we we're looking at the contract now we have to get it right from the beginning um and so those are the main things that I they wanted to say please um fix those things and we will be very happy uh to move forward with the order oh I wanted to say the city manager absolutely cannot the city manager can fire them for any reason it says in the contract and that's what happened last time and it was empty for years that cannot be left to stand they have to talk to the council and give more often reports thank you thank you we'll go to michael hey everyone um michael it's tone so um I'm glad that we're considering having the auditor position filled but when I saw that OIR group is the organization that was chosen to fill that position I was very disappointed um it seems like it didn't you know this is this is this position is maybe it's maybe to us you know what we want is we want uh an accountable police force that's what we want as a community maybe that's not necessarily the goals of everyone who is weighing in on this um but our experience from the protests in Santa Rosa was um we saw that um we you know from being on the street there were a lot of police abuses and we heard many of those abuses in the human rights commission report and then um it seems that OIR only investigated the uh the incidents that SRPD was in the scope of the SRPD's internal investigation and the ones that were investigated um I don't think were particularly good now if that was because um because individuals weren't reporting um the facts I think it kind of speaks to the problem with you know just having a police auditor which is that it's you know part of the it's they're they're perceived as being part of you know the internal investigation of the police and it's not sufficient for people to really trust the process and get well you know give information which is why I think we do need independent um police oversight and that's something that that you know we have to we're not it's not for consideration what I do want to say is um you know again was that OIR's fault or was that the city's fault or was that the police chief's fault I think that it largely falls on the city and so I what I what I guess I guess what I want to say is whether we have OIR or another group I'm that I don't believe trust is going to be uh repaired from this particular choice um and I don't I'm disappointed that we are going with OIR group and just to point out the the previous auditor was fired from his position for criticizing the city's policies on homelessness on homeless sweeps which you know should be criticized especially at the time um was I can see how that would have diminished the uh diminished officer morale to be scooting homeless people around all the time and not really solving the problem so you know we're watching if we end up having to fire another auditor for the same reason I think that's going to be just you know another huge problem. Thank you Michael. Do we have any voicemail public comments? We do mayor. 14.1 Dwayne DeWitt from Rosalinds please do not hire this group OIR as the independent police auditor we need to have something closer to home here in Santa Rosa starting with the citizens oversight committee and getting people in our community who know the problems we've had for over 20 years this is really important and this group that you're talking about hiring it's just another go along to get along crew they basically haven't helped yet I don't think they'll help at all they're just about making the money and doing the same thing that the police union wants um it's really a sad time that so many tragedies are occurring did you know that most of the homicides in Santa Rosa this year have been over in Rosalind and the one police killing so far this year over in Rosalind so we have a vested interest that we get some honesty in this whole process and I don't think this OIR group is going to bring that to the table they're just another crew that's going to follow what the leader wants and take the money and laugh all the way to the bank please citizens oversight committee with a locally based auditor someone that will stand up to the police thank you so my name is Allegra Wilson and I am calling in on a giant agenda item 14.1 the contract with the OIR group for police oversight services I want to call to advocate for more community input before awarding this contract to the OIR group and the Santa Rosa City Council should know that this is a topic of strong interest in the community and we want as much oversight and input from the people who are impacted by overpolicing and police violence as possible the OIR group submitted a report about the police violence against protesters in 2020 that was completely sanitized and had very little relationship to the actual atrocities that were committed including human rights violations as detailed by the Sonoma County Commission on Human Rights and I really urge the city council to slow down this process involve community voice in what goes into that contract as well as in the selection of a of the right person or body to do this type of oversight we need oversight we needed it long before now as we know that the police have killed yet another person just down the street from my house as a matter of fact and it's harmful to the community it's horrible and there and oversight is needed but more than that community input and involvement on that oversight is needed because more policing of the police by interests who don't care about the people is not going to help us and having this body this OIR group and run the show without any input from the community is unacceptable as they've proven by their report that they submitted to the council in May and so again please involve the community in these types of decisions we need to have a voice we deserve to have a voice and we will not be ignored thank you mayor that concludes public comment on item 14.1 great thank you so much i'll go ahead bring it back to council mr city manager there were two things in particular that i heard a couple of different times one of them was a question about the city manager's authority to fire the independent contract the independent contract here for oversight my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong is that actually stems from the city's charter which says that council members only have authority over two employees of the city the city manager and the city attorney and that we are not allowed to give hiring and firing direction and any other position that is correct mayor the city's charter does outline that authority and that is typical of council manager forms of government in the state of california okay the other question was about the ccat doing the facilitation for the community meetings how was it determined that the ccat was the appropriate facilitator in that instance as opposed to for example the mayor or the the chair of the public safety oversight committee i think chief navarro may speak to this in more detail but my understanding was that the chief formed this community ambassador team it's not an advisory body has no authority within the department or other function of oversight in the department other than to encourage community involvement and engagement and he may want to elaborate more on their role with the community engagement process associated with this contract thank you mr city manager yes mayor so they are they are a an ambassador team that's set up to assist us with additional outreach to the public in the way that they would be again utilized in this particular contract would be to help conduct outreach to the public to again the advice is not coming from ccat they are providing input on where the community is positioned they're going to be used to enhance community engagement and to bring more people to the table and so we not only will use them but again we'll use the city's community engagement team or officer community outreach and all that is an effort to try to enhance more community involvement so they're not an advisory they're it's an ambassador team for our for our community so chief would would there be any objection then section nine page 16 of the scope of services says community meetings will be facilitated by the chief's community ambassador team and held twice a year is there any objection then if we switch that to community meetings will be facilitated by the mayor or their designee mayor i'm you know we're our our biggest pieces to get community involvement if that's the direction we can we can definitely accommodate that i i do know that the members of the community ambassador team do want to get involved in some way so i would hope that they're a part of it but if it's under the direction of the mayor or another designee then you know we can accommodate that okay thank you chief council are there any additional questions otherwise i'll have councilmember fleming put a motion on the table go ahead in regards to the time that that the reports are being brought out i believe it stated that it's only once a year when these reports are made available and i'm wondering if if city council if there's an opportunity for us to meet quarterly during the first year well we see this program being developed and then after the first year on a yearly basis unless a situation arises that demands a report to be made that would be a change in the scope of the contract i would imagine that we would need to discuss that and any cost implications with the oir group what we could do councilmember if if it is uh if it's appropriate is if we choose to move forward with this tonight we could potentially have those conversations and then if a change in scope of service is would require additional finances or something of that nature we could bring that as a separate addendum for discussion either in the budget or sooner if that needs to take place i would appreciate that mayor that does make sense we could we could take a look at the cost associated with that thank you sir councilmember fleming yes prior to putting a motion on the floor um city attorney do i need to do anything to incorporate the the mayor and the chief's agreement to provide the reports to the mayor or the mayor's designee or will that happen in the process after i put the motion on the floor no it would be it would be helpful for you to incorporate that into your um into your motion so that you would move to adopt the resolution read the resolution title with uh with the one change um that and i'm sorry my computer just ran out of batteries i don't have that section i think it's on page no worries i'll give it a good crack and will you correct me if i don't get it right yes actually uh the city manager graciously just handed me his notes so i'm good okay excellent all right um i'm uh honored to bring a resolution of the council of the city of san aroza approving the professional services agreement with oir group llc to serve as the independent police department auditor with the additional amendment to the contract that the reports will be given biannually to the mayor or the mayor's designee if i can correct because i want to make sure we're we're clear uh with the community it's that the community meeting the twice yearly community meeting will be facilitated by the mayor or their designee and just to explain the designee part is because uh my thought is that the actual person who should facilitate the meeting is either the mayor or the chair of the committee that has oversight and we don't know in the future what that committee will look like so i just wanted to make sure that there was enough wiggle room within the scope of the contract to be able to to have the right person facilitating that meeting um in so it's uh page 16 section nine community meetings will be facilitated by the mayor or their designee and held twice a year would you like me to do it again i happy with that i think we can say with those changes yes you can you can just stay with those changes as the mayor said yes very good thank you may i get a second i will second all right so we have a motion from council member fleming and a second from council member alvarez are there any additional comments from council members let's go council member alvarez don't work my way down i want to say that that i'm proud to support this i look forward to a transparent inclusive process that makes our community feel that they are represented with respect and dignity and i'm here at your service thank you thank you council member today is a good day it should not have taken as long as it has but it is here now and so i think that what we ought to do is is anything okay i think that given that it's taken us as long as it has to get here um we ought to consider moving forward how we're going to make sure that we don't end up in this situation again where we have three years without independent an independent auditor and i and i know that council has previously given direction to the charter review committee to take this up um it is my hope and my belief that we are hiring a group of talented individuals who will be able to to execute on our vision of an independent and accountable um auditor or auditor that's independent and provides accountability to our police force and that this independent auditor will allow our community to feel some degree of engagement and comfort and trust and that in turn will that trust will in turn increase the ability of our peace officers to do the difficult jobs that they do with a greater degree of confidence and safety and that in turn our community will be benefited all around thank you council member council member sweatel thank you mr. mayor um i am very supportive of this you know it's how we got here is an interesting voyage and i have heard not only tonight but from other members of the community wouldn't be great if we did have a local firm but i think this is the third or fourth time the city has gone out and as far as i'm my understanding they don't exist yet right um and i do want to thank both uh brian and mike uh thank you for your feedback and the answers to the question the word trust has been mentioned here um i think you really have provided those first steps towards trust i really am anxious to see the work that or oir is going to do and we can really partner to build this relationship so i really appreciate your interest and i look forward for future collaborations thank you council member vice mayor you've got the last word um did someone mention about the process of complaints and how the complaints come in and that that should be changed no okay just checking before we went through all this process um so i must say that i was one of the people that very strongly wanted this position filled and i still feel that way and um it is not the dinner that we just had that was really good that has my stomach and knots i think what has my stomach and knots is that i know that on paper and educationally and in experience you guys check all the boxes and i'm so done with checking boxes that it's driving me nuts the fact that you guys did not talk to the people that did the human rights commission report bugs me it really like gets me in so many places and it disappoints me how you can check so many boxes and just be so close to i know no one's perfect but like on paper and just have the expertise and just be there and just be like have all this experience and like no and you're saying well i couldn't get to the protesters but you were so close to people that interviewed the protesters and had all this experience firsthand with protesters and and people that were were there and you didn't take the opportunity to i don't know it just makes me it makes me feel some type of way um so i have reservations um and and i i hate feeling that way when i'm when i'm voting for something but i have really like not i don't feel great um with that being said i think that i think michael said it and that is you know let let us show you let us show you and um i said i have eight eight brown children so i am as a mother not as a council member as a as a resident i am i'm asking you to i know you don't live here but i'm asking you to show our community better than you can tell us better than you can write a proposal i'm asking you to show us with your with your actions and i'm asking you to hold our police department accountable and i'm not saying to hold us accountable to flip our police department upside down because i think we have some darn good officers i'm asking you because i want our department to be the best so i want you to find things that we can improve upon to train our officers to make us the best not to chastise us to punish us to but to train our officers to point out things that can make us the best that that's what i'm looking for um is to make us the best um and as near perfection as we can get not to point out all the things that we do wrong in order to say we're doing them wrong but so that we can train our officers and make them the best um so with that that's what i have to say but i do have this not in my stomach all right thanks vice mayor madam clerk please call the roll councilmember tibbetz councilmember schwedhelm aye councilmember soyer aye councilmember fliming yes councilmember alvarez all right vice mayor rogers aye mayor rogers aye that motion passes with six eyes with councilmember tibbetz absent right thank you so much we'll be talking mic and brian mr city manager let's go on to our public hearings i do believe we have to conclude any public hearings by or excuse me start any public hearing before nine o'clock yes that is correct great so move on to item 15.1 and try to be expeditious with them may rogers and members of the council item 15.1 is a public hearing on the amended 2020 water shortage contingency plan calling close our senior water resources planner we'll do the staff report on this item thank you very much uh city manager colon and good evening council and mayor we'll go ahead and get started with this and i'll do my best to be very concise for you i know it's been a very busy evening already we're here with this first item to present to you a recommendation to amend our 2020 water shortage contingency plan with two amendments one of those amendments also would include introduction of an ordinance next slide please this slide will be familiar to you it's to remind the public that the california urban water management planning act does require the city to take steps every five years to prepare and adopt and submit a comprehensive water planning document that looks out over a we actually use a 25 year horizon that the law requires at least a 20 year horizon and that we also prepare a separate plan to prepare for water shortages should they occur for any reason whatsoever these are adopted every five years and you held a study session in may and you adopted both documents in june the 2020 urban water management plan that long-term water plan and the shortage the water shortage contingency plan the law does allow for us to make any amendments that we think are necessary in between those five year cycles so we wanted to take advantage of that and to propose these two amendments that i will explain next slide please and just a reminder again a shortage plan prepares us for water shortages that could occur for any reason and it's like an operational plan it's very detailed and has quite a few response actions listed in it for any type of water shortage stage and that's so that we can make sure that the water we have available during shortage will get us through that shortage that will have enough for health and safety throughout that period next slide please we have eight water shortage stages as you're well aware and when we get past stage four when we get into stages five six seven and eight that's when we are rationing water we call that water allocations next slide please when we are rationing water when we're assigning water allocations every individual water service gets an amount of water that's specific to the type of customer and to some data that's specific to that site for example how many people live in that home or the type of business when this is in fact in place it is a requirement that folks not exceed the limit on how much water they've been allocated if they do we immediately would start enforcement part of that enforcement process includes excess use penalties next slide please in the current water shortage plan the excess use penalties are defined by looking at a percentage of use over that water allocation and while on paper and an excel spreadsheet when we looked at this mathematically it makes perfect sense and it works very well unfortunately it doesn't work well with our billing software because we end up with increments of thousand gallon units we bill in thousand gallon units so while this does make a lot of sense logically and in many ways it's actually we're not able to implement it in a useful way with our billing system so staff worked with our software vendor and we took a look at a number of different models that we could use so that we could come up with a penalty structure that would have a similar impact but would be easily implemented so next slide please so what we came up with was looking at the thousand gallons of units over use over the allocation and then assign a flat fee for each thousand gallon unit and when we did the analysis similar to the analysis we did and the water shortage plan for the adopted structure the impact would be very similar in terms of the amount of fees that would be charged if someone wasn't complying with the allocations at any given stage so this comes very close to that structure so that's the first amendment that we are recommending we're recommending that we shift to a penalty structure that's based on thousand gallon units rather than on percentage next slide please you're familiar with this slide this is the second amendment that we're recommending the shortage plan currently allows for water demand offsets to increase with the more severe stages of shortage six seven and eight in stage one it's a one-to-one offset but by stage eight it's a four-to-one offset and we would recommend that regardless of which stage we're in when we're rationing water with our existing customers and don't have water to allocate to new uses that the offset be a requirement that's strictly one-to-one for all stages five through eight so those are the two amendments that are recommended next slide please because it's a document that has lots of sections and tables and appendices that amendment includes making sure that those changes are made in all of the parts and pieces of the plan where they are currently embedded my apologies i accidentally clicked out of your presentation one moment no problem so i can mention that you know so what we would recommend is that all of those pieces be included in the in the updating that water shortage plan the other piece that we would recommend is that the ordinance be adopted and the ordinance is necessary to update thank you so much next slide would be great yeah thank you the ordinance would be to change our city codes so that the excess use penalty structure gets updated with the new penalty structure next slide please so in more formal terms the recommendation is this it's recommended by the board of public utilities and santa rosa water that council by resolution adopt the 20 amended 2020 water shortage contingency plan and introduce an ordinance approving revisions to the excess use penalty structure set forth in section 14-04.015 of the city code and i'm happy to take any questions that the council may have thank you thank you so much callin i have just one sort of basic question right off the bat i was at a community meeting a couple of weeks ago and somebody asked me why we bill in thousand gallon increments is there any easy answer for that to explain to people who knows there's an easy answer per se but basically every water department water supplier picks a unit that they use for billing and so we pick the thousand gallon unit some folks pick a ccf or other kinds of that's a cubic foot measure what we do though however i think it's helpful for the community to know is if you used let's say 1400 gallons this month you're actually billed at 1000 gallons and then next month if you roll over the next thousand gallon unit that's when it catches up so so it's really in some ways it favors the customer and that we we go to the the next lowest thousand gallon unit so that we're always billing in whole thousand gallon units and then it does catch up so we don't overcharge our customers we don't round up we round down and we know over time that that does catch up so i i mean because we all uh got pra for our water usage and got to see how much each of us use so you're saying that council member Fleming when she uses less than a thousand gallons in a month she pays nothing that first month and then the second month when she rolls over the thousand it gets added in and she gets charged well it would depend on it's it's when the thousand gallon unit number on the meter turns over so if the thousand gallon unit on the meter doesn't turn over then it's there isn't a water charge that month for the water itself there is still the fixed fee and the sewer fee and the sewer fixed fees so there are still fees and then the next month once that turns over that thousand gallon unit then that counts as a thousand gallons but we don't round up we wait until that thousand gallon unit figure on the meter turns over i hope that makes sense i know it's a little technical no it does i mostly just want to be able to congratulate the council member on being the most water efficient of the bunch that's wonderful i think she was like 900 gallons per month on average i mean just one are there other true are there other questions from council on this i i'm actually i wasn't able to hear that i'm sorry it's i said for the sake of time i have like 20 people at my house i don't think that that's fair i didn't see the new numbers but i have like 20 people at my house i i can't i don't think mine my water usage was that bad was it oh no everybody was extremely efficient but council member Fleming uh one out of the entire group because she has like one person anyway council member tidbits thank you mayor um hello colin one of the questions i had for you was uh what alternatives are there to charging housing to meet some of our water demand offset needs well if i could i think that's going to be our next item and if if i could have your permission to talk about the water demand offset policy itself in the next item um otherwise i'm i'm happy to try to tackle it now but i think we're going to get into more depth about that topic very soon um um maybe i could ask you for some direction on that yeah council member if you don't mind waiting until the item that works for me any other questions from council all right let's go to public comment on item 15.1 if you're interested in providing comment go ahead hit the raise hand feature on your zoom or bum rush cal to get to the podium i'm seeing nobody move and i'm seeing no hands did we have any voicemail public comments we did not mayor okay i'll bring it back to council are there any additional questions none okay let's go ahead and get a motion on the table oh council member sorry go ahead mayor did you need to open the public hearing it's a great question john will open the public hearing provide one more opportunity to see if there's anybody who's interested in speaking and i'm not seeing any so we'll close the public hearing thank you council member my pleasure mayor uh council uh council member fleming oh this is not my item i had a comment on it well i think we get a motion you just want my comment go ahead okay well my comment is that even if you use uh zero thousand gallons of water the water department does manage to get you nearly just the same and it only saves you about a dollar or two so you know winning winning here is relative all right council member soyer excuse me council member spudhelm this is your item thank you uh first of all thank you calling for that clear and concise presentation really appreciate your presentations um so i've moved a resolution of the council of the city san rosa adopting the amended 2020 water shortage contingency plan and way further reading of the text second motion from council member swedhelm and a second from the vice mayor let's call the vote council member tibbet council member schwedhelm i council member soyer i council member fleming yes council member alvarez i vice mayor rogers i mayor rogers i that motion passes with seven eyes now i move in ordinance of the council of the city of san rosa mending section one four dash zero four point zero one five of the san rosa city code revising language applicable to the water shortage rate in revising the excess use penalty structure and wave further in the text uh oh second motion from schwedhelm second from vice mayor rogers let's call the vote council member tibbet's nay council member schwedhelm i council member soyer hi council member fleming hi council member alvarez hi vice mayor rogers hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with six eyes and council member tibbet's voting no all right let's move on to item 15.2 mayor rogers and members of the city council item 15.2 is our second public hearing on the water demand offset policy and fee study and fees and call in close will also be presenting this item for the city council thank you again city manager colon and members of the council and mayor so we will present to you the water demand offset policy fee study and fees this is following the study session that you had a few weeks ago so uh the presentation's a bit reduced but again we can address any questions that may come up next slide please you may recall from the may and june activities that you did when you considered and adopted the water shortage contingency plan that our priorities during water shortages are primarily health and safety economic stability and landscaping with our existing customers and then as the water supplies allow to then have water for new demand as well next slide please and again here are eight stages of shortage and when we get over 25 percent we get into those water rationing stages and just a reminder that that's when we have a very limited supply and our customers are having to cut back anywhere from 30 to 55 or even 60 of their normal use next slide please so during those severe shortages we're rationing those limited supplies the idea is to make sure that that limited supply will make us through that emergency period we have never had to ration water we've had uh water shortage plans since 1992 and have not had to face this but we know that it could be possible in the future again top priorities health and safety and every water service is assigned a very specific amount of water to that service and if they violate it they're subject to the excess use penalties and so again no water available for new demand so when we were developing the water shortage contingency plan we considered things like a moratorium which for us didn't seem tenable given our housing shortage crisis we considered requiring developers to find new water supplies although we've seen as a city ourselves this is a very difficult task to achieve and it's quite expensive developing public water supplies requires a level of materials and construction that is far above what you might use for say a simple well for irrigating um we also it also can take two or three years for the permitting process we also considered requiring that developers would develop their own offset projects but in speaking with other agencies they found that developers typically didn't take that option expensive it's time-consuming and it can be very difficult and they do still have to rely very heavily on the water supplier so there's still costs that have to be taken care of for oversight inspections making sure customers are qualified and that sort of thing so we came back to this idea of the water demand offset as being a viable option where developers would know in advance what the fee could be and what the process would be so there would be some predictability and and it would allow for our housing shortage crisis to be addressed even during severe water shortages without compromising the amount of water we have available next slide please so again uh california does mandate that we have a certain amount of housing the city is committed to addressing our housing shortage crisis so we want to make sure we keep that in mind as we move forward next slide please so the proposed policy tries to balance the realities of a severe water shortage emergency with an ongoing housing shortage crisis and it does provide that mechanism to implement the requirement and the shortage plan when we are rationing water and need to ensure that we have adequate water supply for our customers and are able to then find a way to still address the needs of housing shortages next slide please the applicability of projects would need to meet two conditions they would have not submitted a building permit prior to the policy going place so projects that already have submitted a building permit application this policy does not apply to them we can't add fees after the fact so again helping developers have predictability and surety about what they're getting into when they get a building permit projects would also be subject to new or increased connection fees so a home that had perhaps been destroyed in a fire would not be subject to this because they've had a meter that project had already paid demand fees when it was built originally rebuilding that project does not trigger this policy so this is for new demand that had not previously been on our system next slide please the process would be that the developer the builder would submit a water demand offset application with the permit for the building permit that helps us understand what the demand is going to be so we can determine what the fee is we put together an agreement very often building projects can take many many years to complete so we want to make sure they understand what the obligation could be and under what circumstances it would be triggered because again we need to give surety and predictability to developers who are working on projects if in that agreement process the builder doesn't agree there is an appellate process that is in place so that we meet all the requirements of the mitigation fee act the building permit assuming we've got an agreement both parties are ready to move forward the building permit is issued and the project proceeds and instead of requiring payment immediately as we do for all of our other fees this fee waits until the impact would be felt and that would be upon final inspection or temporary occupancy or any kind of occupancy at any kind but it would only be due if we're in a severe water shortage and we're rationing water amongst our existing customers so at the outset a developer has surety about what the fees could be what the what would be facing them and then at completion they could have the good news of there not being a severe drought in place in which case the fees would be waived there's no need to pay them next slide please so the water demand offset fee were it collected would be tracked separately to comply with the mitigation fee act and it would be used to fund city projects and programs to achieve water offsets and I believe we mentioned during your study session had this been adopted in 1992 when we had our first water shortage contingency plan between now and then we would have collected exactly zero in fees so we've never had to ration water we hope we never have to but if we do get into that situation we need a some measure of way to reduce water use so that we can allow for new water use next slide please at this point I would like to ask that mark hildebrand be promoted he's a consultant that worked on the water demand offset fee study and mark will present a couple of slides here to help us understand a little bit more about the fee study that this is based on great thank you mr close for the introduction and thank you council for having you this evening in calculating the water demand offset fees what we did was we first looked at your different types of customers your residential water customers to understand how much water different types of customers use on average and then we also looked at known programs known water savings programs that the city has implemented over the years so we looked at the cost of your direct bathroom conversion programs from the past your enhanced high efficiency clothes washer rebates as well as rebates for turf removal to understand how much it costs to save water so we calculated the cost of these rebates and the cost of converting the bathrooms and estimated how much water that saved to understand how much it would cost to offset new developments and so we compared that demand with those costs to come up with the fees next slide so on this table you can see the proposed water demand offset fees on the right side and we've classified your different types of residential in the same manner that they're classified for your connection fees so we've grouped them into small medium and large lots because obviously the amount of water used by those types of connections are significantly different as you can see from the fee we also looked at the water used by triplexes duplexes condos and difference an assortment of different accessory development units and other smaller developments finally at the bottom you'll see that the commercial industrial institutionals framed a little differently because these types of developments are so different from one another that your development department actually assesses how much water they expect to use per month based on the permit that's being that's being submitted and so the fee is based on the projected water for that specific development and it would be $415 per thousand gallons per month next slide and I will turn it back to Mr. Collin. Thank you very much so in terms of the implementation should the council take action on this fees would not go into effect in any sooner than 60 days after adoption this again is part of the mitigation fee act so if it were adopted tonight the implementation would not begin until after January 29th so functionally that would be Monday January 31st when this would go into place uh word adopted this evening next slide please we did quite a bit of public outreach we sent letters to over 170 groups and individuals and an additional 59 contractors and developers we made presentations at publicly noticed meetings and since your city council study session we did go to the board of public utilities on November 18th and they adopted a resolution and when we talk about the recommendation tonight I'll make clear what they are recommending and during that meeting there were two members of the public who gave comments during that meeting during the public period Ananda Sweet from the metro chamber of commerce did mention that the policy from their perspective did not provide benefit because we were waiting until later stages and they wanted to see a menu of options to be available and then we had a representative from generation housing and on-profit housing advocacy group expressed that they would like to see the general fund help subsidize affordable housing and I think I'm not I don't have all the details what I think what they meant was to subsidize the offset fee but I don't want to put words into their mouth then we also received email comments from Alan Levine of the Coast Action Group and those have been submitted as a late correspondence and attached to the agenda for this evening's meeting so that's also available we also as you know made a presentation to the north coast builders exchange governmental affairs committee and we did publish the policy and fees study on our website on October 20th and when we sent out letters and notices to folks that was published as well and then of course we did the public noticing in the press democrat and that also included information contact information and ways that folks could participate tonight in the public hearing or in submitting comments prior to this evening next slide please so with that it is recommended by the board of public utilities and Santa Rosa water that the council by resolution one adopt the water demand offset policy two adopt the 2021 water demand offset fee study three adopt the water demand offset fees and four authorize the water demand offset fees to be adjusted on an annual basis to account for inflation at the beginning of the calendar year January 1st starting in 2023 using the engineering news records 20 cities construction cost index and it is further recommended by the board of public utilities that the council consider a general fund subsidy to offset the water demand offset fee for affordable housing projects that concludes my presentation and we're happy to take any questions you may have great thank you so much Colin councilmember tidbits thank you mayor first i want to start off with a question for sue sue and response to your text message about a potential conflict of interest i wanted to ask you our building permit on our project has already been issued and i believe our fee our water fees have already been levied do i should i be worried about a conflict of interest um yes councilmember tidbits um in the event that st vincent uh does st vincent have any st vincent of paul have any uh plans uh for further development uh further development meaning new new projects first not not on the immediate horizon now okay um i think the same as i think then that anything would be too speculative going forward since you already have your permits currently um i think i think you're okay um you may wish to recuse particularly given the recommendation from at least some members of the bpu to provide subsidy for affordable housing projects um which could include the work of your organization okay thank you i'm going to try to navigate carefully and perhaps if it comes to a general fund subsidy of affordable housing projects i will consider our recusal at that point if that's all right um but i my question i do have a follow-up question and this is uh for you Colin first of all thanks for this presentation having been a member of the bpu going through our first study many years ago for drought recommendations i know how much work goes into this um i i do have a question though and it's it follows up on my previous question alternatives to charging housing at all um and i'm asking that question because my appointee to the board of public utilities chris grable asked this very question and i think it became a pretty significant point of conversation at the bpu meeting um specifically there was there's going to be some concern around i think one of the questions was is could we just charge all ratepayers for higher use as opposed to charging housing opportunities could you shed some light on on alternatives to housing certainly i'll do my best um so in terms of some alternatives um one alternative as you know would be having the general fund if there was a desire to not have offset fees charged to any particular kind of project or area of the city or whatever the case may be the general funds are not don't have the same limits on um how they can be used that the water funds do so with in terms of the water funds the money that the water department earns through revenues on the sales of its water those are limited by proposition 218 and proposition 218 makes it very clear that customers cannot be required to subsidize another set of customers and so um we couldn't use our rate revenues to pay offset fees for new development for example that would be a violation of prop 218 so we wouldn't be able to do that we do have cell tower revenues that we use currently those are not um those don't have the same limits of proposition 218 but they are currently used um for our help to others program and what that does is that provides funding for reducing the water bill of customers who are low and very low income customers by having the cell towers that generate income from companies that that use cell towers that money is used to pay the fixed charges for water and sewer so then the customer is only responsible for the water charges which they have full control over they can reduce their water use and reduce their bill directly so that money is um used currently for that program but it could be that if we were so directed that program could be ended and the funding could be redirected to offset um to subsidize the offset fees if we were in a situation where offsets were required we also in our water shortage plan as you just saw tonight with the adoption of the water shortage plan the excess use penalties are a penalty and they also are not subject to prop 218 however it's always been our commitment to work with our customers particularly during drought to make sure they can comply because when we're in a drought what we have a shortage of is water and so we do have the excess use penalties and we absolutely can institute those we're building our billing system to be able to do so but our as we show in our water shortage plan and as we promised you in may and again in june when you considered and then adopted the shortage plan our promise to you and our customers is that first we do progressive enforcement we reach out let them know there's a problem work with them provide technical sense assistance and that sort of thing so if a customer is recalcitrant we have that hammer and we can use it but really what we need is a reduction in water use so we don't anticipate and we don't build into any of our revenue models any income from excess use penalties as being in any way something that we would ever rely upon so there's just no guarantee customers can avoid them by not over using water so those were the alternatives we also mentioned the ones i mentioned tonight alternatives to the offset program altogether the things that we considered the moratorium the requiring a new water supply the requiring that contractors do projects we also discuss those during the bpu meeting as well so i think that that covers all all of the options that we had brought forward during the bpu discussion i appreciate that colin and i want to comment on those before i do or one of the ideas that came to my mind leading up to this meeting you know whenever we're talking about water in my mind in prop 218 was always i think my biggest frustration being on the bpu because it kind of made so many things that would logically follow and have a clear political nexus to the issue almost impossible and to follow up on that comment what i'm driving at is you know when we look at new housing development it's it's far and beyond way more water efficient than all the houses that people are living in currently that were built in the 1950s 60s and 70s that may not have gone through some sort of an upgrade low flow toilets water efficient faucets things like that and so my i guess my follow-up question this is probably one a little bit for jesse oswald or somebody in our building department but um our i believe we have permits that people come in for whether it's electrical plumbing or something in a remodel process where would it would we be restricted by prop 218 to put surcharges on remodels as opposed to new housing construction that didn't violate 218 but still helped us generate the income i can't address that piece as as you're probably aware but i i know that mr oswald was going to try and attend tonight and so we can ask him before i jump to you mr oswald i would like to just address one thing we did look at the efficiency of our single family and our multifamily homes and their water use patterns over the past 10 years when we were developing our urban water management plan because it's really critical to know what our building stock age is and how much we have in different categories of age and how much water use those are because that drives how much water we believe we're going to need in the future so the good news was twofold one water use since 1990 has decreased per capita in the residential sector alone by 44 percent in santa rosa 42 of that 44 decrease was achieved before 2010 so while we do know that older building stock is not as efficient when it was built we've had something like 50 000 i'm sorry 56 000 toilets that we've helped to rebate to get um switched out and you know tens and tens of thousands of faucet aerators and shower heads and we've worked with our customers over the years so what we see is that the 1994 and earlier group the 94 to 2009 group and the 2010 to current group have very similar water patterns in terms of the amount of water used per unit so um it it is true that new housing is built to be more efficient but we see that our customers have taken our programs to heart over the last 30 years so just wanted to clarify that you're right in that older houses were not built to be very efficient but we don't see a significant difference in water use by age of construction and then mr oswald if you might address the other issue that i'm i'm not qualified thank you call councilmember tibbetz good evening thank you um if i understand the question correctly yes um existing stock there are requirements uh when permits are applied for for say renovations uh to a certain extent to require the new efficiencies be uh new new fixtures faucets toilets uh shower heads so yes you're you're accurate in that we are uh through state law um going after so to speak existing stock but it's only in from from from our perspective it's very very much like many of us know that if you pull a building permit you have to put in smoke alarms very much the same thing it's it's a tackle we can only get them in the door when we get them in the door so to speak and i do believe that on point of sale that's also true i think on point of sale it's a requirement from ab i want to say 1847 um that that's also they have to come up to current water efficiency standards well that's that's certainly good to hear and then that would probably lose my support for adding on additional fees to those types of permits i think that what i where you're gonna hear me coming from in the comments and i'll listen to public comment before making up my mind but um but i really don't like about this plan has to do with that we're just adding fees to housing opportunities and that is so especially true when it comes to affordable housing developing in this town is still really difficult this council has spent the last six years trying to undo those fee structures that are incredibly cumbersome uh through fee waivers through fee reductions and i remember we actually the water department made probably the most substantial water and sewer reduction that contributes towards building permit fees and and and while i recognize some of these fees are kind of de minimis in comparison i think it it's also i mean this we know that this adds up number one but number two it's it's also i just don't like the message that this is housing opportunity and then when we talk about equity it's also having to do it you know a lot of communities of color accessing these affordable housing opportunities therefore um i think it makes a lot more sense from an equity perspective that we actually look at the penalties because it bothers me that somebody who would just say well i'm going to continue to water my lawn during a stage four stage four drought in california at a time when this town's you know lifeblood is agriculture and we put a premium on water hence groundwater sustainability districts and potential metering um that you know somehow they're not paying for that that privilege i'd much rather see the source come from from there other questions from council members council members what up thank you mr. mayor and thank you calling once again for the presentation if i could just confirm i heard you say we've never had a ration water before in other words we've never reached stage five in our history that's correct although i will say in 1976 77 um we may have had to i don't know exactly i know we were bringing water trucks in and we were connecting private wells to our water system back in the day because it was so catastrophic and we didn't have lake sonoma so this is a huge advantage that our community has invested in lake sonoma because that buffers us during these severe droughts in a way that is you know almost incomprehensible so in comparison to 1976 77 so i could stand corrected someone might be able to have institutional memory and say perhaps we did in 76 77 that that i don't know um but other than that uh no especially since we've had the building of lake sonoma we've we've never had to ration okay and part of the thing is trying to get my arms around some of the concerns that councilman tibbetz mentioned is that we've this council's priority has been on housing um and and i some of this water offset kind of almost uh comes to the conclusion that new building or new homes equals increased water use but then when i look at the data specifically the gallons per capita per day going back to 2008 i think we're at 128 gallons per capita per day and in 2015 i'm going prior to the tubs we were down to 84 now i i don't have the numbers and i'm not asking you or just to say what were the number of new houses or construction between 2008 to 2015 but i'm sure we have more housing but that did not equate to more water use would that be accurate um actually we did use more water for example 2020 is one of our highest water use years since 2013 but what you're looking at is 2015 was drought so we had very low per capita in 2014 1516 compared to say 2018 so that's i think that's perhaps one of the differences there and we've also seen a population decline according to the california department of finance demographic research unit we're waiting to see what the census data will finally land on for 2020 for santa rosa once that's done the state will then go back and correct their estimates as needed to adjust to that because the census looks as though it's increased population rather than decreased in 2020 to 2021 so it's a little more difficult than than it might seem because when you're doing per capita you're taking all of the water use and dividing it by the population so it there is some potential there for things like the population numbers shifting or a drought that can really drive that curve in a way that's counterintuitive if you didn't know those additional facts and so back in 2015 to get down to the 84 gallons per capita per day we did not have this water offset fee charged to new constructions would that be accurate we were not in water rationing we did have it in our water shortage plan as a strategy we didn't have the policy in place but it's been in our water shortage plan for i want to say about 15 years now so but we've never been close enough and this year with climate change and with it being two severely dry years in a row we're closer than we've ever been since the building like sonoma to truly thinking we need to make sure that this is built into our billing system that we've really dotted our eyes and crossed our t's so this is a this is a drought situation that we haven't seen before 2014 to 16 we got atmospheric rivers and even though we had significantly less rainfall it came in large streams and replenished the lake each winter so we had below well below average rainfall but we still had adequate water supply so again it's a little i hate to get too far into the weeds there but it is a little bit more technical i'm with you and i appreciate the night getting too deep into the weeds but i'm also aware that there the water department does have some water contingency fees that does help the rate payers and smoothing those out what are some of the allowable uses eight aka would some of this suggested the three different programs that if we do get to stage five are there any other water contingency funds that'd be available for that use versus charging new development the only thing that we could come up with that is actually a revenue stream is the south cell tower money that is used for the help to others program the excess use penalties you know if we got into water rationing there is a chance that we could collect excess use penalties but you know we're just not anticipating that there would be a significant amount there because again in the first month we're working to bring people into compliance and in the second month if we're not seeing a change we're starting to move in that direction so certainly it is a possibility but and those penalties could be used for whatever purpose but we can't see those as a revenue stream because their penalties and completely avoidable certainly some folks will be will have those fees levied on them they will not comply but we just don't project we see our for example in 2014-15 our community we asked them to cut back by 16 percent that was the state's mandate they cut back by 25 percent so we just don't typically see folks not you know contributing to to the success that we need to have during drought right thank you for that and so where i'm kind of struggling again at the council priority of housing versus the water that you know again this policy doesn't create any new water what would be the impact of no action by council tonight so if council decided not to take any steps we would be where we were yesterday we would have a water shortage contingency plan that calls for offsets but we would have no policy in place to implement it so if we go into a stage five or worse water shortage we still have this mandate to offset to to ration water among our existing customers there's nothing left for new development and we have a requirement to have an offset but we have no policy no procedure to achieve that offset no nothing in place to fund it nothing in place to ensure that it occurs so hope is we get more rain and we simply avoid this and we and we so that would be the best case worst case nothing happens tonight no policy is adopted and we get no more rain and we find by you know late spring early summer next year that potentially we're in a stage five rationing water and no way to provide water to new development thank you council member Fleming thank you and thank you mr close um i uh many of my questions were already answered by council member schwedhelm and tidbits but i feel indulged me i do have a few more um i i do have a broader question um it's you know perhaps rhetorical um and one to think about which is when the water department hears the council year after year say that housing and homelessness is a priority and when you hear us this year say that equity is a priority do you take these things in it and really grapple with them and say because i i think that every person i've met in the water department is really good hearted but i i sometimes wonder if these things are addressed in the same sense of unity across the city or if they're in a silo so you don't have to answer it but if you do want to tell if you do have a way that you address it and you would like to share it i would love to hear it well um i can tell you that you know speaking personally i grew up in abject poverty and have been homeless so i certainly understand these from a very visceral perspective the importance of housing and reliability and equity it's certainly very near and dear to me just in terms of my own visceral experience um but from a water department absolutely so for example years ago we started to see that the percentage of um low and very low income folks compared to their water bill was out of whack and it was something the water industry throughout california was talking about was deeply concerned about but we have prop 218 so we knew we couldn't simply subsidize and do what pgne does and have sort of that that kind of um i forget what their program is called care i think it is we couldn't do something like that because of prop 218 so we had a committee that worked week after week looking at what could we possibly do and not violate the law and what we came up with was the cell tower revenue and we worked with legal just to make sure that it wasn't something that was subject to prop 218 and then we worked with local providers so that we would have a mechanism where local nonprofits would vet the folks and double check because we don't we don't have uh social workers we don't have a way to check someone's income so we worked with local nonprofits to make sure that that would work and so then we had to help the others program to help reduce the cost of water bills so you know in that way yeah absolutely the other thing is that we're very um careful about not shutting off water for non-payment it's not our first step if someone's not paying we work with them extensively to come up with a payment plan and to find some way to help them our water use efficiency team will go out to their home and spend you know go out as many site visits as necessary trying to help find how can they reduce their water use still have plenty of water that they can use for health and safety but reduce their water use so that they can get their water bill down so there's a couple of mechanisms I think that that we you know that we use um and we are very limited by prop 218 and so um that does hamper us in ways in terms of not being able to do some of the kind of creative things you see with companies that are not hampered by that um so uh I don't know if that really addresses your question but it does it does in part um and I do want to appreciate you for your your bravery and your honesty and sharing that personal detail with us you know it means a lot that that you'd be that vulnerable and open with us um and it informs my understanding of how you approach this work I have some more technical questions moving on um I'm curious to know what your current water conservation budget is oh oh that's a terrific question I do not have that at my fingertips um um I could get back to you I'm sorry I won't be able to provide that for you tonight I apologize I can tell you it's very technical do do you have a water conservation budget yes we have a water conservation team it's headed by a water conservation specialist and she has a team of two analysts and two technicians it's also one of our most robust intern programs we tend to have anywhere from three to six interns that work with us and they're learning on-the-job skills and learning about water and the water industry and water policy and water conservation so it's actually really a fabulous program it's been funded since I think 1991 was the first time someone was hired and that's really one of the main reasons why we've been able to get water use reduced the other thing I'll mention is that the program is designed to be cost-effective so when we look at a rebate or an incentive and we say for example a new toilet would have a lifetime of say maybe 15 or 20 years what would be the cost of providing a rebate for that toilet and staff time and running the program how much water would that save over that lifetime and we make sure that that balances out so the water department knows that it's going to buy less water over the next 15 years by giving this rebate and therefore it pays for itself over time and so we've had programs that are basically paying for themselves over time and we're also very active in getting grants and that sort of thing so we work with Sonoma water on large regional grants that we implement say for restaurants and for homeowners and that sort of thing so there's just a whole range of ways that we go about trying to make sure these are cost-effective okay excellent so going back to the water conservation budget have you determined what the revenue generated from the new development fees would pay for and and how that would apply to the conservation programs and what additional revenue would be needed and and perhaps could it be achieved through other means such as budget cuts I don't know about so budget cuts in the water department are funded by rate payer funds so the budget is funded by rate payer funds so I don't know if if there's a way to do something with the water department's budget but in looking at the study the study looked at two programs that already exist what could we do to provide larger incentives to drive quick response in large numbers so that we could generate offsets quickly so two programs the only costs that are associated are the costs that are over and above the existing program costs those are the cash for grass program and the clothes washer program so the normal program costs are not included in and the offset fees those are covered by the department's regular business the toilet program we know is immensely popular but it's it's expensive in terms of being able to do that as a day-to-day utility so we did it in 2014 I'm sorry 2015 and 16 with a grant we had a two and a half million dollar grant so we were able to implement that program with a grant so the offset fee fully would cover the cost of that program and we looked at trying to design all three programs so that they would ultimately have a similar cost per gallon and again the toilet program would be going from no program to developing and implementing a program and the other two programs would be building on the programs we already have and the cost would only be what's over and above what we already have so the the biggest cost is increasing the rebate thank you mr. close this is mark hilderbrand since I do have the honor of doubling as your rate consultant I I opened up the files from the most recent rate study and that indicates that you are demand your demand management budget for the current year is I mr. hilderbrand I cannot understand anything I don't know if it's a technical issue on your side or our side is that well you know he was going to talk about what the budget is thank you mr. hilderbrand that's okay I can I can get back to council through the clerk's office I really appreciate that okay thank you any other questions from council all right let's go to public comment on this item if you're interested in providing comment go ahead and start to make your way towards the podium can you open the public hearing yeah we will open the public hearing and thank you for sticking with us tonight is it on it is but go ahead and raise up the podium and then make sure you talk right into the microphone we've been having a a hard time tonight hearing some some folks thank you I think it's a little too short good evening mayor rogers uh vice mayor rogers and council members my name is kawiks I'm the policy director of generation housing where we advocate for more more diverse and more affordable housing um first we we do want to knowledge uh excuse me acknowledge the positive changes in this revised ordinance um maintain the offset ratio you know to a one-to-one um and abandoning the plan to escalate it although the original plan um increasing from one-to-ones suffice to four to one might have not really honestly passed the the legal muster in in any case um but we we are still concerned that this interferes with progress on council priority areas uh you know as it was mentioned by some of the council members tonight you know especially concerning housing homelessness and equity and the proposal is is particularly troubling giving uh that our housing shortage you know mostly you know most acutely uh impacts our communities of color and other historically marginalized communities um so we we are left with uh some of the following questions I had a list here but I know some of the council members have been pretty diligent in the research and and raised them I do appreciate that um first and foremost the description of the conservation programs the offset fees would fund is is pretty bare bones um I mean I know calling to to some extent you know he did describe what exactly these fees will pay for but um you know I maybe a little more information about what the relative you know budget share of each would would be helpful and um are there any metrics uh for their efficacy um also um I I think you you touched on this and may have missed it but is there money currently in the budget for these conservation programs now and if so um you know for how long uh would that sustain the program at its current size and have other solutions such as project prioritization delay and reduction been considered um and I know um I know the water department budget is is presented to support rate increases uh shouldn't also be with proposed fees and penalties um and then also at a recent meeting uh miss Burke told the council that the increase in water demand created by recent uh new multifamily developments was negligible um given that it seems important to know exactly how much demand is created by multifamily development um and and and I know to some extent Colin has described night um there are other options so I've said it I'd like to further explore that um and then the presentation given to the vpu slide a showed a dramatic decrease in per capita use over the past 30 years and I think to some extent and you might agree Santa Rosa population growth has clearly leveled probably as consequent of the fires um are these facts incorporated in the water use predictions um and then of course is doesn't appear that the rebate programs are limited people who can show need uh that rings you know our equity alarm bells uh how uh how income limits you know really been considered um and then finally our general plans are based on decades of data averaged uh this drought is a single point time if these fees are levied what is the timeline flow chart for actual water creation and with that um I'd like to say thank you I appreciate your attention to details I appreciate staff's work on this and uh I look forward to uh further conversation thank you so much mr weeks Jen now you can lower the podium I know all the times I've been in this chamber I've never actually spoken from up here um good evening mayor rogers council members Jen close executive director of generation housing where we advocate for housing at all income levels but guided by strong commitments to equity and sustainability the proposed demand offset policy while stensibly reasonable given the drought operates in stark contradiction with this council's priorities in building housing reducing homelessness and advancing equity the obvious conflict of the is that it creates additional cost barriers to housing development which right now barely pencils at both the affordable and market rate levels the more considering the more concerning insidious conflict of the policy which make no mistake is a housing policy is one of equity our housing crisis a scarcity across our entire housing system at all income levels is most acutely felt by our low wage workers our communities of color and historically marginalized communities paying half of your income on housing when you make thirty two thousand dollars roughly the average wage of home health workers and hospitality employees hurts a whole lot more than when you make a hundred grand when it's impossible to make ends meet you may be forced into overcrowded households or onto the streets our latino community members are ten times more likely to live in overcrowded households than whites and this led to the tragically disproportionate covid transmission rates where latinos were nine times more likely to contract the virus than whites slowing the development through raising cost barriers making a choice to maintain the status quo which is one population primarily whites continue to be safely stably affordably housed and another population primarily our communities of color continue to suffer myriad impacts of housing cost burden and stability one council member asked me what other cities are doing and so we researched it and you know what they're doing the same thing they're doing new development offset fees but that is not all that surprising and should it really guide us housing policy in our country including here in san aroza has served to segregate to discriminate and to create and build tremendously wide wealth gaps so doing anything to preserve that status quo like slowing that status quo like slowing development is is inequitable in its face in fact any housing policy that does not improve opportunity for our communities of color is inequitable on its face it's preserving and exacerbating structural inequities and let's be clear that structural racism which has very real and human impacts so today we have one reasonable ask put this decision on demand offset fees off for a couple months ask staff to put their creative problem solving hats on unleash their imaginations and come back with options that are developed through the lens of your priorities housing and equity the drought is here it's real but a commitment to equity with exceptions for drought for disaster for anything is not a commitment at all please don't abandon your equity commitment because of assurances that that might not have to be enforced the principle here and trust in your equity ethic is just as important so we encourage you to be leaders on this be the first city to do something different to be an example of doing something better of doing right with housing policy and we thank you for your service thank you seeing no one else move towards the podium we'll go to zoom and i see a hand in ananda good evening mayor rogers and council members ananda suite with the saner is a metro chamber first we really appreciate the conversation on drought impact and completely support the need to assess our water resources and our conservation and supply solutions the primary challenge that we see with the water demand offset fee approach is that it doesn't align with the city of santa rosa's housing needs and housing goals the city has a stated strategy of encouraging housing by offering an aggressive mix of lowered fees and reduced permitting process burden this strategy was formed with an understanding that housing development barely pencils out affordable housing already relies heavily on subsidies to do so and that's reminding the permitting process and improving the time certainty and cost of housing development is critical to meet our goals from the frame of water conservation new development as you know is much more water efficient this approach of charging new development also seems to imply that these residents are all new water users so require someone to pay the fee for the resulting extra water but what we know and what has seemed to be a key motivator in this council's aggressive approach to housing development is that we don't have enough housing to meet current need forcing families already here to double up in homes or accept inadequate or unstable living solutions this offset fee is an approach that brings a lot of risk in terms of discouraging needed housing and highly water efficient new development by adding another layer of permitting burden and potential development cost calculations to every project and does it with little to no benefit for that negative impact when the actual fee will only apply if we reach stage five level drought yet adding a new layer of uncertainty to the development process today this has also been framed as a choice between building housing or stopping development rather than a conversation about generating revenue to fund other water conservation efforts even if an offset fee was determined to be appropriate revenue generating solution some of the negative impact on housing development could be alleviated by at least putting this on pause in the meantime we'd really like to see a much broader conversation and a comprehensive approach to water resource management including how considered policy solutions align with our community's needs and priorities thank you so much for your time on this thank you inanda let's go to our voicemail public comments there are none mayor okay we'll go ahead and close the public hearing then i'll bring it back to council to see if there are any additional questions council member fleming yeah i wanted to give mr close an opportunity to circle back about the conservation budget it's okay if you don't have it but i thought it was an important item if you had a chance to get it yeah i'm so sorry i'm not connected to the city system in a way where i could actually get at the uh our one solution finance system so i apologize i understand it's a very technical question i should have given you that before i apologize i used to manage the team and i should know it like the back of my hand so i apologize okay no worries thank you so much yeah absolutely all right council member soyer let's go ahead put a motion on the table for discussion thank you mayor uh and thank you colin for your comprehensive presentation and for sharing your impressive knowledge and your personal perspective with us this evening so i'll introduce a resolution of the council the city san aroza adopting the water demand offset 2021 water demand offset fee study and water demand offset fees and wait for the reading looking for a second to the motion second moved by council member soyer in a second from the vice mayor council member tidbits do you want to start discussion uh sure mayor um the way i would like to see this play out uh is that we take no action tonight um i would like our staff in the water department to explore alternatives i'm particularly interested in understanding what a potential excess use penalty would look like um also i assume that we have recorded information about how many people we have done outreach to and and offered warnings to and i am appreciative that the water department takes an approach where we give warnings first but i think if we're in a situation where we're on a stage four stage five drought um i think the warnings uh might not be the best approach i think at that point it needs to just be clearly articulated via water bills via city communications that uh it's a drought it's a severe drought it's been going on for years if not decades in california now um and in california waters are most valuable resource and i i don't think it's unfair to ask people who want to have green lawns and take long showers during an upper stage drought to pay for that that privilege i would much rather see the offset fee revenue come from that source than charging our new housing opportunities in the city and that's not to say that you know who knows maybe not a lot of drought or excuse me development is even happening uh during these times but i i just really struggle with um going this direction after six years of going the other direction council member soyer thank you mayor i i'm just you know i'm wondering how much time the senator's water has been already looking for alternatives is there is is there a way calling you could articulate for us um to what depth you have and you're you and your group and your team has looked at at alternatives to what you are proposing this evening yeah certainly um you know i i know it was a very brief verbal update to you and we did touch on it during the study session in a little bit more depth but the alternatives that we can see would be a new source of water that a developer would bring to the table but we've seen with our own efforts these take years and they're very expensive they have to be built in certain ways to meet water quality standards and there's no guarantee for example if you drill a well that you're going to get a given amount of water and then it can take two to three years to get that permitted for a drinking water source have to be in the right place there's all the infrastructure to connect it to our distribution system the cost become astronomical so we thought new water supply probably not viable another is to have the developers do offset projects of their own we don't think there's actually much cost savings there and there's still quite a bit of cost that has to be paid to the city for oversight and for vetting customers making sure they're eligible and that sort of thing and when we talk to other cities and water suppliers who've had permanent offset programs in place for many years they've said that it just it's not a viable option they've abandoned those options they just don't work of course we did you know moratoriums always an option we just don't think it's the right option but you know it is an option and then we looked at other funding sources and so that brought us up to the water shortage plan piece of it it got adopted in the water shortage plan and then when we came to the council during the study session and the adoption we made sure you knew that there was going to need to be a policy put in place and you asked the council asked about that and we indicated at that time that based on our experience with studying the issue in the past it was likely going to be some kind of an impact fee but that we would come back then we convened starting in early May a multi-disciplinary team of about 14 folks across the city so we had folks from five sections of the water department and I think three or four sections from planning economic development the building official we also had the city manager or city attorney's office excuse me city attorney's office there to guide us as well and we worked with a consultant Woodard and Curran is the consultant that we hired to help us they have some expertise in this area and they helped to guide us as well and they facilitated our interdepartmental meetings that we held every two weeks to see if there's something that we could do to crack this nut because we were all very aware of a couple of things COVID has created so many problems for so many people we have a housing crisis we want to support economic vitality and we just ultimately this is what we came back to was we couldn't find another way through we've never collected excess use penalties because we've never had to ration water so we're not sure what we would do to estimate what those penalties would be but when we came to you in the study session and also to the bpu there was tremendous concern that the excess use penalties would actually hurt the least the folks who could least afford it right so you know a five or ten dollar fee on some people's water bill would be an annoyance for some families that's half the groceries for that week so we we promised you that we wouldn't just put excess use penalties as an automatic find that we would work with our community and our experience is very often it is folks who have the least who suffer the most from penalties so we promised you that program would not be set up as a revenue stream of any kind and that we would do everything we could work with our community so that we could get what we needed which was reduced water use so we were happy to you know if the direction is you know take this back and do some more work of course staff will happily do that but honestly working with hilderang consulting on the fee study piece and working with woodard and curran on the policy development and working in an interdepartmental team and after years of looking at what other alternatives could we possibly have this is what we've come forward with and it wasn't done lightly and it was done with tremendous discussion and some pain i'll be honest i mean the team was deeply respectful with each other but you know folks had some really clear understanding of some of the issues you're bringing forward and and so you know i i think we've again if the direction is go back and do some more homework of course we will go back and do some more homework but we we really tried to do a lot of due diligence before we came to you in the first place because we're very cognizant of just how difficult these issues are thank you for that and that brings up my concern is that if you've already you know you've i believe i have to believe that you've hashed out about as much as you possibly can i am concerned with moving too long into the future without a policy in place because some something needs to be in place and if you have already looked under every rock that you possibly can i'm not sure that sending you back is going to be fruitful unless there are some some concepts that you thought about and dismissed as as concepts that we might find unacceptable potentially i mean you could give us any number or any any long list of unacceptable concepts that we will dismiss potentially i'm just not sure how to i'm not sure how to how to advise you or what how to recommend in going back to the table and and just trying to hash it out again i'm i just i'm not sure where to go with this i mean we could just withdraw the withdraw the the resolution and and send you back i just what i'd like to avoid is an exercise an exercise if there are other models out there that we could we could kind of embrace that had been tried and true and they're not the model that is yours being suggested tonight then i would be interested in hearing them but it sounds to me as though you have reached out to the broader water community and have come back with this with this recommendation so i'm even if it's not it's not perfect that's not exactly what we would like to embrace as far as our given our housing needs on the other hand i'm not sure how to in what direction to to send you so i'll i'll leave that with leave that to the council at this point um council member sorter if i could just chime in i just want to respond quickly in jennifer's absence i'm going to step in and support colin a bit here so in response to your comment and questions by council member fleming i think what colin just outlined for you is a very conscientious approach that center center was a water took to this they didn't take it lightly they took into consideration all of council's priorities they really focused in on how they can try to come up with different alternatives they looked at the market they looked at the other alternatives that that other communities have tried to implement um and i think and i think colin explained it in a very clear way that that they there really was an effort to look at every possible aspect walking into this and and if council gives us direction to go back and look again we certainly will um but i can't and i don't think colin could guarantee that we'll come up with anything new or different uh than what we've already presented because i think the staff has already put an enormous amount of effort um looking at this issue um and so so that's i just felt it was important for me um to to chime in and provide that level of support for the statements that colin made previously thank you council member schwaddle thank you mr mayor and once again thank you colin for your presentation um very supportive of all the work that's gone into this and my dilemmas you probably recognize from the questions i was asking is we have these priorities of housing and homelessness and when it conflicts with lack of water and for me um i i appreciate all the work that's been done um i don't want to do anything that sends a mixed message to developers or anyone else in the community about our focus our priority for me is housing and homelessness and so having an impact to those two goals i just have a hard time supporting at this point um i would ask you know if we get to that stage five and that's the problem here is i i heard you say we may never have to collect any of these dollars right i'm not a developer but you have to figure out how are we going to pay for that if we do get to stage five and to me that possibility at ways there's got to be some other solutions even coming back to council if we're getting there ask the council we need x number of funds to you know you talk about the three different programs the bathroom conversions enhance rebates for dryers and enhance turf removal let's be very specific we need x number of dollars to do this and that's going to help mitigate our situation but again i don't want that to be reflected upon either the direction by the bpu or the excellent work done by uh san rosa water staff thanks nice mayor um you may have already said this but i've been kind of in my head so um the water demand offset fees can um if a certain percentage of a project is uh subsidized for low income uh could could those be subsidized or no only through the general fund is what that's yeah that's my understanding council member uh excuse me vice mayor rogers is that um that we couldn't use rate payer revenue again we could use the cell tower revenue but that would be taking from the help to others program but that revenue is also a stream uh that we we know comes in we have some predictability on it so that is also another revenue stream but it would mean uh that folks who are low and very low income would not get that assistance month to month but i i have to defer on anything beyond that in terms of you know the general fund because that's a little bit outside of my area of expertise i'm not sure if assistant city manager net would like to say anything to that but i i think i should defer on that yeah vice mayor um i think the way we would want to establish a subsidy program is through our budgeting processes we would create a fund that fund would um either recirculate annually if it goes unused uh or it would drop any unused funds would drop back into the general fund and be allocated in the next budget year um that would be one of the few ways that we could establish a subsidy program we would have we were on to create a mechanism as to which projects receive that benefit right now the recommendation from the board of public utilities was intentionally was intentionally vague and just identifying affordable housing i know that affordable housing is a much broader statement than some of the development rules that we have and so we would look to council to provide us additional guidance on how we would utilize a subsidy program for those different levels of affordable housing but that would be the recommendation is that we would go through and appropriate funds into a dedicated account that we would draw from in the event that we were in a stage five rationing and we had developers coming forward with the specific level of affordability that council designates um because tech technically if oh it looks like that picture um technically we could uh actually uh do it and just say that we would come up with funds to help subsidize no okay bye you don't answer to me you don't answer to me well go ahead councilmember all right so uh there's a quote that that i've been thinking of throughout this whole process which is um one that i see walking through my neighborhood frequently saying it's a Frederick Douglass quote saying i would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong and i believe that our water department is is good people but that asking me to do this or asking us to do this on any level is even if it may never come to pass is asking us to implement something that is you know as some of our public commenters have noted structurally inequitable and in a version of structural racism and that's something that i can't be a part of that said you know i hear the concerns from some of my council members about well then what are we really asking staff to do and and what can be done and to that end you know a couple of things that i think we're missing today that that i'd like to hear you come back with if i can be specific it would be a budget a budget of what is needed to solve this problem um to that end you know what are the anticipated expenses what is the revenue generation potential from these demand offset fees and and potentially what are some budget reduction options um and you know it's it's pretty obvious to me that even if we were this might sound outlandish but it's possible we could delay capital projects by just one year and we would cover these the these costs i'm assuming but i can't make that determination without a budget so i invite the water department to return with a budget and with um set with some some of these items that i've laid forth today and again thank you and to this and the board of public leg utilities and i believe the planning commission heard this item as well a couple of months ago your efforts are greatly appreciated but i will not be supporting this in any form Mr. City Manager so we'd be happy to return to council with additional information um including a budget uh based on programs that are suggested by staff for water conservation and achieving the water offsets for new development i i think as you look at that information uh you should have the broader context of what other subsidies we put in place we have uh forgiven a number of water accounts due to COVID and so we have a substantial a rurage in our water enterprise fund uh last i heard it was about 1.2 million dollars um we have a similar situation in our parking enterprise fund where council's made very reasonable and reasoned decisions to subsidize and to try to minimize the impacts of COVID to our business community we have another proposal coming forward to extend those benefits another six months to two years um and the parking fund uh balance is headed this way um substantially um you've just had a study session on one time funds and listed a whole series of very progressive uh and beneficial projects and programs that we don't have enough one times to one time funds to completely move forward with and so as you make these decisions the only thing i'm urging you to do is look at that in the whole context so that you understand if you do decide to subsidize with general funds what other things are you not going to move forward with as a result of those decisions and um thank you for that reminder city manager and at what point will we be hearing um staff present that we have a roughly an eight million dollar budget overage um general fund overage this year as well so as you know we've we've briefed each of the individual council meeting uh council members on that we've also gone to the long range financial planning committee and we plan to return i believe it's in the second meeting in december with a full briefing of the council and some recommendations on fiscal policies and so you'll see that at that time okay i think that would be an excellent opportunity to address some of the concerns that you're bringing up because the council is clearly moving in a direction that is increasing equity and there's a price tag that comes with it you know everybody loves equity until you got to pay for it right and so now we're at a place of wanting it and being willing to pay for it and now the question is can we so we'll have to address that thank you council member tibbetz thanks mayor i'm sorry to take time twice but i feel the need to speak up as the chair of the renewal enterprise district for just a moment um because i know that one of the comments emanating from the board of public utilities and someone brought it up here tonight was well what happens if we um basically exempt affordable housing and then backfill it with general fund money um mr close if you could let me know how much uh the cost per unit would be for multifamily housing if you don't mind i i don't have the slide in front of me certainly well it does depend on the type of multifamily housing so um um the fee for the um apologize just gonna take me one moment to get to that slide and my hard copy real quick here oh thank you so much oh that was so thoughtful uh so for duplexes and triplexes you can see it's 1649 condos apartments mobile homes if they have a separate irrigation meter it's less because we're not funding irrigation through that meter and we anticipate that during drought they're not going to be turning an irrigation meter on necessarily so uh without the irrigation service it's higher because they would be having that accessible for irrigation and then eligible ad use those are ad use that are over 750 square feet senior housing single room occupancy and the small high density apartments which are those 750 square feet per unit or smaller the fee is eight hundred and sixty eight dollars thank you so much so the reason why i asked for this is to i'm hoping that the council will also uh give some deference to market rate housing as well and specifically the efforts of the red which we've supported to the tune of ten million dollars and hundreds of hours of staff time um so the what the snow just using one project example the Keith rogel project on san rosa avenue those demand fees would total 180 thousand dollars and in the timeline actually could line up when a lot of these red projects actually come to fruition when we could see a potential drought just having seen what lake sonoma and lake mendicina the levels they were at this last summer i mean that gives me pause for concern this is one project of about five market rate projects that the fund is going to be considering totaling 500 600 units so when we think about that many units times that fee we're now looking at maybe the red funding instead of six units were fun or excuse me instead of funding six projects we're funding five because it's adding up and it's going to probably to some extent cut into the red fund in the the loan subsidy or the loan requirement that the red would be putting into those housing so i i just really wanted to kind of hopefully provide some sort of a ballpark example of what we're talking about any other comments from council all right for me there's two things that stick out to me in this conversation the first while we talk about the city's priorities and i understand housing and homelessness are two of the city's priorities it also has not been mentioned yet tonight that addressing the impacts of climate change is also one of our cities and uh top goals top priorities there's a tier one priority last year it's continued to be a tier one priority uh so i don't want us to lose sight of the impact of climate change as well and collin had a quote that i wrote down because it's oftentimes what i'm thinking about when i talk about climate policy the people who have the least suffer the most we already know who is going to suffer the most from a drought in our community it's the same communities that were impacted by covid it's the same communities that continue to see under investment that that's the first comment i wanted to make the second comment that i wanted to make is that there's an inconsistency that's happening right now with the council we almost voted down in an affordable housing project last meeting because of a lack of infrastructure in the area that we're talking about this is how you get a lack of infrastructure in the area is by when the rubber meets the road not providing the infrastructure that we need to have uh and not preparing for the future of it i get that we've cut fees i get that we have uh bent over backwards to try to get projects moving and at the same time the council is going to have to adopt at some point if we move into tier five we're going to have to actually bring to us a discussion about adopting additional water restrictions for the rest of the community as well the reason that i've been so supportive particularly on our housing front up to this point through our tiers is that the new housing that's being produced is water efficient that meets what the goals are or what the the tier restrictions are when we move beyond that we have to have a conversation about the way that this impacts our entire community uh and and to me i see the direction that council wants to go on this that's fine my recommendation would be that we actually set this aside then and and attach this to the water declaration when we move into that tier that we have this ready to go as well so that we can have a an actual conversation about how do we provide certainty to our community that if we are asking them to restrict their water usage that we're not then on the other hand over allocating our resource uh in the times of housing production it to me we don't need to do this tonight it's been my frustration this entire time as we've got this second step process anyway but i don't want us to leave here giving the impression to the community that we don't care about the infrastructure that that's in place there's ways for us to do both and the city manager is very correct when he points out that there's a number of different infrastructure elements whether it's parking whether it's our parks that the council has not put additional resources into and this is one of those areas where if we go into a more severe drought the question that's going to be asked is what have you been doing to prepare for the additional demand on water and i want us to have an answer for that go for it i could be wrong but it's my understanding that this is about conservation programs not about infrastructure just to be crystal clear that's where the fees go into the infrastructure okay i'd like to see um okay all right but council member soya this is your motion would you like to proceed or would you like to withdraw the motion well i i can you know read the council pretty clearly um at this point i think just withdrawing the motion or the the um it's actually a well it's a motion um as opposed to voting it down so i'll just i'll just withdraw the motion um and have direct and and then we'll just mayor do you want to direct the uh to call in what to do next and and uh or is it clear call in did did you get the message as to what what your what your challenge is yes if i if i could um council member soya i and i welcome any correction or addition to this i think what we're being asked to do is come back with a list of all options even if they're really bad options um and some analysis also to pull some of the information that's existing in the fee study because it does talk about the budget and the costs and the and all of that and make that a little bit more visible bring that right out front so that the council can look at it um it may be more in the staff report pull some more pieces out of that study that are there uh so that there's a clear understanding what what we would be looking at in terms of budget and that sort of thing um and i think i'm just trying to look at my notes i may have forgotten but i think options and i think um a sense of the budget is what is being asked for i i think i think i can make this a little bit easier call it and see there's consensus from the council uh and it's one of my frustrations is that we're talking in this hypothetical realm not where we actually sit today as it pertains to our tier system for drought uh my suggestion would be that uh if and when the council has to move into the higher tier of drought that when you bring that ordinance to us to adopt that you also bring with us a menu of ways uh to address the impact on new development whether it's an offset fee whether it's a moratorium whatever options you have on the menu and then let the council at that time based on the information that they have and the conditions on the ground at that time make a decision about how to proceed and it could be offsetting with the general fund i don't want to hide the hands of a future council but let's actually have that conversation when we're uh being faced with that decision that seems to be what i'm hearing from from colleagues is that they hypothetically right now they're not there excellent i i just if i could just in terms of timeline i absolutely that's well understood and if that's the direction we will certainly follow that direction just wanted to make one clarification the policy only applies to projects that haven't yet gotten a building permit so if we went into a stage five tomorrow no projects that are currently on the books that have applied for a building permit even haven't received it but have applied for a building permit this policy would not apply to any of those projects so if we went to a stage five tomorrow any new project coming along with the building permit would have to get a water demand offset agreement in place etc but it wouldn't be subject to fees until the time that would be coming online in which case we might already be out of a drought so certainly we can wait and bring this back at another time but we were hoping to get it in before we ever went to a stage five so that you know a year or two years three years five years from now the policies in place because we're anticipating that's actually when the policy is going to sort of have rubber hitting the road is a project that gets a building permit today won't be built for a year or two years or three years or five years so um but but certainly if the direction is to bring this back if we're going into a stage five absolutely staff can follow that direction but i just wanted to help you understand our sense of wanting to put it in place now for the long term not so much for the short term we're just seeing stage five as being more likely in our future than it ever was in the past but we're looking long term and if i could chime in mayor um i just want to also say that that the the challenge that we have doing something at the last minute is the developers have no certainty in what's coming their way they'll see it on the fly which is exactly the opposite of what we were hoping to accomplish which is giving folks that telegraphed look of what might be coming so what you may end up seeing from staff is something more draconian on the order of a moratorium as opposed to some type of fee that that might be inconsistent and unfair to what's coming forward from a development perspective because they didn't know so i i just i understand i as call and mention i think we understand what you're asking i just my my fear is the concept of certainty for those community for those developers um i think is very important and critical and and it may force the hand of staff to look at something that's um a little more strong system under said vice mayor um i i was i was going to say what callin was going to say and yeah have you ever seen that there's a radio show and it has the u big dummy award yeah that's kind of how i feel if we wait until we're like in level five or whatever because then we can't even implement the the policy because everyone has already like applied for their their thing so and i always hear that people it takes like years for them to even get to start to build so they've already applied for all their stuff so i just feel like it would be pointless at that point hopefully we would already have rain um so that's why i was trying to come up with the suggestion um hoping that it never happens but like come up with the a resolution that we could look at it or look at some alternative um instead of pushing it so far off that we don't do anything and then kind of wait i rather be proactive than reactive and wait for us to have to do something and then kind of now what do we do like and at that point it it just could be too late and i hopefully i'm i won't say that but i don't i don't operate like that i just rather look at things now and be proactive council member tibetz thanks mayor um call in quick plug i you know i'm hearing a lot of focus from you and um this this is not around development proposed if you end up bringing something back i really just focus is on excessive use penalties i just conceptually really really struggle with the idea that people i know and you know benna valley people very close to me never have a brown lawn during any drought anything we've ever gone through in the past or we will go through in the future and that they will not pay more for that water than somebody then a low income family would move into a multi-family housing project that already has high efficiency water use fixtures and appliances and already had to pass a landscape uh you know uh drought mitigation plan in this part of the development those things are just do not equate to me so i i just really hope that you guys will put a lot of time and effort into excessive use penalty policies so i'll try to make this uh a little bit cleaner for staff i'll actually make a motion and see if i can get a second that in the event that we move into the next tier of our drought we bring with that ordinance a menu of options for council members on how to deal with new development uh including but not limited to demand offset fee uh an increased excessive use fee moratorium or any other option that staff comes at uh comes up with as an option for council mayor based on on your statement of increased usage fee i will i will support that i will second i don't know if it's appropriate but i i just have a question um logistically uh mayor is is it appropriate for me to ask a question at this point yep go for it okay thank you for for i want to make sure we're all on the same page when we walk away from this yeah thank you really appreciate that um my thought is if we get plenty of rain this winter and we come completely out of drought are you saying then even if we triggered another drought of say a 10 percent reduction we would bring this back or are you saying only if we go from a three to a four i'm just i know it's a little technical but staff needs just a little bit more direction to help us make sure we know what the trigger would be the other the other thought is that if it if it's helpful you you know if you if you wanted to say a given amount of months have us come back regardless of what stage we're in uh you know anyway i shouldn't be telling council to do i apologize but we do need a little bit of clarity on on that that would be helpful yet through the mayor what i what i was hoping was going to happen here was that staff was going to hear our concerns um and hear that we wanted to see a budget we wanted to see what specifically would need to be done and how much it would cost and then some suggestions to that end and then come back i'm with the vice mayor on that i don't want to be making this policy when we're in a terrible drought i want to be making this policy now what i want is specific data this is not a go get more data i'm not ready to make a decision today because i don't want to make a decision this is i need more specific information on the exact scope of the problem and how it's going to be solved and how much it's going to cost to solve it and some other options i i don't really think we need to to wait till we have a triggering event i think we should have a policy in place i just think that it should be with the parameters that we've discussed today that would be if you wanted to put a motion like that on that that'd be i'm something they give my support council member precipits yeah i'm happy to i want to support what council member fleming said uh or i'm happy to make an alternate motion but i think when it comes to discussion about implementation of stage four stage five droughts it's not a matter of if it's when so we do need to have a policy in place for it um and then have consensus as a council on what that policy is so i'd very much like to follow what victoria said we've provided feedback we'd like to see a suite of options come back that are less development focused or things that include development amongst an array of other options council member alvarez all right i'm fine with that if if we can put that as the motion uh i will share that my frustration is that we do have packed agendas always and this is our third time seeing this and the board of public utilities has seen this and the planning commission has seen this so i'd like to make sure that council is getting their questions on the table or the data that they need to call in quickly so that that way when we bring this back we can actually make a decision at that point and mayor if i could just one clarification in some of the earlier discussion and dialogue there was discussion about possible budget reductions or delay or elimination of capital projects and utilities to perhaps fund the cost of the conservation programs and i think the council heard the explanation from staff that if it is a rate payer funded um budget line item or capital project it would fall under the same 218 requirements that we're struggling with already so um i don't there there may be some other outside um non uh rate payer funds used if there are we'll identify those as possibilities but i think the vast majority of the water budget is rate payer funds all right thank you all right so is everybody good we're bringing this back later with more information council members what i'm i'm just procedurally lost because i heard a motion in a second because my comment on your motion i heard you say just new development and where i'm struggling is i think the challenge here is with the existing housing stock um mr tibet's using example his own personal experience and i've seen some of that too where i think you know sometimes the enemy is us we just need to hold ourselves accountable and whether we go the route of the excess use penalties because i agree with what you're saying i just don't want to just loan it to the new housing which is much more water efficient those things are in place so i wouldn't want to limit your motion just a new house and i think we we need to look at other options with the existing stock and the existing users of the water so what i'm so i'm withdrawing my motion because what i'm hearing from council is a desire and we'll see if we can get support for this to bring this item back with additional information across the board uh treat this item this this public hearing that we've done as a study session so that call and can then go back take the input from council members take the request for data and come back and have another conversation with us about this my and i'll make that as a motion just for clarity for folks second all right any additional input all right let's call the vote then thank you councilmember tibbetz all right councilmember schwedhelm all right councilmember soyer all right councilmember fleming yes councilmember alvarez all right vice mayor rogers hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with seven i's all right mr city manager we are well beyond our nine o'clock start time for item 15.3 so we will go ahead and hold that item until our december 7th meeting and that's in accordance for for folks who are watching at home that's in accordance with our open government uh sunshine ordinance which does recommend that uh we don't allow uh public hearings of public's interest to begin after nine o'clock so we'll move that item and we'll go on to item 14.2 our last report item of the night mayor rogers and members of the city council item 14.2 as a report item giving direction to the santa rosa plain ground water sustainability agency board member regarding adoption of the ground water sustainability plan for the santa rosa plain sub basin peter martin our deputy director of water resources will do the staff presentation yeah good evening uh mayor rogers and members of the council um very pleased to be before you today um i'll be uh very brief here today i know that we had a previous study session uh since that time a draft plan has been uh released for public review and consumption and a ground water sustainability plan is proposed to be adopted on december 9th if we could move to the next slide so i'll try not to spend too much time on some new slides you you've seen some of these in your study session but just to re-orange you you'll just indulge me for a few minutes um i just do want to cover uh today um the stable ground water management act requirements and why this plan is required uh we'll give an overview of the santa rosa plain ground water sustainability agency um talk a little bit about the public input process and the public hearing of the santa rosa plain ground water sustainability agency coming up next week and then talk a little bit about just finally and with the staff recommendation as well as the input from the recommendation of the board of the public utilities next slide so um you know just in terms of the sustainable ground water management act often uh called sigma uh it was a piece of landmark legislation introduced in 2014 was definitely in response to rapidly declining ground water levels through all throughout california that were sort of beginning to create concerning economic water quality and environmental and environmental justice issues these were obviously most prominent in wide swaths of the central valley um the sustainable ground water management acts first required the ground water standard sustainability agencies also known as gsa's be formed by july of 2017 uh 2017 excuse me a joint powers authority known as the santa rosa plain ground water sustainability agency uh was created and the city is a participating member of that authority um the legislation further required a comprehensive ground water sustainability plan be created in a transparent public process and imposed timelines on the adoption of these plans critically overdrafted basins were due in 2020 and uh a for remaining high and medium priority basins the santa rosa plain ground water sub basin is a medium priority basin uh a plan is due to the state by january of 2022 um so really just to get to the crux of what the plan is the sustainable ground water management act ultimately tasks these ground water sustainability agencies uh with managing their groundwater sustained groundwater resources in a sustainable manner on a 20 to 50 year planning horizon um so that is what is intended to be achieved with this plan that is out um and that has been finalized for a public review uh next slide so just to orient you with the santa rosa plain itself uh it encompasses approximately 80 000 acres and uh it generally is bounded on the west by the low lying hills of the mendicino range and east by the myocomus mountains uh you know in general uh it's important to note that the sub basin includes the town of winsor and the cities of katati rona park uh santa rosa and sat sabasapal as well as uh quite a bit of unincorporated rural uh communities and agricultural lands um the two principal streams in the sub basin of mark west creek and santa rosa creek and excuse me the laguna de santa rosa as well which ultimately drain a combined watershed area of approximately 251 square miles next slide as i mentioned the santa rosa plain groundwater sustainability agency is a joint powers authority comprised of the representative cities and towns in the basin which i mentioned earlier uh the county of sonoma sonoma water and uh two resource conservation districts as well as a representative from several independently owned water systems in the basin that also utilize groundwater uh the board the board of directors uh you have a representative from the city santa rosa is council member tachua swedhelm who also happens to serve as a chair of that board of directors um the joint powers authority also has a team of staff and consultants and an advisory committee that act at the pleasure of that board next slide so um in terms of where we are there's three steps required to achieving ultimate sustainability uh i mentioned previously that a groundwater sustainability agency was formed by the deadline uh june 30th 2017 and so we are now in step two a groundwater sustainability plan has been developed over the last two years and is proposed to be adopted by the board of directors of the groundwater sustainability agency on december 9th um at one o'clock next slide so in terms of uh i'm just going to stay real brief here but the plan really has sort of four basic elements um it has a uh significant amount of effort that's put into describing the basin setting including current conditions and a description of the groundwater aquifer uh and then you know i mentioned that the plan has to have a achieved sustainability on a 20-year planning horizon so with that the plan must identify a variety of indicators and objectives for which they will achieve that sustainability and that includes a variety of potential projects and management actions as well as a monitoring plan to ensure that the basin is achieving those objectives that are laid out in the plan next slide so just to kind of summarize uh you know the effects you may be asking yourself of this groundwater sustainability plan on santa rosa uh one it does ensure reliable groundwater for the city uh the city obviously operates municipal wells in addition to uh many private uh landowners and um domestic wells throughout the county as well um land use planning uh it's important to note that the city now uh since this legislation passed in 2015 must notify the groundwater sustainability agency of any proposal to substantially amend the general plan and further you know must kind of review and consider any additional plans like this um from the groundwater sustainability agency when amending that general plan and receive comments as well from the groundwater sustainability agency uh the groundwater users could be subject to or will likely be subject to a fees to implement the groundwater sustainability plan that includes both municipal and private wells uh some of you may recall that for the development of this plan the city and the other joint powers authority members picked up the tab for the development of the plan but going forward to implement the plan a user fee will need to be established to ensure that the plan is fully implemented um and so more to come on that uh that is currently in development and uh is intended to be in place by next fiscal year uh in terms of future projects this plan has a conceptual multi-tours intentional kind of projects in it uh that could be implemented to secure the groundwater supply for the future um the city could potentially uh choose to participate in some of those projects um however I should note that the plan itself doesn't commit the city to you know any projects at this time so next slide so I just wanted to highlight that the one more time that the proposed option the final groundwater sustainability plan is going to occur on December 9th in a public hearing um at 1 p.m. you know uh by law of course this plan must be adopted and submitted to the California Department of Water Resources by January 31st of 2022 um you know and most notably uh tonight the action is to ask that you give direction to Councilmember Schwedhelm on how to vote on that uh next slide so I just wanted to highlight some of the public meetings that we've held regarding the draft groundwater sustainability plan as well as some of those held uh regionally the groundwater sustainability did hold two virtual public workshops regarding the drafting of the plan and once the plan had been released for the public as well as you know just notably they have routine meetings of the Board of Directors and Advisory Committee to which the public is invited so that's been going on for more than two years at this point and then just of course the city of Santa Rosa has also held a study session with our Board of Public Utilities and then also received a recommendation supporting adoption of the plan on November 18th we were before you previously this month for the study session on this item and today we're asking for a recommendation so next slide in terms of the comments that we received during the comment period during the month of October 17 individual commenters did submit comments some of those included the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Community Alliance with Family Farmers Sonoma County Chapter the Milo Baker Native Plant Society and then kind of a letter from a statewide coalition that included the Audubon Society of California Clean Water Action Clean Water Fund, Local Government Commission, the Nature Conservancy and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Further some of the local entities including Russian River Keeper Friday comments and there was a letter of support from the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce just to really quickly summarize some of those comments many of the comments were specific to some of the criteria and concerns about you know the viability of some of those criteria there were multiple comments specific to a climate scenario for modeling a future water budget the plan must have by law a water budget extending up to 50 years the Board chose to choose a very conservative estimate with some very I guess yeah conservative estimates in terms of potential very wet years and considerably dry years into the future and those are what were modeled in the plan there were additional requests for clarifying information and plan improvements many of those were made and those included strengthening of descriptions of agencies and stakeholder engagement including a little more on tribal consultations as well as improved maps and information and descriptions that came out of this of a comment period so we'll go to the last slide here please so this is a very wordy recommendation here but it is recommended by the Board of Public Utilities and Santa Rosa Water that the council by motion recommended the city's representatives on the Board of Directors for the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency support adoption of the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency plan at their agency meeting on December 9th and a public hearing so that concludes my presentation and obviously staff are seeking a motion all right thank you peter before we go to questions i'll turn it over to council member squthelm to see if he has anything additional to say i agree with peter's recommendation all right do we have any questions from council i just uh wanted to extend a thank you um i'm sure that's not i'm talking at a turn i guess it's a little late but in the night but thank you council member schwedhelm and thank you staff for all of your work on this all right let's see if there's any public comment on this item if you're interested in providing comment on 14.2 you can make your way to the podium or you can hit the raise hand feature on your zoom waiting to see if anybody makes their way to the podium all right we'll go ahead bring it back council member alvarez this is your item thank you mayor and thank you councilman schwedhelm for your service on this board uh i would like to move that the city city's representative council member schwedhelm who serves on the board of directors for the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency support adoption of the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Plan at the next Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency meeting on December 9th 2021 during their public hearing second motion from council member alvarez and a second from council member soyer let's go ahead call the vote council member tibet council member schwedhelm aye council member soyer with great thanks aye council member fleming absolutely yes council member alvarez absolutely yes vice mayor rogers woodmore thanks aye mayor rogers aye that motion passes with six eyes with council member tibet absent all right we will go on now to item 17 that's our last option for our opportunity for public comment for non-agenda items if you'd like to speak on the item go ahead to either approach the podium or hit the raise hand feature on zoom waiting to see if anybody is going to approach the podium all right let's go to our hand on zoom that's simon simon are you able to unmute yes sorry i'm simon hop i'd like to provide a public comment on the non-agenda item of rank choice voting for city council seats and other electrons i'm a senior at center as a high school and i'll be able to vote within that year i'll keep this concise i believe that rank choice voting is essential because it allows more in-depth view of what voters want the structure of rank choice voting allows candidates with less extreme polarized support and more overall support from their communities to prosper and this is why many other cities such as oakland and berkeley use this system already i strongly support efforts for santa rosa to adopt this system thank you thank you simon and i hope you'll also participate with the charter review committee as rank choice voting is one of the items that they are reviewing for potential to potentially put before the voters here in 2022 with that we've come to the end of our meeting too quick uh go ahead mr c manager i just wanted to correct one thing that i stated earlier about the timing of the discussion on the fiscal policies that's actually scheduled for december 7th great thank you uh and i'll make another announcement for those who missed it that we did hold item 15.3 that was our public hearing to adopt the sonoma county multi-jurisdictional hazard mitigation plan and update the city's existing local hazard mitigation plan we've held that item until december 7th as well in accordance with our open government sunshine ordinance tonight we will be closing tonight's meeting in honor and in the memory of our good friend vince harper vince passed away earlier today and he was a fierce advocate for our community his work uh in our uh with our youth and with our disadvantaged youth in particular has had an immeasurable impact on santa rosa and on the lives of those who he worked with and i know i speak for the whole council that were shocked and were sad uh and very grateful that vince had been in our lives as we'll close tonight's meeting in his memory