 Welcome to today's Joint City Council Planning Commission's study session. Madame, say a quick, could you do a real call for first the Planning Commission and then Council, or whatever's easiest for you. Thank you. Let the record show that all members of the Planning Commission are present and let the record also show that all City Council members are present with the exception of Council Member Sawyer. Thank you very much, Mr. City Manager. Yes, item 2.1, Downtown Station Area Specific Plan Update, Preferred Alternative Selection, David Gouin, Assistant City Manager, starting us off. Good afternoon, here we go. Good afternoon, Mayor Schwedholm and members of the Council and Chair Sisko, members of the Planning Commission. Thank you for being here today. I wanted to kick this off just very quickly to remind the Board and the Commission and the Council where we've come from. So this past year and a half, a lot of the work has been done by the Commission and the Council to put a number of housing policies in place. Very aggressive housing policies to try to address a serious crisis that the Council has made a top tier priority. That includes fee reductions, includes expedited permitting processes, includes density bonus, a lot of focus around development in our downtown near transit, and that's been a year and a half's worth of work. We'd like to think of this plan as being the keystone of that effort, that a lot of the work that policies that you've put in place will be implemented and enhanced by this plan being put into place. So that's what this plan is. It's re-envisioning what our future is of our downtown, how those policies are going to be leveraged to try to achieve the type of housing that we've been looking for over the past couple years. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to our Senior Planner, Patrick Streeter, to do the presentation. And before you start there, Patrick, for both the Planning Commissioners and the Council, Patrick's going to stop. Apparently, we've just got a revised edition of the presentation right around slide 16 or so to ask any questions. So we'll break it up in half, but he'll pause, ask questions for both the Planning Commission and the City Council, do the rest of the presentation. And then he has, I think, five questions he'd like feedback from both of the bodies. Thank you. Well, thank you, Mayor Schwedholm, Chair Cisco, members of the Council, and members of the Planning Commission. As Mr. Guen introduced, this is an update on our Downtown Stationary Specific Plan. And we will be looking at the draft preferred plan alternative that is before you. And I'm sure all of the members of the Commission and the Council are familiar with the slide, but for the benefit of those who are in the audience who are watching, we do have a Downtown Stationary Specific Plan. It was adopted in 2007, anticipating the opening of the Downtown Smart Station. And it was a plan that created a vision of increasing the number of people living near transit and also working in our downtown. It was a 20-year plan period. As I mentioned, it was in 2007, so now we're more than halfway through that planning period. We've had some construction on the non-residential side. There was around half a million square footage of non-residential envisioned. We're a little less than half that, but the glaring graph on this slide is the one on the left which shows our housing development. We envisioned around 3,400 new housing units. In the time since that plan was adopted, we've had 100 actually constructed in the downtown. As this commission and the Council have mentioned, we're in the middle of a housing crisis. It's been exacerbated in recent years due to the fires, and clearly there's something lacking as far as this plan in addressing that, which is why in 2018 the Council in setting their priorities did have downtown housing and downtown development as top-tier priorities. In response, the Planning and Economic Development Department reached out to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, applied for and received a planning grant to undertake this update to the Downtown Stationary Specific Plan. So it's worth noting that with the exception of staff time going into this, all of the funding for this update is through a grant. And the downtown may not be exactly what people envision when they hear the word downtown as far as planning purposes. So it does include Courthouse Square as well as Railroad Square. But it also includes several areas that are established, residential, historic neighborhoods, and other commercials and industrial centers, roughly from College Avenue to the north, down to Highway 12 on the south, and Dutton Avenue on the west to Brookwood on the east. And where we are in this process, as I mentioned, we got started in earnest earlier this year with Phase 1, which was a deep dive into the issues and opportunities. So doing the background studies to determine what worked in the previous plan, what didn't work, and what does the economic climate look like now, what could the city support? And most importantly, what's the vision for our downtown? Is it the same as it was in 2007, or has it changed? So in addition to bringing on technical experts and performing outreach to key stakeholders, we also did do an unprecedented level of public outreach, which was part of the scoping before both of these bodies. Previously, we heard that we wanted this to be out of the box thinking, and we really brought outreach to get as many voices to the table as possible. And we did respond by launching a campaign, both with traditional meetings, but also neighborhood pop-ups, meeting up at events, a robust online component, and taking advantage of our print and radio media to really get the word out. So based on all of that feedback, we developed what are called project alternatives. That was phase two. Phase two was the alternatives exploration phase. So three alternatives were created based on the feedback that we'd received, and I'll talk a little bit more about the specifics of them, but it was three concepts for how this plan could look. And again, we went out to the community, we went out to the experts and got feedback on what components of those different concepts were supported, what would be feasible moving forward. Those have been distilled down into the draft preferred plan concept, which is before this body tonight, this afternoon. And so we're looking for, in response, would be whether or not we've gotten it right, whether this looks like the plan that we should move forward, because the next two phases will be the detail steps. That's when we really drill down on what, parcel by parcel, what makes sense, how these should look, but also the environmental review that's associated with it. Part of the goal for this plan is to preload any environmental review for future development. So we want to anticipate any environmental issues that could come up in the future by addressing them now as part of this process. And so the real purpose of this preferred plan concept that's before you tonight is the summary of the consensus from what we've heard. It clearly and broadly lays out the policy that we'd be pursuing moving forward and kind of sets up that framework for how we will fill in the details. So while we're not going down on a parcel by parcel detail level here, we do want to get some guidance on how these broad concepts work and make sure that these are the avenues that we want to pursue. And so I mentioned during phase one we did that background context analysis for the downtown plan. One thing that we did notice was that the original plan was very focused on the downtown smart station. It envisioned transit-oriented development and really focused along the spine of the rail. What we're doing with this plan is we're looking at walkable distance, which is about a quarter mile, is considered walkable or bikeable, up to a half mile. And so we've kind of drawn these two circles around our downtown smart station as well as the downtown transit mall. These are our two transit hubs. And then the downtown is roughly defined as an area that's walkable or bikeable to those two transit hubs. This is also reflected with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's priority development area definition for our downtown. And I did mention that previous view in 2007 had around 3,400 new residential units and half a million square feet of non-residential. We've found in doing this analysis that just based on the underutilized sites and our vacant sites in our downtown, so underutilized meaning property where the value of the land is higher than the value of what's built on top of it, there's capacity for more than 10,000 new units in our downtown. So as part of this concept that's before you, we are proposing 7,000 new units, which will be roughly double what was envisioned in 2007. But our analysis and our outreach says that that's a, it's not an outlandish projection on how much housing we can have. There's actually, there is the demand and there is the capacity for reaching that level of housing. Additionally, something that's changed today is that we have the federally designated Opportunity Zones, both in Roseland, which is directly adjacent to our downtown, and in the downtown core itself. So those can be leveraged to help finance some of these catalyst projects that we're looking for. We also, there's a memo included in this afternoon's packet that talks about the barriers that we've encountered to having the development realized from that original plan. One of them has just been the process that it takes in order to move a project forward. We do have the benefit of having several boards and commissions as well as the council. And they're all what's called, let's consider discretionary review, meaning the city does not have to say yes to something. And so it can be seven different opinions or in the case of some projects, 14 opinions that are deciding how a project moves forward. So in response, we've already taken some steps, as Mr. Guyon mentioned earlier, in streamlining development and enabling this to occur in the city. So we have streamlined our design review, so it still goes in front of our boards of experts, but as a concept item where we get guidance, and then the ultimate decision is left to the zoning administrator for infill residential projects or projects that meet the needs of the city. We've also been working on an expedited permit review process to cut down the entitlement and building permit phase to really streamline that process and take a lot of uncertainty out of development. There were also economic barriers to development and I'll also just add for this previous slide. We're not alone in trying to move, especially residential infill projects forward. So in response to much of the legislation that's coming out of Sacramento, I mentioned discretionary review previously about having a decision to make. A lot of projects now will be able to take advantage of ministerial review. If they meet certain qualifications from state law, they would just be able to move forward based on yes or no answers. So that's something that the planning commission and the council have been presented with from our department before, but it's also something to keep in mind that a lot of these barriers are also being addressed from other levels of government. The plan I mentioned was adopted in 2007. Obviously that was on the cusp of our great recession. So that did have an impact on development, but we are seeing development bounce back throughout California and the Bay Area, not so much up here. One of the reasons is that it's an unproven market. We've recently acquired transit and it's not gonna be until the end of this year that it actually connects to the ferry going into San Francisco. And we just haven't had any of those large, multi-family projects to compare development to. Also the cost of construction is very high right now and it's the same throughout the Bay Area, but the return on your investment as in rents are much lower here in Santa Rosa. And then there's also infrastructure costs. Those are roughly the same anywhere you build, but it's another thing that's added on to the cost of doing business here. So in order to address that, as I mentioned previously, we've streamlined the process to reduce the cost and the time involved in development. We're also looking for public private partnerships, the opportunity to leverage city property or publicly owned property to try to cut short that delta between the project cost and the project return. And the purpose of that would be to establish some of these catalyst projects that would then prove the market for future development, kind of get the ball rolling. And then also just reaching out for our economic development center, finding out who our employers are and who they could be and what it's going to take to draw those employment centers to our downtown. And also just the visioning that I mentioned earlier, what vision do we have for downtown? What kind of downtown do people wanna live and work in and how can we work towards that vision? I mentioned earlier the process is a barrier to development. There's also just regulatory barriers associated with the way the previous plan was written. It did have a broad vision for the downtown and it had many great ideas, unfortunately, in implementing them that many of them were in conflict with one another. So we had 13 different land use designations within our downtown area. We had I think six or seven sub areas as well as different street types. So it was very difficult when you were to look at a single parcel to identify even what could be built on that parcel. And many times after checking the several references that you needed to, you'd find that they'd be in conflict and so it would just raise additional questions. So something that we're trying to do with this plan is to really simplify how that looks. We're trying to go with a more graphic-based format so you can easily look at a map, point to a parcel and understand what the vision is for that parcel and what it'll take to get there. We wanna provide flexibility. The previous plan was written in 2007. Technologies change, demand changes. We want this project to be or this plan to be future proof. So as an anticipated change happens, we want it to be able to be flexible and adapt as development needs adapt. And we also heard that Santa Rosa has a difficulty in identifying a sense of place. What's the identity for downtown Santa Rosa? So through this process as well as the other initiatives, we are looking to try to establish that and really make it a household name of downtown Santa Rosa. So that will bring us into the preferred plan concept. As the mayor noted, we'll take a pause here for questions from the council and the commission. Chair Siskill, you wanna start with the planning commission? Right. Commissioner, is there any questions about what we've heard so far? Vice Chair Weeks. Thank you, Patrick. Is there a certain standard for the square, the ratio for the number of units versus the square footage for commercial, for bottom space commercial? So like a mixed use development, how much commercial versus how many units would be included? Yeah, or vice versa, how many residential units do you need to support that number of square feet of commercial? Yeah, so there's no industry standard for that, but the common practice in the past has been to require ground floor retail with residential above. We do have some zoning districts. Our community, our neighborhood center zoning district has a ratio of a certain square footage to number of units. So that does exist in our code. I'm not aware of a standard for that. Questions down here? I have two. With the federal opportunity money for Roseland in the downtown core, is that gonna be strictly for housing or is that for infrastructure? How is that gonna work? That's privately managed, but it's for housing and commercial activities. So for new business or expansion of business or new housing on site. So it works for both. I think typically we hear about it on the housing front. We haven't heard much talk about the commercial side, but it's definitely an asset. And as we start looking at increasing office space and potentially bringing an industry down to the downtown that could be used as a funding source. So there could be some application of that funds to the Roberts Road area. Correct. Okay. And then just for clarification, when I read the background material, the memo was talking about the difficulty with the basic construction costs versus what the market will bear in rental. Prices, that's not something we can solve with this plan. I mean, I realize we're working on the development costs part of it, but that we don't have any control over that construction cost ratio to what we can get for rents, is that correct? That's accurate. Although, as I mentioned previously, when we are looking for these public-private partnerships, that's where we can do our part to reduce those construction costs. That way, even if the rents aren't, the luxury rents that I would pay for new construction, the lower rents would be offset by the lower cost of construction. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, I think we're good. Okay, thank you. Got a comment. I appreciate your comment on future-proof plan. That's, I think, a nice aspirational goal for any of the things that we do at the city. So, if you have any questions, looks like we're good. Thanks. All right, let's get rolling again. The preferred plan concept that I mentioned, this is the result of the unprecedented level of outreach that I mentioned previously. We've had a number of workshops, and we've had over 800 Santa Rosa community members participate in these workshops. The most recent one, which was the analysis of the alternatives, we had 120 people show up for that. We've had a robust response to our online outreach. That's included surveys, but also activities, mapping activities, or preference selection. And we did get feedback on those three different alternatives, and we've distilled that feedback into the preferred plan concept that's before you. As far as the outreach has gone, leading up to the preferred plan concept, and then in the time since we released that at the beginning of November for public review, we've reached out to as wide a demographic as possible, including activities with youth groups. We've gone in front of small neighborhood meetings to formal town hall style meetings. One of my favorite pictures on the slide right here is we had a meeting with the Maxwell Court neighborhood. We went out to them. We met in one of their garages, and just the rest of the neighborhood came out, and we had some snacks and a pretty energetic discussion about the future for Maxwell Court, which I hope you'll see reflected in the maps that are before you. And it's worth noting now I'll be going through some of the maps that are in this preferred plan concept. The maps that are here are what were presented to the public at the beginning of the month. Yesterday, a memo was sent out to the council and the commission with revised maps, as well as a list of the changes. Those changes are detailed changes, so moving a line here, changing a parcel here, but the concepts remain the same, both in what's in this presentation, what was released to the public, and what's before you to be acting on tonight. So, based on all of this outreach, we did reach several points of consensus. We found that there was broad support for building up around Courthouse Square, having an intense, dense downtown, sky's the limit kind of feeling. There weren't really too many complaints about having our tall buildings be located in the downtown core. But there was also a lot of comfort with the idea of the village centers that was presented in one of the alternatives. So, creating a sense of place and identity for the neighborhoods that support our downtown. And then, of course, creating connectivity between them so that it's easy to understand how to get from one part of downtown to another, and to get to and from downtown itself. We also heard a lot of feedback regarding Santa Rosa Creek. It's a great amenity for any downtown to have a waterway, especially one that's already been improved with walking paths and bike paths. Right now, the creek is not seeing the type of use that I think we as a city would like to see it used. There are safety concerns, so getting that perception of the use of the creek, but also changing developments so that it actually addresses the creek. And we get eyes on the creek and it starts to be used as a amenity, but also for recreation and for a way of getting around without having to resort to a vehicle. We also heard a lot of feedback about downtown connectivity related to something like a trolley or even city bus, just rebranding to move around the downtown. We had the Park Smart Shuttle, which didn't work in the past. That was because it had very low ridership as part of a long-term visioning plan. This plan envisions the future having the visitors and the residents downtown that would support something like that. I did a downtown loop. And then I also mentioned previously the idea of leveraging public lands to get some of these catalyst projects. So City Hall would be one of those, as well as several of our surface parking lots that are underutilized in the heart of downtown. So as I mentioned, we have these two visions. One is the big city urban core. And we'd really look to enhance the street, the feel on the street for that area, both for people that are driving through, but also people who are walking around or having lunch or having dinner or going out at night. And you'll notice as we move forward for some of these maps, we didn't anticipate a wholesale change to our downtown. As I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, our downtown includes a lot of well-established neighborhoods, historic districts. So what we did was we focused in on areas where there was potential for change, potential for development. These are areas where there is underutilized land, where there's city property, or where there's vacant property, also proximity to existing transit. And so we found these kind of cluster areas that are demonstrated on this map. And you'll see as we move forward to talk about the different changes that are proposed as part of this plan alternative, they roughly coincide with these areas where change is anticipated. So in the downtown, we do have this vision for taller buildings. People really embracing the urban streetscape. But then we also have, as I mentioned, those neighborhood centers. So a focal point for these neighborhoods, usually a park or civic space. And probably also an increase in density and intensity in these areas as well. Not as high as in the core. But also, as I mentioned, there's capacity for very many residential units and there's a need for that. So it can't all be concentrated in one area. So we do envision adding housing throughout the downtown, mainly in these areas where we expect development to occur. Our land uses reflect this vision. As I mentioned previously, the other plan had 13 different land uses. In the interest of simplifying things and creating flexibility, we've distilled it down to four land uses that we're proposing for the downtown. You'll notice that each of these land uses also includes the mixed use term. That's that idea of flexibility. So while we have a target audience for each of these different land uses, we do wanna build in the flexibility that as development occurs, it can happen the way it would naturally happen rather than a prescribed document. That's a snapshot in time. So I'll briefly go through the users that we're looking to really accommodate these four land uses towards. The core mixed use is our downtown core. As I said, that's our business center. That's where people are, our employment centers are. That's where our cultural and civic spaces are located. And that's also where we have high density urban living occurring. Then the next one that I'll talk about is our station mixed use. That's more visitor oriented. So that's taking advantage of the fact that we do have the smart station coming into our downtown. So that will accommodate people that are coming to Santa Rosa to go shopping, to have a meal, but also for entertainment. Something that has changed in this plan since it was released at the beginning of the month of November was the area of Roberts Avenue, which is in the southwest portion of this map. That area's traditionally been separated from the downtown, both in perception, but also in the fact that it's got railroad tracks and a highway overpass physically separating it. It's also a gateway into downtown for Roseland, which is, as I mentioned, directly adjacent to our downtown plan area to the Southwest. And so there's a lot of potential for that area. In the previous plan, it was designated for 100% housing. We haven't had any movement on that front in the time since this plan's been originated. So with this plan, we are looking to have it be part of that station mixed use, which could encourage something like a stadium or an entertainment complex, something like the Barlow, where it's a cluster of restaurants and other types of uses. That'll be a draw for visitors. And we wanna really improve that connection between this area and the station. As the bird flies, they're very close, but just in physically moving between those two spaces, it's very difficult. So really dragging the station used down and to include this area is something that we envision with this plan. The next land use designation is maker mixed use. This is another one that resulted from our outreach efforts and particularly in response to our meetings with the Maxwell Court neighborhood. That area is an established industrial area. There are successful businesses there. In the previous plan, they were rendered essentially legal non-conforming. It was also another area that was envisioned for 100% housing in the future. So in our conversations with them, they did express interest in allowing housing in that area. Many of them said they have to seismically retrofit their buildings. They'd like to add a couple of units so that their employees have a place that they can live and also work in the same area. And with the announcement from Bodine, the asphalt plant that they plan on vacating their space, it also frees up a lot of space for us to reach those housing needs without displacing any of the existing businesses. So the maker mixed use land use allows for light industrial businesses to operate and exist compatibly with residential. A nearby local example would be the warehouse district in Petaluma where you have distilleries, light industrial auto shops, and also medium density housing right next door to each other and it's a successful neighborhood. And then lastly, I mentioned we have an area that's our job center. We have a visitor oriented area. We have our business, our industrial oriented area. The last one is neighborhood mixed use and that is where we're mainly addressing residential needs. So that's where you'll have predominantly residential development, but it is still mixed use so we'll be supportive of commercial uses, but they would be neighborhood supporting. So coffee shops, small bodegas or grocery stores that would be supporting that neighborhood. So now I'd like to talk about another big change that we were proposing with this plan which is the change from the traditional development standards and unit per acre density measurement to the concept of floor to area ratio. And I'm going to ask my assistant, Ms. Hartman, to please present a little activity that we... I used to pass out the legos. Yeah. So just to help demonstrate this concept a little in another way. The idea of floor to area ratio is you set a ratio. So development can occur within an envelope that's created by the ratio of the square footage of your parcel to the amount of building that you're allowed to create. So a very simple example would be if you have an FAR of one on a 1,000 square foot parcel, you can build 1,000 square feet of building. So that can be a one story building that covers the entire parcel and has 1,000 square feet on that first floor or it could be a two story building that covers half the parcel and has two stories with 500 square feet each. The legos that are being passed around right now is an FAR of six. And the activity that we did this morning was we just took the same square Lego piece. That's your parcel. And we gave you enough floor area. So legos that would be six times the area of that parcel. And then three different planners had fun putting them together in different ways. So it's just an example that you can have this variation in building form. Again, building in that flexibility. But it does allow us to set some sort of framework for how development work will occur and what that general vision is for an area. A lot of the feedback that we received from the development community was that they don't want us to just say, there's no height limits, there's no limit to development because it gets very difficult to value land to create a concept for what kind of project would be proposed. So they do need some kind of structure framework. So FAR seemed like a good way to do that while still building in that flexibility. Another key concept with the floor area ratio change would be that we don't want to penalize parts of a building that are not providing housing or commercial uses. So including structured parking or mechanical systems, those don't count into the FAR calculation. We did pretty extensive outreach with the development community on how we would respond to FAR. And that was some of the feedback that we received was not to include those high cost construction elements that aren't actually serving the needs. So that's part of that change. We also heard that they'd like to see a general boost in overall FAR throughout the downtown. So that is also reflected in the maps that we put together for this concept. And as I mentioned, there are examples of how this flexibility can occur. The building on the slide right now is in San Francisco. It's 5.4 FAR. We have some local examples, the Barnes & Noble downtown. That's an FAR of 0.84, so it's under one FAR. Potential construction that could occur on the Pedersen's furniture lot, including the flag lot, which would be all parking, which I mentioned would not be calculated into that calculation, could be a six-story building. And in that case, would have an FAR of 2.4. So they're not very high FARs. The Legos in front of you are six. The US Bank, which is our densest or most intense building in the downtown, that one has an FAR of 4.25, and it's a roughly zero lot line building. That's a vertical column. And so what we are proposing is in the core, reflecting the land use, reflecting that vision, would be a maximum FAR of eight. And then flagging down as we move away from that downtown core to six in some of the areas where we envision higher density development. And then lower FARs in areas where we still wanna see development occur, where we still think it's going to occur, but we also see the need to scale down as we move away from the core. So that's where these ratios are reflected. As I mentioned previously, based on the response from the development community, we did give an overall just boost to these FARs. So it's a high ceiling for what these FARs could support. We don't envision in the near future having projects that are going to reach that maximum build out. They'll probably be much lower than what's allowed. But we do hope that in the future, we start to get enough development that it can make products that start to push the limits on this, pencil out and be a part of the downtown. And at such point, we still don't want this plan to then become a barrier. So we'll be building flexibility into FAR so that if at some point, development starts to cap out on the maximum FAR. We do have a bonus FAR that's available for community benefits. So similar to our bonus density that we have presently, including things such as affordable housing or daycare or paying into a fund that could then create road enhancements or road improvements, public art, public parking, things like that, that our community benefits, a project could feed into those and then have a boost to that FAR. The details of how that would work would be something that we'd move forward, drilling down to the details during the next two phases of this process. But we would like feedback from the commission and the council as to if this is the right approach. And just as a reference, the map up on the screen right now is the existing FAR. It's a rough GIS exercise, but it shows that the majority of the downtown is less than one FAR. And even in the core, which is our densest area, the highest is that US bank building at under a four and a half FAR. So another aspect as we kind of create this flexibility in how building design can take place, we wanted to create these design considerations. This is really looking at sense of place as well as transition areas. So you'll see these transition edges that are the Hound's Toothmark throughout the map. And these are areas where perhaps it's in the downtown. A lot of the feedback we had was that we don't want tall buildings that are going to be blocking out all light and a feeling of openness in the downtown. So those are design considerations that would go into construction. Also adjacent to our preservation districts, that edge needs special treatment on how the building is designed. And we envision this not as a set of standards or rules, but more a toolbox of different approaches that building design can take to address this stated need. Another thing you'll notice on this map is the arrows pointing towards the creek. I mentioned earlier, a lot of the feedback we had was that we need to really celebrate this creek as an amenity. So this would encourage development to orient towards the creek. So new development would front on the creek, but also any kind of changes or modifications or remodels to existing development, which there is a lot of along the creek should also talk to the creek. So this can come in the form of changing your main building entrance or reorienting your parking lot or taking a couple of parking spaces and creating an outdoor employee lunch area that's also addressing the creek. But and we're open to creative ideas on how this is achieved, but it's something that we do wanna see in the future as a part of this plan. And then I'll also point out, there's a hash mark on this map that says active ground floor requirement. As I mentioned earlier, in the response to a planning commissioner's question, the traditional mixed use development model was retail on the ground floor, residential above. That model has not worked in the past and it's not working now, especially with the retail environment, the way it is. So what we'd like to do is in key areas where we really need activity on the street level, something like a retail store or a coffee shop is great if you can make it work, it's welcome. But we're also open to other ideas on activating the street. So that can be, it could be a residential oriented project that has a amenity space or a workout space that has full lazing on the street and really interacts with the street. It could be a model of housing where you have stoop development, you have lots of front doors and just activity occurring. And it can also be another idea that we hear about in the future because it hasn't been thought up yet. But we want to create that open opportunity for actually activating the street and creating a sense of place, especially in these key intersections and corridors. And then the last map and concept that I'd like to talk about is the connectivity. That was a majority of feedback that we received talked about actually connecting these areas of our downtown and what the feel is on the street and how the experience is for pedestrians and bicyclists as well as members of our disability community. And so a few key concepts that we're including in the preferred plan concept would be road diets. So these are already part of our bike and ped master plan. But on Medicino Avenue, Santa Rosa Avenue and E Street, the idea of a road diet is essentially you take away traveling and you repurpose that real estate for other uses. So it could be improved and widened sidewalks. It can be bull bouts or traffic humming measures. It can be bicycle facilities. But basically you're taking some of the space that's given through traffic and devoting it more to that streetscape feel. And many studies show that it actually doesn't slow down traffic at all. It actually improves safety and traffic flow. So those are components of this plan. New roadway connections are being proposed, including the extension of Donahue to connect up to that Maxwell Court neighborhood. And then bicycle and pedestrian improvements, especially on the east-west corridor. We've had a lot of feedback about our underpasses and just generally moving from the east side of 101 to the west side. The main focus of attention has been the Santa Rosa Plaza Mall. The existing 2007 plan does call for a full vehicle access road to be bulldozed through 4th Street, to connect 4th Street on both sides of Highway 101 in the mall. We have not heard from Simon, the current operator of the mall, that that's something that they'd like to do. In the past couple of years of having this plan, we haven't seen that being proposed. It is private property, so we can't, as a city, actually make that happen unless there's a wholesale redevelopment that would then justify that ask. But we have been, I mentioned having all the different players at the table. Obviously the mall is a major stakeholder in our downtown, so they have been a part of this conversation. And we've talked about how do you establish this connection without necessarily needing to punch a road through. And so that's really improving the wayfinding and the accessibility for pedestrians and for bicyclists to get from east to west. So that's something that we're actively in conversation, but it's also something that we'll be looking for guidance from the commission and the council on how that should be approached. The current plan is proposing to abandon the idea of a full vehicle road in preference of pursuing pedestrian and bicycle connectivity. Another key area on this connectivity map would be the connection from Roberts Avenue, the area to the southwest with our west third street and the railroad square area of our downtown. And the 2007 plan also calls for a full vehicle road. In that plan, the existing Roberts Road from the south, Roberts Avenue from the south would take a jog to the east, go under the existing overpass where the smart tracks and Joe Ridota Trail currently go under Highway 12 and then reconnect with Roberts Avenue on the north back to third street. We have reviewed that in the past. Our city engineer has gone out and taken measurements and it seems not feasible, if not impossible to actually have that type of road alignment. Another option would be to punch the road through, so extend Roberts Avenue to the north, create a new underpass under Highway 12 and then connect to Roberts Avenue on the north side of Highway 12. That would involve working with Caltrans who owns the right of way, the engineering costs associated with constructing a new tunnel as well as acquiring right of way from private development because there's not a clear connection between those roads. And then a third option, which is being presented in the preferred plan concept would be to abandon that requirement for a new road connection and instead focus those resources on, again, bicycle and pedestrian enhancement. In this case, taking advantage of the existing Principal Real Greenway, Joe Ridota Trail and smart multi-use path that all converge on the existing Highway 12 overpass or underpass and really improving the way finding and the experience of connecting between these two areas. As I mentioned earlier, we envision a catalytic project taking place in the Roberts Avenue area. This would be a nexus associated with any of those projects would be to improve this connectivity and really create a clear, easy to understand straightforward connection between this area and the downtown smart station. This would also be, there's a symbology on this map called streetscape enhancements. So that's different from improvements where you're widening a road or building traffic lights. This is more envisioned as striping or way finding the idea of parklets where you take parking spaces and convert them to public space and just improving the experience along these corridors for bicycles, pedestrians and vehicles. So it's also associated with development in the Roberts Avenue area would be streetscape enhancement to Dunn Avenue and to Sebastopol Road and Olive Street. And we have these types of enhancements in other parts of the downtown, including along 4th Street into the undeveloped, previously owned by smart parcel to the west of the downtown smart station as well as the Canary site connecting to the creek in that case. And then also just looking at the existing underpasses so on 6th Street and 7th Street and 3rd Street and really improving the experience of using those areas. And this map does also include that downtown connector loop that I mentioned previously. And we have a graphic of a cute little trolley on this map. That's not necessarily how it will occur. As I mentioned, it could be rebranding of city bus using our existing transit infrastructure but really including that ease of moving around the downtown by whatever means you want to which could include vehicles but could also be bicycle, pedestrian or using our transit options. So to summarize the key moves that are a part of this plan concept, one switching away from traditional development standards and units per acre to this FAR form of regulating development. We also want to waive parking requirements for projects that are within walking distance of transit. This doesn't mean eliminating parking downtown. What this means is that we no longer want the city to be again, snapshot in time telling development how much parking it needs to include. Development will have to include its own parking. There's the only way to get a project financed and to have a marketable project is to include some form of parking but we want to allow that flexibility for the market to tell us what kind of parking they need. Also as technology changes and vehicle demand changes, we'd like that parking ratio, that's an inner development to change with it. And we also want to allow the flexibility of leveraging the existing parking infrastructure we have or several underutilized parking garages in the downtown. So those can be used for commercial purposes as well as residential purposes. So that's the thinking behind this, this waving of the parking standard. As I mentioned, also the active ground floor requirements, being flexible but also requiring that we activate the streetscape, pursuing the public and private partnerships to get some of these catalytic projects going, enabling our public spaces. Another component of this project that I didn't mention on the map is previously we've had a requirement for community and neighborhood parks. It's the traditional definition of a park. So many acres devoted to outdoor open space that's programmed for park uses. What ends up happening with that type of development is that we say a general area where this park needs to take place. Development occurs on every other parcel except for the last person holding the bill then has to build that park and they can't build a project to go with it. Park never gets built and the parcel remains vacant. So we're looking to enable public spaces both through civic spaces, traditional public parks and also private spaces that can be programmed or enabled to have pop-up markets or recreation or some sort of public use. That's another one of those amenities that can go into that bonus FIR that I mentioned earlier. And then lastly, improving the way finding that connectivity and the experience and the clarity of how you get from point A to point B in the downtown, there's a lot of potential for how we can address that. So those are the key concepts that we're looking to move forward in this plan. Specifically the areas that we want direction from the council and from the planning commission are these five items they were sent out in the memo that was sent out to this body yesterday. One is we would like guidance on the four mixed use types that we're proposing. Is this the right idea? Should we continue with that? I just mentioned the change from traditional neighborhood and community park to these urban park and civic spaces. The Roberts Avenue connection. I gave kind of three ways that we can go about. The keeping it the way it is currently in the plan utilizing the existing underpass, creating a new underpass or staff's recommendation which would be to eliminate that vehicular connection instead focus resources on bike and pad. I should also add the caveat at this point that we still have to do the, I mentioned the next phase is the real detailed modeling on how this looks. Depending on what kind of feedback we get from this group, it'll either be the primary project or an alternative that we study. But we will have to look at the feasibility of any of these changes to circulation. So it's possible that in spite of whatever guidance we get here, it may or may not be a requirement to have that vehicular connection. So we'd have to readdress that once we have that additional information. The fourth item would be the boundaries for our new land use and FAR districts. One of the comment letters that we received recently that was passed on was talking about in the area of the southwest portion of the St. Rose neighborhood. There's an area, as I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation that we applied land uses and FAR to areas where we anticipate development occurring. That's one of those areas where development could occur. So that's why we included it, but we'd like guidance from the Board and Commission on, or from the Council and Commission on whether those boundaries are correct. Just to specifically address that one area, we have revisited it and it's currently at eight FAR in the proposed plan. We'd be comfortable changing that to be six FAR, or no, four FAR to reflect the other properties that are in the area. So it's kind of hard to focus in on this map, but it's the, if you look at the downtown core area where we have our eight FAR, it is the northwest most corner of it. That block is surrounded by parking facilities for the mall. We do have a project currently being proposed to redevelop that area. So we do want to include it in the framework for how this plan moves forward, but it would make sense to change that FAR from the highest intensity, eight, down to four FAR, which would reflect the parcels along 7th Street where the museum is, and also directly leading into the St. Rose neighborhood. So that's just specifically to talk about that parcel. That is something that we are looking to change and that is part of that detailed work that we will be doing as the next phase and the outreach and the feedback will still be welcome throughout these next phases. We are looking for the general guidance today to move forward on these broad concepts. And then lastly is the issue with the St. Rose Plaza Mall. The same question as we have for Roberts Avenue is the existing plan for full vehicular road, the same vision in this plan, or would some alternative make sense? And again, in this case, staff is recommending pedestrian and bicycle improvements as opposed to a full road build out. And so with that, we are open to another round of questions and I'm sure there will be many and I'm happy to go back to any of these previous maps. And we do have representatives from most of our departments with city staff here to address any specifics that maybe weren't addressed in this broad overview. Thank you. Great, thank you, Patrick, for that presentation. So again, for the council and the commission, we'll ask questions. We'll then imagine we have some cards from members of the public and then after we hear that, we'll be asking everyone to answer those five questions. So, Chair Suska, do you wanna go through the planning commission first for any questions? Right, and just to echo the mayor that this is a time for questions about what we've heard and we'll have plenty of opportunity to give our comments as to the things that Mr. Streeter is asking us to do after the public hearing. So any questions? Yes, Commissioner Duggan. Yeah, you just kind of touched on this, talking about the St. Rose district and maybe changing that one parcel that's noted as FAR eight. So in the districts that have the combining designation for historic, cause I know that they've pretty much bordered downtown and the downtown core, what additional planning process or hoops do projects are they gonna have to go through if they're on one of these parcels that's got the combining district? So we do have, I mentioned our preservation districts, several of them are within our downtown and that's implemented through zoning with the H combining district. And as part of this plan, we are, in most areas we are not even proposing any change to these areas, but there are transition edges where we have development can be assumed to take place and we do have these provisions in place. We are not proposing to change any of the zoning provisions that we have in place for the H combining district. So it does still require landmark alteration for most projects. It requires meeting the standards for a preservation district. There are also height considerations. So within a preservation district, there's a height limit of I believe 35 feet or two stories unless the review authority can make certain findings that whatever is proposed above that will be compatible with the surrounding neighborhood. So as of this draft, we are keeping all of those provisions in place, but it is something that could be amended if we receive feedback that that's something that the council would like to see. So if I'm understanding this correctly, like on that one block that we're talking about next to the mall. So even if you put an FAR of six, it still has to meet the requirements for height requirements unless you can make the findings that it's for some other reason compatible. Yeah, and it would also still be subject to the California Environmental Quality Act. So the secretary of interior standards for development of historic properties. So most of the properties within our preservation districts and the district itself is considered historic. And so still subject to all of those state guidelines as well. Okay, thank you. Councillor Peterson. Related to the historic district question. So my understanding from the memo from diet and Vadia is that we're looking at 50 years old and greater. We haven't had a comprehensive survey since 1989. Do you have a sense of what types of error, I guess the scope of the buildings that potentially could be historic if there was a new survey? Yeah, so I mentioned the secretary of interior standards. One of those qualifications for a project that could be historic as if it's, or for a property that could be historic as if it's greater than 50 years old. A majority of our properties in the downtown are older than 50 years old. That's anything built before 1969. So I wouldn't say majority, but we do have many historic properties. So that is something that we'd like to address as we, I mentioned one of the goals for this is to be able to streamline development and try to anticipate in advance any of the issues that may arise. So historic resources is one of those issues. So we are looking in this plan to address, at least for catalyst sites, the historic resource inventories. So to determine whether or not a site is considered historic, and then also any mitigations that would be necessary for adaptive reuse of that site to occur. We are also beyond this plan seeking funding sources to expand that exercise throughout our downtown. And as we move forward in the general plan to look at how that can be applied throughout the city, because we are aware that our existing inventories are dated and the methodologies are different today than they were back then, in addition to many more properties becoming eligible in the time since. Thank you, Mr. Calia. Good thing you moved forward. I couldn't see you over there. What determined a catalyst site? Can you talk us through that a little bit? Yeah, so it really goes back down to those clusters of areas where we see development potential. And then the catalyst sites in the updated draft plan concept that was sent out, we have two types now. Previously it was just public areas that had public property that could be then entered into this public-private partnership to have a new development that would kind of invigorate development in the area or set a market comparable. Now in the plan we have the private sites and public sites where we envision catalyst projects taking place. And so it could be an area where we have, the city has an ability to leverage some of the costs in actually getting that project off the ground. But it could also be an area where we're looking for a keystone project to really set the president to get other development to take place. And they roughly align with these different clusters of areas where we do see there's a lot of vacant land or underutilized land. So that's where we wanna see these projects move forward. As we do the final plan and that's adopted, we likely won't have these catalyst sites be a part of that plan. That's more a part of this concept in creating the vision. So in the future, if there was a privately owned site that wanted to potentially be a part of a public-private partnership, they could then go through some kind of process to do that. Yeah, and that's a separate track that we are currently taking right now. So it'll be before the council. I think later this year it is talking about the opportunities for those public-private partnerships. But yeah, the sites in here are basically guideposts for us to, I mentioned previously, doing that on the front-end environmental studies. We have limited resources so that we're looking at those catalyst sites right now to do those studies. But it doesn't preclude any other site from becoming a catalyst site. Commissioner Kripke, okay, Commissioner Carter. Thank you. Early on, you mentioned that you saw capacity and local demand for up to 10,000 housing units in the planning area. Yet we have a problem with the 2007 plan getting the housing off the ground. And it was one of the issues alluded to was nothing is market-proven. So does the plan look to embed housing types that do have some proven marketability or what do we do with the plan to sort of overcome that? There's demand, there's capacity. Nobody wants that type or nobody wants to build that type of housing. Yeah, so the housing type is not something that we've drilled down to on this level. It is something that can be addressed through policy. My caution would be that the marketable housing type today may be different from what it is in the future. So we really, again, would like the development community in the market to be able to determine what is appropriate. But those are policies that as we see certain types of housing types, one of the outreach meetings we went to is with the Disability Services and Legal Center. But for the disability community and for the aging community, that's a difficult housing type to utilize because even if they're built a building code which requires visitability, so you can visit the first floor, that's a whole sector of the community that can't take advantage of any of these housing types. So we do want to be aware of trying to either recommend a certain housing type or have policy that requires a variety and diversity in housing types. So it is something that we'd look at at the policy level but we aren't looking at it yet on this concept level. And jumping all the way back to your schedule diagram, I think we'll be going through environmental review as we're preparing a final plan, area plan for adoption in the spring. Yes, so. You mentioned some upfront CEQA work. Can you say a little bit about how the CEQA process is gonna go and will there be a lot of alternatives to study where some of these circulation alternatives can be looked at through the CEQA process? So we are planning on the majority of the study will be on the preferred plan that we're hoping to get guidance for from this meeting. But we will have alternatives that are visited, especially in areas where we're deviating from the previous plan. And the goal is to have the environmental review be concurrent with our draft plan, which would be concurrent with our updates to our zoning code. So in the past, we've had these different stages for these different documents. And that creates just inherent conflict between them because they're acting on a different times. So we do plan on bundling this all together. And in the spring is when we would release the draft environmental impact report. It'll be a supplement to the existing one that was prepared in 2007. So only in areas where we have changes or new impacts that would be envisioning and that can be created through adding new units or through changes in circulation. So those are the areas that will really be focusing the analysis, but we'll be releasing that draft EIR in addition to the draft plan, which will also be in addition to the updates that we're recommending to our general plan and to our zoning code. And then ultimately it will be up to the council after we do the public review period for those documents to certify the environmental and adopt the plan. So that'll be the final decision-making step. Vice-chair Weeks. Patrick, can you explain a little bit about what neighborhood transition would look like? Or it could be, you said that you would have some type of a toolbox that people could utilize, but can you give us some examples? Yes, so off the cuff, some examples could be the type of glazing that occurs, step backs in buildings. You just saw a saw from our three little Lego pieces right there, the feeling of form and mass differs greatly between just those three examples. And that was planners playing with toys. So when you have actual architects that I know, we would be looking towards what's successful in other areas as we build this toolbox and that's another area that we'd be looking to conduct robust outreach to get that feedback on how we assemble it. But those are some examples on how design can address the feeling of bulk and mass of a building. Patrick, if you wouldn't mind, if you could go back to your preferred plan concept, FAR, slide, and just explain the little asterisk system, sentence about minimum FAR, I wanna understand what that is. Yeah, so originally we had proposed the maximum FARs and it was a range, so we'd have the maximum and a minimum. And that raised some red flags for us because we didn't want to then be setting another requirement that may not be able to be met. An example is on West 3rd, South of Railroad Square, there's a small parcel next to the Hyatt. In the existing plan, it's required to be developed as a two-story building and we've never had any movement on that site. It's remained a gravel lot because nobody could ever make a two-story building take place there without consolidating the surrounding properties. So that was a pitfall we wanted to avoid. At the same time, we didn't want, especially in our catalyst areas, like for instance, adjacent to the smart station, we didn't want an underwhelming project to come forward and be allowed. So that's why we have this asterisk that for catalyst projects, and I mentioned the catalyst icon will fall off in this final plan, but we will have policy for specific areas where we want to see at least the midpoint FAR developed too so that we don't have projects that are underutilizing the space. And that's got a precedent in our existing general plan where in our medium and high density areas, we require density up to the midpoint of the allowed density ranges. Okay, and then I want to understand the neighborhood mixed use designation. Are we mandating that there will be retail or ground floor activity in those areas or the market's gonna drive whether it's housing and how much mixed use retail is there without what we're doing there? For the most part, it's market driven, but I will call your attention to the design considerations where we do have the graphic for ground floor activity requirement. In those areas, we would require, not necessarily retail, but some sort of ground activating user design. But that's right in downtown. It's not out in the MWALL-E area. Am I misunderstanding that? It's not in the MWALL-E area in this graphic, but it is in certain areas like down Santa Rosa Avenue. I think in one of the iterations we had in the Maxwell Court neighborhood. So, and as we do drill down into details, it'll be determining where those areas should be that we'll be looking for feedback. Okay, great. And then finally, Roberts Avenue, the punch through, the reconnection, that was examined and found to be feasible enough in the 2007 plan with housing and reestablished in the Rosin specific plan. So it has been examined and there was an EIR done, but pertinent to the land use being housing at that time. And now we're going to be elevating the land uses. Has it specifically been looked at, that recommendation specifically been looked at to take that punch through out, given that we're elevating land uses. And in two prior plans, it was found to be advisable. Right, so the two prior plans did have the environmental review that found that traffic and circulation would function, assuming that punch through occurred, or it's not a punch through in that case, it'd be a reorienting of the street. So we have not done that level of analysis for this plan, but as I mentioned, that would be one of the two alternatives moving forward would be does the circulation work with that vehicular connection and does it work without the vehicular connection? And it's also, there's the potential that even if we were to find from a circulation functionality level that that connection's not necessary, it is still the city's discretion as to whether or not we want that to be there. So whether or not the modeling shows it, it's still something that we're looking for feedback as to whether that's the appropriate use that we'd like to see in the future for this plan. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, Council, questions? Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You talked to Patrick a little bit about the eyes on the creek and you mentioned the remodeling. Are you saying that as people go to make changes to the existing businesses that are along there, that there's going to be an effort to try to reorient them as well so that they're focused on the creek? That's correct. I'd envision, again, we don't have the details on how it would work, but there'd be some threshold. So if you're changing out some desks in your building, it's not going to trigger that threshold. But if you're doing a full scale facade change to a building, in that case, we would say, well, how are you addressing the creek? Because it says so in the plan that you need to be doing that. And then obviously new development would be subject to that. We do have the Waterways Advisory Committee as well. So their charge is looking at projects that are adjacent to the creek that are being proposed. And this would be another resource that they could then point to to say, how is this project addressing the creek? Excellent. You talked a little bit about the Maxwell area with the rezoning of the, what would we call it, the maker's space or the maker's designation. How does that impact the Baudin site? The, well, actually for the Baudin site, we are proposing the neighborhood mixed use. So that one, we are still looking to have it be predominantly residential. And that was the feedback that we got from the Maxwell Court neighbors when we met with them was that we understand the need for housing. Why don't you put it here where this asphalt on that is vacating. So that area would no longer be eligible to become an industrial site. It would then be designated housing. A difference in this plan for the maker mixed use and the proportions of that neighborhood would be that the existing light industrial uses would be legal conforming. They'd be allowed to be in that neighborhood. Whereas currently right now they're protected with the limited light industrial overlay, but that is set to be reconsidered by the council in 2020. At which case, if that were to go away, they'd become legal non-conforming properties. So in this plan, with the maker mixed use, they would be legal and allowed to operate and maintain their operations there. Okay, and in the meantime, the Bodine site, the asphalt plant would continue to be a legal non-conforming use even under this plan. Correct. Great. Does this concept plan account for the proposed square and railroad square idea? Yeah, that was, we've gotten a lot of support for that. So that's incorporated into this plan. It's in the narrative and it would make its way into our policies. Right. And then with the proposed circulation patterns, particularly around the bicycle connectivity, whether it's the Roberts Avenue area or whether it's fourth street concept, do we, does this plan talk about what classification of bicycle path it would be? Again, with the idea that connectivity only matters if people can actually use it. Yeah, so again, this is on the high level concept point of reference, but as we do get into policy, something that could be incorporated into the plan would be cross sections that show what level of improvements we're looking for for these facilities. Yeah, and I do believe that the bicycle master plan has a lot of that and I just wasn't sure if it gets pulled up into this higher level component. Yeah, we would look for consistency across all the plans. So either incorporating what's existing in the bike and pet master plan or amending that if it is in conflict with whatever is inside of this plan. Yeah, I know that other cities, when they've done their general plans and their specific plans, they've also included with it values that they want to be placed throughout it. And for me, one of them would be that connectivity that we have is protected connectivity for bicycles and pedestrians. Okay, thank you. Great. Other questions? Mr. Chibitz. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, really amazing work. I can't imagine how much time and effort this must have taken you guys. My hat's off to you. One question I have, actually a couple of questions, is you mentioned one of the barriers to development. This is an ongoing conversation I'm having with people in the community about how we're gonna get those catalytic projects going. And you mentioned one barrier that we do have control over and that's the under grounding of utilities and helping with utility placement. Are we taking any steps such as aligning our capital improvements budget or is the water department doing the same to try to, I guess, address that particular barrier? I don't really have an answer, but I can defer over to Mr. Keown. Thanks. So as part of this process, all the departments are at the table as we're talking through these projects and part of the plan that's gonna come forward are known improvements that are gonna be needed to be made both on the water, CIP, transportation elements. So those will be a project list. Typically what happens is those projects then get folded into a CIP and then prioritized with the rest of the city's CIP project. So that prioritization does take place and it takes place in front of the council so that you'll have a chance to look at that CIP program and how that's being prioritized. The other, so that's the water which we're, the other thing is there's some things like under grounding power lines which we're finding in the downtown specifically on narrow roads has become an issue. And so we are reaching out to PG and others to determine are there a way that we can work with them to try to get ahead of some of this. But it's costly and expensive and we have to kind of work through different approaches on that but so we are looking at different approaches for both public and private. So in, without going too far into the detail of the CIP budget, I can share with council that just the Fulton Road project exhausted the entire funding for underground and utilities from the 20 act. So that we, those resources are meager. They are out there. This is one of those continuing conversations about where and how much this community has tradition and the city has traditionally invested in these types of enterprises. And so that remains a struggle. And that's why we're also looking at other potential funding sources to address some of these infrastructure conversations. That's why we're exploring things like an enhanced infrastructure district. There are ways to maybe address some of these hurdles. Great. I'll just give you one quick example. When the 2007 plan was adopted with some of the sewer capacities were identified as an issue down Third Street and others. And so part of the CIP program over the next few years was to replace the sewer lines in Third Street and others. So that capacity has been already upsized to try to achieve what the vision was. And fortunately over time water use has gone down so the capacity has essentially increased. So those are the things that we'll be looking at to make sure that we try to get ahead of some of these developments. Good, I appreciate that. I'll be, as we work on the CIP budget going forward, I'll be looking for that. And also now that we're talking about these public-private partnerships to get this going I see that as being a really necessary ingredient in this mix of things we have to do to make downtown viable. Another question, it was kind of unclear to me in this plan, do we have, I think it's called the concept of walkable districts. I'm gonna look to Kristen and the audience to talk to me about it at public comment, but she once brought up with me that the idea of having tables and chairs on the other side of the sidewalk kind of encroaching into the street is a good way to just create energy in the urban space. Is that addressed in this plan? Is this plan even an appropriate place to address such a concept or would that be a separate ordinance? Yeah, this plan, in addition to being a land use and circulation document, it's a visioning document. So establishing that streetscape vision and how to achieve it is something that is within the purview of this plan and its narrative and its policies. Okay, so it's within the purview, but it's not in this particular plan at this time? It's roughly reflected in some of the concepts. For instance, the street enhancement where we talk about parklets as one of the ways of enhancing a street. So that's in line with that line of thinking. And as we do build on the details, that's the area that we'd be looking for feedback in that regard. Okay, I'll save that for my comments, but obviously I'm pretty supportive of that concept being in this plan. Let's see. My final question is, it was touched a little bit about how the programmatic EIR is gonna help increase, or actually I should say decrease the permitting process time. Could you give us kind of a walkthrough of, okay, if somebody walked through today and they met the FAR requirements, they met the land use requirements, what steps are they gonna have to go through until they've got a building permit? Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. That's one of the key elements of this plan is that, as I mentioned, we're trying to simplify the process, and part of that is addressing the environmental review, which for many projects is the largest degree of uncertainty moving forward. So for a project that is consistent with the vision in this plan, there would be some level of design review. As we mentioned, we've worked to streamline that process. Design review would be the discretionary stage of the review, so it would mean that that's when the environmental review would take place. Because the project is consistent with this plan, which has an adopted environmental impact report, it would likely be eligible for an exemption from further CEQA review. So any of the potential impacts to resource areas would have been addressed in this report, and the general rule is anything that's not peculiar to the site. So if it's an infill site that is within our downtown, that's part of this analysis, likely, since it's meeting the vision, it would then be exempt from environmental review. So the only discretionary stage would be design review. Once that is approved, you move on to the building permit, which is all ministerial, so there's no more uncertainty there. It's, do you meet the standard or not? Okay, so there's no planning commission in that process? Okay, interesting. So I was gonna actually raise the question of, I know that we have a policy in place, although the details of which are fuzzy for me that doesn't have design review if you have an affordability component in this area. How does that, I guess, complement it? If somebody has affordability as a component, is there essentially no discretionary review? Or am I missing the mark here, David? We have reduced review for affordable projects. Again, that's when they go for concept. But there also is legislation coming out of Sacramento that exempts a project from discretionary review. The same thing happened about a year or two ago with accessory dwelling units, that unless we have a design standard in place, we can test it against our adopted standards, but they have to be those yes or no answers. So that's essentially eliminating that discretionary review. So yes, the state law is saying, since affordable housing is something that we need, they're going to take that discretion away from cities. And so in those cases, yes, there would not be environmental review and there would not be city discretionary review either. Okay, thank you. Mrs. Weissmaier. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Again, fantastic work and most of my questions have been covered by my fellow council members. I am wondering if there's still room in this project or in this visioning exercise to add enticements or encouragements for universal design? Yeah, so as I mentioned, we are looking to remove requirements, but include incentives. So if universal design, and we'll be looking for the feedback and comments from this group, if that's something that we want to incorporate into our policy to incentivize, absolutely that can be included. Okay, and I'm curious to know how we arrived at the 8.0 for FAR? That's based on not just building or products that have been proposed in this area, but also other jurisdictions we looked to, including San Diego recently adopted FAR for their specific plan, Sacramento as well, and looking at the types of developments that are in line with a vision that's similar to what we would have for our downtown, similar form bulk mass and densities. That's where we actually established six as probably an appropriate FAR, but hearing concerns from the development community, that's why we raised it to eight to really just not be putting any caps on the development and not trying to create any additional hindrances. Okay, that's good. I'm curious to know, given that the council seems fairly unified from what I've heard from my colleagues over the last year around the importance of development and the need for housing, and this plan seems fairly comprehensive and I'm going to avoid getting into the details, but I'm curious to know if there's anything else that you think we've left on the table in terms of enticements to help developers decide that Santa Rosa is a great place to come and build housing and support our community. Oh, that's a heavy question to put on me. It's okay if you don't get it perfectly. This is an opportunity to editorialize, but there's anything else you can think of. There was, and I would have probably brought it up during the presentation, but there is a lot out there that I'm sure I'm not able to think of, so that's actually a great opportunity for me to mention. We do have a website for this plan. It's plandowntownsr.com. That's the easiest way for anyone with an idea or something that should be included in this plan to get in touch with us, but also my email and my phone number up there. We are open to suggestions, creative ideas, critiques we want to hear at all. After the public comments, you'll get about 13 people with great ideas. I'm ready for that, but it is a good point. We can't think of anything, of everything, and so we really are, depending on the community, to reach out and give us their feedback and expertise as well. Okay, and that's at plansr.com. Plan downtownsr.com. Thank you. Mr. Tibbets. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. One more quick follow-up question. In this plan, how many vehicles, excuse me, or not vehicles, housing units are not included or near the one-quarter mile mark. Is there gonna be a lot of housing units that will require parking? Yeah, that is actually something that, on our next phase, we do wanna drill down to. That's a question that we've raised ourselves. So we are looking into what areas would be affected by this waving of the parking requirement. We're assuming, because it applies to transit hubs, which are the smart station and the transit mall, but also to high-frequency transit stops, which are major arterials, it would apply to most of the areas, especially areas that we envision development occurring, but getting that actual number would be valuable, so we are looking into that. I appreciate that, and if this comes back, you'll probably just let us know then, or if you could email me when you figure that out to let me know. The reason why I'm asking is, I don't personally, I recognize from the lending and finance perspective that it's probably necessary to have some parking spaces, and at the end of the day, that's probably gonna what determines how much parking there is, but if there's any flexibility on the lending and finance side that a developer could be working with, personally I'm not that interested in a lot of parking. In fact, I think there's two alternatives that we should explore. One is, I was made aware of an organization called Green Trip, and one of the programs that they work on is having developers with rentals actually basically buy bus vouchers, which would then help us increase ridership on our transit lines, get people off the road, help with traffic, so looking at something like that in lieu of a parking space, if that's an option for the developer. The second one would be, is obviously master leases in our own garage, if it's near our own garage, and increasing usership there, so I just wanted to give those to you guys. You think, oh, sorry, I just wanted to respond to that question real quick. I think you brought, bring up a good point. One of the things that we did find in the old plan were some inherent barriers to utilizing parking in off time, so parking garages are available, parking spots that are empty at night and folder in the day. So part of what this plan is trying to do is create that flexibility to have those conversations with developers in a different way than we've been able to have before to try to encourage that. So, and I think we've had a few recent conversations with people that are looking at how to utilize that the garage is at night when they're empty and then flip it on the other side during the day. So I think what this plan, again, is trying to do is remove some of those barriers that we found and we've heard from the development community and we've actually run into ourselves to try to address the issue that you just raised. And some of them just staying on the parking, isn't the whole concept of unbundling the parking with the housing, because I know mayors and council members had a presentation about that. And again, I think, won't the market kind of dictate how much that unbundling will occur if there's demand for that? That's correct. And the previous plan had a lot of great ideas for how that could take place, but then I mentioned conflicts within our own documents. There was another provision that said you must provide all of your parking on the site or else go through a cumbersome process to change that. So that's why we are trying to simplify and really let the market tell us how much parking they need on their site or how we can be flexible on addressing their parking needs. Great. Can you just pull up a slide six, just the timeline? Just want to check in, see and realize that yes, we're in December of 2019. So the, and I know we've had community-wide issues where we've canceled meetings and things are getting jammed. Can you give us a realistic timeline expectation? Again, I am asking this before you've heard from the planning commission and council, but what impacts have our other community-wide issues have or will have on this timeline? So it's hard to parse out where the loss of staff time based on responding to community issues has affected the timeline. In addition to as we've revised what our scope is to really maximize outreach and try to reflect the feedback that we've been hearing. So it has resulted in the previous plan was a nine-month timeline. So from when we started in January, we would have assumed a final adoption to occur probably in September. So now we are looking at final adoption probably occurring in April or May, possibly June. So we are extending the time period, but it's hard to say what the causes are of that in addition to making sure that this is a document that once adopted, we don't have to amend in the future has resulted in some extension of that timeline. So the city manager's gonna step in here. It is, you hear the team is really trying to work hard for to produce this document. I would be leaning towards the summer before we're really talking about the resolution here. There are just too many places that this organization is playing catch up and it's not just this team, it's our legal team, it's other public works. So I would just be ask you all, we were really trying to deliver it very soon, but to be patient because of those community-wide, let's call it what it is, public safety shutoffs and a fire that basically took us offline for six weeks this past fall. No, and I appreciate that, Mr. City Manager. And that's why I brought it up, just to clarify expectations here because I'm very appreciative of Patrick, you, your assistant and the rest of the teams, the amount of outreach that's been done it's been really incredible because I think this is gonna be a document that is gonna go on, whether or not it's future-proof, I think, I hope you're on the right track here, Patrick. I did wanna just also add that we do have the existing station area plan, so it's not like development can occur right now. While there are barriers to it, it's still a very valuable and useful plan for addressing things like the CEQA issue, that also hasn't adopted EIR. And as I mentioned, there are several other initiatives taking place right now concurrently with this plan update. So, by all means, as development is coming forward, we are working closely to start to get to some of those countless projects happening even now before we adopt the final plan. Great. Okay, let's go to- Mr. Mayor, go ahead, Mr. Olives. Patrick, what input or feedback did you receive from the Roseland community related to the Roberts Road connection? So we didn't receive, we held a meeting with the Roseland community at the Roseland Community Library two Saturdays ago. And we didn't receive too much specific feedback about how that alignment should occur. What we did hear was that the connectivity between Roseland and the rest of downtown needs to be addressed. So they, even in this presentation, we're showing downtown, but Roseland's not on this map. So I'm just making sure that it's, they're not within this downtown barrier, but they are certainly a part of this downtown conversation. So that was the feedback that we received is that we need to be able to, we need to be doing more to create that sense of identity and connectivity. Thank you. Mr. Sauer. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much for this. It's very exciting and it's, I'm speaking to the timeline right now and you just addressed it in part and I appreciate that. My concern, this is a very valuable situation that we have the Planning Commission and the Council together speaking about this yet on the second time. And you have been eating and breathing as this plan for like you mentioned for a year and a half. My question has to do with, as we move forward, are there any restrictions on the grant and do we have the luxury of time? Because I would love to have the luxury of time. This is probably one of the most important decisions that these two bodies will be making in their careers on this Council. We've been dealing with a lot of media issues over the last couple of years and this is one of them. So my concern is, do we have the luxury of time? Will this body be able to come together perhaps, if necessary, again, before the draft is approved to be able to come to agreement if there are some sticky issues that we might still be struggling with that either are brought up by ourselves, the people in the community that we speak to or the community at large? I don't think luxury is an operative word I'd use ever with this project involved. As far as the grant with MTC, I believe it's a 36 month window for using those funds. So even with the delays we've had with this project, we'll still be far below that. So there is space for the scope of unscheduled to extend if necessary. But we would like some certainty coming out of this meeting because as you mentioned, it is very valuable to have the Planning Commission and the Council giving feedback. We'd like to be able to drill down on the next stage to really be focusing on details. So there will be opportunities prior to the final adoption to bring in front of these groups. We've also been checking in regularly with our other boards and commissions, including design review and cultural heritage board. So there will be additional opportunities before the final yes or no vote. But we would like to continue with a sense of urgency and try to have solid answers and direction moving forward at the close of this meeting. Mainly on those five issues. Those five issues are key with the assumption that the rest of the plan as a concept would be able to move forward. But if there are other issues that we need to be brought to light, we'd like to do it today. Excellent, thank you. Great, any other questions? See none. We'll go to public comment. First up, Michael Martini followed by Terry Shore. Good afternoon. My name's Mike Martini. I live on Austin Way here in Santa Rosa just outside of this core area. And I find myself walking downtown quite frequently. And I ride my bike through the downtown area at least three or four times a week. I'm here today to commend the council, commend the commission and commend staff for taking a look at the plan. It would be easy to be a cynic, especially given that the plan is 12 years old and you've produced 100 units of housing. It's also easy to be a cynic because we know that there's a room over in planning that shelves are full of plans that have been developed that have gathered dust. But the reason for my optimism, my reason for the optimism for this council is this council, this planning commission and the community recognize the need for housing. One of those plans that sits on the shelf and gathers dust offers us a cautionary tale. And that is a station area plan that was developed for the smart site. And if you forgive my seasonal metaphor, we put so many ornaments on that tree it couldn't stand. So I caution you here today that as a body, you do not design, you plan and you give them a framework that the designers are able to fulfill. The first thing that government can do is in the area of infrastructure and connectivity. And I really appreciate the comments that were made about that. It is imperative that people can get in and out of and around in a particular area. We saw this because of the fires. I'm here to speak very strongly in favor of the full connection of Robert's Avenue because if you want that area to succeed, you need to be able to get people in and out of. The second issue is the issue of process. And I appreciate the comments about streamlining. And clearly in California, moving from 18 months to six months is streamlining. I'm here to remind the council and everyone else that there are places in the country that people can break ground in six months. So streamlining is somewhat relative. And I would ask you to continue to look at that. But the more important one is the issue of CEQA and the ability, you cannot waive CEQA, but you can get a lot of those things out of the way. And I'm very, very encouraged by having that be a part of the plan. So I thank you all for your service and your attention to this plan. I agree with council member Sawyer what you're deciding today is gonna have a lasting and significant impact on this community. Thank you. Thank you. Terry Shore, followed by Ray Holly. Ray Holly, followed by Nina Rizzo. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members. Ray Holly with the Sonoma County Library. Our downtown library is listed as a catalyst site. So we're happy about that because we've been a catalyst for over 150 years. I wanted to tell you a little more about it. The busiest branch of our 16 location system is the central library here in downtown Santa Rosa. The library is open seven days a week with more hours than any other branch, 58 hours a week of full-time comprehensive service. Almost 20,000 people a month walk through our doors at 211 East Street and they check out about 35,000 items a month. Santa Rosa residents come downtown to learn about their families at our history and genealogy library. They come to improve their lives at our adult literacy center. United States military veterans come to central to our veteran center. The next generation of video and audio entrepreneurs come to take advantage of our digital camera library. Some of them come on, come down, they put on special headphones and they play our electric piano using our large collection of sheet music. Every day in central we hold events and programs. Some are small like story times and homework help. Some are massive like the day in September when Santa Rosa middle school students came to the library to connect via radio to the international space station. And we wanna thank Vice Mayor Fleming for attending that day and inspiring those students. Central is the largest library in our system at more than 60,000 square feet. Its history stretches back to the mid 1800s. In fact, the central Santa Rosa library was the 14th public library established in the state of California. It's always been right downtown. Our customers are your customers. They live downtown or they come downtown. They park, stroll, eat and shop. We are a part of a shared history of service with the city and we look forward to being part of a shared future. We appreciate the city's willingness to include us in these important conversations about the future of downtown Santa Rosa, a future where you will need library services more than ever as you intensify zoning and create more housing. Libraries welcome everyone through our doors. We make communities smarter, safer, happier and more prosperous. And we look forward to a long partnership with you in downtown Santa Rosa as we imagine a new downtown Renaissance. Thank you. Nina Rizzo followed by Dwayne Dwayne. Well, you're really far away. Good afternoon, council members and commissioners. My name is Nina Rizzo and I'm the Green Trip Program Manager at Transform. So thank you, council member Tibbets for mentioning the alternatives to parking that our program offers. For those of you who aren't familiar with us, we are a nonprofit and we promote walkable communities with excellent transportation choices so that people of all incomes in California can be connected to opportunity. We can keep California affordable and help solve our climate crisis. So with diverse partners, we engage communities in planning, we run innovative programs and we win policy change at the local, regional and state level. So in 2008, Transform created the Green Trip Program to support and recognize multifamily housing that reduces parking, traffic and greenhouse gas emissions. And in your submittal that you received today, you should also have two letters that I submitted to Mr. Streeter. So back in 2007, Transform participated in the original drafting of the downtown station area plan and we support the city's redoubled efforts to promote transit-oriented development, especially in the aftermath of the 2017 Tubbs Fire. Infill housing is needed more now than ever. As was already mentioned, since 2007, the plan has only built 100 units and we're here today because we all know and agree that Santa Rosa can and must do better. We commend the city's proposal to facilitate shared parking resources and we also wanna push you a little bit more. To truly prioritize housing production and housing affordability, Transform recommends that the city eliminates parking minimums for the entire plan area, not just the quarter mile in the zone currently proposed. Parking requirements contribute to the high cost of development and encourage the use of vehicles to get around which results in more traffic and more greenhouse gas emissions. And as was noted before, we want to see a walkable community downtown in order to support the businesses that are there and the added ones that you want to come. So when parking costs are transferred to renters, rent becomes even less affordable by about 16%. And that's no chump change for someone who's a renter. That's about $140 additional per month. So we recommend that the city eliminate parking minimums for the entire plan area. And not only that, but we would recommend parking maximums of 1.0 ratio. Okay, I'm gonna wrap it up and I just want to again, encourage you to be much more ambitious with the parking minimums and consider the inner related crises of housing and climate and to take bold action. Thank you. Dwayne DeWitt, followed by Cindy Young. Hello, my name is Dwayne DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. I thank you for this effort, but it has been a bit exclusionary. It's important that we keep in mind the new state recommendations for general plans that will include environmental justice and social equity. And Roseland is one of the most disadvantaged places in the city, if not the county. The other day, actually on November 6th, Casey Edmondson, the current chair of your Cultural Heritage Board, pointed out that isolation of Roseland was from Santa Rosa's urban planning. So it's been something that's occurred because of the way planners act and not just because of the free market. I salute the free market and the opportunities that could be had to go for 10,000 more housing units. I'm a member of the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group and I'm going for it. Sure, build as much as you can. Give all these developers every opportunity they can to get more housing in as close to the downtown central area. My point of contention today though is that I was a member of the Roseland-specific plan and in the past, I, as far back as the downtown task force of 1994, have been attending meetings, talking about how we're going to make things better for the city and Roseland. With that in mind, the Roberts Avenue connection is a vital thing, not just for the city, but for Roseland and it could be that thing that brought environmental justice and social equity to us. There was some consternation when at the end of the Roseland-specific plan process, we were told what we had talked about was being thrown aside because the city planners now wanted a tunnel under Highway 12. Now it appears that it's back in the mix and something different may come forward and you want to hang your hopes upon a bicycle and pedestrian connection. Well, I looked around when there was about 100 people in this room earlier, there was only one bicycle downstairs. People don't really use bicycles to get around Santa Rosa and you need to make sure that we don't do this plan hoping for something that's not going to occur. That connection is going to happen for you at least putting in a one-way road under that overpass that exists. You're not going to be able to do a big tunnel. You don't have the money. You're not going to be able to do a two-lane road because it's too wide for there. But you could do a one-lane paved connector and you could have a walking and bicycling path next to it. It'd be much better than that smart boondoggle path they've put in. They've spent millions of dollars paving land next to the smart rail for people to use and very few bicyclists use it. So let's get real about this and put in a roadway and connect Roseland to downtown because I don't want to ride my bike in the rain. Thank you. Thank you, John. Cindy Young followed by Keith Woods. Good afternoon. I am a volunteer at the California Welcome Center at the Railroad Depot in Railroad Square and I came here because we see many, many travelers from around the world as well as many locals and many communers that use the smart train. The number one complaint is about the parking. Nevermind about the fees, but the limited parking that's available with only two or three hour time limit is not acceptable to most people that come in. And so I hope you're putting something into your plan that addresses the parking situation around the smart train. Hopefully there will be a parking lot there. Another complaint that I'm embarrassed to have to address is connecting to the rest of downtown which you are addressing thankfully. It's really embarrassing to tell people they have to walk through the mall or they have to go under the underpass where there are a lot of shelterless people living. We're grateful for the Redwood Gospel Mission and the St. Vincent's who house and feed the shelterless. Nevertheless, there are many of them that launder around and this creates quite a scene around the Railroad Square area. So some sort of resources and planning needs to be done for the homeless in the area to be addressed. Another issue is public restaurants. There are no public restaurants in the downtown area which I hope is being addressed. And then one other complaint we have is that there are no markets, no grocery stores, no markets to pick up a salad or a sandwich or a drink or an apple. So that is also something that's lacking in our downtown area and Railroad Square. And I do support the unification of Railroad Square making it into a square. I think that would be wonderful to have another little park there. However, we have the homeless issue to deal with first because that's not gonna make for a very pleasant environment there for square. So you're addressing a lot of these issues and I hope that you will continue to hold these into your plans, these ideas. Thank you. Thank you. Keith Woods followed by Peter Rumble. Mayor, council members, members of the commission. My name is Keith Woods. I work at the North Coast Builders Exchange but I'm here as a 32 year resident not representing the organization. And I've only got one response to what I've seen in this presentation and that is simply wow. The work that's been done on this is extraordinary. I've been in this town since 1987 seen a lot of plans brought forward but nothing as creative, visionary and appropriate for Santa Rosa as we're in the 21st century than what I've seen here. It's gonna create a new Santa Rosa and I think we need to look at it that way. At a meeting the other day, I referred to Santa Rosa as somewhat of a city teenager at that awkward stage between being a suburb of San Francisco, which we're not and while maintaining our agricultural roots and becoming a major city. And we're at that awkward stage and this will change all of that. I don't think people realize how big Santa Rosa is and is worthy of a program of a plan just like this. At around 175,000 people of Peter, I think we're the fifth largest city in the Bay Area out of nearly 100 communities. We're the largest I believe between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon and we deserve this. And I'm hoping it gets the broad support that it does deserve. Out of the 480 or so cities in give or take in California, this will move us up the list of great cities. I think other communities will look to us with envy if we can pull this off in the years ahead. I think the citizens and the businesses in Santa Rosa are ready for this. Now everyone will understand it's gonna be costly. It's a costly venture both for the private sector and the public sector. But I'm hoping that we carry the message all of us out to the citizens that this isn't just a cost, this is an investment. And we've got to look at it as an investment and what it can generate in tax dollars and identity building for tourism and it's making us further a destination will have payoffs to that investment. And I hope you take a very business-like approach in how you go about all of this. I'm in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with my friend, Mike Martini, which always feels a little uncomfortable, but he's right. We can't let this go on a shelf somewhere and not be carried out. This shouldn't be just a strategic or visionary plan. It's got to be a pure unadulterated action plan. I absolutely commend the staff from top to bottom for everything they've done to make this happen. And once again, I just say wow to all of this. And I hope you fast-track this to make this dream a reality because I'm getting old and well, I'm old, but I want to see this happen. So congratulations to all, move ahead on this. Thank you. Peter Rumble, followed by John Stewart. Mr. Mayor, Planning Commission, City Council. Peter Rumble from the Center of the Metro Chamber, not just the fifth largest city in the Bay Area, but the 26th largest city in California. So that's fun. I wanted to just raise a couple of points after I joined many others in commending staff in the city. I can't remember a time where staff were willing to drop everything and go out to a community meeting, make a presentation, collect input, like they were in this process. And it's to be commended with, I think, a day's notice. David Patrick, you guys showed up and it's really appreciated. I think that we want to make clear that this plan sort of holds sway with every other plan that is out there. We want to make sure that this is sort of the overriding plan. And I think that needs an affirmative statement. These are things that I'm hearing through the presentation. I just want to make sure that we are explicit about them. I think we also want to be sure that we meet the intent to continue to build up and not accidentally down zone. And this is a point that is a little bit more technical. It's just sort of an unintended consequence where we might find one little parcel down the road. So providing direction to staff to kind of follow the intent and the vision to build up and sort of de-conflict anything that comes up that might accidentally down zone rather than move up. I want to join with Transform and really commend this notion of eliminating parking requirements and allowing the market and the developer to find what works best for that development in that particular situation. So really want to commend that as well as want to make sure that we note that parking is not part of the FAR calculation. Again, we heard that in the presentation. I just want to be sure that your council provides affirmative direction in that. And then lastly to take care of some of the issues that were brought up through questions, I do want to be sure that your council knows and the planning commission knows that the chamber is very much ready to work on EIFDs as a way to enhance infrastructure financing districts to make sure that the city has the funding necessary to do the infrastructure improvements that we need to support this kind of a development. And of course the district's downtown district and the chamber stand ready to work on things like wayfinding and beautification and addressing some of the perception issues that we have for downtown. So thank you very much. Staff did just a tremendous job. Thank you. John Stewart, followed by Heath Troll. For me, this is a yogi bearer moment. I've been coming up here for 20 years. John Stewart, I'm the principal at a LLC called the Santa Rosa Canters. It's also been renamed the Fool's errand. And we're still at it. I'm a grandfather now many times over. I want to congratulate the staff on this work that they're doing. We're very enthusiastic about what you're doing. We've tracked this thing. I remember when we were coming up here in 07, there was no, let alone 99, there was no plan. Now there is and you're a mendicant. I congratulate you. I actually remember meeting staff people here when they were single, then they were engaged and they got married, they had babies and now the babies are in graduate school. So I am very happy to be back here. I set a summary of our interesting tragic comic scenario on this project, which started at 99. We spent three or four years from ought ought to ought for with the cultural heritage board. We're getting permission to deconstruct the various walls and keep certain walls. We cut a deal. There was another chair and in that, actually there were three chairs in that four, the city, the regional water quality control board and smart. We cut a deal where we preserved most, but not all of the walls that people saw in 08. We also then were able to access the soil to go down and do four years worth of work with the regional water quality control board, which is actually doesn't sound, it was a positive experience because they told us how high the bar was set. We now have no further action letters. We did soil remediation and groundwater both at 18 feet. We then got entitled in 08. We optioned the smart property, which is not one of my more brilliant moves, but we wanted to do the site in Toto at a time that seemed like a great idea. In theory, we should be able to do that site at Railroad Square in one fell swoop. The economy doesn't always listen to the planners in that regard, and you have to do what you can do. We were entitled in 09 for an affordable housing project, and the city decided that it wasn't what they wanted, they wanted to proceed with something that was all-encompassing involving both the smart property and ours, and they didn't like it as the senior site. So they rejected it, and we have been on the sidelines since 2013, so we're looking to wrap up your comments. Yeah. I want to compliment you on looking at the access to the creek. We designed our whole site so that it had a 47-foot swath leading to the creek. We did that from the beginning, working with the cultural heritage board. I like your concept about the FAR. John, I'm gonna have to ask you to stop. Sorry, our buzzer's not working, everyone's only entitled to three minutes, so thank you for your comments. Hugh Futrell, followed by Efren. Efren left, so Steve Bertelbaugh would be next. Oh, Efren is there, thank you. You moved. Okay, go ahead, Hugh. Yeah, Hugh Futrell, 204th Street. Mr. Mayor, members of the council and members of the commission, as most of you know, my firm has actually developed and built most of the new buildings of various kinds in downtown Santa Rosa over the last 25 years, so naturally, I have a particular perspective and looked at the preferred alternative with some care before coming forward to make a few comments. I also do wanna commend the planning department, Patrick Streeter and his team, for listening carefully to the comments that practitioners brought forth in this process. That willingness to listen is extremely important, and I will say to some degree was perhaps lacking 13 years ago with the prior plan. I have very quickly just a nature of a technical question that if it can be addressed at some point, I would appreciate it, and then three main observations. The technical question concerns the issue of road dieting and the preferred alternative along 3rd Street. There's a lot of language about that. I'm operating on the assumption, and I'm really, I guess, directing this to Patrick, that that is the kind of technical thing that will be drilled down on in the course of the next phases of the project, because there's a section of 3rd Street that may benefit from that, that is not explicitly called out for road dieting, although it is called out for landscape enhancements. So that's one question. Then very quickly, three observations. One is that the FAR concept, the numbers, the maximums, and the borders are absolutely right without any exception. The job on that is outstanding. Second, please stay away from being too prescriptive in the plan in respect to housing types, but the deepest respect those of us who are in the market as practitioners understand the market better than the city or a set of consultants ever could. Our problem is not a housing type problem, it's a different kind of problem. Third, the suggestion we heard from one commentator that there should be an absolute maximum of 1.0, please don't do that. There are occasions for family units, for example, in which tandem parking, which creates a 2.0 for that unit, is really necessary. The third issue and the one that I would really stress here is that the main contribution the city can make to transforming our downtown in the manner that Keith Woods mentioned, is in the area of infrastructure investment. A clever, flexible plan like this, one that's carefully thought through that lacks ambiguous and contradictory language, is essential. And the city staff deserves great credit for bringing this forward. But infrastructure is critical, that's the one thing you can do that the private sector cannot do. And in that respect, enhanced infrastructure financing districts are the absolute fundamental tool. So I encourage you, focus in on that, reference it where you can in the plan and make this an absolute top priority. Thank you. Thank you. Efren Carrillo, followed by Steve Bertelbaugh. Honorable members of the council, honorable members of the Planning Commission, Efren Carrillo, a lifelong resident of Santa Rosa. Staff has certainly put into practice the council's desire for community involvement and engagement, contrary to some of the comments here in public, from various notes of the city and really wanna commend Patrick, Claire and David for following through on their statements from the last joint session that we had here in January or earlier this year. A plan that supports a dense and livable pattern of development is where we are afforded the greatest opportunity to support a vibrant environment both day and night. Here to support the alternative preferred plan concept, which really brings in various components of what was discussed here prior joint study sessions, but also one that interconnects our streets, our parks, our public spaces, and our village centers. As we look at the actual development and putting the plan into action, I think it's important for us to continue to focus on a multimodal transportation system, as it already been described by some of the public comments earlier today, but one that does so in a way that provides a viable alternative to the car. I do think that there is a test case that we can promote here in the city of Santa Rosa that provides an alternative for folks that don't have a full reliance on the automobile. I think it's good for development. It's certainly good for quality of life and it's good for the environment. Reducing the requirements on parking and providing flexibility is key, as well as focusing on the height restrictions. I think while there is a necessity to be sensitive to particular zoning overlays, i.e. historic districts, some of the height restrictions in these areas may very well prove to be overly restrictive and in direct opposition to the fundamental goals of the plan. So as you move forward in acknowledging that construct, I do think that we're gonna have to look at a balancing act that are moving forward. I personally believe that less restriction here is better. As we look towards housing, and the housing mix in the core and in the village centers, I think it's gonna be important to ensure there's a wide range of housing choices for individuals and families with a diverse set of social and economic backgrounds. That will be critical. The plan before you is not only a step in the right direction, but rather a leap towards the city reaching its full potential. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Steve Bertelbaugh, followed by Lois Fisher. Steve Bertelbaugh with the Transportation and Land Use Coalition. I want to be the third person to confirm the idea that parking should not be regulated. Let the builder and the financing agencies, the banks, decide how many parking places a particular development needs to have. They know much more about what's needed than any of us do. And they tend to lean in the direction of too much parking, but let them make the decision. Don't establish parking minimums. So that should be for the entire district. What we are finding is that with e-bikes, electric bikes, and electric scooters, the catchment area for the station has expanded. It's no longer the half mile that people have been considering is the distance that people are willing to walk to the train. The train is carrying lots of bicycles. The idea of running bikes and being able to drive to the station and leave them at the station is picking up steam. And so the entire area should be looked at as a catchment area for the travel on smart. So that brings us to the idea that we need to make the streets safe for people to walk and for people to bike. Let's include in this plan the idea that we have limited speeds downtown and good places for people to use their bikes and their electric scooters. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Lois Fisher, followed by Cliff Wiggum. Good afternoon, Council on Planning and Commission. My name is Lois Fisher. And I actually need to have the preferred plan concept FAR brought up, if possible. I actually wanted to thank Council Member Rogers for asking about the Square and Railroad Square, which I'm here to promote. And one thing I really would like to have the plan do as Council Member Rogers mentioned, is it in the plan? And I think part of the reason that it's hard to see is Courthouse Square is right here and it's actually green. And I guess the vision is that this is the potential square right here and it should probably be green in this FAR plan. Now I think it has FAR 5, which is really not really practical considering it's a park and then there's a historic depot in that site. So I'd like to have it match the Courthouse Square coloring on that one. And then the next item is the preferred plan concept design considerations. I guess the next slide. I didn't catch that one slide. The next slide is it has design considerations. Yeah, oops, you just passed it. Okay, you can see again here the Courthouse Square is green and Railroad Square is actually, it shows that it has a preservation district on it. And I can understand that for the depot itself, the depot building itself, but I definitely don't want to preserve that parking lot into perpetuity. So I'd like to have the preservation district, maybe even a little asterisk in denoting the depot itself, but not spilling over onto the rest of the plan. And then I think someone mentioned that the idea of a greenscape would encourage the homeless population in that area. And we actually have two alternatives for the Courthouse Railroad Square. One is a hardscape piazza and the other's more of a green space. And almost everybody has been saying they prefer the hardscape for that very reason. So anyway, we're doing everything we can to address that in our design. So thank you. Thank you. Cliff Wiggum followed by Rick Tice. Well, regarding the connectivity between North and South Roberts Avenue, the underpass for the Rudotta Trail makes total sense. It needs to be upgraded with lights and widened, but we'll never get cars down that. Dutton Avenue and all of our pretty full now. When we build housing to the South, we're going to need a way to get across. The Roberts Avenue underpass makes sense, but I understand there's no money to do it, but they can do it. Future infrastructure tax financing has a possibility. If we straighten out Roberts Avenue, so it goes straight to Sebastopol Road and connects to Timothy, Timothy could be made to go straight to Barham and you can get to 101. So you'd have a straight shot from Third Street under 12 to Sebastopol Road, four-way intersection at Timothy and continue to Barham. If we encourage the developer to straighten the crooked Roberts Avenue to make it straight to go to Timothy and their initial development, we can plan for the underpass in the future when we can be afforded and when the traffic dictates that it would work. I've talked to developers and they're in favor of doing such, but we'll need a lot of support from government and from Caltrans will have to get on board to do an underpass. The city's engineering and traffic studies have said the only place you can put an over or an underpass between 101 and Stoney Point is Roberts Avenue. So I'm encouraging that we don't shell the underpass, but we prepare for that in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Rick Tice followed by Richard Carlisle. What a great pleasure it is to be here. I was a former Santa Rosa Planning Commissioner and I want to say that an advocate for smart growth and sustainable development for 35 years here in Sonoma County. It was sort of disappointing. The other thing I want to do is I want to thank all the three staff people sitting in front of you from community development as well as Mr. Rose up here who helped Sonoma Academy build one of the most sustainable buildings in America and in 2018 won virtually every award for sustainable design and performance. And I oversaw the development of that project and they were a great pleasure to work with. I do want to say it was a real disappointment to hear Patrick Streeter say that, you know, we still have no sense of place here in Santa Rosa. And 20 years ago, the American Institute of Architects, Rudas Study came here and told us the same thing. There is no sense of place in Santa Rosa. This could be a city in Iowa. How disappointing. Well, this plan could be transformational. And I can't believe that Keith Woods and I are standing side by side in total agreement. Unbelievable. Anyway, and when I took the first walking tour with Patrick Streeter, a couple of people said, but where are the people going to park? And I know you're gonna be faced with that problem. And just I saw an interesting article the other day about when they built Giant Stadium, the business community was adamant that we needed 100,000 new parking places or it would create a ghost town in San Francisco, economic ruin. And Ellen Jacobs, who was the professor and chair of UC Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning as the guru on parking, said, in parking as with the rest of life, the best path is sophisticated, yet simple. San Francisco should do nothing. In fact, so that's what happened. And without 10,000 new parking places, well, it's not a ghost town and in fact has become quite the contrary and investment unfortunately has brought this place with this extremely huge success. The other thing I want to point out is affordability of housing. If we want smart to be successful, we need to have an abundance of affordable housing and a minimum of market rate housing around Railroad Square. And I'll send you copies to the Dukaka Center report on affordability for transit rich neighborhoods, which really explains why that needs to happen Thank you very much and good luck. Thank you, Richard Carlisle followed by Peter Stanley. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the council and planning commission. I'm Richard Carlisle, also a former planning commissioner who was involved in the original station area plan. And I want to commend staff for really taking the original plan and putting some oomph into it. I think it's a very good addition and changes to the plan to give it some meat to it. Anyway, job well done. And a couple of comments I want to make in going through some of the public hearings with staff and in the past here, I noticed that the east side, which is between East Street and Brookwood, it seems to me like that's a good opportunity area. You have Memorial Hospital on the east doing a vast expansion. So you have an employment base there. You have a small shopping center right there. You have a police station. You have a fire station. You have Santa Rosa Creek that connects it back into downtown. That could be a pedestrian way. So it has a lot of opportunity for some immediate housing right adjacent to the downtown. So I think that should be looked into. Secondly, I want to support what Lois Fisher said as a longtime owner, property owner in Railroad Square. I think having the square redone in Railroad Square is fantastic. You have the historic stone buildings there where we could create a piazza. And I can't tell you how many times I've stood there and kind of observed people coming off of the train, newcomers to Santa Rosa. And they get off and they don't know what to do. So what do they do? They kind of walk down the middle of 4th Street because there's no there or there. And so we really would appreciate emphasizing that square redone there for an entrance into Santa Rosa as coming off the train. And as you know, the merchants and property owners back that they approved the new financial package just recently to help support that. So I want to emphasize hopefully we can get that square. It took a long time to get Courthouse Square. So maybe we can get this one a little faster. Thank you. Thank you. Peter Stanley. Am I on? Mayor Schwedhelm, Chair Sisco and members of the commission and council. My name is Peter Stanley. I'm with Archeologics and also a downtown business owner. I want to add my congratulations to staff for this incredible work that they have done. This has been a vast improvement over where we started from 2007. We are definitely headed in the right direction. I've submitted a letter to council and to the commission with a couple dozen endorsements from downtown business owners, stakeholders and individuals within the community in support of this plan, but also with just some comments. As we all well know, the devil is in the details. Patrick has made it clear that that's where we're headed now is to work through these details. First and foremost, I want to support this significant change from CD districts and height caps into FAR. I think this is a creative approach. This is a way for us to get the density that we want. It leaves that in the hands of the developer and the market to figure out how to make it work. The reduction in the parking requirements is a significant addition as well. It's time to start letting the development community work through all of these problems. As we know, it's not just one thing. It is an avalanche of issues that we have to address in the city. One cautionary note I want to make is that we have these edge conditions in this community in the downtown planning area. We have areas that are ripe for development, either vacant lots or underutilized lots that do not have historic buildings on them, but they may fall in or on the edge of historic districts. And there is subjective language within this policy and it's not being addressed right now. I know it's on everybody's mind, but this notion of compatibility becomes a very difficult thing to overcome at times because that's a very subjective approach. If a piece of dirt has been sitting there for 40 years, what's its compatibility to the existing neighborhood now and what development could we put on those sites? And I'm speaking of the smart site at this point, but there are other edge condition sites. We have an FAR on that site now, which is encouraging good dense development, but it's surrounded by one and two-story buildings. So is the compatibility gonna become an issue as we move down the road? I just think subjective language has a way of causing problems down the road, not by anybody's, it's not by plan, but it just comes out as we try to move through with projects that are on the ground. So flexibility in the approach, giving that flexibility of planning staff, community benefits that allow us to enhance and move and bring in new ideas. Patrick's made it clear, staff has made it clear, we do not have all the answers right now and we don't know where the answers are going to be, but we are all working towards that. A lot of us have been here for a long time, 40 years I've been here trying to expand on this. I just wanna quickly say also that I sat on the commission with Commissioner Sisko and that Roberts Road Connection is a critical piece of the circulation between Roseland and into that downtown plan. I think this is something that we talked about a lot and it was put in there for a reason. I would encourage you to keep looking at that. Thank you. Thank you. Those are all the cards we have. If I can just solicit both of the bodies. Are there any questions from any of the comments that you'd like to ask staff before we go to the five questions? Mr. Tibbets. Thank you, Mayor. The question I did have for you guys is relating to how historical buildings and districts come to be formed and to Mr. Stanley's point, how do we take the subjectivity out of it and turn it into an objective process? Yeah, so we do have the Cultural Heritage Board as a body created by the council and appointed by the council and one of their tasks in addition to design or develop development review is also to establish our preservation districts and we do have a council adopted document for the processing procedures for historic properties. So it does come from the council giving direction on how our historic districts are regulated but also what the structure is for that. And as I mentioned previously, we do have a section in the zoning code that's applicable to areas that are in our historic preservation districts. As part of this plan, we would not be touching that section but since it's council created, if we were to have support from the council to amend those areas to create flexibility, that would be something that we would then pursue with as we work out the implementing the zoning amending other sections as necessary. Thank you. And what would it cost to do a full EIR across the city? Programmatic EIR. Just to address historic resources or no to address the CEQA type issues what we're doing with the specific area. I don't really have the ability to make that answer that. That's not something we can estimate for you tonight. Obviously we're going through a general plan update process. It's a comprehensive update and the entirety of the contract is 2.5 million and part of that, big part of that is the environmental review process but that's a program specific EIR. Of course it's a higher level than a specific plan gets down to development standards and processes. General plan is focused on big picture stuff like land use and circulation. So when we do the comprehensive general plan, it's not at the specific plan level, it's higher. Okay, thanks. That's all my questions. Any other questions as a result of public comment? And could you put up slide 35 then with your five questions and Chair Siskel, why don't you start with the planning commission? Commissioner's now is the time to make your comments and also keep in mind answering these particular questions for staff as well as anything else that you want to add. So Commissioner Duggan. Okay, thank you. I think this is a very unusual hearing where most of the commenters from who've been watching us and listening to you have all said so many positive things about this plan. So thank you so much for all your hard work and it's obviously got a lot of support in the community. So I only have a couple, I've got a couple of personal quibbley things and then also just my answers to your questions. So I guess I'm most concerned about some of the areas that have but the historic districts like on the opportunity area slide showing the old, I guess the old post office building now the new museum is part of the opportunity area and like why would we include a historic building that's obviously in great use right now as part of an opportunity area? So just the boundaries of that slide are a little bit concerning to me where they about the historic districts. And also the concept of FAR is an intriguing one, let's say, but I'm also the same thing as far as the, on the map of the preferred plan, the concept FAR map showing those higher FAR numbers on the edges of like the core district. I think maybe some of those should be reevaluated make those lower like you've indicated the parcel that's part of the St. Rose and putting that down to four from eight as shown in the map, I'd even encourage you to go lower two or three for that parcel just because it is on the edge of the historic district. And let's see. And as far as the questions, I think the four land use types are good I'm in support of those. And it's number two, I mean, I think that's fine if we just have, if we're looking towards a more urban model just changing that from the neighborhood and community parks to urban type park is fine, I'm in support of that. In Roberts Avenue, I know I've been here for a long time and we've had many, many discussions about Roberts and I personally don't think there's enough physical space to do the roadway that goes around and I think there's more space but less money to do the tunnel underneath the highway but I do think it's important to have Roberts connected somehow so there's activity on that roadway and it also provides another way for people to get towards the station and I think bike pet improvements would be nice there but I think it's gotta have some even if it's a one-way street have some kind of car travel would be more activating for that portion of roadway than just bike and pet. I think I sort of made my comment on number four the boundaries for the land use in the far districts. And I would just say like especially when you get close to the historic districts to just give that another look and then the Plaza Mall, I would love anything that would improve the connectivity between Railroad Square and downtown and I think people don't understand that right now they don't actually stop you if you walk a bicycle through the Plaza but if there was some easier, more direct, more obvious way for people to know that that would be great. Let's see. I like the active ground floor concept and also Parklets downtown. I think that's really important and also rooftop public spaces. I'm in support of those and otherwise I think that's all my comments. Good job. Thank you. Commissioner Peterson. Well, let me join in the chorus of appreciation for staff's hard work on this. I think it was really a tremendous effort and a lot of great public outreach. And in particular, I think the website itself is very user friendly and it's always nice to see that. With a plan like this, I think that the two guiding principles for me are to think bold and big and also to not make the same mistakes that the city has made in the past. So those are kind of what's informing me as I go through this list of specific questions. For number one, I think the creation of the four new land use types is appropriate. I think, again, a lot of thought has been put into this. A lot of public outreach has occurred. I think it's totally appropriate for this plan. Along the same lines with number two, I think it'd be perfectly fine to change to Urban Park Civic Space instead of the traditional neighborhood park, especially if that's, again, not working, if it's a mistake that doesn't get anything done. Along the same lines, a lot of the public and Chair Siscoe, I think the Roberts Road extension is it's important to keep that in place. I think if we're trying to pull people down through that area, trying to reduce the isolation of Roseland, I think that that's one of the kind of key components. And my position would be to keep that as it was and not rely on bicycle or pedestrian improvements to try and handle that issue that we're trying to address. I'm not sure that they would be effective. And I think we'd sort of end up where we are currently. I think the boundaries for the new land use and FAR districts are appropriate. Again, a lot of work has gone into this. And I think they're very well thought out. And then for number five, again, I don't think we should make the same mistakes and I think we should think big. I think that it would be a mistake to let them all off the hook when it comes to connectivity for vehicles or at least a really radically rethought kind of connection. I'm not sure that the types of bike pedestrian improvements that I imagine will be coming for something like this would really address the issue. And I think that that's dealing with that is going to be one of the really key issues to change the feel of downtown, change the connectivity of downtown and really make it a desirable place to be, especially at night instead of kind of a dead zone that is hostile or unforgiving to pedestrians. So with that, I'll turn it over. Commissioner Collier. It's pretty incredible to hear all of the public support that has been given for you guys. And it's been incredible, the amount of work that has got into this. I agree with Commissioner Peterson on a lot of the issues, mainly on the Roberts Avenue. I do think that, you know, it's similar to what Mr. Stanley was saying. I think it's kind of our duty to put the investment in to give Rosalind equitable access to our downtown. And I think it's important that we do that, along with, I think, you know, being bold about the mall, I think it would be, it's beneficial to go bold right now. And it'll be interesting, I know now is not necessarily the right time, to talk more about expanding the parking waiver more than just a quarter mile. I think that's something that we should really look into expanding it, maybe at least half a mile, if not the whole station area. Thank you. Commissioner Kripke. Yeah, I'm gonna echo everybody else and say this has been an outstanding job by staff. Great presentation, great work. It was my first staff presentation with props. So that was really cool. I'm a big fan of a lot of things in here. I'm a big fan of the FAR, the eyes on the creek, I love that. I first saw that when I traveled to Ashland, Oregon, they've got a great little place up there that's kind of, I'm assuming similar to what you have in mind. The underpass art lighting and wayfinding that you guys had, I love, make it more hospitable to walk through those underpasses on all of third, fourth, fifth and sixth, and less, I don't know what the word is, but less unfriendly, make it more appealing. I'm gonna agree with everybody else so far and say the connectivity to Roberts, via Roberts through Roseland is important. Exhaust all possibilities, think big, think bold, all the same things. And then we do need to address the elephant in the middle of the city and the Santa Rosa Plaza. I mean, I don't know what our friends in Indiana or with Simon think if they are thinking about it at all, but I think there's a room full of people here in a city full of citizens that want something done with that. I would like to see connectivity via a roadway, if possible, if not something grand, something bold to take place because it kind of reminds me like if you see a line of ants and then you put a rock in the middle of it, that flow of ants all of a sudden just disperses everywhere and that's how it feels to me with the middle of our downtown, in the middle of our city. So I'd like to see something happen with that as well. It's a little bit bold, but as far as one through five, I've already addressed three and five, but one, two and four, I'm all four. First of all, I'd like to add my voice to those saying what a wonderful job you've done with this plan. My first reaction was that as a professional or former professional planner, I get it, I like it. Is there anything there for the general public? I'm hearing from those attending today that they get it too and it's also a good plan, so I have to commend the staff on their outreach efforts and communicating this effort. The four land use types seem right. My impression as I toured the Maxwell district was, wow, there's a lot of automotive stuff here. I hope we have the land use designations to accommodate those. We all like to bike and walk, but I wouldn't underestimate the car culture in this part of the country. Certainly adding civic space to neighborhood and community parks seems like a good idea. I've certainly heard that the Roberts connection is an important one for linking Roseland to the main community in downtown. I've learned to use all of them in Sebastopol. I like that connection. I think the enhancements to that are very important and if it proves from an engineering or a cost perspective infeasible to do, Roberts, we really need to focus on that Sebastopol all of connection and making sure that works properly in the existing pedestrian bike connections. The connections through the plaza are really important. I walk a lot downtown between downtown and Railroad Square and it's pretty easy to do. It's not apparent, it wouldn't be apparent to visitors to the city who aren't familiar. In my view as a planner, I think the most obvious and legible connection between the two areas is Third Street and I think if we have any opportunity to work with the shopping center on taking Third Street out of a ditch and from underneath them all, that might prove to be an important connector between downtown and Railroad Square. Both vehicular and pedestrian. We show pedestrian improvements but I can never bring myself to walk under there so I'd be interested to see what kind of pedestrian improvements we're gonna have on Third to make it work for pedestrians and bikes. Just reiterate what a great job you've done and how I look forward to moving the plan ahead. Thank you. Vice Chair Weeks. Well, I'm gonna be the sixth voice of saying good job. I really appreciate the creative and flexible approach that you took. You heard us when we talked about flexibility last whenever it was last year, maybe it was earlier this year. As far as the preferred plan concepts, I like the four new land use types. I think that was really creative. Once again, you heard us when we asked for some options and flexibility. I agree with changing the neighborhood park to urban park civic space concept and I like the idea of the piazza down in Railroad Square. I think that could really help transform that area. Roberts Avenue connection. I think I would go to the memo that we got yesterday where you talk about including Roberts Avenue underpass option for consideration and allow the flexibility in the EIR to analyze both options and that's what I would like to see. I don't want to delete that option because who knows what's in 20 years, 30 years, what construction's gonna be like, what things are gonna cost, et cetera. And I think that's important to connect Roseland with the rest of the city. That yes on number four. And I like the transitions that you talked about for some of the neighborhoods. And yes on the focusing on bike and pet improvements. And as I tend to do, I'm gonna go off script for just a moment and add a couple more things. Going back to the memo that you sent, number 15, which talks about supplemental FAR is available, or FAR is available for undersized parcels and bonus FAR is available through provision of community benefits. I'd like to see that explored. I'd like to see wayfinding. You had it designated on some of the maps but I'd like it to see in a broader area for a variety of things. And also the cultural historic survey. I know that takes money and time but I'd like to see if there's a way that that can be done. I think that could help going a long way for some people. So thank you again. It was a great job, Patrick and Claire and David. And Bill, wherever he went. And I would add my voice to that also. It's an incredible amount of work done quickly under extremely stressful circumstances. Just with a lot of public input, I really appreciated the youth trips that I was able to participate in. I know some of the other commissioners to get their feedback and just the outreach has really been tremendous and you've come up with a really document that Keith Wood was saying, wow. I'm very happy with the four new land use types, particularly how well I think they're going to elevate and make Roberts Road an opportunity site to make those a visitor space and make it clear. One of the complaints that I had about the last plan was that it was all housing. It really didn't make a there there for Santa Rosa. And I think with these land use changes at the smart site in Maxwell Court and Roberts, we start to create some reason for people to come to Santa Rosa and to enjoy the downtown in a variety of ways. So I'm very happy with those. I think the flexibility of changing from a traditional neighborhood park and community park to urban park is a valid one. I appreciate the boundaries for the FAR districts and certainly with Ms. Hill's comments in mind, if there's more sensitivity to the historic districts, I would definitely support that. Y'all knew I was going to do this. I'm going to talk about Roberts Road. Since I've been on the planning commission, the variety of education that I've got, I really see connectivity as the foundation of good planning. We've been reminded of mistakes that Santa Rosa made in the past, the mall being one of them, of how we have interrupted our connectivity. And I think the city has been going a long way to correct that with the Sixth Street underpass by reuniting Courthouse Square, Prince Memorial Greenway. The Roberts Avenue connection is really, really critical. If we want Roseland to be a part of downtown, and I do, and I really see it as visionary to draw them down from the smart site into an interesting and vital area on Roberts Road and turn the corner and go down to the Roseland Village, that connection is really, really important. It was important the three times that the planning commission has looked at this and staff has vetted when it was going to be housing. I think with the elevation of the land uses, it's even more critical that you're able to get there in a variety of ways. The problem that I have with abandoning the vehicular connection, and we don't have to design it now, we don't have to figure out how to pay for it. Now it needs to be in the plan because we've got a very able council, and I'm hoping we'll have more able councils as we're future proof that are gonna be able to come up with plans as we have for things that are difficult to work with and pay for, but we've achieved. And so I think that it's completely possible. But Roberts Avenue, when the freeway went through, the north side fared much better than the Roseland side. It's light, you can shop in that industrial area without feeling like your life is in danger. On the Roberts side, it's better now, but the city's put resources. We had to condemn the last remaining house that was there, the Holbrook House, years ago through the neighborhood revitalization program because of how negative and how much police resources were being used there. There's still a lot of calls for service in that area. And so I think it's just, it's really critical that we are joined, that we see ourselves as joined to downtown, and that we not go into, well, it's gonna be expensive, it's gonna be hard, it's gonna be this. I think we owe it to the Roseland community to keep it in the plan and keep working with what the future may bring in terms of that. But I think that connectivity is absolutely critical for us to feel joined to downtown. I think those land uses could be a huge opportunity site. I'm glad to hear that some of the federal money maybe could be used for commercial uses. It could be an economic generator quickly for the city. So I really, really can't stress enough how important that vehicular connection is. If you look at the enhancements that are being proposed, if you've been down all of, all of is framed by the freeway. There's very, you're not gonna expand the streetscape and you're coming into a very narrow Y intersection. So there would be, in my opinion, maybe some private land use acquisition or something to make that, turning that corner. But you're leaving that area, Roberts, as an island, that you have to go all the way around, either Dutton or all the way around Olive to get to, and if there's going to be really vital uses there, I don't think that that's gonna be appropriate. And I think traffic analysis might show that that might be really difficult. So, obviously I'm very passionate about Roberts Avenue and I'll end with that. All right, thank you. Council, Mr. Tibbets, you wanna start? Sure, thank you, Mayor. I think as Commissioner Peterson said quite well, this is clearly a bold plan. What I think, or at least the one takeaway I'm gonna run through, just bullet by bullet, answering your questions. If there's one takeaway though, I hope that you see that what I'm gonna really be stressing and looking for is freedom and flexibility in this plan going forward. Because I think to achieve this vision, the people who come forward and wanna make investments in this city and be creative in the ways that they build, we're gonna have to have a very flexible structure to allow them to express that creativity and also finance it. So, on Roberts, I'll start with that where Chair Sisko left off. I would just say follow the memo and keep those options and flexibility available for the future. Yes to the four mixed use changes. Yes to urban parks and parklets. I would like to add, really take a look at and spell out walkable districts and what their role are in this plan. Yes to the existing boundaries and FARS. I'm very supportive of Four Street and punching through that plaza and creating a way to access Old Railroad Square and Old Courthouse Square. I would also ask that you look into in this process as some of the flexibility or the options you can bring forward to be flexible on parking. I would second what Commissioner Collier said and that is just look at how flexible we can get. Really look to the developers and the banks as well as from our own perspective trying to reduce the number of parking units. There are, but again, I think it's gotta come down to flexibility if we want things to actually materialize in our downtown. But do look at allowing those developers or whoever end up becoming the property managers or operators using bus vouchers for people who live there in lieu of parking spaces. Similarly, activate some of our dead spaces that we have in our existing parking garages with master leases. One thing I'll ask on behalf of Peter Rumble is he asked if this plan was overriding. My understanding is that it is over existing plans down there. Maybe that's more of a question is. The short answer is yes, this would supersede anything that's previously been adopted. Okay, great. I just wanted to make sure that that was the case. And please, and I think after what city manager Glen brought up about a lot of our under grounding resources being depleted, knowing that our capital improvements budget is always stretched and we've seen years behind. As time allows, let's do take a serious look at the enhanced infrastructure finance district. I don't know if that's something that we do. I don't know if that's something that the Rural Enterprise District can do for us to help with staff time, but to start having that conversation. The other thing I would ask is for us to do what you said, Mr. Streeter, which is to amend the areas of the preservation district to allow for that flexibility of new development to come in, I'm very supportive of that. And that's my comments. Thank you guys. Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. When I look at the plan, I think man, that's the city that I want to live in. And I was born in Santa Rosa and I've been raised here. And this is the direction that I think that we really need to go. And I think staff has just done an incredible job on taking input points from well over 800 people. And I know those are the vocal minority in the community, but really distilling it down into a usable guide path for us on what the vision of Santa Rosa is going to be 20 and 30 years in the future. So a lot of the things that I'm looking at are not based on existing conditions now. Yes, we have issues with homelessness and that's impacting Railroad Square, but 20, 30 years down the road, I would hope that the council would have taken steps to address them, to really put in place a plan of what we would see as the ideal and where we want to get to and not get bogged down on specific issues that are happening at the moment that we can also address outside of the land use planning. I think that number one, and it's been brought up a lot, is that connectivity to Roseland. And when I talk to people who are not from here, the word that's used to describe Santa Rosa and it surprises me every time is unwelcoming, that the way that our infrastructure is, the way that our planning process is, is that it's just unwelcoming. And I see a lot of that addressed in this plan, but I think that connection at the Roberts Avenue area is a way of us being more welcoming to Roseland to pull it into our downtown and to be a part of the economic success of our city. So I do think that that's really vital. I'm looking into the future and thinking that decoupling, parking from our land use is going to be really essential. And yes, doing it as a project by project to see what works is fine, but I would hope 20 and 30 years into the future, we're seeing fewer car trips that we're seeing a public transit system that's actually able to sustain a community without having to add additional parking spots. So I think it's a chicken and the egg and I think we're getting there. I am excited by the four new land use types because it's simple and it's flexible. And I think that that'll be helpful. And I also do like the idea of the urban parks and civic space concept. One of the things that I would like to see from the council when we do our goal setting at the beginning of the year is a discussion about what types of enhancements, we've called them density bonuses up to this point, now with this FAR system going into place, what that would look like for priorities that we would like to push forward in our land use, whether it's how we place our childcare facilities, how we do green roofing, a number of different priorities on things that we'd like to give developers, yes, the flexibility by not having to always have it as a requirement, but how can we move our city in a direction forward by adding value to the projects as they're coming up. So I'd like to see that in our planning process as well for goal setting, I think it'd be a good exercise. As it pertains to the boundaries, I wanna make a strong case for our preservation districts and understanding that what we're trying to do is create housing, but I don't think that creating housing is also in conflict with keeping the cultural value that we have in our areas. And in fact, when I talk about making the city more welcoming and when you talk about a sense of place for Santa Rosa, I think that those are still values that we have within our community as well, that having strong cultural districts or, excuse me, historic districts and preservation districts create that sense of place within our own community. It creates an atmosphere that's more welcoming. And I think if there's a way for us to make sure that we're continuing to tweak that wear and a butts up against them, there's going to always be a little bit of a difference, but particularly where it infringes on the historic preservation districts, I wanna make sure we're being very careful. I was glad to hear before we even got there the conversation about Morgan Street, how that is in the historic preservation district and it is on the fringe of what we're trying to do. And so working better with those neighbors there who have invested a lot to make sure that the historic district is something that is compatible. And I hear the conversation about a plot of land or a plot of dirt, how that there is no historic value to it, but the overall composition of a historic district and the marketability of it is an economic asset. So I don't wanna lose sight of that in the push to create additional housing as well. I talked last time we did this about having each of our welcoming sites, pull people into our downtown and pull people into our village stations. I don't want us to lose that as we push forward on this. I've also been very clear with you all about my feelings on the mall. So I will say yes, let's get that punch through as a walkable, bikeable area. I'm not in favor of vehicular crossing through there. Although as it pertains to Roberts Avenue, I do wanna leave that flexibility to staff to come back to us and show us what works. Mr. Alvarez. Thank you, Mayor. I think this is a pretty big and significant historic step for Santa Rosa and Patrick, I think you and your team should be very proud of the work that you've done so far on this. Thank you from the top very quickly. Yes to the four new land use types. Number two, yes. Number three, I think you've got the message. I look forward to seeing what you come back with Robert's Road and keeping that in there. The boundaries, yes. And absolutely, let's find a way of punching through the plaza as it relates to bicycle pedestrian access. Mr. Sorry. Thank you, Mayor. And I'm gonna jump around a little bit. I will start with the preferred plan concept direction. But I first wanna, I do wanna also thank David Ewan and his very capable staff. I know it wasn't just Claire and Patrick. I know this probably touched on every single department in our city. And so thanks to every one of them that weighed in on the opportunities and the challenges in coming forward with a plan like this. So I'll just, yes on one and two and four. And actually I'm gonna skip four and discuss that for a second. And five, I'd love the idea of punching through a vehicular a hole through the plaza. But I like unicorns too. And I know I can't have those bouncing around in my neighborhood, but I... So the plaza will not stand forever. There will be opportunities in the future to create ways to connect our east and our west and our east downtown. I probably won't be around for that. And perhaps it'd be fun to see it. I do wanna live downtown. I have 15th, I have 13 stairs into my house. And every time, every year that goes by that number starts to become a little bit more challenging than it was the year before. So I'm looking forward to living in our downtown and you are creating in this plan the kind of downtown that I would like to live in. Number three, the Roberts Avenue connection I think is important to leave in the plan. It's been articulated very well by other members of the council and the planning commission. I think there's a lot of value. We've been challenged and we've had obstacles in the past. And I understand some people would think that some of those obstacles would have been impossible to overcome that we have. So I would like to leave that in the plan. Number three, on number four actually, it was brought to my attention this evening by Mr. Stanley about the subjective language. And it does concern me. And we had a project on Brookwood Avenue or North Street and they used words like adjacency. And that came back and bit us pretty strongly in the appeal. So compatibility and adjacency, I would love to be able to see a review of what any people might consider to be subjective language and to remove as much as possible while maintaining our flexibility. It'll become especially important I think when we deal with our historic districts and the adjacency there too, whatever that might mean to people. But we do, I think that it would be helpful also to acquire a cultural historic resources survey. I know that they are expensive, but it will help in the conversation with our historic district. Historic districts as we move forward and potentially change our cityscape that will be directly, that they may be impacted by more than anyone else. It is true, yes, these districts are very, very close to the downtown. I know that they would expect the downtown to change and evolve. And their ability to walk downtown is a major asset to them. And I think that with a little bit of compromise and a great deal of community input, which you have done a stellar job on this, doing on this entire plan to keep up that work of the involving the neighbors and hopefully come up to some, it'll be tough. It'll be an emotional resolution. It'll be tough on the planning commission and on the council, but wherever we can remove that subjective language, I think would be, will serve us well in the future and serve councils well in the future that may have to deal with trying to analyze what this council and this planning commission was trying to accomplish. So I thank you. Thank you for this learning. Thank you. And I want to thank the Oracle of Bennett Valley for predicting that one day he'll live downtown and along with unicorns and be able to cross through a non-existent mall. So anyway, cheers to you. But most of all, Mr. Streeter and to your team, I want to commend you for nothing else bringing together people who I never thought I'd see agree. So I'm going to hire you for my next campaign. But everybody's already said all the nice things. So I'm going to get down to a few of my initial impressions and then answer your questions. First of all, is that I love the idea of flexibility for development and allowing the market to tell us how many parking spaces they need. And I think the FAR is a fantastic idea of allowing developers to keep a consistent amount of or at least a relatively consistent amount of density without being prescriptive about it. And I think it is going to draw on the creativity that we would really like. I have a couple of thoughts about the type of people that I'd like to see downtown that haven't really heard touched on a lot. I want to make sure that downtown is not just welcoming to the people that have ownership stakes in downtown, although that's really, really important. But I want to make sure that downtown is also welcoming and this goes into the Roberts Road thing. But downtown is welcoming to all the parts of Santa Rosa and it's welcoming to people with disabilities, it's welcoming to elderly people. And one of the things that I really haven't heard except for childcare mentioned is that it's welcoming to families. Downtown is a place that is really difficult to come down to and enjoy with small children. And so as this is executed, I don't mean to say any of this to as any form of a stick to our development community, more as a carrot. Please do universal design. Please incorporate elements that are hospitable to children and family and typically populations that don't come to what we think of as our downtown because folks do come down here and they will spend money and they will enjoy it and it will become more vibrant and it will be a virtuous cycle. To that end, I'd like to see some wayfinding which I've heard echoed a little bit and most importantly is connectivity. And to make sure that the connectivity is not just vehicular and that where we don't do vehicular transit that we don't disenfranchise typically underserved populations by not doing vehicle access that way so that we are somewhat fair and equitable in the places that we put bikes in pedestrian paths because we know that for many people, especially with small children or elderly people, the vehicle in lieu of a robust public transit is not gonna cut it for them. So I'm gonna go on and answer your questions and then leave you with a few more thoughts. The first is for sure yes on the land use types and yes to number two. Number three, I think that you've heard that everything that you're gonna hear on that. So number four is a yes and number five is I'd like to see the bike and pedestrian rain king on that, especially because there's great parking around there. It's not one of those spaces like Roberts where it's difficult to park and walk. This place you can park and you can walk, you can park and you can bike. If there were any type of transit that went through vehicle based transit, I'd like to see it be public transit or safety based transit. So I'm gonna leave you with this. I commend you and especially for doing the community outreach and for moving forward a plan that comprehensively accounts for the twin crises of housing and climate. In spite of multiple specific plans nobly collecting, doing the work of collecting dust, I am enthusiastically hopeful that Santa Rosa will not just answer the call of housing and infrastructure but pave the way to the future. I believe that at present we are a city lab but that soon we will be a test case for best practices and I cannot wait to see it and I am hopeful that I will see it. Thank you. Alrighty, last one. Overall, the flexibility, I think you and the whole team heard what we had said at the last time or before the council, like let's have a plan with flexibility, I think you've really modeled that. I'm also really interested in whether it has to show up on the design, the reunification, the design of railroad square actually put a square there. I think that could be a jewel on both sides of the freeway. So I know the designation may need some adjustments but I'd really like to focus on that and hopefully, well, I plan to bring it up early next year for council to see if we can find some prioritization time to make that a reality. So in answering to your questions, yes, the four new lane use types, very supportive. Same thing with number two, Roberts, my feelings are consistent with Chair Siscoe's. The road was there when we might have a solution right now but let's keep it in the plan. With number four, the boundaries for the new lane use. I appreciated what you said near the culture heritage areas like St. Rose neighborhood, lowering that because it does seem a little, right of butts next to some very significant parts of our community. You had mentioned having a four far, I think would be very appropriate. And then St. Rose Mall, let's open up Bicycle Pedestrian. I think that we can have some huge creativity there. I don't think we need to have cars going through there but Bicycle Pedestrian I think is a way of the future and that really is, would be an attractant for everyone coming off that smart train and everyone else living in Santa Rosa. So I do want to just re-emphasize I am applauding you just like everyone else has but please don't rest on your laurels, stay inspired to the finish line because we still have a little ways to go and I can't wait for that final conversation when we make this a reality because I think this is going to be a community that we all want to live in and what you've been doing you're making all of us very proud that you work for the city of Santa Rosa. So with that, is there any other questions or clarifications from either planning commission or city council? It has been pretty clear to me. I just did, I remembered during the public comment that question did come up that we didn't address which was the issue of road diets. We have them shown on Mendocino, Santa Rosa and on E Street and the question was raised about what about third street or places like that. So they're not in this concept but as we have other Bicycle Pedestrian plans that I move forward they can be incorporated into those and so we're still open to them. Again, this plan will preclude something like that. Also, I think it was pretty clear universally across the board what I heard the answers to these five key moves. Just to clarify though, for number five about the connection through the mall, I heard a lot of people saying punch through things like that. So what the takeaway is is that Bicycle Pedestrian should be the focus and we want something bold that's really addressing it but it doesn't necessarily need to be a new roadway connection through that. I think that was pretty much the feeling that I was hearing. And then I also, I did hear another one that wasn't one of these five but it seemed to be universally supported of expanding the parking waiver to just be the entire plan area as opposed to doing that exercise where we figure out what's within a quarter mile of transit. So it seemed like there's a lot of support for that. So that might be something that we'd add into this as well, moving forward. Okay. With that, okay. We will join the special meeting in the city council. We are gonna take a brief recess before we start our 230 study session. So let's take about five minutes to reconfigure and then reconvene. All right, welcome everyone to today's city council meeting. This will be our, we'll be starting with what was previously scheduled for our 230 study session. And just for members of the audience, what we will do is go through the study session all the way through our consent calendar and then I'm anticipating that would put us past five o'clock and we'll start our public hearings at five o'clock or as close to it and save the report items so we're done with both public hearings. Okay. And I'll repeat that again once we get started with the regular calendar. So Madam City Clerk, could you do a real call please? Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member Sawyer and vice mayor Fleming, although soon to return. Great, thank you. Mr. City Manager. 5.1 study session presented by the Sonoma County supervisors to discuss the proposed one half percent sales tax measure entitled the Sonoma County wildfire prevention, emergency alert and response transaction and use tax ordinance, which will be introduced by Chief Gosner. And I would like to welcome Chair Rabbit and Supervisor Hopkins to the presentation as well. Thank you. All right, Mayor Schweldholm, Vice Mayor Fleming, council members, thank you for having us here today. This is gonna be, it's our opportunity to present the Sonoma County wildfire prevention, emergency alert and response measure to you this afternoon or this early evening. I'm joined by supervisors Linda Hopkins and Chair of the Sonoma County Supervisors, David Rabbit. We also joined by county staff who are in the seats behind us and then Ruth Bergstein who's gonna join us in this seat here of EMC Research, Inc. for the presentation. And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Chair Rabbit. Thank you very much, Chief. And thank you again for having us here today, Mayor, Vice Mayor, council members. Good to see you. We'll start right off with really the issue of that hand. I think we all know Sonoma County is very unique for a lot of reasons. We have more miles of roads than most of our neighbors, double in fact or triple. We have more parcels than most counties our size actually, in a very parcelized county. And we also have solid urban growth limits, which rightfully can find suburban sprawl but also ensure that all cities within the county have a wild land interface, excuse me. And not unlike the number of school districts in this county, we had, not that long ago, I think 42 separate fire protection agencies. We're down into the, I think the mid-30s today. So we're moving in the right direction, but we still have a lot of entities out there. Through consolidation, we have less today and we'll continue to move in that direction and that's our goal. We also utilize volunteer fire departments and while the agency are beloved for sure, volunteers are harder to come by as demographics change, as you can imagine. No longer does the farmer jump off the tractor to respond to the local fire. Volunteer firefighters are required to receive the same training, the same certifications and equipment as a full-time career firefighter. This has made it extremely difficult to recruit and retain volunteer firefighters throughout the county. And there's not equal fire coverage or emergency coverage throughout the county and that's a problem. You might not think that's a problem if you have adequate coverage here in your city, but when you are relying on all entities, the need is urgent to have engines and people show up on scene. Now this picture up here of the Kincaid fire depicts the eventual evacuation area pretty well. And so what I'm here to talk about a little bit is mutual aid. Mutual aid is a wonderful thing. It's something that we are incredibly grateful for and God knows this county has utilized mutual aid way too much over the past couple of years. All agencies within Sonoma County make up mutual aid and Santa Rosa responds and also Santa Rosa benefits from mutual aid. And I think that one of the important things to note is that we truly only are as strong as our weakest link. And if, for instance, Santa Rosa is next to a weaker jurisdiction, you're actually going to be hemorrhaging your resources out into those unincorporated areas to respond to calls in under-resourced areas. First responders, luckily for us, do not base response decisions on jurisdictional boundaries, just the same way that fire doesn't. And with increased resources and personnel, instances of sending mutual aid outside of jurisdictional boundaries will decline, which ultimately means that you are able to keep more of your resources within Santa Rosa city limits. Because I'll be honest, I'm often the weakest link when we're talking about what is the most fragile link in West County we're very under-resourced and so we benefit tremendously from mutual aid and we're grateful for it, but I think it would be better if we were able to keep some of those resources more local. I also wanted to take an opportunity to hand out a handout, I don't know if I should bring it to the clerk or is that the best way to go? I actually had permit Sonoma work up a bit of magic at the last minute, so unfortunately it didn't make it into the presentation, but it actually analyzes what is the Wildland Urban Interface within the city of Santa Rosa? And so the intermix area totals 2,500 acres roughly, the interface area is 2,300 acres, the influence zone is 5,800 acres and there are roughly 10 miles of city limits that are sort of interfacing directly with the Wildland Urban Interface boundary. And so that just kind of shows that even though we are separate jurisdictions, we have a tremendous amount in common when it comes to fire threats. I'll just add that the city of Santa Rosa, we typically have 25 to 35% of the city that reside within the Wildland Urban Interface and that's just the city, that's not counting everything outside that comes in. And as one of our CWPP people, the Community Wildfire Protection Plan, but Santa Rosa is a great catcher of fires, meaning fire runs to us from other places. So Napa County in 2017, when the Tubbs Fire started was in Napa County and this year's case it started in Geysers and then almost made it to the city but did not. So the primary goal, the primary goal for our fire advisory committee is a more efficient, effective, and sustainable fire response emergency alert and wildfire capabilities that protect the health and safety of the public or Sonoma County. The recent King Cave fire illustrated the strengths and the weaknesses of our current and our fire and emergency services. So our emergency alerting was strong and efficient based on lessons we learned in 2017. However, it is important to note that we had time on our side with this fire. We were able to receive mutual aid quickly and efficiently from across the county and from across the state. That help was only available to us because we were not competing for resources from other fires. In 2017, we had numerous fires around us, not to mention we had multiple fires already in the city, both structure and vegetation fires. So we were very taxed in 2017. This cycle in 2019, it was very different for Sonoma County and the city of Santa Rosa based on how it unfolded. We've been a significant challenge to receive the help that we needed if we needed to compete for resources. So really, we were the only show in town this year where before we weren't. We are grossly understaffed with firefighters in the county to meet the daily needs of the communities that we serve. We should not have to hope to receive the mutual aid that we ask for during these times of crisis. We should have ample firefighters on duty across the county to meet demands of our service of every day. I will say in 2017, when we ordered 78 strike teams early on before midnight and there were strike teams that had to drive through two major fires to get to the city of Santa Rosa even there assigned us. So that was the challenges in 2017. We didn't have that luck at this time. We had everyone that all hands on deck for Sonoma County that was able to help with the king cave fire. And as you can see from this slide, this is not a new issue. In fact, this doesn't, this actually predates the wildfires of 2017. So we were meeting on this issue. I can tell you from my tenure, I believe from year one in office for me, which is now 11 years ago, this has been an issue in Sonoma County for quite some time. Districts were coming to the county each and every year looking for funding. And again, these were independent districts. So these were financially independent and solely governed districts, not a county responsibility, but they were having a hard time making ends meet. That actually affects all of us. If you travel anywhere throughout the county, you wanna make sure that you have coverage, emergency coverage, God forbid, should anything happen. The County of Sonoma, again, is only responsible for a small piece of the overall picture. We're only responsible for the only dependent district, which is CSA 40. CSA 40 is basically the volunteer fire companies. Today, there are 10 volunteer companies down from 15 in 2011. I think there were 18, maybe not that long ago. The 10 VFCs are now under the umbrella of North Bay Fire with an agreement with Goldridge Fire District as well. It's a more effective and efficient way to provide fire service. The county has been paying for the VFCs and will continue to do so. We have doubled the amount of revenue invested in fire delivery countywide over a few short years, plugging the holes as they emerge. County funding sources include about 1.5 million in Prop 172 revenues to date, and that's growing annually. About 3 million in transient occupancy tax, as well as other general fund sources. So in short, we're not trying to pawn off a county financial obligation. The easy course would be for the county actually to go back and only spend money on what we're obligated to spend money on, which is the VFCs, which we've been taken care of. The issue has been that the entire system needs to be brought up and bolstered, and we're all affected by the entire system, as I mentioned before. The expenditure plan as well, I think another important note. The expenditure plan was a product of the fire professionals. The chief can probably go more into that. I will say that they took off their patches at the door, and they looked at what was needed to ensure all county residents have the services they need no matter where in the county. That doesn't mean the response time to an accident in Timber Cove, for instance, is gonna be the same as a response time, obviously here in the city, it's gonna be different. But we wanna make sure the apparatus is the right apparatus to show up for whatever incident they're responding to, that the personnel have the training that they need to respond to that incident across the board. The sales tax allows everyone to contribute funds to the fire services in this expansion scope beyond the property owners, and ensures those spending dollars in Sonoma County, which occurs quite frequently out in Linda's district, contribute to the fire services, whether they be tourists, residents, or businesses. So it's really about making sure that we have adequate fire services throughout the county, and that's important in every city, because mutual aid is, as was mentioned early, a wonderful thing. Sherty, please. One thing that I also wanna promise, I think that I've gained a reputation for better or worse from my colleagues on the board for always talking about West County and always fighting for resources for West County. And in addition to the fire chiefs leaving their patches at the door, I want you to know that we truly did, and that we really stepped back and did not actually argue or fight for any modifications of funding for our districts. So we really let the experts decide, let the experts sort of bring forward a proposal, and really sort of left our predilections out of it. And so I just wanted you to have that sort of straight from me. And I'll just, I'll continue on, but I wanted to talk about this slide just a little bit. So the last three bullet points, this has been a long process, and I will tell you the Fire Service Advisory Council while it started in 2016, it started with the 70 member committee, and it's very hard to wrangle 70 different minds on what's right and what's how we should function as a fire service. That quickly evolved to that fire service advisory council turning into 10 voting members. We typically had 30 plus people that would provide input and it became more of a granting opportunity. So the faster you got your request in, the sooner you got the money, but you look kind of soon, very soon at real, we realized, look, this is not the right way to do business because we're not taking care of the county, we're taking care of one-offs at a time, and it just didn't sit well with us. And that's when we lead it into the Strategic Leadership Group in 2018, which was a smaller group, there was about six or eight of us that really worked on the problem where we literally took our patches off. I worked for the city of Santa Rosa, but I was looking at the county as a whole, and just like every one of my colleagues were moving forward. And then it turned into the fire service working group. So on the list, the slide that you see is everyone that's on that list. We got Jason Boas, Chief of Hillsborough, he's with the county chiefs, he's the president of Sonoma County chiefs. I'm not gonna go through all of them, but we have Cal Fire, we have labor, we have volunteers, we have district representations, and this group meets every day, excuse me, it feels like every day, every Monday starting at noon, and it would go to sometimes four o'clock. And that's a long day for all of us that have normal jobs, as you could tell. So the member of the fire service working group and fire service leaders represent city, special districts, county fire chiefs association, state fire chiefs association, Cal Fire and the firefighters union leadership. We are appointed by the Board of Supervisors to provide strategic goal setting and leadership to develop the fire and EMS system to meet the current and future needs of our county and all of our jurisdictions that we serve. We come together every week, as I stated, and our goal at every meeting is to design a fire and EMS delivery system that meets the needs of everyone, everyone in a city and everyone in the county. That's everyone, tourists, citizens, visitors. It really is, we're looking at a holistic system. We work hard to develop this plan, a plan that significantly enhances the fire and EMS services for all of Sonoma County residents. The plan you, before you tonight, was vetted by each one of the fire chiefs during the meetings of the fire service working group, telling each region's chiefs in the plan, excuse me, the plan represents the inclusion of any edits that each chief desired, meaning we had multiple, multiple meetings and when we brought region, we're in region Santa Rosa's in region seven, so we brought, there's only two chiefs of us now, Chief Hanna and myself. It was easy for us, but region five, there's multiple chiefs, these are, this is what we're thinking, what are your desires, what are we missing and we would bring them in and they would give us that input. So I feel it was a very fair process, a very lengthy process and it really did help the process. This was all in to reduce the reliance and dependency of mutual aid, this plan that we developed, by having more firefighting force on duty every day to meet the current and future needs and I'll talk a little bit more about that in the next slide's coming up. So these are the fire chiefs recommendations and so we based it on population density, NFPA 1710, NFPA 1720 and the ultimate goal was to make sure we had a safety net throughout the county. Santa Rosa enjoys three engine, three person engine companies, we have 10 of those and we have two truck companies with four people on each truck. We get a tremendous amount of work done with those companies. Not everyone in the county had that same employee base. So there are somewhere volunteers, so you get one person, some had two person engine companies. Our goal was to take a look at population densities, our response times and see what we could do to make it better throughout the county. One of our key goals is getting three people on each engine. You can get a tremendous amount of work done with three people. It's important to note that NFPA 1710 for urban areas which the city of Santa Rosa is, recommends four firefighters on an engine. We do very well with three. We can do much better with four but we recognize that is very difficult as it costs. Our goal was to get three firefighters on every engine around the city of Santa Rosa throughout the county. And part of that was eliminating in a response boundary. So right now we respond to each other whenever we're needed. It's mutual aid. Sometimes it's automatic aid. Sometimes it's master mutual aid. All these terms kind of commingle but the thought is we want the quickest engine to get there to provide the service for whoever needs it. Even if it's outside the city of Santa Rosa, it doesn't mean it's not a city resident, right? And vice versa, it could be inside the city and it could be a county resident. So we want to make sure that we are able to increase the overall strength of the firefighters in a system and reduce, this plan I feel reduces the dependence on departments like the city of Santa Rosa because we're bolstering the departments around us and throughout the county. So these are, do you want to talk about the South County? David? Sure. You can see, this really dictates how many or tells the story about how many different fire coverage areas we have. If you look at the bottom, the border of Marin, that's basically the VFCs. That's now called the six pack and there's about six VFCs that are aligned. That's what I mentioned earlier is now called North Bay Fire and it's run under the administration of Goldridge. So that was a move forward rather than having six separate fire chiefs, six separate training protocols and everything else was to combine those into one, made more sense financially going forward. You can see the city of Petaluma in pink. You can see Rancho Adobe above in blue and as we move further north, chief, down. There we go. There's Santa Rosa. You can see many different agencies out to the West and as we creep up north, you'll see the northern part of the county again with a checkerboard of different entities that provide different coverage. There has been a lot of movement, like I said earlier, with consolidation. We, this measure really incentivize and we'll talk about that later but incentivize further consolidation because we still think that the number that we have now while less than what we had just a year or two ago can be much smaller and we will gain efficiencies from that. Yeah, so the need for more firefighters, more local firefighters are needed to enhance our preparedness and our responsibility capabilities. The staffing increases and augmentations planned and all the fire regions of Sonoma County, that includes 200 plus full-time additions throughout the county. These are firefighters to facilitate alert and warning and evacuations. Something in the Kincaid, in the Tubbs fire, we didn't have enough people to do that and that fire moved into us so quickly that it was very difficult. The Kincaid fire was a little bit different in that it really demonstrated the strength of the mutual aid system and our over-reliance of that very system. We did not have the number of firefighters on duty to meet the initial challenges of the Kincaid fire that it brought to us but while we had quite a few resources, we still needed more and we need more firefighters on duty every day to quickly and officially manage all emergencies. While we have been focused on the Kincaid fire, the challenges to the fire service are wide and varied from devastating wildfire potential to life-threatening flooding in Petaluma and along the Russian River. The threat of a significant earthquake and hazardous materials incidents. So this, just because we're out of fire season doesn't mean we're out of danger. We're waiting for that earthquake. We know rains are coming. Last year we had some significant flooding throughout the county and it may happen again this year. With wildfires occurring more frequently and spreading more rapidly, we must increase our on-duty staffing to respond with a quicker and stronger level of response. And with that, so it's 200 full-time firefighters but that's also personnel for vegetation management and fire prevention. That includes seven different inspectors throughout the county, which Santa Rosa would receive one that talks about battalion chiefs for regional command and control of incidents. So while Santa Rosa has one staff battalion chief, we really need two staff. This plan gives us that as well as it gives us command and control throughout the rest of the county with other battalion chief positions. So it really is a large plan that oversees the entire. There we go. Now you can hear me. Polling clearly showed that the public has an interest in continuing to invest in vegetation management, wildfire prevention and preparedness, emergency alert and warning systems as well as firefighters, stations and apparatus. Because of the way our county and our cities have developed, we have a great deal of wildland-urban interface which we discussed a little bit earlier. And with climate change, it seems like we have two seasons basically in Sonoma County, whether in fire season or we're in flood season. And those two seasons, quite frankly, exacerbate one another. So when we have years of heavy rainfall, we also tend to have heavy vegetation growth. And honestly, our failure in unincorporated areas to adequately manage our vegetation directly threatens the city of Santa Rosa. And so it's really, really critical that we move forward with aggressive vegetation management programs in these wildland-urban interfaces, both inside and outside of city limits to try to keep our communities as safe as possible. And the good news is that this measure brings funds both for programs as well as personnel to actually carry out that appropriate vegetation management. And we are definitely, we've already invested in this in the county and we've made some progress, but when you have a million acres and quite a bit of wildland-urban interface, we definitely need more support to really aggressively pursue this. And also emergency alert and warning systems, they've garnered a lot of attention. Post-2017 wildfires and quite frankly, the campfire as well. The Kincaid fire was handled much differently, but that was because of significant investments made within the system, something we need to continue to invest in going forward. During the Kincaid fire, for instance, the wireless emergency alert system, or WIA, was used 15 separate times. Soco alert was used 26 times. Nixle alerts, probably too many to ever remember, but the NOAA weather radio was utilized twice and that was the first time used for such an incident west of the Mississippi. So in addition, the Sheriff Department, I believe, hopefully the Santa Rosa PD as well, will utilize the high-low sirens when ordering evacuations. That proved very beneficial. Fewer folks have landlines. Most cell phones are opt-in. Technology continues to advance and again, it drives home the point that we need to continue to invest in alert and warning systems, not only for fires, but for floods and God forbid the earthquake that is around the corner. Nothing though really ultimately replaces the value of personnel and firefighters on the ground, on the neighborhoods, in the neighborhoods, evacuating residents, going door-to-door and searching for trapped residents as well. 17 fires demonstrated this significant lack of staffing that exists today. I will say that we can never staff enough to meet the entire needs of any October of 17 or 19, but this will bring us much further ahead than where we were. It will have additional, some 200-odd firefighters and three shifts, so 66 at a time, being on duty. We'll be more prepared, we'll have adequate resources and we'll be able to respond much, much quicker. Yeah, and I'll just add, after the 2017 fire I addressed my department and I said, look, we can't build a fire department based on one event and that was hard for them to hear because they thought, all right, we're gonna get more people, we're gonna get more equipment, we're gonna get stations built and it just doesn't work that way. Well, here we are in 2019 and we just about went through the same thing that we did in 2017 and we need to be different, we need to be better and this plan helps us get there. So these are the Region 7 plan highlights. City of Santa Rosa is also part of Region 7. There's 44 additions of staffing, so that's three battalion chiefs. Those three battalion chiefs will reside in the city of Santa Rosa. There's two prevention officers. Santa Rosa will get one of those prevention officers to help with the vegetation management program and there's 39 firefighters for Zone 7. 18 of those will come to the city of Santa Rosa. One for Station 9, which is a station we need to build on the avenue and one for Station 12, which is a building station that we need to put in between Calistoga and Fountain Grove. With these, so the facilities, there's five new stations just in Region 7. The city of Santa Rosa is slated to get two of those new stations and there's also two station moves. So Station 6, we need to move as the city. We need to move out to Los Alamos area and then we build Station 12 in between Los Alamos and Station 5. That'll close a huge gap that we have as a city. Currently, we have four people on Engine 6 because it's such a large second due. With our two-in-two-out state law, we can't go interior on a firefight unless we have two people out and with the three-person engine company, you can't do that. Station 6 is different because it's such a long second due for anyone to get there. We put four people on there and that's since Station 5 has been burned down. When it gets rebuilt, then we'll drop back down to a three-person engine company, but it's important to note that we need these people in these places to effectively get done what we need to get done. And this is a little bit more on a new stations and expenditure program. So for the city of Santa Rosa, we're looking at two new stations and moving one station for a total of about $30 million. It's about $1.1 million annually. It's not designed to pay outright. It's designed to get the money as an installment. There's the ability of bonding and grants and et cetera along with that. Other stations, sites include the city of Hillsburg, the city of Rohnert Park, the city of Petaluma, Geyserville Fire Protection Districts and the Sonoma County Fire District, which is formerly Rankin Valley, Bennett Valley and Windsor. So as mentioned earlier, we do have fewer fire protection agencies in Sonoma County today than last year and the year before, which is good news. Consolidation is brought about effectiveness, efficiency and financial sustainability in as much as we still need to enhance services in some of these areas. The good thing about this measure is that it offers both the carrot and the stick to basically incentivize further consolidation efforts. There's actually a clawback clause for everyone except for the municipalities to pursue consolidation where it makes sense. And then that will actually be reviewed not only by LAFCO, but also by the Board of Supervisors. And I want to be very clear, I've been very clear. I think I boast more school districts and fire districts per capita than probably anywhere else in the county in my neck of the woods. And I've been very clear that I don't think that there is any voter tolerance for redundancy of administration and that we really need to focus on consolidation and regionalization. And that is a message that I have carried directly to fire district boards and fire chiefs out in West County because I think it's really important that our taxpayer dollars are invested wisely and that each dollar goes as far as it possibly can. And I think that when you actually come together to regionalize and consolidate these agencies, you also get a better global perspective about where it makes sense to invest resources. So I'm really very supportive of the consolidation being essentially a prerequisite for receiving this funding. So reallocation, there are some instances where we can reallocate money. So there's an expenditure plan that goes along with this. But there are times when you have to reallocate money it could be that there's a critical need for facilities that pops up. It could be a piece of equipment, a fire engine or a truck. Typical fire engine today is about $640,000. The latter trucks about $1.4 million. So those are things that should something catastrophic happen we could take a look at and look at the reallocation. Also departments that consolidate, we need to look at that. Do you need the same amount of money? Is there other funding opportunities? So what this does is gives us the ability to take a look at the current environment today and the environment in the future because we never know what the future holds. And we can reallocate funds as needed with properly vetting it out. Yeah, and I just wanted to say that, I think that this is one of the topics of greatest conversation sort of within the cities right now and would definitely love to hear from you if you have any questions, we can certainly discuss this further after the presentation. But I want to be very clear, this is not about the county being sort of big brad brother and we're gonna come in and we're gonna steal your money and we're gonna put it somewhere else. This is about actually creating flexibility to adapt to changing needs. And when I first heard about this and when it was presented by the F swag, I said, so explain to me what would be a condition? And they're like, well, imagine that the entire town of Grenville gets wiped out. I was like, okay, that was a great image for me. Thank you guys. Really truly if we had sort of massive, some kind of massive catastrophic event where we actually saw an entire town go away, there might be a need to reallocate funds temporarily or even permanently. So, and also when we're looking at different annexations, sometimes different areas have different fee structures. And so you actually might end up getting additional money by annexing some territory that didn't previously have a parcel tax. And that could then free up some funds that could possibly be invested if say we need another fire station somewhere or there's some kind of emerging need. The idea was to build in some level of flexibility since this does not have a sunset unless determined by voters. So we wanted to make sure that we could meet the needs of the future. We're also setting a baseline that people could trust today. Yeah. And to the county hired a consultant and she is actually sitting right here to the left of me, Ruth Bernstein of EMC research. They conducted not one, but two polls and two sessions of focus groups in between to see if there was support in the county and to hone the message and the deliverables. So what you see in front of us today is really a result of not only the good work of all the fire chiefs, but also taking the task to the people and really asking them, what are you willing to support? What does that need to look like? And I think we went quite frankly above and beyond by doing the two polls and the two groups of focus groups. And Ruth can answer questions as we go forward here as well. I can tell you that not surprising the 2017 wildfires were and it should be noted that this was the polling was done all before the Kincade fire. But the 2017 wildfires were fresh on people's mind when the poll was conducted. The poll, as I said, was prior to the Kincade fire. And the presumption is that the numbers might be a few points higher and Ruth could probably speak to that had we gone back out for a third test today. I apologize here because I think what you're gonna see is, oh no, we got all the cities there, so good. There are concerns in the county, obviously. The top concerns is you probably already know, housing and homelessness. It's consistently been there for the last year or so or perhaps even a little more. It's followed very quickly though by infrastructure and fire protection and disaster preparedness. And again, what would Kincade do with the fire preparedness going forward? We're not quite sure. And again, this is what was the board took action on in November 2019. The board of supervisors did vote unanimously to place the wildfire prevention emergency alert and response measure and associated implementation plan on the March 2020 ballot for a half cent sales tax until repealed by voters. And we are at the point of questions. Great, thank you for that presentation. Mr. Rogers, you got a question? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Chair, is there a maintenance of effort requirement built into this? Not specifically. I mean, what you have are basically, I think the unique thing is with the term of the measure being quite frankly, long term, there's a percentage that was figured out of where each individual district in the chief could probably speak to this better, but each individual district, what they need to achieve that NFPA standard and bring their standard level up so that they can fit within the bigger picture. So the maintenance of effort is actually, I believe, built into the NFPA standard and the percentage of funds that they'll need to get that. And of course, as the measure goes out in years, that dollar amount will grow, the percentage will stay the same. Yeah, I was just curious because as you know, Santa Rosa's past measure O, which supplements our services, I know that there are a number of district fire districts that have passed parcel taxes that supplement theirs. But if the public doesn't maintain those, even if the local government body is still making an effort to maintain the funding level, what happens to the allocation? So for example, in Santa Rosa, if measure O is not reauthorized by the voters and the standard is the coverage standards that we've been talking about, how does that impact the reallocation? Sure. So the percentage would not sort of automatically adjust in terms of the funding that was being returned, but that would be something where I think that what you do is you would go to the Fire Chiefs Association, sort of explain the need, and then there would be an analysis that was made at that point and a recommendation to either proceed with a reallocation recommendation or not based on the needs and the other available funding sources at that point in time. Does that seem accurate? It's a good question. At the end of the day, there are gonna be parcel taxes that are gonna have expiration dates. There are gonna be sales tax measures that have expiration dates. There are budgets that are gonna have pressures that you're gonna wanna spend money elsewhere on. It's very true. What we hope to do is that we're gonna put $51 million, nearly $51 million annually into fire protection services, not supplanting anything, but adding to it and upping the standard. We hope that helps. We hope that gets us to a place where the entire county is gonna be covered. And to those entities, and I've had this down my way, we just passed a few parcel taxes in different fire districts, and that's great. And that fire district in your city needs to have a strong, and you do have a strong fire department, but you also, because probably no other, maybe law enforcement to some degree, but really fire departments rely on one another. And even as large as the city of Santa Rosa is, truly relies on who surrounds you and who could come in and help and who covers what stations. And I know that you could cover more than perhaps a single structure fire at a time. That's not the case everywhere. So it's really about making sure that you have that backup and deep bench. The deep bench is required. If you don't have that, you're gonna have lower levels of service. And so it really comes down to kind of evening the playing field, which is gonna be good for all, even though perhaps the money is gonna go in different areas because everyone is going to be on the same page. And again, not always planning for that one October, but it happens more often. Mutual aid happens daily. And we just need to make sure that we have, no matter where we are in the county, and as certainly we all know, people migrate around the county at great extent, and that's a great thing. We go out to the coast. We wanna make sure, God forbid, something happens on the way that whoever responds is adequately trained, has the right equipment, and is there within a reasonable amount of time. And that's the goal here is to make sure that we're covered throughout the county at that same level, and to bolster every district, which I think is very true. Yeah, I appreciate that. It's certainly not lost on our council how important mutual aid is and understanding that both the fire that threatened us this year as well as the one that actually got us in 2017, and either of them started in our city limits. Councilor, the question is Mr. Tibbets. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. One question I had, and I think that the fact that the fire chiefs or get association, get together and make the recommendations to the board might be the answer, but one thing that excites me about this measure is the idea that there is gonna be more collaboration between districts and also hopefully more coordination when it comes to fire response. Other than the fact that the chiefs are getting together on a regular basis, are there any mechanisms in this ordinance going on the ballot that kind of requires it? Are there any sticks that basically say, oh, if you're not playing along, there goes that funding, or we're gonna consolidate the district? And what's the, do you know what the term is? How often it is? We decided, yeah. Or no, on the, we're gonna let Terry take that question. We're just gonna get the term. There is a built-in number of years that review takes place. Great, and I was just checking on the number of years. But essentially we do have that. This does actually give us the stick in terms of you are going to consolidate or you will lose your funding. And I think that's particularly critical with, we have some different fire districts and fire agencies who would prefer to just sit on an island and they have a lot of community pride and a lot of stake in their community, which is a great thing. But if they're not actually working with their neighbors and they're not actually part of a more global vision, and they will not actually receive funding for that, we have it a quaw-back, quaw's essentially. But Terry, there you go. Good evening, city council members. Terry Wright with the county administrator's office in Emma County. Something that's actually kind of a chief hind and I were just looking at, that's kind of missing from our slide deck here, is that there's in fact a citizen oversight committee that is also really integral to this measure. They, the citizen oversight committee is going to staff and look at all the provisions in terms of ensuring that the funding is spent according to the expenditure plan that would be approved by the board and the ordinance adopted by the board of supervisors. And within that, there's annual reporting requirements that are also part of this in the ordinance. So that, and the expenditure plan, so that if a district, and it's primarily geared towards the districts because of the county's interest in consolidating that our fire surface agencies and improving fire services here in Sonoma County. So that there's a provision, there's also independent audit provisions in the ordinance as well. So the provision would be that every three years we would look to sit there and see how are these agencies doing in terms of moving towards consolidation. And we've looked to partner with Lafko because they're looking at that as well in terms of how service delivery, how these communities within our county are being served. So if we have a situation where we have a district who they're just, you know, they're not playing and they don't want to necessarily consolidate for the betterment of fire service delivery and in fact, multi-service delivery here in the county in terms of flood, fire, earthquake, that we do have provisions to look at it. We don't take it lightly. We'd partner with Citizen Oversight and Sonoma County, Lafko to do this. It would require, we could reallocate those. So the provisions of reallocation would enable us to reallocate those funding to back into the system so that the service delivery could be provided. But it would still protect the residents of that area. So there's provisions that if we're to utilize reallocation, we would still protect the citizens of that area. So we did try to do our best in terms of being thoughtful of moving towards consolidation but still protecting the populace that we're sort of looking to serve. I also want us to address in terms of the question regarding the maintenance of effort. It's not a maintenance, but we're not looking to supplant funding. So I don't know if of that maybe would might be considered somewhat of a maintenance of effort that there wouldn't be a supplantation of funds. But if you were to, if measure O were to go away, the way that Supervisor Hopkins described it in terms of, yes, that funding source would no longer be available. So the provisions would exist within the expenditure plan to be able to look at that situation. Again, as Supervisor Hopkins described it, the city would come to the fire services working group when we look at the circumstances. Because again, the whole view of it is to try to make sure that we've got a holistic system of care coming from, you know, another way to look at it from a fire services perspective. Any other questions? I have a couple. Chief Gosher regarding some of the measure O stuff. So how would, let's say this passes, how would this affect the measure O, public safety measure O that currently is funded regards to our baseline? Would that have any effect of our measure O allocation to police, fire, or game prevention? I don't believe so. Measure O is based on what our budget is right now. So this tax measure is outside of that. And this tax measure isn't designed to supplant anything. So it's at a, those two don't combine in my view. Okay, and then how would this tax measure address some of the challenges we have with measure O if healthcare costs and salaries escalate quicker than the sales tax escalates? I didn't see where there's a built-in provision for that. Yeah, there, you know, it goes up when the taxes go up and it comes down when the taxes come down, right? So there is no provision built in for that. So some of that is gonna have to rely on cities and entities to deal with as we move forward. What this measure does is gives us the ability as the city to hire additional people that we need right now. And it gives the districts and the volunteers the capability of doing the same to create that network across the county. So part of the maintenance of effort that was discussed is some of those issues that you bring up now. This tax measure won't fix every little problem that comes up, but it's a great start to making us better. And I totally get the intent behind this. My concern is we hire 200 firefighters. We have the great recession that people are saying, hey, it's gonna be coming. And now we don't have the money either in the general fund or this, what happens then? That's, and I'm not asking you to predict the future, but is there any reserve balance policy where some money would be set aside for that rainy day like the state of California has done? There is a little pot of money set aside for the incentivization of it all. I will also say that it's gonna take a while to ramp up and hire. So there's gonna be money that if it passes, we'll be able to sock away for some of that rainy day. So there will be some availability of that, but I don't have an exact answer or something that is concrete for you. Okay, and then we've also talked a lot about firefighting, but I know in Santa Rosa there's an, is it EMT or a paramedic requirement? Paramedic. So if a paramedic, will that be county-wide where there, because I don't know what the other agencies are doing with part of paramedics. Part of this is we look at paramedicine and we want the other agencies that wanna participate as paramedics to have that opportunity. For example, Sonoma County Fire Districts would surround Santa Rosa if this was to pass, they're able to put paramedics in Larkfield and Bennett Valley. What that does for the city of Santa Rosa, right now, engine three or engine five or engine 11 is going to Larkfield on medical aids because we're the closest paramedic. The ambulance is behind us, so to speak. Same thing in Bennett Valley, engine four is going out to Bennett Valley because we're closer than the ambulance. If they're able to put paramedics on their engines, then we don't have to respond to them. So we get to stay in service in the city and respond to our own calls. That doesn't mean if they don't need our help. If they need our help, they ask, we will help. That's not what this is saying, is that we are not gonna help. What this says is it gives the other departments the opportunity to have paramedics and provide that higher level of care. So I heard you say opportunity versus requirements. Let's say we hire 200 firefighters. How many of those are gonna be paramedics capable to provide the service you just described? Yeah, for the city of Santa Rosa, it'll be 18. Well, no, I'm talking about the other ones. I know what they're referring to is Santa Rosa. Yeah, no, I understood and I don't have an answer for you. The thought is that most departments will wanna go to paramedicine. There are some that just don't wanna do it right now. That doesn't mean that they won't do it in the future, but part of it is training, part of it is time in the seat. But paramedicine is where we want the county to go. And part of it is cost. And I recognize, Santa Rosa said, he has the benefit to the community to have that ability. So I would just encourage, again, just for the voters, I share with us the percentage of calls that are medical related versus fire related. At least for Santa Rosa. Yeah, generally 68 to 70% are EMS related. So I would just encourage that be emphasized. And then could you again, share with me the reallocation decision? Again, my questions surround what have previously been asked about the measure of public safety. So that's due up for, I think 2024, whether if we adjust it or what, if it doesn't get continued, there's variety of different options. How would that reallocation decision be made? So let's say it doesn't pass worst case scenario. So then I would bring it to the Sonoma County Fire Chiefs, explain the situation. And explain why we need a different allocation set to our city. And that would go to the ad hoc and the Board of Supervisors eventually for a vote for approval or not. So I saw, I think at the board level, it's gotta be unanimous vote. What would it be required to be at the fire chief level? Yeah, that's, you know, for my perspective, the way we do business right now, we usually, we hold a vote and the majority vote rules. So that's how we move forward in this case as well. That doesn't, that means I gotta come forward with a case and why we need it over everyone else, right? So there, if there's extra money in the allocation, for allocation, it's a little bit easier if you're trying to take money from somewhere else, as you know. So when it goes to the Sonoma County Fire Chiefs, it would, I would present if it was the city of Santa Rosa and then a vote would be taken throughout the county chiefs and we would move forward one way or the other. Okay. If I could just add one thing to that. I think it's important, two things I wanna add. One is that the percentage, I think the percentage, the funding percentage is a bit deceiving as the chief mentioned, while calls are gonna go up, we know that calls are gonna go up year after year, they happen anyway. If you have outside resources that are gonna respond, you're obviously the beneficiary of that, not having to respond to that that you could call or go to a call within the city limits that is gonna meet the criteria that the city set forward. So there's a monetary benefit there or some percentage of benefit for that part. I think your question regarding the paramedics is a great one and we're also going through the EMS ordinance in the county and I think that is exciting times because there are new ways to go forward with that and I think obviously paramedics are a big part of that as we get to that point in time where we can sign that contract. But it also goes to the question of the ability that this measure gives us is to really look at the placement of resources throughout the county where they're needed and not to over resource one area and under resource another is to really make sure that the paramedics that are perhaps especially out west are gonna be more equally spaced so that if there is God forbid a bad accident someone could get to that that has the wherewithal to take care of anyone that's there. The same thing is true of apparatus and all the other needs that are out there that hasn't always been the case and as you can imagine with 40 some odd different fire entities, all of them acting in a silo wanting to do different things. There was no great coordination. This has the tools to really implement the coordination that we've really wanted to do for quite some time and because they're dependent districts or independent districts pardon me there hasn't really been any stick other than obviously dollars when things go south and they come to the county. So I think we have some things built in here that are really gonna make a more coordinated and a more effective system overall because of that. Ms. Vaxman. Yes, thank you and I'm wondering Chief Gosner if you have worked with the city to figure out what portion of these new firefighters if it costs $100,000 a year to hire a firefighter what portion of that is gonna be a pension responsibility and what portion of that is gonna be the responsibility of the city that won't be funded by this measure. I'm asking how expensive this is gonna be for the city outside of what we're asking our residents to pay for in the tax. Yeah, so the city of Santa Rosa when we took for the 18 positions of the 21 positions, 22 now with the vegetation management and spec position we used top step of every rank to figure out real costs for the city. That's the starting point. So that's salaries and benefits are included in that. So in the beginning the tax measure will cover most of it down the road. It's it probably will not and we'll have to adjust as we move with PERS costs and health benefits and everything else. So again, this is a tax measure that is designed to put boots on the ground. But if you're asking me for the crystal ball and what it's gonna cost in 30 years. I'm not asking for a crystal ball but when I am asking the taxpayers for money I do wanna let them know how much I'm asking them for. And so it's not that the endeavor isn't worthy. We all know that this is something that is important. The question is I wanna be able to tell people and the crystal ball is not what I need but some sort of what percentage are we realistically looking at this changing? And if you can't answer that I understand but I do see our CFO up there. Maybe he has an answer. Nope, nope. Okay, no answer there either. So I will move on to my next question which is about the structure of the fire chiefs. He said there's 10 members and I'm wondering if there is a plan for having an odd number or some other way to make decisions that could be more definitive or if you have a high breaking member or some sort of thing so that when there are votes that you can come to resolution. Yeah, there's actually the 10 members I was talking about was for the fire service leadership group. So that there's actually many more fire chiefs in the Summit County fire chiefs membership and it's right around 35. So not everyone shows up. We have, we hold monthly meetings. We have agendas just like any other entity would. So there it's, I will tell you that we very rarely get all fire chiefs to come to the meetings. So the ones that do show up are the ones that vote and we keep track of that. So there's more than 10. Because the board of supervisors can't make a decision unless they get a recommendation from your body. I'm wondering about the governmental structure of that and I'd like to hear more about that. I'd like to know also will the votes be weighted based on the amount of contribution from folks. Again, this is just, it's not about a commentary on the measure, it's a commentary on just good governance and try and understand what we can take back to people and say how we're gonna do it. Cause some jurisdictions are gonna be spending a lot more than others and so we wanna make sure that people, dollars are represented democratically. Understood. Any additional questions? Mr. Rogers. So chief, one of the things that we have discussed multiple times at the council level is the standards of coverage map that you've provided for us with, for the public it shows where each of the stations are and then what their response times are across the city to make sure we have, I think it's three or four minute coverage is the standard. Four minute response, yes. Yeah. Do we have anything like that for the county as a whole? What the acceptable leverage level of coverage is? You know, so the NFPA standard speaks to three or four different levels. There's urban, there's rural, there's suburban. Right. So if you live in a rural part of the county, essentially it's you need two firefighters within 15 minutes and that's acceptable. In the city it's, we need three firefighters on scene within four minutes. So while we do have those maps, we've created those through Jim Colangelo early on in the process, probably a year and a half ago as a starting point for where we needed to go and that's how we decided as a group what gets funded and what does not get funded and why it gets funded. So those maps are around, I don't have them. Yeah, I would just think that it would be helpful, I think, for the public to see what does the current coverage map look like and then as you did on our Santa Rosa specific one, when you move a station to show what the updated coverage would look like to get a better feel for it, I think it'd be helpful to see the before map and then also what people can expect the coverage to be once assuming the measure passes. Yeah, no, I understand and I'll also add that a lot of the mapping was built around the volunteers, right? So that takes a lot longer for the volunteer station to get out at time. So you're, when we put paid part of the 200 people is we're gonna staff this station because we need full-time firefighters there. So that changes the map dramatically. But I don't know if we have, if we've gone to the level of this is what it is now and this is what it's gonna look like with the 200 firefighters. I was just gonna add that if you'll notice that there's new stations, that there's move stations, move stations are really relocated stations to put them in those areas that the response times are gonna be better and or a volunteer not driving past the accident to get to the station to get the gear to come back to the accident, those kind of things just based upon data. And I think it was all through the standards coverage approach and it was initially called the silver plan because we obviously could not afford the gold plan or the platinum plan. So it was really finding that what is the level that we think we could reach with reasonable amount of dollars spent and what you see before you is really the implementation of that. And while it's not as easily sort of graspable or as sexy as a map, we do have a before and after Excel spreadsheet. But I think that we could definitely turn that. I think that's great feedback to actually make sort of a visual representation in terms of sort of staffing and potential shifts in terms of response time. And actually we can also provide you with the additional data regarding ALS and EMS extensions too. And just so you know, that's something that I think that there is a broad commitment right now across the fire services and unincorporated areas to really look at ALS and EMS and cross-trained firefighters because we actually struggle a lot in West County where our fire services actually provide the ambulance response. So when the ambulance is gone, we're really short on firefighters. And so we're definitely looking at those two things holistically. And I think it was no mistake when we sort of agreed to be on both the fire services ad hoc and the EMS ad hoc on the board of supervisor so we could talk about those things sort of across jurisdictions and think about them in a holistic approach because you're exactly right, Mayor. It is the majority of it is actually medical calls these days. Thank you. Okay, seeing no other questions, we have one card so far, Mr. Dwayne DeWitt. Thank you, sir. My name is Dwayne DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. I'm wary of forever taxes and I'm quite certain that a lot of good work has gone into this. We actually have four seasons in our area. We have drought, earthquake, fire and flood. So I understand the severity of the situation but we're already pushing almost 10% on the dollar. And this is gonna put us at that level. So I'm really concerned about what some might call oversight. They always give you the term, yeah, we're gonna have a citizen's oversight committee but it's usually folks who are going along to get along with the folks that have the tax. It's not folks who are actually budget hawks looking to make sure that things are well watched after, if you will. We had a fire district called Roseland Fire District, Volunteer Fire District. Recently has been annexed into the city. There's about two and a half million dollars that has gone from that fire district into the city. Now it would be socked away. And people in Roseland would be like, well, what's it socked away for? And how's it going to be used? So what I'm hoping is that we do a better job of explaining to the public before this goes out because it might be defeated if people don't thoroughly understand how the money is going to be allocated and that there'll be no kind of slush funds off to the side just waiting. And especially, I see here a lot of young people today. This tax is gonna be on them maybe for the rest of their lives. When I was young, the tax was only 4%, 4 cents on the dollar. We're getting to the point where it's almost an overload on the public. And measure O might not pass again because people have already felt that like maybe that's been abused a bit if you will. So I'll leave it at that. You folks just need to do a really good marketing campaign if you're gonna get my vote. Thank you kindly. Thank you, do we have any other cards on this item? No. With that, Mr. City Manager. City Manager has a request is that I believe staff wants to know if you wanna bring this back in two weeks to take a formal position. So I just, if the council desires to do so, I just need to hear that that's the general will and we've reserved time on the 17th to do so. And we can do that fairly easily as a report item. Okay, before I pose that question to the council cast of supervisors, how are you educating the other cities on this? Is this a traveling city show? And are you making the request of you like a formal support? This is informational. We are not here to campaign. We were here just to present what we passed and what we were placing on the ballot in March 2020. We last night was the first stop on the road show, as you said, down in Petaluma. Chief Hine and I made that presentation last night and we're here obviously tonight. We'll be going through all the cities. We haven't specifically requested action. We obviously would love to have your support. We think it's important, but right now we're really just doing the informational road show that we're allowed to do through all our great state statutes. And you know, I just, I wanted to say that I wanted to invite feedback and I'm available, you know, I think you all have my cell phones. Feel free to reach out. I've already heard some, you know, questions from some of the smaller cities regarding possible, you know, implementation. How do we sort of get a voice at the table? Or, you know, so I'm very much open to the ballot initiative is the ballot initiative. The ordinance cannot change, but there are also ways that we can talk about implementation. If you have any concerns, you know, sort of outside of that, where we could talk about policies and procedures and ways of making sure that you have a direct line, whether it's to, you know, the Fire Chiefs Association or the Board of Supervisors, we can also always, you know, sort of pass policies separate from but that would refer and point back to that ballot initiative. Thank you. So what I would like to do is then pull the council. So if you could provide any feedback about the presentation and then for the city manager, let us know if you'd like to see it come back to the city council for formal motion support. Yes. Yes. Okay, so Mr. Rogers, we'll start with you and work our way around. Just thumbs up. Do you have any feedback or? No, I think I'd bring it back for us for a discussion for a formal opinion. I really appreciate the supervisors taking the time. I don't know if you had a full meeting today as well, but I know it's been busy for you as well. So thanks for coming to explain it. Look forward to the conversation on the 17th. Great. Mr. Alvarez? Yes, you wanted to come back. Mr. Sire? Yes. Mr. Tivitz? Thank you. I'll just say thanks for coming over to our house and sharing this information with us. You know, I'm excited about this. I think it's gonna increase regional collaboration. I know that after the Tubbs fire, that was the topic of concern for this council is how do we start interacting better with our partners regionally to protect fire from coming into the city. And I think this is gonna be a huge step in the right direction. So yes, I would like to have it come back and take a formal position on it. Ms. Vice Mayor? Yeah, thank you so much for coming to town and would like to hear a little bit more when it comes back about the governmental structure in terms and some of the policies that we could possibly implement that would refer back to the ordinance, but definitely look forward to taking a position on this one. Great. And I also wanna thank you, including Chief Gosner for sharing the information about this. I don't wanna apologize for the late start of this because I know you've lived the exact same things public process sometimes don't start as timely as they should, but feedback from the public was very important. Our last item is will be this item. So I am also a support of bringing it back to the city council for formal support or not. Okay, and are we certain on that date or do we need to? No, we're certain we'll be bringing it back as a staff led report on the 17th. Okay, thank you very much. We'll wait for a little bit of a transition before we start our regular scheduled council meeting. All right, Mr. City Manager, let's get back to our normally scheduled city council meeting. Madam City Clerk, could you do an announcement or roll call please? Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of Vice Mayor Fleming. Thank you. We just had our study session. Mr. McGillen, could you report out on, I guess, our first joint study session? Nothing to add at this point. All right, thank you. We have no proclamations. Any staff briefings, 9.1? Yes, I am. I'm not sure if that microphone's on. Yeah, I'm noticing that myself. So under 9.1 fire recovery build update, I am very excited to announce that the city has been awarded two hazard mitigation grants from FEMA. A, first off, a $3.36 million grant has been awarded to help fund nearly $4.5 million project to replace three diesel generators, 16 propane and natural gas generators with more reliable generators at 19 critical water and wastewater facilities across the city. This project will help ensure water and wastewater continuity during emergencies and loss of power incidents. Additionally, the city received a $1.06 million award to fund a $1.4 million project to install backup battery systems for traffic signal controllers at 175 locations. This project will allow for traffic signals to operate for an additional four hours after loss of power. The funding is provided from FEMA's 404 hazard mitigation grant program, which is made available to states following a presidential major disaster declaration. Both projects were submitted under the October 2017 wildfire disaster declaration. Staff worked very hard throughout the extensive grant application process for both projects. I would like to acknowledge the team members in transportation and public works and in the water department for their efforts to help secure this project funding for our city. I would also like to thank our congressman, Mike Thompson, and his dedicated staff for their ongoing work to advocate for the recovery and resiliency needs of our community as we pursue these projects and others. I believe at the 1217 council meeting, staff will provide a briefing on all of the city's public assistance and hazard mitigation grant projects that have been submitted to FEMA to date. So I have one question for you, similar for you to ask. When would we anticipate that funding actually coming to Santa Rosa? We'll tell you on the 17th, what's our best guess. Great, thank you. Any questions for the city manager on his report? Not seen any. City manager, roll into your report. So this is, I just wanted to call your attention that the wall of mayors, which was installed approximately 15 years ago on the west side of the chamber, featuring photos of most of the past city's past mayors, that installation was starting to fail. And so what we've done is install a new digital kiosk, which is now up and running. So we invite the audience and council members afterwards to take a look at that new display of past mayors. Additionally, you're seeing some work go on around the chamber. Some changes and we will be probably instituting some new procedures come the 17th, involving public comment. But I just wanted to note that there have been some ongoing improvements. In addition, for transportation and public works, the League of American Bicyclists recently honored the city of Santa Rosa with a bicycle friendly community certification, elevating our city from bronze level designation received in 2015 to silver level designation. Santa Rosa is leading the way, being the first city in Sonoma County to receive silver level designation. Currently only 488 communities across the country are recognized by the League as Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum. This award recognizes Santa Rosa for its commitment to creating transportation and recreational resources that benefit residents of all ages and abilities while encouraging healthier and more sustainable transportation choices. The city's plans for additional bicycling improvements within the community can be viewed at srcity.org backslash B-P-M-P. And that's the end of the report. Great, thank you. Madam City Attorney, do you have a report for us tonight? I do. Mr. Mayor, I'm providing you the quarterly report of settlements and active litigation. This is for the third quarter of 2019. The report shows two settlements. Both of those settlements were reported previously in our last report, so I won't go over those. Then it outlines our current ongoing litigation as of November 25th, 19. There are 23 cases total in the state and federal courts. You actually added up those that are on the list, there are only 22, the one that was omitted inadvertently was a PG&E litigation, which obviously has taken and continues to take a substantial amount of our office resources. Of the other 22, there are four code enforcement cases that are in state court. Obviously there are quite a few other code enforcement matters that are currently pending in the administrative process. We're involved in those as well. But in terms of actual litigation in court, there are four. We have seven personal injury and dangerous condition of public property cases. We have four matters that involve police conduct and police actions. We have seven others. Those include our homeless encampment litigation that's ongoing, as well as two key TAM proceedings. Those are proceedings in which we are plaintiffs and we are trying to recover excess payments. One concerns water pipe manufacturing and the other concerns telecommunication providers. And then we have a couple of contract claims and some other miscellaneous. In addition to those cases that are currently pending in state and federal court, we received seven additional claims. We're referred over to our office in the third quarter and those cover various issues, various matters. And I will note that we've had several more claims referred over to our office at the beginning of the fourth quarter. But those will be reported in our next quarterly report. So that's it. I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you. Council, any questions on that report? No. Okay, statements of abstention by council members. Are there any at tonight's meeting? Seeing that. Oh, Ms. Vice Mayor. I'm gonna abstain from item 14.6 and Mr. Sawyer said he would move it for me since it's on the consent calendar. Okay, 14.6. Okay, before we go to council members report, I just wanna state again the order of this agenda. So we will continue in order the agenda through our consent items. We'll then take public comment and then we will jump to our public hearings, 17.1 and 17.2. Most likely at that point, since council has been and staff have been here since one o'clock, we will take a dinner break and then come back for items 16.1 and 16.2, the two report items. So with that, council members reports. Would anyone like to report, Mr. Rogers? Just a quick announcement that I will be pointing Leslie Graves to the Community Advisory Board and just a huge thank you for her willingness to serve. Great, thank you. Any other reports? I just wanna do a quick report. Last Friday, downtown Santa Rosa's location in Courthouse Square of the Winter Light Celebration I really wanna thank the Metro Chamber and Sutter Health for putting on the event. There were hundreds of people in the square and again, as I mentioned that night, that's why I think one of the hopeful activities that we would have when we reunited the square. So it's great to see the tree lit and I encourage everyone to head to downtown see it for yourself and while you're there, spend some money. So with that, approval minutes. 13.1, regular meeting minutes from November 12th. Were there any additions, subtractions, adjustments? Seeing none, we'll accept those as submitted. Mr. McGlynn, consent calendar. Item 14.1, resolution, Fifth Amendment to General Services Agreement with Day Management Corporation, DBA Day Wireless Systems for Maintenance, Repair and Inspection Services for Existing Communications Equipment. Item 14.2, resolution, resolution approving amendment number two, to city attorney's appointment agreement and ordinance to increase the compensation of the city attorney by providing effective May 12, 2019, a 7.5% merit increase and a 2.5% deferred compensation for a total contribution of 5% of base pay. And effective July 7th, 2019, a 2.5% cost of living salary adjustment and a increase in contribution by the city for the 2019, 2020 fiscal year, equal to 0.025% of base wage to the city attorney's retiree health savings plan for a total contribution of 0.75% of base wage. Item 14.3, ordinance introduction, ordinance to the Council of the City of Santa Rosa implementing Title 21 of the Santa Rosa City Code, correcting section 21-02.050.B of chapter 21-02, inclusionary housing ordinance to limit the housing impact fee and inclusionary housing incentives to multifamily residential and mixed use projects in the downtown area file number PRJ19-036. Item 14.4, ordinance adoption, second reading, ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa amending Title 20 of the Santa Rosa City Code reclassification of property located at 407 South A Street to the CG General Commercial District Assessors' Parcel number 010-221-016, file number MNP14-018. Item 14.5, resolution, holiday shopping garage user fee reduction. Item 14.6, resolution, approval and adoption of the city's salary and plan and schedule. Council, any questions for staff on any of those items? See none. We do have two cards, both with Duane DeWitt. So Duane, you have two minutes for item 14.2 and two minutes for item 14.6. Hello, my name is Duane DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. I appreciate the city attorney. I don't know her very well, but she seems to be a pleasant person who's done nice things for us. With that in mind though, I'm a bit concerned about the size of that merit increase. All the rest of us are kind of trying to just get by and cost to living increases for social security are only about 1%. The city's giving on its salary schedule cost of living increase for everyone, 2.5%. I'm like, well, okay, but here the city attorney's getting a 7.5% increase in salary. And it doesn't show why. I looked in here, right now she's getting paid $211,000 and some change per year. And it's gonna jump up to $247,000 with this total cost of the agreement being $36,000 for this year. That's a lot of money. That's a quarter of a million dollars a year to just basically doing a regular job. I'm really concerned that you folks take this idea of you have to match the average of comparable cities and not necessarily go with what our landscape is. So I'm real concerned. We've got a really high and almost bloated budget for top management people. And the folks down at the bottom, the groundskeepers and the folks that keep the city running, they're not getting enough. So I would hope, and this is no offense to the city attorney, that in the future you would cap this and you would say, hey, no, we can't give this much more money to you. And we have to give the money to our groundskeepers and our parks, recreation people and the folks that make the city really comfortable for us residents. And that'll be enough for the second item too. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Diane. Ms. Fleming, you have one through five. Yep, I move Consent Items 14.1 through 14.5 and raise for the next. Second. We have a motion and a second. Your votes when they pop up. And that passes unanimously. Mr. Sawyer, you have 14.6. Yes, thank you, Mayor. I'll move 14.6 and wave for the reading. Second. We have a motion and a second. Your votes, please. Passes with five eyes and one abstentia of Vice Mayor Fleming abstaining. Thank you. All right, item 15, do you have any public comment cards? Okay, first up, Dwayne DeWitt, followed by Lisa Landres. Hello, Merry Christmas to you. I'm from Rosalind. I would like to encourage everybody to buy living Christmas trees this year so that the trees could then be planted to make up for trees that have been burned. We're losing trees and in my neighborhood, they're actually gonna be cutting some down, which we would like to actually keep. But the city makes decisions not based on what the residents want, just what they decide is best for us. With that in mind, I also have a concern about the way the people who are disadvantaged unless I guess you'd say there if not, but for the grace of God, go I. There's a lot of people out there during this season who are having a tough time. Many of them are living in tents along a trail called the Joe Ordo to Trail, which runs through Rosalind and to the West. And I don't think they really wanna be there. It's just that that's the only place they can find to try to be partially dry and out of the mud. It's a paved trail so they can be up along it. They have their tents there. And I really don't believe they're saying, hey, this is where I wanna be for Christmas. I think that it would be really nice if we would find a way to get some shelter for the folks who are disadvantaged this Christmas, give them some spots where they can be warm and dry especially, and then have the compassion so that after the holidays, we also give them a place to live. And I know you'll say, well, that's not part of your purview, but in a way it is because government exists for the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens who pay the taxes. So here we are in a conundrum. We got a lot of folks who are having a really difficult time and it gets worsened by our public servants. The folks are supposed to be helping them with health, safety, and welfare. So I just ask you to do your best this year to be as compassionate as possible to those folks that are stuck out there in the harsh weather. And for all of you others that may not believe in Christmas, at least just have some sympathy for those who are worse off than us. Thank you. Thank you. Lisa Landers followed by Linda Jo Sheehan. Lisa Landers, I have just three quick things. We went to the Board of Supervisors meeting and brought up the Joe Radota Trail. We followed in on that conversation. Most of the meeting was a bust. Board of Supervisors completely lost control of the meeting. They were shouted down, you name it. Though they had a deputy on site, they didn't utilize him until we finally asked that a person who was being very belligerent was taken out. We're asking you to put that on as an agenda item since Santa Rosa has pretty much the greatest proximity to Joe Radota Trail in addition to Board of Supervisors. My second thing is to follow up with the where we're at with the dog attacks. I now have Supervisor Goran meeting with Brian Whipple from the Director of Operations for the Animal Control to see what is not happening, where the breakdown is happening. I did have to file a formal complaint against an animal control officer who was very unprofessional. So that's now in her complaint file. SRPD has been wonderful in contacting us and staying on top of it. They've reached out to Brian Whipple. They are now gonna take a more proactive stance when there's an actual assault against a human. There's gonna be somebody who will actually respond and not just let that homeless person slip away with their off leash dog and walk into the sunset to have it happen once again. My third item is how long it took me to get a copy of the conditional use permit for 600 Morgan Street. I first approached council with it. I was told by a council member I would get it. I said, I'm happy to walk in, tell me where to go. I'll get it, I'll pay for a copy. That didn't happen. They said they would follow up with me. I sent an email, I called. I ended up going through five employees to get a conditional use permit, which is dated 2014 with no problems of record noted, though I have a landslide of people from that area calling me with problems. So I've now been driving that area and I could tell you that everything they say is true. Both sides of the sidewalk completely blocked. Numerous shopping carts abandoned within the street. People that have no business trying to cross the street without a crossing guard, trying to make their way high, drunk, mentally afflicted, whatever they are, barely being able to navigate getting across the street. People doing circles in the middle of the street with giant children packs behind them loaded with things to where they don't even yield to traffic, they just keep going in circles, blocking every direction. So something needs to be addressed there because no business owner could own a business like this. And the fact that we allow Catholic charities to be stewards of a business like this and not hold them accountable to having some sort of supervision, one of the items was that they only need to have one person on that site. They're serving like 1,000 people in a day. How is one person adequate? So I'm gonna ask you to look into that because that is a fallen down on the job thing that's not well served and it's not serving its clients and it's definitely not serving the community. Thanks. Thank you. Linda Joe Sheehan followed by Jennifer LaPorta. I really appreciate the situation that you guys are in right now. I'm trying to solve a problem that you're not giving the money or the wealth of the soft. I wanna come up with an idea, maybe a solution out of the box that you can use temporary until we can have more definite solutions in the works. We can't ask one part of our community to suffer all the problems of the homelessness. We really need to spread the pain throughout our community. And one of the ways to do that is to say, okay, this park or this place is a homeless shelter for two months and then move it every two months or whatever time period you have in mind with help getting them to that location and also toilets and so forth that they can use. I know that seems crazy, but we don't have homes for all these people and they're together because they need to be together to protect themselves. If you have never lived out in the streets, thank God I haven't done it in many, many years but I was there at one time and so I know how difficult it can be. You don't know there, but for the grace of God goes I. If I didn't have some of the things that I lucked out in with life, I would be homeless myself because I could not afford the rent that are available today. I could not afford them. So if we could like maybe two months in this location and then dream up another, I've known that churches have volunteered their spaces, landlords have volunteered their land and everybody has said, well you can't do it there because the neighbors are complaining. If they know it's only for two months, two months they have to give up the sanity or the stationary of the area to help those less fortunate. They might even contribute and might even give something to that area at that point to help those that are there. It's an idea. It's thinking outside of the box and I hope you can use it. Thank you. Thank you. Jennifer La Porta followed by Robert J. Murray. Porta Santa Rosa homeowner. I have a degree in environmental health. I am also already experiencing symptoms of electrosensitivity. I oppose the city's plans to install so-called small cell phone towers in residential areas all over Santa Rosa. Over 100 of these towers are planned. About 25 were already installed. Verizon and Mobilities plan to blanket the city with radio frequency, microwave. Radiation is part of Big Telecom's plan to install 800,000 small cell wireless transmission facilities in the US. There has been no safety testing showing that 5G is harmless to humans, animals or plants. However, there are thousands of peer reviewed scientific studies showing biological harm of 4G, 3G and 2G to humans, animals, pollinator, insects and plants. You are playing with fire. This idea is a massive science experiment. I do not give my consent to be irradiated with 5G, to be experimented on with 5G, to have my data harvested for the internet of things, to be part of the total surveillance society, to have my privacy taken away, especially medical and banking info, or to be harmed by 24-7 unmonitored and uncontrollable wireless radiation. The lawyers will say they have to file a legal precedent. Well, we followed legal precedent for vaping, fentanyl, pesticides, petroleum and tobacco. It took decades in some cases for the negative health consequences to be known. This is a very bad idea for 5G. We must use the precautionary principle, which states when an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken, even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. Now the idea is that your hands are tied by the FCC or big telecom is a myth, if not an excuse for an action. The following cities have passed protective telecommunication ordinances. Sebastopol, Sonoma, Petaluma, Mill Valley, Belvedere, San Rafael, San Anselmo, Fairfax, Ross, Los Gatos, Palos Verdes, Walnut City, and the County of Marin. Cities that have banned 5G include Hillsborough, Piedmont and Danville. Verizon advertises 5G small sales as being low powered, but in reality, they are using the same equipment as large macro towers, the same radios and N10A just retrofitted to be put on a PG&E pole. Please work with your staff to develop an ordinance that protects our residents and their health. I will have specific asks for this ordinance at the December 10th study session next week. Thank you. Thank you. Robert Murray followed by Anita Lafellette. Good evening, Santa Rosa City Council and everybody here. I thought of preparing some statements. I did actually write a few things down, but I figured I'd just speak from the heart and let you know my story and what brought me here tonight. I was born in Santa Rosa, but when I was six, my family moved to Alameda. Those that don't know, it's right next to Oakland, neck deep in the Bay Area. I spent some time in college down in the Los Angeles area as well, working down there, looking for a job after college. I went to Cal Poly, got a nice little degree, decided to find a place to live after college and I knew of Santa Rosa. I had family in the area still and I still liked Santa Rosa. I thought it was a great place to live and raise a family. Well, I've done just that. The last time I was in this council room, I was with my children and my Cub Scout den. I had the boys in here showing them what city council was and how city government worked and how we as citizens could address our government and let them know our concerns and share our stories. Well, I've been in this town for over 20 years and this is my first meeting where I've actually attended a meeting and not just a tour for kids. So why would I be here for 20 years and never attend a meeting? What brought me to this meeting tonight? My wife is part of a run club. That run club used to run on the Joe Rodota Trail. That run club used to run on the Creekside Trail. My wife is not safe running on either of those trails whether she is alone or with a large group of women. They are not safe. This is not something that's popped up and slowly grew over the course of years. It didn't suddenly happen in 2017 after the city burned down. This homeless Christ that we're dealing with on the Joe Rodota Trail has popped up very recently. This is a very acute problem. So we need to figure out exactly why they're here, who they are and what they're doing. And we need to clean it up. We need to make it safe again, safe for our wives, safe for our mothers so they can go on a morning run with their groups. So I can ride my kids on that trail once again. That same Cub Scout Den, we would ride that trail to Sebastopol to scream in meanies. There's no way in hell I would do that now. It's inconceivable to do that today. My kids are not that old and it wasn't that long ago that we could make that bike ride but today it's inconceivable. There's no way we're getting a five-star rating from any bike group anywhere given the condition of our trails. This needs to be cleaned up. It's completely unacceptable. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Anita LaFollette, followed by Brenda Gilchrist. Good evening. Thank you for hearing me. I just wanted to remind you that they just did a study in that other demonstration we had there about the fires and they asked people what was their biggest concern and they said homelessness. And I want to remind you because I'm back again. I've been here, I've been coming here for years. I'm trying to get these people shelter. The study showed that most people are concerned with homelessness. Hello? You have an emergency proclamation still in effect. People are out in the rain and these people are some of those that need more help than others. We have empty buildings. I don't want to remind you but there are a lot of empty buildings. We could put these people in. I like Mr. Duet's idea. Let's open up a building and give them some shelter. I like the idea of moving off the trail but while they're there, let's give them some services like so they have a way of picking up their garbage. A measure of our community is how they care for the least of them. And I want to also remind you there was an article in the Bohemian about two weeks ago about rebuild that's counting with a lot of money but was allocated to Santa Rosa to rebuild and that money is just sitting there and maybe we could use it to support those that are out on the trail. How about that? And we have the TAC committee. We have the leadership committee. We have the committees that are designed to know how to do it. Let's get something done in this area. Thank you. I hope you had a good season. Thank you. Brenda Gilchrist followed by Craig Murphy. Hi everyone, Brenda from Citizens for Action Now. How many people are here from Citizens of Action Now? Raise your hands. Ooh, okay. Thank you for representing tonight because I think more of us are starting to show up because we used to just work hard and we would enjoy this beautiful city but a lot of us are now starting to come out as concerned citizens. So we appreciate you guys giving us a chance to at least advocate for ourselves. Jack Tibbetts, you replied to somebody, I think it was yesterday or today to a letter and you made some good points about the problems and the issues that are preventing us from managing the transient and vagrant population. One of them is Prop 47. We understand is tied the lawmakers or police officers and sheriffs hands. We're in a state, we feel like as citizens for the county and of the city, we feel like we're in a state of emergency. We'd like to propose to city council that as much as you can to advocate for repealing or changing the impact that Prop 47 has had, ask for some federal emergency or assistance to deal with the lawlessness and the vagrancy. There was a lady today as I was driving on Railroad Square, going to an appointment, pushing her cart on a green light, traffic, people almost hit her. So there's been various issues on a daily basis that all of us are seeing. What we're also feeling is that there is, the city is pointing at the county, the county's pointing at the city. They're saying the county needs to deal with the Joe Renauter Trail. Somebody needs to deal with it. If you guys could collaborate efforts, and I know there's some public challenges that we're not aware of as citizens or residents, but we'd like to have you guys collaborate, coordinate and deal with this as an emergency crisis because we're all concerned about our safety. As Robert Murray said, I'm also afraid to run on the trails. I won't go out without someone running with me or biking with me. And it's a sad state of affairs that a lot of us that used to enjoy our parks or enjoy the streets won't go out at night, or we won't go out and run in the parks and feel safe. So we're pleading that you guys look at emergency, federal assistance, maybe state assistance to either reverse or overturn things that are handcuffing our police officers or our sheriffs from managing the situation. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Craig Murphy, followed by Shelley Radke. Thank you for hearing me out, council members. Craig Murphy, Santa Rosa, member of Citizens for Action Now. First thing is I want to ask that the Joe Renauter Trail and the homeless issue in general makes it onto the agenda in the future. I want to address a recent string of incidents that are related to the homeless issue. And that is the dog attacks that have been occurring from off-leash, dangerous, aggressive dogs owned by homeless individuals specifically. The most recent one was Carolyn Teal. Many of you are familiar, as you spoke, at one of the most recent council meetings, off-leash pit bull and a smaller dog attack here next to Montgomery High School owned by homeless individuals. Those individuals, the pit bull was put down, but the smaller white dog has been taken into quarantine and now the individuals are petitioning to get that dog back. My wife, Marcy Murphy, was nearly attacked by the same dogs who charged at her and luckily the rope that they were tied to the tree held. Christina Hall, dogs charged her, this was a different incident in Santa Rosa, by homeless owners of the dogs. Carrie Meshes, dogs charged her, Santa Rosa. Jim Drager, was charged by dogs in Santa Rosa, all owned by homeless individuals. Katherine Johnson, her dog was attacked by a pit bull owned by homeless individuals. Evelyn Smith, her dog was attacked in Santa Rosa by a homeless-owned dog. Hans Van Bolderich, his dog was attacked in Doyle Park. Jordan Simmons, her dog was killed recently in Grayton that's been on the news, most of us have seen that. Another example of that, that owner was a homeless individual and she's trying to get that dog back, which is now in quarantine. So, these people don't always have empathy for what happened and they're self-serving and they wanna get their animals back that are clearly dangerous, aggressive animals. Charlotte Tressler, she was attacked herself in Doyle Park, Debbie Isley, dogs charged her, that was in Santa Rosa, Susan Hirschfield, aggressive off-leash dogs charged at her in Doyle Park. Carol Cranston, her dogs were attacked three times in Doyle Park and all of these examples have happened within the last year and a half. So, it's a recent escalation, it's a serious problem. My argument is that individuals who lack the ability or the physical or mental wellness to properly take care of themselves cannot properly take care of an animal. Individuals with no assets or no means of being financially liable have no business owning an animal. If my dog escapes from my gate and attacks someone, my homeowner's insurance goes up and the victim gets restitution. With homeless, they move on, they acquire another dog for protection after theirs removed or often petitioned to get their dogs back. This population should not have the same rights of dog ownership as those of us who have something to lose should our animals hurt another. Thank you. Thank you, Craig. Shelly Radke, followed by Susan Lamont. Hi, I'm Shelly Radke and I live in the condo complex that is right over the wall from the Joe or daughter trail, Casa del Sol. And it's 150 feet to the homeless people and I'm sorry, but those people are not law abiding citizens. There are fires going on, drug use, lawlessness. I don't even ride my bicycle over there anymore. I've been a working citizen for 40 years and paid taxes all my life and I support the parks and I really like to know why this is being allowed and tolerated. One night while we're returning back from work at the hospital when I get home late at night there was smoke when it was warm. And I called the fire department, actually called the police. They referred me to the fire department. Our department came out and they said there's nothing that they can do. And for me to come to a council meeting. So here I am. Thanks. Thank you. The 10th and final speaker for item 15 will be Susan Lamont. Because you've changed the order of things I would like to speak on 16.2 but I have to be at another meeting. Is there any way I can have an exception for that? Just go ahead. Okay, I appreciate that. Normally I would object to the expense of a special election for the replacement of Julie Combs. But I've seen nothing from this particular council that would give me any assurance that you would replace some Julie Combs with someone like her. As a matter of fact, Mr. Schwedholm has said that's the last thing that he intends to do. Lots of us voted for Julie Combs twice. Lots of us waited for seven years for you to appoint her to be vice mayor. Instead you've appointed people with almost no experience at all. I hear that Mr. Schwedholm has said there will not be a Julie point two. And that is because you want diversity. Julie was your diversity. She was the individual unique thinker on this council who knew about the problems that the average resident experiences. And whether she is going back and forth between Ecuador or not, she is the best representative this council has seen in many, many years. And if you are going to say you will not replace her with someone like her, it is an indication that you do not actually believe in democracy because democracy would require that you satisfy her supporters and replace her with someone like her. Now I know that's a tall order because she's fabulous. There aren't very many of her around. She and I don't agree on everything but I trusted her, she was honest, she was intelligent, she had integrity. And therefore it's sad but I'm asking you to have an election. Now if this had happened to Mr. Sawyer or Mr. Oliveris, the press democrat and the council would be offering sympathy, they'd be asking for understanding, they'd be asking for flexibility, they wouldn't be saying oh, she needs to go. There's nothing I've seen from you to indicate that you would do that. And it's only developer backed candidates that appeal to you and that appeal to the press democrat and what has happened is offensive and I advocate for an election, thank you. Mr. Glenn, item 17.1. Item 17.1, public hearing, ordinance adoption, ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa modifying chapter 18-44 in its entirety and subsection B of section 18-04.015 of the Santa Rosa city code concerning adoption of the 2019 California fire code as amended. Ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa modifying chapter 18 to adopt by reference with local amendments the 2019 California building standard codes, not including the 2019 California energy code, the 2018 international property maintenance code and the national pollutant discharge elimination permit and waste discharge requirements. Jesse Oswald, chief building official in Eden and Heartage fire assistant fire marshal presenting. Good evening, thank you. Jesse Oswald, chief building official. So this is our second and final time seeing this information for the year and for the next three years, actually. So the first slide introduction of ordinance, this is actually to adopt an ordinance for our building and fire codes. We'll go over these slides. They're very familiar to you. We'll go over them again for those who may want to see the information again, but then we'll also have ability to answer some questions. So some background, California building standards are published in their entirety every three years. The building, California building and fire code are included in this series of standards. And I'll make note for this session and this vote tonight does not include the California energy code that was voted with amendments and adopted with the last public hearing that we had on codes. So the California code of regulations title 24 is published in July of the year that they intend to be adopted. It was this past July and they will go into effect January 1st of 2020. The California code of regulations title 24, parts one through 12, that's the entirety of this set of codes and regulations are statewide standards that apply to all public and private buildings being built in California. This includes the building, fire, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, energy, disabled access, green building and other standards. And again, highlighted the energy code is not part of the discussion tonight. Updated and adopted every three years for statewide application by the California Building Standards Commission with mandatory enforcement by all jurisdictions and what that's essentially saying is if we don't do perform, execute local amendments, we're going to get the state's base codes anyway. We have the opportunity and we take it when local jurisdictions to adopt and amend only more stringent requirements based on these climactic, topographical, regional or geologic conditions that we find here in our local jurisdiction and we have to justify those to the state. So as of July, or published in July again and we'll go into effect, the addition was adopted locally or by the state, excuse me, in January of 2019, we have until the first of this coming January to get this exercise completed and submitted to the state for acceptance and adoption locally. So we have collaborated city staff, fire building department plus numerous others. We've collaborated with other peer organizations throughout the region and the county. We've done significant outreach with two council study sessions and there were numerous other study sessions targeted at the reach code but these codes were also in play with other discussions throughout the community. And as Jesse mentioned, we did a fair amount of collaboration, the billion officials and the fire prevention officers in the county started meeting back in February of this year and working on the updates of these codes. And this is the fourth time we've presented this information to you once in a public hearing prior to and this is one for the adoption. This is the list of agencies that participated in the updates and we'll go to the next one. And we have some basic examples of some of the stuff that we've updated and we've discussed this before but it talks about our number of access points to new communities, vegetation management, practices with new construction, home hardening stuff on new homes that are built and significant remodels. We also have, we're also adopting by reference NFPA 38 or NFPA 1 chapter 38, manufacturing and cultivation of cannabis regulations that we've worked with some of the industry to bring in fire protection engineers to evaluate next one. And then here are some of the overarching home hardening requirements that we're bringing into the building code and residential code that we worked with the building officials to implement and also to implement a three to five foot and ignition free zone around newly constructed homes. And some additional things that are coming in with the codes. It was a pretty extreme interest expressed in the adoption of the emergency housing requirements that Housing and Community Development, the state agency made available to us nearly two and a half years ago. We had not adopted those and we're proposing to adopt them within this jurisdiction. They're an appendix in each of the building and residential codes. And what these do is they provide minimum standards that we can rely on when we do execute emergency housing in whatever fashion that means. So it gives us a baseline for us as regulators to be able to say, this is where we can go with this. It is a helpful tool. And the adoption would be, we're specifically having to adopt it because it's an appendix that isn't required by the state. So for next steps, the peer review as we've discussed, peer review and input has occurred with our fire and building agencies throughout the greater North Bay area, Sonoma County. We had our, again, dates are incorrect. Sorry for the changes. So the last hearing was the introduction. Today will be the final opportunity to discuss and actually vote to adopt the ordinances. So the recommendation by the fire department and planning and economic development department that the council adopted ordinance by reference to 2019 edition of the California fire code as adopted and amended by the state of California and further amended based on local conditions for use in chapter 18-44 of the Santa Rosa city code, repeal existing sections not applicable to new codes and modify the Santa Rosa city code to reflect the new model code. And also to adopt by reference with local amendments to 2019 California administrative code, California building code, California residential code, California green building standards code, California electrical code, California mechanical code, California plumbing code, California historical building code, California existing building code, California reference standards code and the 2018 international property maintenance code, the national pollutant discharge elimination permit and waste discharge requirements. Any questions? Well done, it gets better every time I hear it. Council, any questions for staff? All right, I will, this is a public hearing. I'll open the public hearing. Do we have any cards? No cards, you don't have to fill out a card, but if you'd like to address the council on this item, feel free to go up to one of the podiums. Seeing no movement in the audience, we'll close the public hearing. And as a follow-up, we're gonna allow Mr. Sawyer to try to repeat what you just said. Mr. Sawyer, do you have this item? I spent a lot of time trying to memorize this and I gave up a long time ago. I'd like to introduce an ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa repealing chapter 18-44 of the existing Santa Rosa city code and adding a new chapter 18-44 adopting by reference with local amendments, the 2019 edition of the California Fire Code and wait for the reading. I have a motion and a second to any comment. Seeing none, your votes please. And that passes with four ayes. Secondly, I'd like to introduce an ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa adopting by reference with local amendments the 2019 California Administrative Code, 2019 California Building Code, 2019 California Residential Code, 2019 California Electrical Code, 2019 California Mechanical Code, 2019 California Plumbing Code, 2019 California Historical Building Code, 2019 California Existing Building Code, 2019 California Green Building Standards Code, 2019 California Reference Standards Code, the 2018 International Property Maintenance Code and the National Polluting Discharge Elimination Permit and Waste Discharge Requirements and wait for the reading. Second, I'm just gonna repeat that again. Thank you. Any additional comments on that? Here we have a motion and a second, your votes please. And that passes with four ayes. I just want to thank staff for the presentation. I know that we've heard it twice but I know all the work that went into producing this document, so thank you very much for all the benefit from this, so thank you. If I may, I'd like to thank the Council. This is a milestone for me in my career as a Chief Building Official, my first official code adoption being your building official now for a little over a year, so thank you. Great. I can hardly wait to see in three years. Mr. Merlin, item 17.2. Item 17.2, public hearing. Continued hearing on appeal of Planning Commission decision to approve a conditional use permit for Fox Den Incorporated, a cannabis retail and delivery business in an existing building located at 4036 Montgomery Avenue, Unit B, Santa Rosa, California, assessors parcel 013-284-012 file number, CUP-18-076. Bill Rose, supervising planner amongst others. Presenting. I should really say Claire, right? Introduce your assistance. Thank you, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name's Emmanuel Ursu, I'm the project planner. The item before you is an appeal of approval by the Planning Commission of a dispensary located at 4036 Montgomery Road, Unit B. In my presentation, I'll give a very brief overview of the cannabis ordinance, describe the project, comment that was provided by the public and followed by a brief review of the environmental review of the project and recommendation. As the council's aware, the cannabis ordinance allows both personal use or has provisions for personal use in commercial cannabis businesses. What is proposed is a retail dispensary with delivery. The ordinance went into effect almost two years ago, January will be two years since this ordinance has been in effect. The ordinance allows cannabis businesses and retail businesses in certain districts, including the neighborhood commercial district in which the proposed businesses are located. There are setbacks required 600 feet to schools, and those are K through 12 schools. There cannot be an over-concentration of retail dispensaries, so only one within a 600 foot radius in their subject to a conditional use permit which entails a neighborhood meeting decision by the Planning Commission. And then the city council is the appeal body in the case of an appeal such as this project. The ordinance allows delivery of cannabis products but only from retail storefronts, drive-throughs are not permitted, hours of operation are specified in the municipal code as are very detailed security provisions. On-site consumption is allowed but is not being proposed in this particular application. State law, among other things, requires a 600 foot separation between dispensaries, cannabis businesses, and schools unless the local jurisdiction specifies a different radius. The city of Santa Rosa municipal code requires a 600 foot setback from K through 12 schools, and it does not require a setback from preschools under the city's municipal code. In addition, dispensaries are subject to a conditional use permit. There are specific findings that are required to be made and we'll get to those next. There are six findings, as I said. The first three are listed here. Generally, they require the ideas that the project is consistent with the applicable land use policies of the community compatible with its surroundings would not be detrimental to the surroundings and it's physically suitable for the property on which it's located. The planning commission's findings, as it pertains to all six of these required criteria, findings are contained in the resolution that's before you this evening. This project began with an application that was submitted about a year and a half ago, a little more than a year and a half ago in April of 2018. A neighborhood meeting was held after the application was deemed complete. The planning commission held a public meeting at that public hearing held at the beginning of this year. The application was approved. An appeal was subsequently filed by the Kiwi preschool, which is located behind the project. And the city council heard the appeal on April 9th, continued the appeal hearing with direction to the applicant to provide responses on a few specific issues. A revised submittal was provided in August of this year and after much back and forth between the staff and applicants and a propellant team, we're finally able to land on tonight's hearing date as a date everyone was available. The project, as I mentioned, is located on Montgomery Road in the northeast quadrant of the city just before Summerfield Road. It is designated for retail and business services in the general plan, as are all the parcels surrounding it. It's in the neighborhood commercial zoning district. It is more than 600 feet to the nearest school. And here's an aerial photograph that shows the site. The trail house building is in front of the proposed dispensary. That rectangular building behind it is approximately the right half, if you will, of that building is proposed for the dispensary. Let me go back. The Kiwi preschool is in the building that is above behind the proposed dispensary. This is a view from the street. The dispensary would be in the gray building at the back of the property. That's the trail house building in the front. The preschool is beyond the trees at the back of the property. So when the council considered the application in April, it had just over 1,700 square feet. The revised proposal reduced the retail component by increasing, basically taking away from the retail to make more space in the garage. So the retail area is now 789 square feet compared to the 918 square feet of retail floor area. But the overall space is 1,500 square feet compared to the 1773. This is the site plan that was considered back in April. There's no change to the building footprints. The primary changes, and this is what is proposed now. The circulation is for vehicular circulation on site goes from a counterclockwise one-way direction into a clockwise one-way direction. So the entrance is now to the east, which is on the upper portion of this slide and the exits on the bottom portion on the west. In contrast, the existing circulation is counterclockwise. There are other changes that were made. So this is the floor plan that was considered back in April. If you look at the bottom of that plan where the office, prep, and vault area in the hallway, that is where the primary changes in the proposed to that hallway, all those spaces at the back of the garage are now garage space rather than floor area and the dispensary space is slightly smaller. The hours of operation remain the same, consistent with the maximum hours allowed by the municipal code. So public comments that were made at the neighborhood meeting, at the planning commission meeting, at the first council appeal hearing, kind of focused on, I'd say, three areas as shown in this slide. And those, I believe, are still concerns that we will probably hear this evening from the neighbors and from the appellants. The basis of the appeal is included in the staff report and the appellants, I believe, are here this evening, so I'll let them get into detail on the basis of their appeal. At the April 9th meeting, the council, after hearing public input from 40-some speakers, held extensive discussion on the merits of the project and directed the applicant to go back to the drawing board to take a look at a few kind of very discreet issues, as shown on this slide. Really seem that the onsite circulation and parking were kind of top of the list of concerns. There were concerns also that the delivery vehicle would actually use up parking that would otherwise be available for clients of the dispensary. And there was also concern raised by neighbors regarding the ADA compliance with access from the street to the front of the building. So in response to the direction that the council provided, the applicant retained or had their traffic consultant take a look at the site again and re-evaluate it. They had their traffic consultant also had a peer evaluation of their review done. And they came up with several recommendations, several changes. The first was to change the circulation from the counterclockwise to clockwise direction. The effect of doing that is when exiting the site, the line of sight for vehicles was increased from 70 feet to 250 feet. And that is when looking to the left as you exit to the property. The red in this diagram shows the line of sight from in the existing condition. The black shows it in the proposed condition. The other change that they made was to install recommend installation of mirrors at the back to improve circulation around the back of the building. Since this was prepared, the mirrors at the back, the trail house building would actually not go in that location that go on the outside of the corners, not the inside of the corners where because they would be effective in that location. So there'd be a, I think a concave versus a convex mirror on the, so they'd go actually on the building, on unit B, the back building. And then a mirror was also proposed at the garage entrance. In response to the concern with parking, the applicant is proposing to lease four offsite spaces for employees. They've reduced the size of the dispensary thereby reducing the parking requirement by one space. They've also widened the parking in the, both in the garage and the open parking in the existing parking lot. Traffic engineer recommends that there be a signed parking with signs for clients of the dispensary and clients of the trail house. And then also the traffic consultant noticed that there were several clients that would come to the trail house, unload their bicycles and then leave the site and not return for a long time, at least for the period of time that they were there on site, which I believe was over an hour or so is what the report stated. And so they recommended that parking be restricted to use by patrons while they're on the property. To, the way they widen some of the spaces is on the east side of the parking lot. There was a space to the far right where it says no parking. That space doesn't meet the required dimensions. There's a doorway that opens into it. So they striped that no parking and then widened the remaining spaces so they're now compliant with the minimum parking stall width. On the west side, the entire overall width of the area devoted to parking is increased by shifting the curb at the far left parking stall, about a foot or so. And then making the remaining spaces a little wider to be able to accommodate the required parking width. In terms of the assertion that the delivery vehicle would take up required parking, the response from the traffic consultant is that it would actually reduce parking demand in that one delivery vehicle would be able to provide service to multiple customers that would otherwise come visit the property. And in terms of compliance with the ADA, the city's building official reviewed the proposal and found it to be in compliance. A ADA path from the street to the front of the building is only required if a pedestrian pathway is provided. There is no pedestrian pathway provided. That's a condition that has been approved in other new facilities that have been approved in the city. And there is a ADA pathway from the handicap parking stall to the entrance to the business. So the building official found that it is in compliance with the building codes and handicap access codes. The projects also found to be in compliance with CEQA and qualifies for several exemptions as indicated in this slide. And so we recommend that the council approve the resolution to allow Fox Den to operate a dispensary with a delivery at the project address on Montgomery Avenue, Montgomery Road. And that concludes my report. Thank you. Great, thank you for that presentation. Let's start first with any ex parte communication by council members. Let's start over here, Mr. Oliver. So did you have any? All right, none. Mr. Slaven. Vice Mayor. I received an email from Glenn Vaughn and spoke with Newcastle. Mr. Rogers. Yeah, over the course of the last six months I think we've all had extensive conversations. I've talked with the applicants, talked to the appellants. No information was learned that isn't available in the publicly available documents. Mr. Dibbitts. Yeah, I spoke with the appellants, I think shortly after the last hearing, it's been some time, and then I received a voice message from Mr. Caston. And I've met with both the operators of Trailhouse and the owners of the property. Again, learned nothing that's not contained in all the public documents or was discussed at our last hearing. So with that council, any questions on that presentation? And do we wanna afford someone to make a presentation? I didn't get a script from you guys on this one. Because this is a continuation. Do you have a question for Mr. Dibbitts? Go ahead. So I'll probably have more questions as the applicants and appellants make their presentations, but one thing right off the bat, I think my biggest concern that I have is somebody who frequents the Trailhouse a lot is that, and I can't believe I'm saying this because I can't stand it when people cite parking as a reason to not do something creative. But it really is kind of a problem there already. And I noticed that the applicant has gotten a lease with, I think it's a smog shop down the road, but some information that was given to me by Matt with the appellants made me wanna ask some questions. I guess, I'll just leave it there for now. So Nick, when you make your presentation, hopefully you can address that. Thanks. So now that I have my script here, do you wanna, do you have a question? I'll have questions, but I wanna listen, I think, to the appellant and the applicant first. Okay, so first we'll give you 10 minutes for the applicant presentation. So if you please identify yourself and we'll go from there. Don't worry, time's not starting yet, Nick. Go ahead, Mr. Roger, do you have a question? It's actually adding on to the ex parte disclosures because I wanna make sure if it needs to be addressed, it gets addressed. Somebody made a reference to me about a Facebook post from an employee. It in no way, I haven't seen the post, I don't actually know what it says and I in no way am basing a decision on it, but if that needs to be addressed in the conversation, please make sure you do so. Thank you. Are we ready? Alrighty, thank you, Mr. Mayor. We greatly appreciate everyone's time on this project. It has been a little over 18 months and I wanna thank staff, the council, the planning commission and everyone's been involved in the project for a very thorough review. Since the last meeting, we took the comments from the council very seriously, made substantive changes and hope that we will have provided you with the confidence to know that this is a project that will improve the existing conditions, both as far as safety goes and as far as the economic diversity of the area. One of the first steps that we took after the last council meeting was to expand and change the professional team. Many of the questions and concerns from council revolved building permit related items and we had not engaged a civil engineer at the time as we normally do that after the entitlement process. In order to answer your questions, we engaged with William Borrello, who I just mispronounced his name, so my apologies, William, with Anadel Engineering in order to make sure that all the site modifications we were proposing would be feasible once we reach the building permit stage. We also engaged with Musa Abasi, with Tramspedia, which is a traffic engineering consulting firm located here on 4th Street in Santa Rosa in order to do a peer review of all of the work that we had and engaged a new architect with DGA, who has done extensive work in the city. As a part of this new team, we took your concerns and modified the project a little later in the presentation. Steve Weinberg, senior principal engineer with WTrans will go through those specific modifications and Emmanuel has just reviewed many of them for you. These were substantive changes reducing the retail floor space in order to accommodate increased and above code standards, parking and traffic circulation for the property and to fix existing safety issues on the property. In addition to that, we engaged Joanna Cedar to be the community liaison manager for the project so that we could provide a contact and a face for the neighbors who wanted to be able to communicate with us both through this approval process and through what will hopefully be the development and opening of the project. As a part of her roles, she canvassed every business within a mile radius of the project with the exclusion of the applicants who had requested communication through their legal counsel and introduced herself. This was not a persuasive outreach but instead to make sure that people had a face and a contact number in order to be able to find out more about the project if they wished to. As a part of her outreach, she also met with many folks in the Oakmont community and I believe you received a petition of support for the project from well over 40 folks from Oakmont including a number of letters of support today from folks there that are looking forward to not having to drive to the west side of town in order to be able to access cannabis within Santa Rosa. There were a number of additional developments and on this side, I just want to kind of communicate to you a part of this process with this new team of licensed professionals. We wanted to make sure that we could test this project concept with the city staff professionals and so the civil engineer, our two traffic engineers and our project team sat down and met with the chief building official as well as the engineer and multiple other staff within the city to go through in detail the project and make sure that it was fully viable, not just for an entitlement and concept level review but for when we reach the building permit process and submit our plans. As you can see, there were a number of changes made to the project. I'm not going to go through them in detail because Emmanuel did an excellent job in his staff report in reviewing those changes. I will say that the reduction in the square footage did free up an additional parking spot for the project so the project will now have one spot on site more than it's required to under the code and while not covered in the staff report, it's our intention to make that space available for trail house visitors. No trail house was approved with the 10s parking spot reduction. We hope that this can help alleviate some of the issues associated with that reduction for their operation. Additionally, one small correction, the mere locations will be both where they are currently shown on the plan and then we will also put additional ones on the Foxden building itself. That's to accommodate people coming in and out of the two parking garages, both trail houses, current interior parking garage and then the future Foxden interior parking space and that shouldn't help improve line of sight for vehicles traversing in all directions. With that, I'm going to ask Steve Weinberg to come up and review the specific improvements in how they impact the traffic safety of the project. Thanks. Good evening, members of the council. Steve Weinberger with WTrans of Santa Rosa. WTrans completed the traffic analysis for the project just to highlight and it was already covered in the staff report, the circulation, the change in the access, the reverse of the directions. I just wanted to point out on the image on the lower right, currently with the red images, the existing exit is limited by the, when there's ever a parked vehicle. They're minimum required sight distance for a street of 35 miles an hour like Montgomery Drive is a minimum of 250 feet. So that is not currently the driveway with a parked vehicle does not meet current design standards because it does not allow adequate sight distance. So the change in reversing the direction and exiting on the west side will allow even with a parked vehicle clear 250 feet to a vehicle approaching from the east and then in excess of that to the west and to the west, you just have red curb and a driveway. And with the curvature of Montgomery, it's a much more advantageous situation for all vehicles exiting the site. So right now it does not meet standards. The proposal would meet and exceed standards. Nick already mentioned about the installation of the mirrors to deal with the corners of the back lot for both pedestrians and vehicles. So I want to mention, we did do a vehicle trip generation analysis, although there was no operational analysis needed because the level of traffic is below city standards. We use both IT rates and we did do surveys of two dispensaries in Santa Rosa, one that has a delivery option and the one that does not. Both Santa Rosa, the race we developed for those two Santa Rosa sites were actually lower than ITE, but we use an average of all three to estimate the amount of traffic. So we did not make any deductions for deliveries. So it's our opinion that with the delivery option at the site, the amount of traffic will be less than stated in the report. In terms of parking, simply as Nick mentioned, the city standards are met for parking. Again, it's our opinion that the delivery option as we look at rates for with and without delivery will slightly decrease the parking needed on site. And Nick also mentioned that the additional space that was developed will be assigned to Trailhouse. That's all I have. I'm going to pass it to Musa Vasi from Transpedia who did a review of our work. Thank you, Steve. This is Musa Vasi with Transpedia Consulting, a licensed traffic engineer and a licensed civil engineer in the state of California. In fact, I worked in the past six months closely with the project team and WTrans and I have reviewed 11 iterations or versions of the traffic study and the project plans and I feel comfortable with the proposed plan and it enhances the safety and the operations of the existing project and just short note. Thank you. Thank you, Musa. Since I have 50 seconds left, Council Member Tibbets, I'll just respond to your question or suggestion to speak on the lease parking. Because we're not asking for a parking reduction, we're committed to having our employees not park on site. The most immediate plan that we will be using to implement that is the lease parking that you referenced. So we have, we actually have six spots, four confirmed spots in the lease that you were referencing. We've identified offsite to operationally ensure that our employees have parking available and so they will be available and our employees won't be parking on site. Should those leases not be available in the future, we will find other avenues in order to make sure that our employees do not park on site. And with that, I respectfully request you to support the project and deny the appeal that's before you. Thank you. Thank you. Council, questions on that presentation? Mr. Rogers. Thank you so much for all the work that's been done on this already. Can you talk a little bit about the distance of the parking spots that you've obtained for employees. How far away is that from the actual site? So they're all on Montgomery and within adjacent parcels or one parcel down. So it's all located within the commercial so less than a half mile within walking, a rated walking distance of the property. And is there a level of enforceability that the project commit to, to make sure that the spots are utilized by employees and that employees aren't taking up the additional parking at the actual site? Yeah, we are committing to not having employees park on site while we may utilize different methods in the future to make that happen, such as if, I would say, we improve some bus service in that area and we're able to offer transit passes, encouraging biking to work or making sure that we have offsite parking. All of those options will be used to fulfill that commitment but the commitment is firm and solid that there will not be on-site parking for employees other than the delivery vehicle being used for operation, which is addressed as being actually a path to reducing the parking demand for our operation. How long do you expect the average person who comes in to the facility to stay? So the times differ between different store models. An initial visit by someone signing up for a delivery service that they're looking through could take longer but a typical visit is between 12 and 15 minutes. There's no on-site consumption, there is no availability area for lounging, so it is for a retail facility of this size, you're not gonna find anyone hanging out. It is come, get what you want and leave. Someone on their first visit may take longer than that and then folks that are going for their second or third visit may utilize the delivery service and take no time at all. So one thing to contemplate and I'll let you think it over before we wrap up is whether or not the outdoor parking spots might be appropriate for a 30-minute time limit or a 45-minute time limit as opposed to keep folks from parking there all day but to continue to have some of that flow accessible. So hopefully you'll think about that a little bit. I know one of the quirks of Santa Rosa's ordinance from when it was adopted to where we actually see the cannabis industry in California now was not allowing delivery-only space and requiring that storefront and I think that's part of why we're in this jam that we've been in. If the council were to make a future policy change, do you think it's possible you'd be coming back before us for a change of this project or is the intention to keep it as a retail dispensary with that accessibility? The current intention is to keep it as a retail with the accessibility. It is a commercial general plan designation in a commercial zone area and having a space where folks are able to come and interact with the product is important. With that said, the intent is to encourage people to sign up for the delivery option. The many of the communities and the folks that have already been reached out to, especially in the Oakmont area, very excited about that option but giving them that physical space where they can interact with the products, especially for their first visit, is seen as an important model. With that said, there are no dispensaries on the east side of town. We may learn things through operations that warrant a change should arise but at this point we see it as a benefit and will provide access to currently unserved part of the city. One of the concerns that council had last time was about cars backing out from the inside parking. I understand that there's been a change in sort of that flow so that now individuals will come out face first, correct? Correct. Great, thank you. Mr. Chivitz. Thank you, Mayor. These are some questions for you, Nick. So when you say that you do have the parking spaces, you guys currently have a lease in hand for those parking spaces? Correct. How long is that lease for? Is it month to month a year? For spaces, I believe the initial term is one year and then it converts to month to month. Okay. So we also have two other spaces that are under lease for the life of the lease that we have on the facility at Trailhouse. So the six spaces, then these two came along after we submitted our submission, we have four that are available for a year and two that are available additional. And I'm sorry, the two additional, that's news to me and that's good news but where are those located? Immediately adjacent to the other ones. Okay. One of the concerns, and I actually failed to mention during my next part today, communications, I did have a conversation with Gary Weisacki over the phone over the Thanksgiving holiday who's representing the applicants. And one thing he brought up, I thought was a good point if you're gonna have employees walking to new parking spaces, essentially. We've got the keys to a facility that has a high value product that is also a cash business or probably cash heavy business. What safety measures do you guys have in place to protect that person's safety when they're in transit? Well, the first thing I'll say about a safety measure and a security measure is that the best ones are the ones that aren't known in public. But with that said, the procedures include life security guards, cameras, alarm systems. We've worked very closely with Chief Navarro and previously Captain Navarro on ensuring that these facilities are able to meet these standards and will continue our close relationship with the San Rosa Police Department. Okay. Those are my questions for now, thank you. Ms. Weisacki. I wasn't aware that Gary Weisacki was representing the trail house, but I did speak with him as well. I just thought he was a fan. And a very, like, you know, avid fan. All right, well, I'm curious to know from your traffic engineer what the delta was between the two dispensaries in town, the one that had just delivery and the one that did not in terms of vehicle visits? Just getting that information, because I was wondering that myself. So the, okay, in terms of a peak hour trip rate, the two-size one without the delivery service was, on average, similar to the I.T. rate of 21 trips per 1,000 square feet. The one with the delivery service was about 14, so roughly a third less than the one without delivery. So roughly a third less than the one without delivery service. Thank you. Any other questions, Mr. Sawyer? I just had a question, because I had some questions too about the parking. So we've heard there's a lease from the conditional use permit. What if the lease expires? Does the city have the ability to shut it down? In other words, is the lease contingent upon operation of the business? And just to be clear, you're talking about the off-site space. The off-site space that we're just talking about. Yeah, since those aren't required, they're not attached to the use permit. So it's just a surplus parking that's being provided by the applicant. Does council have the ability to put that as a condition of the use permit? I think the council could consider adding a condition, but we'll have to be careful with the language of that condition. We can work on a proposed language that references acknowledgement and acceptance of the applicant's offer to provide that programmatically. But they're not here tonight for asking for additional parking or off-site covenant for some separate parcel. So, but they're offering this as additional parking that's not required through a lease or a programmatic. And also it was acknowledged through his comments that it would be, that is one opportunity, but these aren't necessarily site-specific. It could be through programmatic measures as well. So we'd wanna recognize that flexibility. So I guess for me to put it into context, I think the interest of the council last time was, landlord tenants, same folks, you guys worked this out. And so we're here today so that wasn't able to be worked out. Having something just said that we have this offering, I don't know how to consider that. If it's, I totally respect Mr. Kaston's and that's what their intent is, but unless there's some assurance for the folks at Trailhouse, that parking just goes away and that's something we consider in going one way or the other. With the applicant's consent, that can be made a condition of the approval. And as Ms. Hartman mentioned, an acknowledgement that the applicant has offered that and that then becomes incorporated into the project description and into the conditions of approval. Great, thank you, that was helpful. And then I did have one question about changing the route. Having talked to some folks and having been in a location, I don't see many places where you first, if you're going eastbound on Montgomery, you're now gonna pass the exit to enter the entrance. Typically it's your first right is gonna be entered to leave and you wouldn't pass the exit. From a traffic perspective, our other locations have other locations done that because that seems somewhat confusing for customers and... Yeah, I think anytime you have an arterial with lots of commercial driveways, you get the gamut of different orientations from one business to the next. In this case, I think the site distance issue sort of dictates the advantage of leaving on the west side. Secondly, if you think about left turns into the site, are not impacting or overlapping with left turns out of the site that making a left into the two-electron lane to go westbound and turning left into the site don't interfere with another whereas now they do. And but again, with an arterial like this, you get all different variations. So I get the intent is for the site, but are there other locations in Santa Rosa that have come to the same solution? I would probably look to city staff if they wanna point out a specific, I can't off the top of my head, I'll give you one. In your studies, has this solution been proposed elsewhere? I'm trying to figure out are there gonna be unintended consequences? Because yes, we've done the site line, but the situation is brought up so you're passing the exit to go on the entrance and is that gonna create some other unanticipated consequences? Well, this is a mitigation we've used before where you could better site distance on the exit on one driveway versus another. So we have used before. Specifically, can I mention one in Santa Rosa? I can't. Okay, fair enough. Any other questions? Go ahead, Mr. Casson. My apologies, one point of clarification. The least term on the four spots is five years, not one year. And also just to raise the question on your last question that we would hope that staff would also respond to that because our understanding is that the current condition in site lines don't meet safety standards and that the other alternative would be to red stripe existing parking on Montgomery and reduce the existing parking supply. Does staff care to respond to that? My interest is just understanding are there gonna be some unintended consequences of coming up with this solution? Good evening, Rob Sprinkle, City Centre of Public Works. Yeah, what we would have to do at this location is remove some of the on-street parking to provide for the adequate site lines if the circulation would remain and we were holding off on doing until this was resolved because we know parking is a big issue at this location. We wanna keep as much parking as possible. As far as the circulation being passed the trail house versus in front of, it depends what direction you're going. If you're turning left into it from the westbound direction, you're gonna be going past the trail house. So to me, I don't know that there is a specific reason why you would need to have an entrance at one side versus the other to have a clockwise over his counterclockwise rotation other than addressing the site distance issue which is a perfect example of why you'd do that. I guess my question isn't what they were asking. Do you know of other Santa Rosa locations where they've come up with a solution for this same site line issue? After the time I had, I don't. So most of the locations that are commercial locations have bi-directional driveways, so it's not an issue. So this is a unique location. Okay, thank you. Mr. Tibbetts, one more question. Thank you, Mayor. This is a question for the traffic planners and I wouldn't expect you to have recorded high traffic volumes of the trail house wondering if in your studies, if you made determinations or observations about when trail houses peak hours were or are, and I'll ask the same of trail house when they speak, but I wanna try to get an idea of the peak flows for different businesses, if possible. From our traffic city, we did not do a 24-hour survey of traffic in and out to determine what the peak of that use is, so. Okay, thanks. Any additional questions? Seeing none, thank you for that. We now have 10 minutes for the appellant presentation. Hello, good evening. My name is Pamela Stevens and I'm the attorney for appellant Kiwi preschool and daycare and other interested party trail house. On both Kiwi and trail houses behalf, I would like to thank you all for the time that you have spent to understand the very many issues that have gone into Kiwi's appeal. The basis for the appeal is that the project proposed by the applicant fails to meet the required findings C, D and E under the zoning code. These findings are C, the design, location, size and operating characteristics of the proposed activity must be compatible with the existing and future land uses in the vicinity. D, the site is physically suitable for the type, density and intensity of the use being proposed. And E, that granting the permit would not cause a nuisance or be injurious to the existing neighboring businesses. Today, you will hear from the owners of Kiwi and trail house as well as from an architect and traffic consultant who have evaluated the applicant's resubmission and will explain how it falls short of addressing the specific concerns previously raised by you when you indicated the applicant needed to present actual solutions to the many problems that you saw with this proposed project back in April. You will hear first from Glenn Fant from trail house. Thank you. Hey guys, my name is Glenn Fant. I'm the owner of the trail house. The business that would share the parcel with the proposed dispensary. So here we are eight months after the last meeting and this project has the same issues. I have many concerns with how the applicant's project will impact my business and based on the new submissions, my concerns have not been addressed. Before I get into the specific issues, I'd like to address the last minute submissions by the applicant. Prior to the April city council meeting and again before today's, the applicant held their completed traffic study and architectural drawings and other changes to the project until 4.30 p.m. yesterday. How am I a concerned business owner who is familiar with the project, let alone the general public supposed to read these submissions and formulate an opinion in less than 24 hours. This is an obvious attempt to prevent the applicant and the public from taking the time to comprehend the appellant and the public from taking the time to comprehend and formulate a reasonable response. I would hope this council does not believe this is the appropriate manner in which responsible business would conduct itself. Traffic, parking, and safety continue to be our main concerns. Nothing in this resubmission provides real solutions to the problems council identified in April. The offsite parking plan is absurd. Reversing the traffic circulation creates as many problems as it fixes. Regrating the parking lot disrupts my business operations and the proposed use will double the number of trips on site. These issues combined with the underdressed environmental concerns in the west side of the parking lot are cause for great concern. I'm a Santa Rosa resident with three businesses that are providing over 50 jobs for the community. I've worked 24 years at these bike shops, which has culminated in the creation of the Trail House an internationally recognized business that's having a positive impact on our community. Why am I standing in this room for the third time defending what we've created from a project that is incomplete and poorly defined? To be clear, this is not about cannabis. This is about safety and incompatibility. This is not a situation I would ever choose to be in and I look forward to today's resolution. In addition, really quick, Gary Waesaki in no way represents us. He's a fan of Trail House and he's definitely helped me out, but he doesn't represent us. Something else, we've had no issues with sight lines. Everybody's talking about sight lines, but we've had no accidents and no incidents at the Trail House. That's not a problem for us. And the reason we did the flow and the direction we did is because the left-hand turn off Montgomery sends cars, if we reverse it, it sends cars directly at our outdoor seating. And that was the reason we all came up with the flow that it has now. Thank you. Hi, I'm Colin Brigette with TJKM Transportation Consultants. We're a well-known transportation engineering firm, worked throughout California and other states. So I was here at the April hearing and the key topic that was relevant to the appeal criteria was that the site is not physically suited to accommodate typical daily parking demand and that the level of parking demand could be incompatible with the adjacent land use. The applicants traffic study in discussing parking focuses on conformance with the city's zoning ordinance requirement. There's no finding in the applicant's study that the supply of parking will be adequate to accommodate typical peak parking demand generated by the dispensary. Based on data collected by I.T.E., the parking demand, typical peak operations at this site, there should be somewhere between 11 and maybe as high as 20 cars parked based on I.T.E. data for similar dispensaries. And that I.T.E. data even found that a 1,500 square foot dispensary had a typical parking demand of 20 cars and a smaller 750 square foot facility had a peak demand of 15 cars. So all of these numbers are much higher than the supply of six that we're talking about here. Hi, good evening council members. My name is Mike Schwartz and I'm the architect who designed the trail house with Glen Fant, NorCal Cycling and specialized bicycles. The revised CUP application does not adequately address finding CD and E from the April 9th city council meeting. I have several points that fall into four main categories. I'll go over them now. Accessible path of travel. A code required accessible route has not been provided from the public way to the project area for this application. This was a major concern at the previous city council hearing is still not addressed and is identified by finding C and D. Foxton suggests that a building code exception would remove this requirement and propose that their project does not need pedestrian access. I think this is a misunderstanding. The exception only applies when there is no pedestrian access to the project area. And through review of Foxton CUP application and previous discussions during planning commission and city council hearings, we know that pedestrian traffic is a key component of their business model. It's also important to note that the CUP application is a preliminary process and it's often not feasible to obtain a final code interpretation at this stage of project development. Environmental mitigation. We've identified a possible environmental issue that has not been addressed and is relevant to findings D and E. There are at least two abandoned 2000 gallon underground fuel storage tanks that may be affected by proposed site work. Additionally, there are at least three underground monitoring wells that measure migration of contamination from an adjacent dry cleaning business. Trenching to extend water lines for fire sprinklers to the project area and proposed regrading work could lead to a requirement to remove the underground tanks. I spoke with a hazardous mitigation contractor, an excavation contractor who specializes in underground tank removal and a city fire official about this issue to clarify the requirements. Their unanimous response was that proposed site work would likely necessitate removal of the tanks to comply with state regulations. Mitigation of contaminated soil often requires an extended period of time and may involve many layers of testing and regulatory review to achieve compliance with state and local requirements. Parking. There are unmitigated traffic concerns that are identified by findings C and E. The site has 18 existing parking spaces, 14 belong to trail house, four spaces belong to the project area that now serve 41 daily trips. Fox 10 proposes changes to provide 21 parking spaces, trail house would have 15, Fox 10 would have six. That will serve 338 daily trips and include one accessible space at the garage, which is frequently under parked, one delivery driver space, one security staff space, which leaves three standard parking spaces. They now apparently also have six offsite spaces for staff, which does help. Then there are also inconsistencies in the application. The CUP application was originally made in April of 2018 and has involved multiple operators, architects, and engineers. These changes have contributed to a disorganized set of documents that no longer cohesively describe the project objectives and has become difficult to understand what the applicant's intent really is as it pertains to the project resolution. In short, I can no longer discern what information is relevant, which makes it very difficult to concretely define the applicant's design intent and how they satisfy regulatory requirements. If the application were to be approved, it would be challenging to understand exactly what was approved. I still do not think a clear roadmap has been provided to move this project forward and I'm available for any questions you may have. Thank you. Was that the end of your presentation? I don't know, the time just came up. All right, council, any questions for the appellant? Seeing none, we'll then go to the public hearing. I'll open the public hearing. Do we have some cards for this? Although you don't have to fill out a card for this, I'd appreciate if you would. Makes it a little bit easier to go through these. Okay, first up is Priscilla Bale, followed by Don Winkle. Council members, I'm Priscilla Bale. I live on Santa Enida Court and I'm a neighbor of the proposed facility. For many years, excuse me, I've shopped at the little shopping strip mall on Montgomery and at the Cleaners, Marys, Yogurt Time. This is a very complex intersection. You have mission coming down here into Montgomery, you have Melita Road, you have Summerfield Road, and then you have the Shadowbrook Apartments Road. Meanwhile, you have the gas station with people going in and out, kids and parents going to Yogurt Time, and then people going into Thompson Cleaners and the Trail House. So during rush hour, which starts usually about two o'clock when school gets out to about seven o'clock at night, that intersection is very clogged. And traffic backs up in those turning lanes if you've ever driven there, almost all the way back to the stoplight where McDonald's is. And the same comes true with people coming on Summerfield Road. So to increase traffic with another commercial enterprise in that tiny little lot where Trail House is, I think is creating quite a hazard. Trail House itself has enough spaces barely to accommodate people who eat there and who take their bikes there. And I've seen people parking over near Mary's and coming around. So even adding the six spaces or the four spaces doesn't really solve that problem. And it's very difficult to come out of that parking lot whether at Thompson Cleaners, for example, which is next door, and try to turn left on Montgomery. It's almost impossible when there's heavy traffic. So you end up going right, going around the intersection, going to Howard Park and coming around to make a left turn. So I think adding the extra trips and the extra customers coming to the cannabis facility would create a traffic situation that could actually cause accidents, cause people on bikes to be hit, and could cause pedestrians to be injured. Thank you. Thank you. Don Winkle followed by Mike Schwartz. Hello, council. My name is Don Winkle. First, I'd like to address a couple of what I consider troubling aspects of this entire process. When you consider the staff presentation and the applicants' presentation, the applicant in general is giving quite a bit more time to present its matter. But the most disturbing aspect of this process occurred at the prior council meeting. But it became apparent that the council is prepared to deny the use from that. Mr. Carson just simply walked down the pit, suggested to the staff that the council take it in, take its decision and then table it for a while. So the applicant, excuse me, the appellant clearly doesn't have those advantages. And I think this puts the applicant, the appellant at a disadvantage. And the dismissing Carson, as has been noted here earlier, deliberately placed the appellant, the staff, and the council at a disadvantage, but they're not releasing the WTrans report until yesterday at roughly 430 when they, if you look at the dates of the report, that appears he had it since mid-November. All of that said, the hardest matter is traffic flow in the parking. Parking problems created by additional, created by adding an additional car every three minutes through an already over-impacted parking lot. Any additional traffic-controlled problems created by such cars, competing for five barely dimensionally compliant spots located in a warehouse with a single point of entry and exit. At the prior meeting, the council directed the appellant to not return in the words of council without actual solutions. Well, they're back and the actual solutions are to add four employee parking spots, a quarter mile and two busy intersections away, and reverse the direction of traffic flow. So we've heard that there's some dispute over the leases in general, like where are they? What are the terms that the applicant doesn't appear to actually know what the terms are. Either way, the lease is strictly a temporary fix because the leases are gonna be subject to whatever prior rights are on that property, like the deed of the trust. So in other words, if the property is sold, will the lease survive? We don't know. Regardless, the four spots for the employees is not really gonna affect the number of cars per day, so it really doesn't change that much. We've also heard from another engineer that reversing the flow will actually create more problems. Inbound and outbound traffic will cross paths. They're gonna increase in the number of conflicting movements on Montgomery Drive. Inbound traffic, which tends to be faster, will be adjacent to trailhouses seating, where that's a potential safety issue. Finally, the reversal will obstruct the view of the arriving of motorists instead of proposed indoor parking, further exasperating already potential or already problematic situation. So petitions and letters of support are part of this process, and I have a lot of respect for that. However, the fact of the matter is the applicant has failed to produce an actual solution that reduces traffic congestion in the parking lot. And as such, we ask the council to exercise some courage and common sense and deny new approval of the use permit. Thanks. Thank you. Mike Schwartz, followed by Hula Clifton Pope. Hi Mike Schwartz, I actually do have one comment that I wanted to make about the parking garage and how that comes into play. The traffic study indicates that there is bi-directional traffic into and out of the parking garage. When you look at their diagrams, it really doesn't work that way. Only one vehicle at a time could pass in and out of that door. So imagine when you're in a parking lot, which normally has a two-way aisle, the car in front of you is waiting for a space. You're either gonna sit there behind them until they park or you're gonna go around them. So in this case, you can't go around. So you're gonna have all these cars parking whatever 15 cars per hour, whatever it is. But the entire parking lot is shut down. There's no inbound, no outbound traffic while you're waiting for cars to park in the garage. So that's one point, thank you. Thank you. Hula Clifton Pope, followed by Jacob Hansen. Good evening. My name is Hula Clifton Pope. I've been the owner of Kiwi Preschool for the last 30 years. We've educated many thousands of youngsters in our community. At the last hearing in April, I listened intently to the comments from the five members of council about why they could not approve the applicant's application. I remember you expressed specific reservations as to why the dispensary was not a good fit for the location. After reviewing this resubmission, I remained very concerned about location of this dispensary since safety of Kiwi's children is about most of concern to me. I immediately look for a safety or security plan related to this proposed project. There is no tangible plan and the applicant only states in the paperwork that Fox 10 will take all reasonable steps to discourage and correct objectionable conditions that constitute a nuisance. This lack of specifics is especially concerning to me since I recall council member Tibbets requesting more information about security and the safety issues related to robberies at dispensaries. I did not see where any of these specific concerns were addressed in the resubmission. As the dispensary is a cash-only business, we have parents who are rightfully concerned about a lack of concrete and understandable safety and security plan. The applicant has failed to demonstrate the proposed project is compatible with the existing land use, physically suitable for the use being proposed and would not be injurious or detrimental to Kiwi's operation. I would ask on behalf of Kiwi that you grant our appeal. And I did councilman Tibbets do research with the San Rosa Police Department in the last two years, 2017, 2018. I was astonished to find there have been over several hundred calls to service at six of the dispensaries in San Rosa. How many calls to service can Kiwi parents tolerate before leaving our school? These calls to service are typical disturbance, unwanted guests, men down, traffic stop, stolen credit cards, follow-up investigation, drunk driver at the location, traffic stop, domestic disturbance, out with subject, battery just occurred, burglary, hearty theft. These are just some of the calls to service at one of the dispensaries in less than one month. Thank you. Thank you. Jacob Hansen, followed by Craig Lawson. My name is Jacob Hansen. I manage Santa Rosa Insurance Agency at 4000 Montgomery Drive. It's an adjacent building to this proposed location. So access to parking is a big concern as many people have already said. It's already a congested area with lots of parking issues already. But also one thing that I believe it was a staff planner mentioned as far as the state law is that the access to the building of a dispensary must be visible from the street. In the schematics I looked at, it looks like the doorway is behind trail house and therefore not visible from the street. So you'd have to walk around trail house and then walk in the door of Fox Den. So just wanted to point that out. Thank you. Thank you. Craig Lawson, followed by Petty Lawson. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, my name is Craig Lawson and I'm a resident of Oakmont on the east side of Santa Rosa. When I learned of this permit application, I looked through the code requirements approved by five of the six council members here tonight, knowing that the viability of this project in Santa Rosa will ultimately come down to whether or not you meet all those requirements. I would like to highlight the location requirements to an open dispensary. Over concentration, no cannabis retail within 600 feet of any other cannabis retip facility. Check. Setbacks to a K-12 school. Check. Measurement of distance. Check. Visibility of entrance from a public right away. Check. Cannabis is not federally legal, so the property must not have a federally insured bank loan. Check. These are codes that you approved and the property meets every one of those code requirements. Your appointees, the planning commission, did a fantastic job of voting based on the facts and I would urge you to do the same. Thank you. Thank you. Your next speaker is P. D. Lawson, followed by Tiffany Bagala. Mr. Mayor, this is P. D. Lawson and council members. My name is P. D. Lawson and I am a local, small business owner that has a no parking at all and my business is doing very well and I am also a resident of Oakmont. My business is on Montgomery Drive. I drive past the trail house on a minimum and I don't really see the issue with the parking there's always some place for somebody to park out there I have carpal tunnel because of the business that I do I do use the CBD on my hand and it would be amazing for me to be able to stop by there rather than to have a drive all the way to the other side of town to get my medicine or like I do for my customers you could just have it delivered so for me it's a win-win thank you Tiffany Baggala followed by Stephanie Baggala my name is Tiffany Baggala my family and I are the property owners at 40 36 Montgomery Drive I'm a third generation Santa Rosa resident born and raised here we come from a long line of small business owners and we've always been proud to call Santa Rosa our home and help support the local economy and businesses in our community in December 2017 when the City of Santa Rosa became pro-cannibus by unanimous vote of the City Council and outlined all the regulations we realized our building met all the code requirements opening a business in Santa Rosa is extremely challenging yet we believe in our community and we support and want to see the businesses thrive here we have followed all of the regulations outlined by the city we've listened to all of the feedback and all of the requests made by staff and the council after the last council meeting we hired civil engineers and architect we had a third-party traffic consultant review the original traffic study that we had done we reduce the square footage of the dispensary so it would reduce the number of parking spaces we secured off-site parking for employees we have been open and honest and we have kept our integrity throughout this entire process Santa Rosa's mission to treat cannabis like any other business seems to be falling short here if this was any other business looking for a retail conditional use permit in this space it would have been approved already there was an article in the press democrat on November 24th highlighting the 16 to 25% layoffs due to the lack of legal dispensaries to get products in front of consumers we have an opportunity here where the proposed dispensary meets every code requirement constellations have been made to help ease concerns of the council staff and public and this is an opportunity for Santa Rosa to allow a business to open and operate where so many others are being forced to close their doors and move out of the area we hope you are not looking at this as a landlord tenant dispute we are looking for you to vote on the merit of the application my office is currently in the proposed dispensary space I have the pleasure of seeing the trail house team and their customers every day we smile and we wave and when I see a mountain public we hug one another I am confident that we can work together to provide a safe and successful business for our community once the conditional use permit is approved I would like to address Mr. Rogers question about what was posted on Facebook the trail house posted the day that the original traffic study was to be done we're having a hard time making it over the hump day we can help today from 4 to 6 p.m. we're having a very special happy hour our tablets is amazing and everything will be $2 for poor half off of food and the bike shop tires and tubes will be two for the price of one 4 to 6 p.m. only a second post by someone that was on staff dispensary traffic studies today and I think thank you thank you you don't mean thank you Stephanie Baggola followed by gail dank bar hello thank you council members for letting us speak here today my name is Stephanie Baggola and I'm part of the family that owns the property of trail house and the proposed dispensary a Santa Rosa native I moved back here after college not only because our family was here but because it was a place where we wanted to start and grow our careers the last several months have been very challenging to local businesses with restaurants closing each week plan power outages becoming the norm and disrupting workflow and revenue and countless people moving out of California business owners and entrepreneurs are rethinking Santa Rosa as a viable place to do commerce our family who is rooted in the local community our business owners we're literally coaches we sit on nonprofit boards and our members of the PTA and we followed all the proper steps took on all the extra hurdles that have been thrown at us and yet we are we still believe in Santa Rosa we know this can work and hope you will follow the code that was written and deny the appeal so that Santa Rosa small business can again thrive and just one more note to address the cross-fellow traffic and if there's other businesses in the city that have that actually just right across the parking lot we all know Mary's Pizza Shack it's incredibly busy there's one way to drive in and one way to drive out so people have to drive by the exit depending on what direction they're going or drive by the entrance and then right next door that is the movie theater there's east west cafe and there's yogurt time an incredibly busy strip of business that's just right on the other side of the parking lot that is just one example three guys thank you thank you gail link bar followed by Carlos Perrell hi my name is gail dank bar I'm a retired public school teacher and I've lived in a valley for 32 years three mornings a week I walk with my retired friends around Spring Lake and afterwards we take off and go do our errands it's a time that we choose to be on the road kids are in school people are at work there's less traffic I drive by this location all of those mornings in fact I was there today and I could have easily pulled into the parking lot there were plenty of spaces but there's no dispensary yet this is a time that I would choose to go there and I know that other people who are older like I am and retired would also choose this time non peak hours I hope that when you're deciding that you will keep in mind your older voters and how much we would appreciate the convenience of this location thank you thank you Carlos Perrell followed by John McDonald hi my name is Carlos Perez I'm a business owner here in Santa Rosa I have a company called bike monkey our events have generated more than 75,000 transient visits in 15 years we've helped create a nonprofit called King Ridge Foundation where we've raised over three million dollars for at-risk youth and wildfire by our survivors Glenn is on our board of directors and has himself contributed very significantly to families who lost everything that they owned in recent years the success of his business serves far more people than just his own customers I say this because it's important you understand the collateral negative impact that hurting trail house business would have I share the opinion that increasing vehicle traffic a trail house will hurt this important business and we've we've been warning this committee that pretending that it will somehow still be safe enough is irresponsible and you know here we are again I go there with my kids they're age 6 and 10 as do hundreds of other families and I can assure you that my anxiety of getting them into and out of that building is warranted as high as and as high as I can already tolerate well this may sound extreme it happens every day somewhere an inattentive driver accidentally takes the life of a child who is too small to be seen and that building does not make keeping your kids safe if you have more traffic you can't double it I just I don't see how it's worth it to increase any additional risk of the probability of some kind of tragic accident happening because of traffic on the hunch that you're awkward forcefully contrived traffic plans going to work somehow Glenn's a good friend but I'll choose not to take my family to his establishment anymore if I feel it puts us in harm's way these are real not made up decisions that I have to make as a parent and I'm not the only one I want this committee to value our right to a sense of safety when we come to you and ask you not to play engineering games at our expense or experiments on us at the expense of what we have already worked hard to create in the long term Santa Rosa will not establish a welcoming identity for our entrepreneurs like myself and Glenn who see a long-term potential in our ideas act on and build their communities and then get blindsided by changes that make no sense whatsoever we've invested heavily in this community and we're being shown the door thank you for hearing me and my concerned community members I don't think that it's fair for us to be at this point when a traffic study is being cited with data that doesn't correspond to national standards and I think you need to look at that thank you thank you John McDonald followed by Amy McNair members of the council my name is John McDonald I'm a 52 year resident of Santa Rosa and I do remember when this was the city designed for living and I implore upon you to deny this conditional use permit the parcel the building is totally incompatible with the use the parking is out of control I've been to trail house a few times I live near there in Montgomery Village and there's rarely parking right now plus there's very little parking on the street the last thing that I would like to stress is that one of your conditions of your ordinance is that there be a clear site of line to the entrance that does not happen now maybe if you're a policeman driving by you got a half a second to look but this is another reason why this is not compatible and especially with the preschool right near there the last thing is that you folks designed an ordinance it was your first try but you really need to go back if a school is within 600 feet or 601 feet then it's okay that's not right that's not common sense and I would implore upon you to please deny the permit for that reason thank you Amy McNair followed by Andrea Kramer good evening mr. Mayor and members of the City Council my name is Amy McNair I have lived in Santa Rosa most of my life and spent at least the last 30 years living on the east side of Bennett Valley where I've raised all my children and I'm also a grandmother to five ages 11 to 3 I suffer from fibromyalgia a debilitating chronic pain condition I have chosen not to use opioids or other pharmaceuticals to treat my condition as I don't believe they are safe I have found great relief using cannabis and CBD to treat my nerve pain this in turn has given me a better quality of life it is frustrating that I have to drive across town to get my medicine I run my errands in the middle of the day and that's when I would be using the dispensary I would also plan once I figured out what they have to best serve me to have it delivered I drive by the proposed site often and even visit the trailhouse on occasion I've never had trouble finding the parking spot I was there today pulled right in six other spaces I hope you approve this dispensary that we need so much on the east side of Santa Rosa thank you for your consideration and your time thank you Andrea Kramer followed by Deborah Crippen so clearly my name is Andrew Kramer I'm a long time northeast Santa Rosa resident in addition to being a longtime cannabis user one of my favorite things about our side of town is you know it's really got a nice neighborhood feeling there's outdoor activities to do there's lots of you know just nice amenities and businesses I've kind of come to love and it's got a little bit of a quaint feel to it you know the one thing I don't really have anywhere near my home is dispensary and it's pretty frustrating because every single time I like to go to one it really ends up being about a 40 minute round trip all the way across town and it's just far from being convenient and far from being eco-friendly as well so you know I just kind of wonder why in one of the regions of Santa Rosa with the highest senior citizen densities there's no dispensary access we've heard from a few folks that would really like it and I think Joanna went out to Oakmont and she was talking about how there's quite a few people who signed the petition as well citizens of California voted so we could have safe access to cannabis the Santa Rosa City government voted so we could have safe access to cannabis why are there liquor stores bakeries bike shops ice cream shops then everything else in northeast Santa Rosa but not canvas dispensaries and I think really this also does kind of come down to an equality issue and the Fox Den deserves an equal opportunity to show that it can be a great neighbor just like everybody else in front thank you thank you Deborah Crippen followed by Katie Clark I'm Deborah Crippen I'm a business owner on 4331 Montgomery Drive so I go by the trail house and this a lot four times a day every day because I go home for lunch and you know I often see there's plenty of parking sometimes on the weekend I see there's no parking I also my business is in the lakeside village lakeside strip mall there where parking is an issue people figure it out over time and you know it's just a matter of everyone working together I read in the paper the other day that still two-thirds of our cannabis economy is in the black market so that leaves only a third that's being legally done we have no dispensary on this side of town we have few dispensaries of the county compared to our population it seems that this is perfect place and a perfect time for a dispensary on the east side of town I think if this were another business there wouldn't be this conversation going on at all I think a lot of it is around the cannabis issue and you know we've passed the laws the city's adopted ordinances I think it's time to step forward and get our dispensaries where they belong thank you Katie Clark Clark followed by Matt Wolfinger hello I'm Katie Clark and I live less than a half mile from this location I am not I don't smoke cannabis I also don't drink beer so everybody's entitled in my opinion to have a business to have a small business that's what the heart of Santa Rosa is we are not strip malls we have terrible traffic problems but we have them everywhere it's there's no location that I can think of in Santa Rosa that has successful businesses that doesn't have some traffic issues there seems to me no reason why this business cannot coexist with all of the businesses around it small businesses have a very difficult time they need to have the opportunity to prove their model will it work hopefully two or three years from now they will want to buy a nice big building in another location where there's tons of parking but we have to give them the opportunity to succeed or to fail just like all the businesses were given around it we are a town that needs revenue we need the tax revenue cannabis is a very taxed industry I had the joy recently of paying to have my own court repaid because the city does not have the money to do it I got tired of being frustrated so I just paid for it myself give them the opportunity to participate in the city to pay their taxes so everybody here can benefit thank you thank you Matt Wolfinger followed by Kimberly moan hello council members my name is Matt Wolfinger and I'm here to support to speak in support of the appeal I'd like to remind the council of the facts surrounding the parking situation at 40 36 Montgomery Drive the appellants original site parking plan shows a total supply of 22 parking spaces city council deemed this insufficient and asked the applicant to find off-site parking to remedy their concerns the applicant's current plan which we viewed earlier tonight shows 21 spaces this reduction of one parking space is in line with the reduction of retail square footage but it leaves the site in the exact same situation as before this is not an improvement these are the same conditions rejected by this council in April and before I move on I just want to be clear I think it was asked of where the parking is going to be and the applicant has dodged that question I'm going to address that but I would like to hear the actual address if it's the one listed in the W trans study or not to address this issue the applicant proposes for now six off-site parking spaces which W print W trans on page six of their traffic study indicates will be at 43 25 Montgomery Drive 43 25 Montgomery Drive is a small shop with five total parking spaces I've provided you should view a copy of that with an aerial image in the appellants materials this does not seem like a location that has four parking spots to give perhaps the applicant has the address wrong in their proposal if we assume the off-site parking is possibly located at 43 23 Montgomery Drive this view left based on Korea the same aerial image of the parking lot that I showed you shows that this location only has six parking spots and I'm fairly certain that they need more than two if they were to permanently lease four of them perhaps the applicant even means the strip mall that is next to these two locations well I've gone through the city's parcel look up and found that that site has 20,000 plus square footage of retail space to lease which would require 80 or 90 parking spaces it's fairly high and if somebody counted that which I tried to it's difficult because the parking is not very visible they don't appear to have parking as well now you're not allowed to remove parking is my understanding based on city code without either a replacing it with existing supply or b asking the Planning Commission to allow an exemption so I'd be curious to hear if that conversation happened if that is what we're being proposed here off-site parking was one of the major asks of the appellate applicant by city council during the previous meeting this is reasonable as using their own W trans study from November 11 they calculate trail house alone demands more parking spaces 23 and the total number of spaces the park in a parcel will provide under the current plan which is 21 without the off-site parking which I believe is highly questionable as to whether one it exists and two it exists in a place that it can't actually be this new submission changes nothing from the appellate presentation I hope the council sees this that resubmission for what it is having no meaningful solution to the on-site parking concerns after eight months of attempts this project does not meet finding c&d and I asked this council to uphold the appeal thank you Kimberly mullen followed by Shane Bresnian hi there thank you for your time and service my name is Kimberly mullen I'm a longtime Santa Rosa resident and I also remember when Santa Rosa's motto was a city designed for living I oppose this high traffic business operating at that logistically complicated location behind trail house I believe a high traffic high volume business would be detrimental to the environment it puts cyclists and pedestrians in danger and compromises a thriving business which is a popular attraction and the local to edit tourist destination I'm concerned about the traffic flow parking lot safety and how trail house business would be impacted by a high volume high traffic business the layout and functionality of this high traffic business in this location is still like placing a square peg in a round hole regressing the traffic flow will be confusing and dangerous for established trail house patrons and Montgomery Drive drivers unique traffic situation caused increased risk parking lot is barely the parking lot is barely functional for the thriving business as it is removing on street parking to accommodate reverse traffic flow reduces the total number of overall parking spaces so that will still be a concern trail house is one of the few places in Santa Rosa where I enjoy spending my time on money I'm worried that increased traffic and reduced parking will make trail house yet another great place in Santa Rosa that's too difficult to patronize please put design and please put design in our city make it a city for living again please put safety first allow trail house to continue to thrive and do not approve this business at this location please don't move forward with the square peg in a round hole situation that's detrimental to the environment deny this permit thank you shame Brezhneyan followed by Joanna cedar hello city council thanks for having us again third time I'm manager of trail house and run day-to-day operations there we can listen to the experts all night long and look at their maps with nice ruler drawing longs ruler drawn lines to show line of sight but it doesn't matter what works is in place right now and the planning department has already approved it if you have people coming in that side they're going to hit our patio eventually and that's going to be a disaster it makes it dangerous reversing the flow doing what they've done does not make that any safer or any more helpful the other thing I'd like to address is why mr. castan gets to talk to the planning department so much while the meetings are going on and revise what's going on he's had eight months to figure this out and he's still scrambling to do this right is this what's going to take place as we continue on here and if it gets approved is this what I'll have to deal with every day at a business that's thriving we'd like to continue on a trail house and be as successful as we have been and be a pillar in the community but it's becoming harder and harder if this is continued to be allowed so I ask for your vote for trail house tonight thank you thank you Joanna cedar followed by nicholas haig arach evening my name is Joanna cedar I am the community liaison for the just this dispensary project I did have the opportunity to canvas the neighborhood and there were there was one point that the businesses that I spoke to talked about when speaking about the this proposed dispensary project and it wasn't parking it was the increase in business that they would see because people would be drawn to the dispensary although I do understand the concerns about parking a business that would not require a c up could potentially and would likely occupy this site and could not and would not have the conditions and and accommodations remediation accommodations placed upon it this project does meet the criteria set forth in the ordinance and I do urge you to deny the appeal but there's something else I want to say about safety and security and community there are a multitude of studies that show that a cannabis dispensary in a neighborhood because of the enhanced security that is required by the Bureau of cannabis control actually causes a decrease in crime one can look up studies that were put forth by the regional science and urban economics by police quarterly and the RAND Institute and to see that reduction in crime and to see that enhanced security is going to be a boom for the neighborhood in fact I am well aware of a of a dispensary in Sacramento that has operated in since 2009 it's called a therapeutic alternative and it's located directly across the street from a Montessori school and they have operated together for a decade without incident and I think that that really brings me to my last point and that is that I do sincerely believe that these businesses will operate beautifully together this is a community and and I have faith that this body will do the right thing and will deny the appeal and approve the business thank you thank you Nicholas hey arach good evening my name is Nicholas hey Eric I'm a third generation Santa Rosa native and a second advocate and activist while I agree with several commenters that there needs to be a candidate's dispensary on the east side of town I can't think of a worse location I know that this city council supports the idea of creating a more bike friendly city that won't happen without showing your cycling and outdoors community that you are committed to protecting us from cars there have been at least three cyclists killed by cars in Sonoma County this month I'm concerned that the traffic studies conducted for this project so far do not take into account the high amount of cycling traffic that is unique to this particular park there's a constant flow of people and bikes pedestrians dog walkers and other non-vehicular traffic taking place all day long there are unprotected bike lanes on either side of Montgomery Drive that are used by cyclists commuters sport riders families and so on all day many of the people who currently park there are cyclists themselves at trail house as you may know a cyclist drives a car much differently than a non-cyclist does trail house is a unique local business that fosters community and creates a safe successful and healthy gathering space for cyclists runners families and visitors from all over Sonoma County in the world I have deep concerns about this proposal and I asked the city council to show their support for Santa Rosa cycling community by rejecting the proposal once and for all thank you thank you those are all the cards we have you don't have to fill one out if you'd like to address the council on this item would anyone else like to address the council please say if you just state your name through this my name is Merlin Davis and I'd like to thank you guys for your time and efforts trying to understand the plans and wrap your head around the project as it's proposed and I wanted to call a little bit of attention to in the face of this much public opposition you would have expected or wanted the applicant to do a more thorough job of addressing some of the specifics problems and and the future issues with ADA compliance and the difference between ITE studies and how many cars are going to show up and how many parking spaces the ITE studies would recommend you have versus the amount of parking spaces that the zoning requirement requires more specifics about how they plan to deal with the tanks if they have to dig trenches for water lines for fire sprinklers more specifics across the board but they've specifically avoided going into great detail on many of and in fact all of the topics that we've brought up over the last year and I think that's particularly disappointing it's very important that this type of process and the planning commission did a great job of making this a major conditional use permit so that public has an opportunity to express their concerns and bring them forward and the applicant should have addressed them and should have addressed them in much greater detail I understand that it's not necessarily typical to go into great detail about how they're going to meet all of the building requirements ADA and fire and so on but those speak specifically to our issues at the trail house as a business and how they're going to impact our relationship with our customers and how those sites going to be designed it would have been really nice to have had all of those issues addressed before this meeting and the last minute submissions and the vagaries and the piecemeal submissions make it very hard for us to really understand how we're going to be impacted and I don't think that's very fair Vals thank you thank you is there anyone else who'd like to address the council on this item please hi i'm john pittarelli i'm a local business owner in santa rosa i moved here in 1999 to open up my business i now live on the east side of town my house burned down on the north side of town in 2017 so this dispensary will be a lot closer to me and that's kind of important to me because i'm a medical cannabis patient i was in an accident in a vineyard flipped an atv i have two rods and eight screws in my back so i no longer ride a bicycle although i used to love to mountain bike so i can understand the biking issue but they don't take up too many parking spaces partially being a business owner i can choose my own time to go in i choose right around nine o'clock nine thirty so i miss a lot of the traffic i stay late at work i've driven by the site seven o'clock there's parking spaces so it is a convenience to me as a business owner and taxpayer i understand other business owners to give other businesses a chance approve the permit i'd like to see the fox down there thank you thank you anyone else like to address the council please uh sorry for the last minute and get my name down there um but my name is peter the val i'm an architect in the area i'm also an adjunct professor at san rosa junior college and i teach architecture um i'm here in support of trail house because of a few reasons and i felt compelled to kind of get up and talk about it but this really is a communal area and i feel in the short term the parking situation will create a dangerous situation in the parking lot based on the density the parking there is already limited but more so there's a couple of issues that kind of alarm me by the drawings that came up first of all the accessible path to travel from the handicap parking spot proposed by the cannabis dispensary actually goes right in front of the garage door um also it's proposed that it's in and out travel through that garage door but that garage door is not wide enough but more so there's a couple a couple of standard of care issues that i kind of start with the drawings just briefly um my experience i believe that is a 211 sided building which would possibly classify it as a type five the plans classified as a type three i also noticed that the plans that came up tonight are not stamped or signed um they seem a little hasty in my opinion so it kind of makes me wonder what else you guys are going to uncover during the design process when final construction documents are submitted thank you thank you anyone else like to make comments to the council seeing no other movement i'll close the public hearing according to the agenda here the applicant has an opportunity for a three-minute rebuttal would they like to take advantage of that yes thank you mr. mayor um first i just like to share a personal story in 2012 as many of you are aware when i was riding my bike up down fountains grove at brush creek um i was hit by a car and the driver who hit me had run a red light it was a mother uh who ran the red light because her daughter was suffering from a seizure uh and she was distracted and that resulted in me having to go to the hospital there are safety issues everywhere that we are as cyclists this project doesn't increase safety issues it removes an existing one it reduces the existing issues at the property by increasing sight lines fixing an issue that's already been identified as city staff is having to be fixed and if this project doesn't move forward with its solutions that means there will be parking reduced from the public street in the public right away i wouldn't be here representing this project if i didn't believe that the safety for cyclists and pedestrians and children were taken into consideration and i thoroughly encourage you to respect the professional engineers the local team of civil engineers multiple traffic engineers who live and work and operate in this town who have reviewed this project and put their professional stamps of approval and expertise behind it i also want to 100 reject the accusation that we in any way shape or form submitted anything in a piece mail or late fashion as per standard procedures with the city we submitted the w-trans report in august in draft format that gives the staff as a reviewing it time to issue any comments and request any changes we received on november 11th an email response saying that they believe that it was adequate and the final stamped and signed version of the report was submitted with no substantial changes after that this is an accusation that i believe has been designed to just cause more clutter as many of the things i've been mentioned by the appellant have done fundamentally this is a retail project going to a commercial property that is going to serve the people in a neighborhood that have no access to this particular type of use on a side of town that has a lot of people who want it i ask you to take into consideration the petition from residents of oakmont the public comments you've heard here today and your own goal tier 2 goal of supporting this industry and the desperate need that we have for more retail outlets throughout the city if there are any technical questions about the competency of our local licensed professionals they're here to respond to those thank you very much and we request that you reject to this appeal thank you bring it back to council do you have any questions for staff the applicant or appellant miss vice mayor yes i'm during the public testimony somebody mentioned a november 11 study was that conducted by foxden or kiwi or the applicant the final traffic study was dated november 11 so we received a draft or preliminary study that was prepared by w trans and that was submitted in august i believe around the second of august we then provided copies of all the materials that were submitted to the folks at trailhouse so they had those materials at least since august perhaps mid august or so i just wanted to clarify that the study itself was not conducted on november 11 no no no it was the final document that was submitted and it's included in the attachments to the reporter dated 11 mr tibbitts thank you mayor this question is for staff particularly the staff that reviewed the traffic plan with there are 338 new daily visits to this parcel is it is that a common ratio i guess of having from my count seven parking spaces to accommodate that load the parking lot side of rock sprinkling in the city center the parking lot is actually determined through the zoning code so the traffic engineering part we're looking at the traffic engineering study to make sure it's it follows the city zoning code for the parking requirements we have a lot of businesses i could just say in in general we have a lot of businesses that have that or a higher rate for a peak hour or for a daily occurrence that have us the same zoning code requirement for parking okay and as a follow-up you know one of my concerns that's that's popped up through this process is how and i know that the council effectively asked us to reverse engineer um the traffic flow there but something that came up that was of concern to me again was in doing so we'd likely have to reduce on-street parking that currently is exists and made available to these businesses is that did i understand that correctly i think no if it remains how it is currently we would likely remove one potentially two spots along the frontage to make sure the site distance is adequate if the circulation is reversed then that would not be necessary okay all right thanks for clarifying that thank you mayor Mr. Rodgers thank you mr mayor one of my first questions was actually on that exact point about those parking spots that are on the frontage when trail house went through its approval process and ended up getting the parking reduction was the adequacy the adequacy of parking determined by counting those spots as well i can answer that since i issued the trail house zoning clearance it was uh it's a by right use and the parking reduction was also by right so that was a over the over the counter exchange of information to make sure that they could make the findings and the findings are looking at only on-site parking spaces okay so those ones that would potentially need to be eliminated were not considered at that time to count towards trail houses total required parking spaces that is correct um did you also work with trail house on the flow of the traffic coming in and out and specifically we heard from folks at trail house that they had designed the outdoor patio based on the flow of traffic coming in the opposite side for the purpose of the land use clearance if you will we did not discuss and that's not appropriate for land use determination but following land use determination that there was sufficient parking the applicant moves on to building permit plan check and if there's improvements to the site which there were us quite a bit of improvements to the landscaping and parking they work through the building permit process okay in the ordinance there's been some dispute and some of the public comment about the visibility of the the frontage of the dispensary from the public right of way can you address that issue yes so the front door would be visible from most vantage points to the right of the trail house obviously when you're directly in front of the trail house you're not going to see the the front door but it would be visible from vantage points to the west or to the right as you're facing and we have a street view that we can show if we can find the right slide here we go so this view shows so the garage just to the left of the garage door is where the entrance would be so basically from this vantage point to the west on Montgomery you'd be able to see the entrance great thank you Claire if this wasn't a cannabis facility would another retail operation be able to go in there by right or would they have to go through the same conditional use permit process most retail uses would be able to go in by right and they would have the same parking requirement of one space for every 250 square feet of floor area and would there be any level of recourse uh on a different type of retail use there would there still be an appeal process or something that the the business could go through not if it's a retail use that's allowed by right most retail uses are allowed by right in this zoning district the only discretionary review that there would be is if there were exterior modifications to the building design review would be required but that would address the aesthetics of the design of the building okay there was also a comment about the fuel storage tanks under the ground uh to be very candid i don't know what to do with that can staff try to walk through that with the council what that one if we have any information on that to what the implications of that actually are and three how we might proceed good evening members of the council gay bosborne deputy director of development services underground storage tanks unfortunately are part of construction it is fairly typical to run into them as part of modifications to older sites if those are uncovered if they're known the best bet is to avoid if there are installations that need to be performed to provide additional water service to the building which likely is the case in this situation that may be possible but if they are uncovered through excavation then the contractor is required to go through the normal process of disposing of any hazardous material so there is a process with our fire department and through our building permit to account for that if it's found in a field okay do we have any knowledge of whether or not tanks actually do exist there that would need remediation i personally do not um we would have to provide a perform additional research if there are monitoring wells on site those monitoring wells would be looking for something under the ground they would also be an piece of infrastructure that would need to be avoided but once again that's not that uncommon with older properties where they have a history of underground excavations okay and then i think this i think this is a question for the applicant what was brought up specifically about the parking spaces was the address that was specified in the w-trans report can you verify what address you're actually talking about for those parking spaces so that we can take a look at that so the four parking spots that are identified specifically in w-trans reporter it four three two five Montgomery Drive which is about a four-minute walk east of this property the two additional sites are parking spots are that have that we've been able to secure since then are actually closer um the our goal in in an off-site parking um uh condition would be to give us the flexibility to adjust over time um obviously Santa Rosa is moving towards being more transit and bike oriented and we don't want to uh have to always provide x number parking spots so we don't have x number of employees that are out there with that said the lease is for five years so we obviously see the you know medium term length related to that need and so staff i'm going to come back to you there was an insinuation in public comment uh that at that site the accommodation of those four parking spots would not be call it allowed because then it would drop that existing business below their parking requirement uh can you help us to walk through that a little bit so as we've indicated tonight the project meets the required number of parking spaces on site this is just surplus it's something that the applicant is offering in agreement with a private property owner in the vicinity we've not done an analysis of that site to determine and and answer that question specifically okay i'm going to listen a little bit to my colleagues that is a concern that i have is that it was a specific ask from the council to come back with it and i'd like to i need a little bit more information about the adequacy of that response on that uh that front council any additional questions you hit all the ones i was going to speak on um at this point since uh i would like for staff to explain the options that council has before it but i did hear from staff regarding this parking issue is that the applicant could offer that if i heard you correctly madam city attorney yes that's correct the applicant could offer uh that as a condition of approval and that would be then within the council's discretion to accept that and i'd like to go to the applicant are they are you willing to make that offer at this point yeah um if i could defer to bill rose to read it because he ran some draft text by us that is acceptable for us yeah so the draft text is as follows as present this would be a draft condition of approval as presented and volunteered by the applicant the applicant agrees as a condition of project approval to secure and maintain six off-site parking spaces for employees or subject to approval by the director the allowance of equivalent measures go ahead say with a live mic we agree to that condition thank you okay mr. tables did you have a question yeah i did um so one of the concerns that the trail house has is that you can put that in as a requirement for approval but once approved there's no enforcement mechanism is that correct that scenario there'd be no enforcement mechanism yeah that's correct so when it's a required parking space there's a different scenario you heard mentioned tonight it's through a conditional use permit process a covenant would be required and that has a different bearing to it these are not required spaces so that's why that process is not what what we would follow then one thing i would ask of the applicant is that you may want to not answer now talk to your team but would you be amenable to or open to it being a requirement on the conditional use permit so to clarify our understanding of this condition would be that if a complaint were filed against us so similar to any other business that may have gotten approved parking as a part of their plan that they're not utilizing for the public a complaint could be filed against us and with this condition the city can investigate confirm whether or not we were meeting it and revoke our conditional use permit if we were not meeting it so i believe that it has a little bit more force and i am hesitant to contradict mr rose but i'd seek staff to likely concur with me that it would be able to be used to enforce us uh the staff request if we could have a five minute break to discuss the specific we'll give you five minutes thank you thank you are we ready to resume yes rose yeah thank you mr mayor so what i'd like to do is just reiterate the condition i just read um it's true that can be a condition of approval of this use permit if the council pleases however it is a little bit more of a challenging condition in terms of enforcement so the enforcement would be complaint based go through the typical code enforcement process staff would receive that complaint we would evaluate it and what our threshold would be for compliance is the lease essentially because that's what that condition is effectively calling for i mentioned a few moments ago that when we see projects that propose off-site parking for required parking spaces the process is a little bit different it's through a conditional use permit which is before the council tonight so this is the right entitlement to attach this condition to but the difference is is that a covenant runs with that off-site property so a covenant is a promise it says yes these spaces will be available permanently for that intended use and i'm just going to read the section out of the zoning code for the council's reference required off-street parking shall be located on the same parcel as the use is served except with conditional use permit approval parking may be located on a parcel in the vicinity of the parcel served subject to a recorded covenant running with the land recorded by the owner of the parking facility it's the off-site site guaranteeing that the required parking will be maintained exclusively for the use or activity served for the duration of the use or activity so it locks in those spaces just for that use in this case foxed in so is our applicant so we support the condition as read by mr. Rose doing an off-site covenant for non-required parking isn't a part of the code this project is already providing more parking than the code requires we've gone through great lengths we've hired building permit level civil engineers in order to widen the space we've addressed and hopefully contributed to alleviating some of the parking restriction issues that were created by trailhouses parking reduction but there's only so much that a 1500 square foot retail facility can bear and still be a viable project an off-state covenant is a significant inexpensive process that doesn't that we are not able to pursue but we do approve of the condition as read by mr. Rose that we will maintain six off-site parking spots and or other equivalent measures in order to make sure that we don't have to have our employees park on site okay thank you mr. tibetian another question thank you mayor i just wanted to clarify what i just heard mr. rose if you will and thank you for looking that up i'm impressed that you just made that materialize yeah so if i'm understanding this correctly the the covenant or the deed restriction if you will would actually carry in this case with the parcel maintaining this the smog facility or any parcel actually so you could write it in this case that whatever parcel is providing that has to have that covenant and it's for exclusive use that's the primary reason for that so that's correct though help me understand what that would look like the applicant would go to the parcel with that holds the smog shop and say hey will you throw this on your deed yeah it runs with the property it goes on title is what it is so following up on that further you did say though it would be a possibility as part of the conditional use permit to just require foxtend to maintain a lease i mean i'm thinking they've got to always maintain a lease that is equal to or greater than the number of employees on site serving the facility and if that was ever not in compliance trailhouse for example you can see it getting abused could turn turn around call code enforcement and code enforcement could come out and basically verify that or at least investigate it and then determine if it was in violation or not that's correct and that was the first condition that i read and that condition also included language it said or equivalent measures so it could be the lease for these offsite parking spaces on the the smog shop or the other site or another site in the vicinity or some other equivalent measure but that is correct okay thank you okay are there any other questions from council seen then could someone please read what the options are because i see there's four separate options before mr tibbitz entertain a motion the options are to deny the appeal that has the effect of approving the project and the council would adopt the draft resolution that's included with the agenda packet council could amend that by adding findings to the resolution or conditions of approval to the resolution the second option is to uphold the appeal that would have the effect of denying the project we would ask council would state the findings it's relying on to to deny the application and direct staff to come back with a resolution memorializing the denial findings the third option is to continue the item with direction to the applicant or staff to return to the council or to the commission with the new information or additional changes and just as a note if there's a three to three vote either direction that's a lack of an affirmative action that would mean that the action of the planning commission stands great thank you for that with that mr tibbitz you have the for discussion purposes i'll move a resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa denying an appeal and approving a conditional use permit for fox den incorporated to operate a medicinal and adult use cannabis retail dispensary and delivery business within existing building located at 4036 montgomery drive assessors parcel numbers 013-284-012 file number c up 18-076 wait for the reading of the text second we have a motion and a second comments let's start on this side of actually mr soya you're up thank you mayor well ladies positions are always very difficult difficult and appeals are some of the more difficult situations that council members find themselves in what i do um in these situations when we have dueling consultants and dueling experts um i tend to defer to my city experts and i also have some philosophy that is important to that i have to respect as well i'll be voting tonight to deny the appeal and the reason is we have been spending a lot of time changing our our planning department to be whenever possible to be incredibly consistent and to offer fairness and dependability if you jump through the hoops and you receive you get your approvals and you receive your entitlements this applicant has gone through a redesign they've gone through the planning commission traffic engineers fire department building our chief building official the police department community meetings individually meetings with individuals and they have met the requirements of our zoning codes um i feel compelled to honor and respect the process that is in front of us this evening i do have concerns about because it's been mentioned so many times and something that i hope um is ultimately resolved one way or another either by use or that the reality concerns about the parking issue that they do not come to fruition um it is it is it could be a challenging place uh with two i'm with one very successful business and another business that hopes to be but our traffic engineer um has studied it and i know that he is not one that would suggest something that isn't possible i have a great delivery respect for all of our the employees that have touched this project and there have been many so i will again i will be voting to deny the appeal based on the recommendations from our planning commission and that of staff mr. Oliver's thank you thank you mayor um first of all i want to say that um the processes that we've developed and the guidelines rules etc ordinance related to cannabis was a very difficult process a long process uh myself councilmember soyer and councilmember rogers uh being being a part of that and it wasn't easy here from all sides to come up with something uh that would work for everyone but i remember having the discussion about how whatever we did had to as best possible uh be an ordinance that treated the industry the same as any other business there are some regulations obviously that we have to pay attention to but that was a major goal and in this case uh i see the applicant has gone from my perspective above and beyond trying to make some accommodations here uh the the issue related to the first issue related to the use it's clear from my experience that it that it meets the requirements the traffic issues i think have been clearly met uh in the same thing with the issues related to safety those have been addressed as well very clearly um and especially with the input from our own police department related to these types of uses so i will be denying the appeal mr rogers thank you mr mayor so for me the difficulty that i'm finding in deciding how to vote on this is looking at the findings that are required uh specifically finding c i'm having a hard time not saying that the design the location the size and operating characteristics of this new activity would not be compatible with the exit or would be compatible with the existing land use i think i talked about this a lot last time that uh it's not the fault of the applicant that there's an impact to parking that's on the site it is from the existing use from the success of trail house that has made the parking situation there uh and the issue for us to actually look at and my gut tells me that even with the traffic reports and the dueling traffic reports doesn't help that that we will be adding additional cumulative impacts to that site that are going to be harmful to the existing land use uh the part the flip side of that that is hard for me as well is understanding that any other retail space that went in there would have a an existing impact on the traffic also with no recourse from the trail house facility and from the surrounding businesses as well so that's why i've been really struggling to figure out which way to go on this one uh i know it's customary to announce how you're going to vote i'm leaning towards denying the appeal for that purpose uh that an existing uh an additional type of retail could come in have that same traffic impact whether uh this council approved it or not but i will say i am struggling to meet the finding here on c so i will continue to listen to to the other council members as well mr tibbetz thank you mr mayor um yeah this has been an interesting uh appeal for us to follow over the last few months now um i struggle with it too because i as a member of this council i always want to create an environment that if somebody's going to take the time the energy and the money to invest in this city invest in this process that we create that we vet no matter how flawed it may be uh that there is a modicum of relative certainty that they have a good shot at at making it and what i really reviewed uh what uh matt thank you from from the trail house you gave to me to to review i think you gave it to a few of us up here on a lot of these these criteria you know to me a b and c uh the project actually meets that criteria in my opinion i differ with my friend and colleague mr rogers on on item c because when i read that and i think about the land use designation to me that's not a subjective designation that's a specific designation of zoning that's how i interpret it uh where i keep tripping up is very clearly on d um to me when i read density and intensity of the use being proposed including access utilities in the absence of physical constraints this is where my my support for um denying the appeal starts to to get tripped up um and it's for the reasons that that mr rogers stated i mean i think that the success of the trail houses they've kind of created their own problem over there and to me i'm trying to visualize what 338 new cars coming through uh is going to look like uh but ultimately when i think about it as well it's my understanding of the presentation and my research is correct it's really only one parking site outside that that would be essentially used the rest would be inside so i'm also not seeing a change from the current use that's very significant um so you know one thing that i will probably if sue i probably should have done this when i was reading the the motion but i would like um the trail house to have some form of recourse uh in the event that that parking does become an issue you know the applicants have said and i appreciate that of the applicants a lot uh that they are looking at off-site parking um it's it's unconventional for us to kind of tag on those requirements to a business but it seems like we're doing it i would probably feel more comfortable if we did it so that way uh there's really i think in my mind a little bit more of a guarantee that there isn't going to be parking wars over at the trail house um so is it possible for me to withdraw the motion as i have or just amend that we we require a lease to be in effect for the the conditional use permit to be valid uh yes you may withdraw your motion um i don't recall who seconded it or wasn't it mr allie so i i would like to do that if my seconder um is okay with that that's the motion i'm putting forward is to deny any appeal uh but to uh require that this employee lease parking be on the conditional use permit thank you and that was the uh agreement that mr kassen had agreed to earlier i believe so yes waiting there we go i learned the red light uh yes as read by mr os thank you then yes and and that's it for me thank you mayor okay so we're clear we have a motion yes if you could state the motion councilmember tibbetz sure so it's we've we've got all the resolution of the council part but i guess what i would be adding and i will also look to bill if you'd like i just read it into the record you can accept it okay as presented and volunteered by the applicant the applicant agrees as a condition of approval of project approval to secure and maintain six off-site parking spaces for employees or subject to approval by the director the allowance of equivalent measures i think that's satisfactory thank you as amended um actually i would recommend that you state the resolution title and indicate with the um suggested amendment sure i move a resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa denying an appeal and approving a conditional use permit for foxtent incorporated to operate a medic a medicinal and adult use cannabis retail dispensary and delivery business within an existing building located at 4036 munkum redrive assessors parcel number 013-284-012 file number c up 18-076 um as amended with the language of of mr rose if you'd read it for the record sure i'd be happy to read it and we actually have one additional recommended condition it's a clarification so the the condition related to the parking i'll reread it as presented and volunteered by the applicant the applicant agrees as a condition of project approval to secure and maintain six off-site parking spaces for employees or subject to approval by the director the allowance of equivalent measures the suggested clarification also has to do with a condition of approval of approval number two in your draft resolution that's referencing compliance with all conditions of approval identified in planning commission resolution number 11935 adopted on january 24th 2019 approving a conditional use permit for cannabis retail dispensary and delivery for medicinal and adult use except condition of approval number two shall reference august 2nd 2019 as the date of the plans referenced so there's a new set of plans and we want to make sure the date is correct i appreciate and accept that and i also waive for the reading of the text second okay we all have nodding heads here with my chair okay miss vice mayor thank you i appreciate all the work that has gone into this and i think i differ from my council members a little bit in that i i don't see a major priority issue on the parking the safety sure is is really important and i'm glad to know that there will be additional safety measures and i can think of multiple places where you enter you drive past to enter anyway i think that it's going to be fine i think that many big cities deal with issues like this and that this is part of us growing up we have a great need for revenue both from the trail house we have a great need for preschool spaces and i said my child to a preschool i would be very happy to send my child to your preschool if you can't have enough kids enroll in it i highly doubt that that's going to be a problem given how many kids we have waiting for preschool spaces we need to grow up as a city and part of that means that parking wars need to become passe and frankly we just spent a few hours on something that i think is part of our growing pains and i'm sorry for all of the heartburn that he gives everybody and i'm not unsympathetic to it but i do think that we need to to move forward cannabis is a tier two priority childcare is a tier two priority these are things that we care about and i weigh them carefully and the other thing that i weigh is that i think it's extremely unfair to ask a business to go through all of these steps and wait over a year to do this and then to deny it i'm going to defer to staff's recommendation and deny this this appeal thank you yeah for me going back to april you know when you said january of 2019 is when the planet commission voted 5-0 in support of this project um my hope was after april and it's worked with other projects you guys work it out because um my hope would have been it could have been a win-win in fact when i spoke with matt and glenn that's what i asked them do we see a win-win unfortunately they didn't see one but i think these two could be compatible um and i know mr roger is one of the comments you made when staffs talked about by right any another use could go in there would have more traffic than this because i don't have the concerns about the cannabis it's a legitimate retail establishment in the city san rosa and so i think staff we've done enough i'd be supporting what the motion is on so with that we have a motion and a second your votes please and the motion passes with five eyes mr roger's voting no so the appeal is denied so with that thank you all for your participation we'll take approximately a 20 minute recess for a meal break okay let's resume our city council meeting mr city manager report item 16.1 16.1 report resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa acknowledging receipt of a report made by the santa rosa fire chief regarding compliance with sections 131 for 6.2 and 131 for 6.3 of the california health in safety code ian heartage assistant fire marshal presenting thank you council members um this report comes on the heels of the ghost ship fire and the losses suffered there um it was the deadliest fire since the 2003 station fire and the deadliest fire in california since 1906 based on the losses of these of these high death rate fires the state has mandatory inspections that are required by all fire departments within the state of california and based on this requirement the senate with sb 1205 decided that we needed to have a mandatory reporting to our governing bodies on our services that we provide for those inspections this is that report this is the first year that the state has required agencies to provide this report we're reporting on the 2018 calendar year and we'll be back to you hopefully shortly after the new year with 2019 the reporting requirements are for all group e and group our occupancies as identified in the sb 1205 legislation a group e occupancy is a an educational occupancy for six or more through the 12th grade our occupancies that are state regulated are our one our twos which are hotels motels and apartments also mentioned in the state legislation are care facilities so all of those uh occupancies are provided in the staff report and the completion rate that we provided so in the city of san rosa we have 60 known e occupancies and we have 862 known group our occupancies in 2018 fire fire department staff completed 88 percent of our group ease within the calendar year the 12 months and 95 percent of our group ours january of the very next year we were at 97 and 99 percent completion and a couple straggling inspections were completed by uh may 31st of 2019 to complete out the 100 percent based on our our learnings of going through this exercise and providing you this report we're already making changes to the scheduling of those inspections so that we're front loading them a little further in the year at the beginning of the year so that we don't have those stragglers you know taking us over that 12 month period so that we will hopefully be able to report 100 percent within the calendar year for 2019 but if not certainly for 2020 do you have any questions council any questions see none do we have any cards mr all there is you have this um thank you a little resolution of the council seat of san rosa acknowledging receipt of a report made by the fire chief of the fire department regarding compliance with section 13146.2 and 13146.3 of the california health and safety code and wait for the read of the text second the motion is second any other comments all right your votes please and that results in six yeses thank you so much for the presentation thank you very much mr mcglenn item 16.2 16.2 report council vacancy appointment procedure and schedule sue gallagher city aterna and and dina manis acting city clerk presenting good evening mr mayor and council member i know members i know it's getting late so uh we are going to i'm going to outline our steps forward in light of our council vacancy as you know council member combs resigned from the council she announced that a couple of weeks ago and her resignation was effective on November 25th section 31 of our charter provides that the vacancy may be filled either by appointment by the council within 60 days of the vacancy or by the calling of a special election i'm going to walk through the various options and the various steps for each of those options for the special election pursuant to section 30 of our charter the special election is governed by the state elections code state elections code requires that a special election be held on a designated election day date those dates are the second tuesday in march the second tuesday in april or the second tuesday in november so those are the three choices it's actually the second tuesday after the first monday of each of those months but um so with that end the election has to be called at least 114 days in advance of the election given that the earliest election date that you could call would be the april 14th 2020 election the city clerk acting city clerk has spoken with the sonoma county registrar of voters um and has received an estimated cost of the that election the estimated cost is the range is between 180 almost 185 thousand to a little over 323 thousand the difference depends on whether there are any other items that go on to that ballot at this point there is there are no other items on the april 2020 ballots so the city at this point would be bearing the entire cost of that election to meet the deadline for an april election you this council would have to call the special election by december 22nd so if you are going to be inclined to go that direction we will ask that you give direction to staff to come back later in december probably december 17th to allow you to call that election your other option is to have the council itself appoint someone to fill the vacancy and that process is governed by a council policy number 00023 that council policy was originally enacted adopted by the council in 1988 and it had some clarifying amendments i think it was 2007 and 2013 but i did want to clarify that that policy has been in existence for some time and it sets forth a seven step process um you adopt a schedule you prepare the application form you close the application period and release the names of the applicants uh you prepare interview questions you hold the interviews you vote and then you formally appoint so step one um and my thought is unless there's an objection i will walk through all of the steps and then i'll come back and we'll go through the decision points that were where we need council action so step one is the adoption of um of the schedule and the council policy 00023 and i'll just refer to it as a policy going forward uh requires that the council uh adopt the appointment schedule at the earliest possible date and the schedule um has to include um sorry a schedule must set forth the time and the date for applications um the the application period when it opens when it closes the time and date for submission of interview questions by the public the public's going to have an opportunity to submit proposed questions and then finally the date for applicant interviews uh to take place at all at a at a public meeting and i would note that um well let me move to the next slide and then well i'll talk about that the six staff has suggested a schedule for the process and the proposal is that the application period would open at noon tomorrow uh that gives us an opportunity to make any adjustments to the application if you decide to uh to propose any revisions and then it would close two weeks later december 18th at five p.m we would look to have the public submission of proposed interview questions begin also tomorrow but at eight a.m. and run for 12 days closing monday december 16th at five p.m. and then we would propose that interviews take place in january january 7th um beginning at four p.m. and then continuing into january 8th if necessary um you're of course free to we'll we'll talk more but we'll be free to adjust those dates as you as you choose um i put up the calendar just to make it a little more visual in terms of what that means so concurrently the submission of public questions and concurrently submission of applications but the application period going a little bit longer the reason for that is is that um we are looking to have questions and the applications all together that week because in the following week we go into the holidays so um it's going to be give staff more time to work on and pulling that together and just to couple on that there still would be work happening on the holiday or on the holidays to get to a january 7th additional pushing of that date pushes us really quick you know we will not be able to meet at january 7th eighth deadline so i just want to emphasize that that that pushing those dates then causes a rolling effect and gets you closer to the date where you have to make a decision and just cause challenges with your january calendar yes and i and i want to make two two additional notes um one is that um what is the actual full time that you have the 60 days the 60 days and that would be for the final appointment of someone would be on january 24th so that's kind of the last day that you could act after that you would need to call for a special election i also want to note that under this schedule because the interviews are going to happen in early january you will have already missed the deadline for an april special election so if you want to try to leave your there's there's really no way for us to to do it to give you time to go through an appointment process and still give you time for the april election that means if you are unable to make a decision on an applicant and you have had the interviews in any time in in january you'll be looking at a november 2020 election which negates the need for a special election because you'd be having would be having the new district election at that time step two is the application form and staff has prepared the application forms city clerk has prepared that and that is in among the materials with the staff report the policy requires that the application include three questions a statement of your background statement of qualifications and a statement of why you wish to be appointed the application also according to the policy has to include a nomination form that has valid signatures of at least 20 registered voters from san aroza i will note that the policy allows voters to sign more than one nomination form so it's not and not exclusive now the application also must be accompanied by the completed form 700 the statement of economic interest and then the council can provide additional questions if if they would like again the suggested application form is attached to the staff report includes all all of the elements of the policy and it also includes eight additional questions it was thought that those additional questions do provide you some helpful information when you evaluate the candidates and those actual those eight questions mirror those that were used in the application in 2013 the most recent vacancy just on that except for the one we added about districts because in 13 there was not districts that's that's correct and we asked about districts we included the district questions simply up up at the top that you identify your address and and identify also that the district in which you live that's really just for your information councilmember combs was an at-large councilmember her position remains an at-large position so an applicant can come from anywhere in the city step three the disclosure of applications the step three is really when the application period ends no information can be released before the application period closes once the application period closes though then the applications become public and the identity of the applicants will be released and and the applications themselves will be available for review at the clerk's office step four is developing the interview questions pursuant and there's two pieces to this first is questions are submitted by the public and then we'll get to part b is the advanced questions that the council can can draft the questions that the policy requires that you allow the public to submit proposed interview questions those again we were having those submissions done concurrently with the application period following closure of the application period then those proposed questions are forwarded to all of the council members and all of the canny council member may at their discretion use any of those questions during the interview itself the other piece of questions for applicants is that the council by motion may choose to present questions additional questions to the applicant in advance of the interviews again there are already the three policy questions and then the eight additional questions in the application itself application form itself but you may choose choose to present additional questions to applicants in advance and you may choose to have the applicants either answer those questions in writing prior to the interview or to simply provide a verbal response during the interviews those questions the mayor may appoint an ad hoc to put those questions together or you can allow all of the council members to suggest questions we then moved to step five which is the council interview itself those interviews take place in a public meeting each applicants interviewed separately each applicant is given the opportunity to make a brief opening statement excuse me and and to respond to any advanced questions if advanced questions have been given and if they haven't already been answered in writing after that opening piece each council member then has the opportunity to question the applicant and the policy the way the policy is written is on any subject he or she feels is relevant to that applicants qualifications so it's quite broad that all be getting being given though there there are and i will caution the legal questions there are restrictions i will at that time when we get close to the interviews i know you all know those but i'll send a reminder as to areas that you should not delve into and given kind of that broad opening the policy does provide that the council may by a majority vote place either eight or both a time limit on each interview or limit the number of questions that each council member asks after the interviews are completed we go through a voting procedure it is by through a process of elimination in the first round each council member shall vote for three applicants although the policy allows council members the council may allow for four votes per council member if there are more than 10 applicants at each round those applicants receiving one vote or less are eliminated and in each subsequent round the council members vote for one fewer applicant than in the prior round until each council member is only voting once in that final round the applicant that receives four votes shall be appointed to the vacancy step seven is the appointment and the policy says that the council by resolution may appoint the applicant that receives four more votes in the final round if no applicant receives four votes then the council may adopt such other procedures as it deems appropriate for the appointment so the policy is wide open at that point of how you might go about selecting someone and again if no appointment is is made within the 60 days that is by January 24th then a special election must be called but again at that point special election would be in November and of no particular use the other the final two notes that i would make is that the successor will serve for the duration of council member combs's term and that term ends in December 2020 and again i had already mentioned that hers is in that large position so anyone from anywhere in the city can be can submit an application and can be selected so before i go to the recommendation what i'd like to do is to the recommendation is simply to approve for the council by motion to approve the procedure and schedule fulfilling the city council vacancy created by the resignation of council member julie combs i'll note now go back and go through each of the decision points i'm happy to answer any questions before i do that dealing before we do that mr rogers yes a couple of questions one hypothetically in the event that we did an appointment and we're not able to then come up with somebody by the 60 days is it required that that name still go on the ballot for November because my understanding is that the date that we would certify the election from November would be the date that that seat is disappearing anyway yes it would be my opinion that we would not need to place names on the November ballot to fill the vacancy given that the November ballot will that that seat will no longer exist at the time of the once the election is certified okay and then just from a procedural standpoint for the process of voting for a replacement does the ordinance say that the council shall vote for three or may vote for three the policy you know let me um because we have when we do appointments and we do it through this process of elimination there have been times where council members choose to only vote for one or two and i'm wondering what the ordinance actually says yeah the the um and again it's a council policy rather than the ordinance but um it says each council member shall vote for three applicants okay thank you sure um were you there questions yeah miss washman so correct me if i'm wrong has there ever been an instance in which the vacancy has not been filled not that i'm aware of not in those the the three that i'm aware of they were all they were filled for some reason i thought there might have been one that wasn't filled yeah um there may have been one in the past but i not to my knowledge okay can we one of the options in terms of limiting the questions was not this one but i'm wondering if we can do it can we limit the amount of time each council member has instead of the amount of questions uh yes i i don't see any reason that you could not do that to my mind that might be a little bit more realistic and moving through the process right one of the difficulties in that is um i i guess the council member would have uh could ask as many questions as they could get answers from the applicant and the applicant may go on longer than the time period grant and we would it be possible to advise the applicant that they have that much time with that particular council member certainly yeah and would the council member be able to cede their time those are all decisions those are it more quickly yeah those are all decisions that the council can decide um also should the if the mayor determines to appoint an ad hoc for development of the the advanced questions that ad hoc could also be the council could delegate these questions also to the ad hoc so two different thank you two different paths any other mr tivitz thank you i wanted to follow up on um vice mayor phleming's question is does the charter require us to govern with seven or is governing with six an option governing it with six is an option the um charter does i i'm going to look at the exact language um yes if the the the way the charter reads is that if the council fails to fill a vacant council vacancy within 60 days after it occurs the council shall then call a special election so you're technically under the charter required to call the special election but again it would be and it would be an exercise in futility um if it wasn't done before uh December 22nd so but it sounds like your interpretation would be the spirit of the charter is that we need to fill so i think this the spirit of the charter is that the vacancy should be filled um but there is not a requirement and if um if you are unsuccessful uh then you would be operating as a sixth member council for uh there for the almost a full year okay and i think the essential question that the the city attorney is going to go back to is what path are you choosing and so the intent is to fill the particular path are you going to call special election because you still do have time to call special election for april or are you going to proceed down a path of of soliciting for replacement that appointment process would effectively cancel out a special election in april but i think the intent is to fulfill to try to fill the seat you're going to have that critical question in front of you in a second about that initial pathway and that's what i was can we yes let's let's ask the first question are there any questions about it because i think this is what we have to decide to do a special election or an interview process are there any questions for the city attorney on what the special election i would ask the council at this point to make that decision that choice of whether and you can do that by motion and a vote whether you wish to proceed by way of calling a special election in which case we'll come back december 17th with that item or if you want to move forward with the appointment process mr. Rogers i have you having this item you ready to make a motion yeah i will uh don't have it in front of me i will make a motion that the council uh follow this the staff recommendation and pursue an appointment of our uh replacing our council member second we have a motion and a second any additional comments your votes then please in that passes with six eyes thank you for that reminder uh do we have any cards on that item okay dwayne duit no dwayne susan lamont she spoke earlier so all the public comment all right with that do you want to go through the other steps or do you want me to share with my thoughts um either way well let me just give some thoughts to my colleagues with the appointment by council it is my intent to um name an ad hoc committee to actually um select the questions that we would be posing to any of the applicants or candidates um so actually i could just name it now right in the point it since we're going in this direction yes you may so the um my ad hoc committee would be myself the vice mayor and council member soyer and our intent will be to select the questions and i would also offer the the time frames as to to your question earlier not knowing how many applicants we have i i think once we given the timeline that you shared earlier after the date of all the applications we'll know how many applicants there are we'll have an idea of the questions from the public and then our ad hoc committee will make some suggestions for a motion vote for the council is that the way yes that sounds that sounds appropriate um let me go back though because we do have to do a couple of motions one is for the uh suggested schedule um again what we are proposing i'll actually put it to the calendar is to open the application period and the period to submit for the public to submit questions open that tomorrow uh december 4th um 8 a.m. for submission of questions and noon for submission of or for um uh yes to open the application period at noon tomorrow and then to close a period for submission of public questions on the 16th monday and then to close the application period on the 18th and then we would be you would be in a position would be in a position to pull the materials together for you to be able to have an ad hoc committee meeting before christmas so so i do want to ask a clarifying point mr. mayor are you saying that you would have a meeting with the council to ratify the decisions or are you asking this sub the ad hoc to make those determinations because there's not currently a meeting scheduled before the 7th and 8th i would like to do whatever's consistent with our council policy and so if the ad hoc can make those that would be my intent that the the three of us would make those yes the ad hoc um the ad hoc under the policy the ad hoc can uh draft the questions to be answered uh in advance either in advance in writing or at the interview and i would ask that the council um this evening affirm that the ad hoc may also address the issue of the time limits for the interviews themselves time limits or limits on the number of questions but i think the first step will be is this schedule and then to have the interviews on january 7th is this schedule acceptable to council or are there any changes can i make a brief suggestion regarding the question opening period can we align that for noon tomorrow instead of 8am in the efforts to put an online portal available yes for the middle of those questions thank you mr rogers and just as a question for the city manager right along those lines is staff prepared if the council does approve of the application tonight is staff prepared to have that up on the website and available by noon um i believe that is the case yes great thank you would you like to make a motion yeah i will first the schedules yeah i will also make a motion to accept the proposed schedule opening the application process as well as the question process tomorrow december 4th at noon and closing the public comments or the public questions portion on monday the 16th and closing the application period on wednesday the 18th of december and and having the interviews on january 7th beginning january 7th correct and beginning the interviews on january 7th and completing them whenever we're done very good and just to clarify that that was a 5 p.m closing for those on those dates correct close of business for the city hall and mr did you second that okay we'll motion a second any additional comment your votes please and that passes unanimously very good the next step is the application form and so we'd ask if you are comfortable or desire any changes to the application form that was attached to the staff report mr rogers yeah i see no additional changes that i would make so i will move for the council to adopt the proposed application form yep everything is consistent with what we've done so far second we have motion to second any additional comments your votes please then motion whoa rump roll maybe one of the requirements to be that you can use this the system and that passes unanimously and in terms of the advanced questions um the mayor has indicated uh that he will appoint and has appointed the ad hoc committee to draft the advance questions i'm not sure though whether we've had the council as a whole the policy requires a council as a whole to decide whether or not advanced questions will be posed and whether those questions should be responded to in writing or at the interviews verbally if you would like to um refer that question those two questions also to the ad hoc you may do that i think i'll make a motion uh that the ad hoc create questions uh that the applicant has the opportunity to respond to verbally in the interviews uh as a advance heads up for them and that the council members would still retain the ability to ask any pertinent question that they need at the january seventh meeting second any additional questions that's already with the time limits portion for the ad hoc authority be a second separate motion yeah okay any other questions okay your votes please and that passes unanimously and so now the delegation to the ad hoc of the decision to place a time limit or the limit on the number of questions asked and the proposal has been to to have that delegated to the ad hoc as well mr rogers i'm thinking about what the motion will be uh i move that the council have an opportunity to weigh in uh at the start of that process on whether or not we need a time limit second yeah discussion if i can start with what process what the the start of the interview process so that we have as a body of six have a discussion about whether or not we need to have a time limit rather than it just coming out from the ad hoc without input from other council members mr tibet thank you mayor the reason why like it is a concept is it allows us to kind of take stock and how many applicants we have and then make a time assessment in that moment whereas if i'm sitting on the council and not the ad hoc i would have concerns if the ad hoc said we're going to allow 10 minutes for every applicant and we have four applicants because i just want to make sure that the council has enough time to ask questions and the applicant has enough time to respond mr soror thank you that was my con i figured that's where you were going that it would be dependent on the uh reality of how many applicants we had correct be able to make an informed decision yeah not that i don't trust the ad hoc news vice mayor what would you think about um the council weighing in and the ad hoc making a recommendation on based on a couple of different scenarios of different uh applicant pool sizes i think that that's appropriate okay and i could include that in the motion if if the city attorney would prefer yes i one the one comment that i would make from a staff perspective is that if we are going to um as you have affirmed um have the interviews on january seventh um it would be helpful in scheduling the interviews to be able to tell people when their interview slot is which we can't do if we don't know until that day how long each interview will be i recognize entirely that the length of the interviews will may depend in in significant part on the number of applications that are received so if you received i think last time maybe there were 14 applicants 17 applicants you're going to have a shorter period than if you only have four um and perhaps the council could simply give some guidance to the ad hoc tonight um because we won't have another full council meeting before the application period is closed on the 18th you know other options i mean you know what i guess some of the other options would be we could just tell everybody to arrive at you know at four o'clock and that we'll go through them as as we go through them and let them know what the order is going to be we could hold a special meeting to um have you decide um uh the time limits let me amend my motion okay so i will move to allow the ad hoc to make that determination about the timing uh my suggestion would be though that if a time limit is imposed it's a time limit per council member to ask questions not an overall time limit on the individual interview i want to make sure when i'm done grilling somebody that other council members have time left to do this thing right and i understand i i think we understand that but i think we also want to make sure there's flexibility so that we can actually schedule folks so i'm a little concerned about overall time limit i think to your point having equity is that where you're striving at equity in the questions and the response times right since i haven't heard a second on that yet let me just provide a little information about my thoughts on this i see there's a variety of different opportunities for each candidate you know having done dozens if not hundreds of interviews you know an opening comment we'll probably have some i can see again this is without talking with my colleagues on the ad hoc but a series of questions that we ask the same ones for each and then each council member will get depend upon the time you get five minutes you get you know ask whatever you want from that frame in mind wrap around closing comments and time frame so for me i mean i want us to have as much information as we need to make the best possible decision the reality is if we have 17 you start working that out i know i some people so let's give them an hour that's 17 hours interviews if it's like last time so i know for me as a member of the ad hoc my interest is i think to meet all of our expectations we all have that same time frame whatever questions you want to ask but you're going to go i think at some point we have to say you got five minutes every council member has five minutes right and i'm fine with that so miss vice mayor did you have any comments or yeah i i'm with you um mr roger's about wanting to provide um you know some amount of of fairness i mean tons of all the fairness in it my concern is that if we if we don't put a limit on it that's firm we can't schedule and then staff can't prepare and then if we have 30 applicants you know that we're just gonna it's gonna be a train wreck and i and i get that my perspective is that we have an obligation to get it right not get it fast and so i don't want arbitrarily put a limit on it that doesn't allow us to actually get the answers we need to have the public be informed all of us up here went through lengthy campaigns where the public was able to ask questions was able to get responses that they wanted and we'll be filling this position with somebody who has the same authority in voting that the rest of us have without any type of vetting so what i don't want to do is limit it in a way that hinders our ability to actually ascertain somebody's ability to do the job and i think that that's that's understood and appreciated mr tivitz thank you yeah that that was the point i wanted to make i really i appreciate that you know staff you're being sensitive to these applicants time but the the fact of the matter is for me to sit up here you got to go through a process and and if that means that you got to sit through 10 other people going through you know what their answers are then then you got to do that i don't want us to artificially as chris said limit ourselves and our ability to procure the answers on behalf of the public that the public as we all know is going to expect us to ask and determine so you know my position on this whole thing is is if we are supposed to basically make this decision on behalf of the public let's allow ourselves the time to do that now i trust ultimately that the ad hoc is going to make good time determinations but i would feel more comfortable that the ad hoc bring back a recommendation based on the number of of applicants that there are but ultimately the council votes to set the time i again i don't foresee this being the case where the ad hoc would come back and say well we have 17 applicants we're determining 10 minutes for each person if that were the case i would say well wait a minute i i want to ask at least 10 minutes worth of questions of this person and and i think the public is expecting that of of me and all of us up here so i just want to that day be able to make that final determination as a council because time is going to be important because of the information also i i really appreciate the processes we go through in interviewing people up in the mayor's conference room but i mean if this is going to resemble anything like that i will be completely dissatisfied with the process of putting somebody up here yes the the process does have to take place in open session and and and certainly the council wants to have sufficient time to to ask questions of each applicant so certainly so any other comments you're at your mr shawyer no i'm not on this item i'm on this piece so mr rogers could you state your motion let's see if we get a second so the motion is for the ad hoc to uh go off and bring us a recommendation uh at the at the commencement of the actual interviews on whether or not a time restriction is warranted uh and what that time restriction would be the council would then adopt or deny that recommendation okay is there a second to that i'll second that so my first question would be so you're suggesting that conversation would happen on january 7th it'd be the the first item that we would do before we begin the interviews right on january 7th correct okay mr i swear would it be acceptable if we share our recommendation with staff or is it even legal legal for us to share our recommend i can wait um is it would it be legal for us to share our recommendation with staff the subcommittee recommendation on link prior to that meeting so that in an attempt to and of course the council can override it and say no we don't like that and we want to do something different for the motion on the floor but can we go ahead and share it like let's say we say it's 45 minutes per candidate can we share it with you so you can attempt to schedule the candidates and the staff time and then if it gets overridden well that's what happens a campaign is you know time consuming and not very pretty uh yes we would um we would anticipate that you would share that with staff in order to help us even schedule yes schedule our own time but also applicants at least give a sense of of timing um but yes you could come you could come in on the 7th and and and make different decisions um and i may get i may get slugged by the um by the city manager but i mean the other option is that you have you you have a special meeting at some point after that the applications are all here um but we need to set that meeting if we're going to do that we need to set that meeting tonight and everyone has to commit to participating in that meeting tonight so that that's the problem that we're running on a very thin calendar here so it's not it's not an issue about that executing that staff will make it available but we need to get it locked down tonight so if we're going to have a special meeting we should schedule that special meeting this evening my sense my sense is this is that the subcommittee is going to go to great length to do whatever we think is going to be acceptable and highly reasonable to the council and i really hope that we don't need a special meeting in that what we you know it's like when your mom says which half of the cookie you want and one sibling gets to break it in half another one gets to pick i mean so i'm hopeful that we take that philosophy that if we screw it up you know we're going to be greatly inconveniencing ourselves and staff but i would still urge that if this is going to be the the measures that we that we schedule a special meeting and then we could relax that's suspend that special meeting because we didn't need it i would rather approach it from that reason that i worded the uh motion the way that i did is i'm not interested in having a special meeting i just want to provide some level of assurance for council members that your input will be heard uh and i like i said i trust the ad hoc to make a good decision but i also want us to just approve it uh whether we're going to do a time limit or not at that point based on their recommendation not in a special meeting and i believe so just with the time less the way's been laid out either the 19th or 20th or maybe the 23rd of december would be the ad hoc's meeting the ad hoc at the conclusion of that meeting by then we'd have all the questions and we'd know how many applicants the ad hoc could do a vote and do the recommendation staff could act on that recommendation with the understanding that on january 7th members of the entire council can say that doesn't work for us we're going to change it that's way i was correct mr alvarez as a point of reference what process was used last time was forest timing part pardon the last time we went through this process with the vacancy what process was used forest timing of the interviews there was a time limit and i don't recall i don't know if the city clerk recalls i mean the question to me is what is the ideal amount of time to get the information that we need from from the applicants so that the community can hear them because it it seems to me that it's a little bit of a disservice when you're saying that if we only had four well gee i wish i had more than 10 minutes 10 minutes seems a little bit short to me for from my perspective but if you have 20 uh you're going to shorten it down right so i think you can miss something by shortening things down arbitrarily you know because you may have a really solid candidate out there that you weren't even less questions of because we only had sorry we only have 10 minutes for a view but if you there's only four of you we could ask you a question for 20 minutes and got a lot more made a better decision uh this is a very important decision so i think we need to have some kind of a framework to work with and they should know to put themselves in a frame of mind okay how long am i going to be standing up here answering different questions that don't have to be work on brevity or not so i think it's it's it's relevant to see what we did the last time in the previous council vacancy appointment they had 15 minute interviews scheduled and they ran relatively on time i think by the end of the evening there was a little bit of back and forth some interviews ran shorter some ran a little bit longer but they originally scheduled it in 15 minute increments yeah i was surprised when i heard that too mr rogers uh from a process standpoint so will each of these interviews be scheduled in a way where the public comment is on each individual interview or will it be an aggregate at the end i hadn't thought that through but i would say it's going to be at the aggregate at the end okay uh if i could make a suggestion i know we're we're still laying out the process let's try to provide a public comment opportunity up front and then one at the end if that's the way that we're going to go um because i could also see if we have 30 applicants uh and say it's 10 hours of interviews i don't know i could see the public uh not feeling heard if they don't have an opportunity to weigh in for 10 hours and just my feedback from the mayor perspective i'd be very open to having it both pre and post and that would be certainly be obviously permissible so and the the public would have had the opportunity to have reviewed the applications the written applications so they would also have that basis for making comment for clarification oh sorry um for clarification on that point for guarding the public comment in the event that the application or the interviews roll into the second day would that be also on the second day at the beginning of that interview period and at the end of that my intent would be let's say it's item 15.1 public comment before we know because we know it's going to be interviews and when we're at the end of we've heard done all the interviews whether it's four days later or the same day and we'll have another public comment at the conclusion of those because i mean for me the reason behind that if you're going to make comment you want to hear everyone's and that might be as long as it takes for what i've been hearing here so with that let's call the question and could you restate your motion and then we'll the motion is for the ad hoc to bring a recommendation to the full council at the beginning of the item on january 7th uh with a recommendation on whether or not to impose a time limit and what the time limit might look like for approval of the council second okay we for the comments your votes please and that passes with five i's one no uh mr alvarez voting no m city attorney do we have more questions that we need to answer not at this time this these that gets us going on the process and once the interviews take place there'll be some more decision points obviously but for this evening i think we have the direction that we need all right thank you very much for that thank you mr sire this would be the time for for me to complicate things somewhat sorry about that um there there were some lessons learned at least one that i remember from the last process of interviews and selections and that was that the council members or the the applicants had an opportunity while sitting in the in the in this chamber to hear the questions and to see the responses of the council members to those questions to get a flavor of exactly what the where the council members were going um my my request would be that the applicants be sequestered um somewhere outside of this this chamber and that they'd be requested not to they can't i mean we can't force them i don't think we can even force them out of the chamber um but that of course could weigh in on how we make our decisions about those individuals but i think it's unfair uh in in the spirit of parody to you know rarely do you have a room full of applicants and every applicant gets to hear the questions submitted to the first one and and along down the line so um how do we and there may be who i don't know there may even be another couple of recommendations that might come down um from our experience in the past that we might want to put before the council for a decision how might that happen if they if they so we could we could do on what we could do the one i just mentioned potentially this evening but what if there are other recommendations that that came before the subcommittee ad hoc you would need to schedule a special meeting because if you look at the timetables that you've approved you're not going to get the the subcommittee ad hoc it's not going to get to look at the questions because we're going to need to compile the questions the closing date is the 16th the closing date of the application period is the 18th there's no council member so there's no formal council meeting scheduled between then and the 7th so if you have questions that you want to vet for the full body to vet you're going to need to schedule a meeting of the council before and give us time to then respond to that instruction so you're looking to schedule an additional meeting at some point in the calendar between the the 18th and the 7th and i would just remind the council that i think that this is a little different than the last time because unfortunately the way the calendar is falling is this is happening in the midst of the holiday season and so we need some prep time to be able to respond to changes so i just that's why i was saying if we're going to go that route council member i would be highly advising the council to set that meeting if we don't need the meeting then we can always release everybody but for planning purposes i'm going to if you if your desire is to have a full meeting of the council to run through some scenarios we're going to need to schedule that this evening unless we just left it at that one issue that could be considered this evening as one of the requirements of our candidates if you want to have that conversation tonight and flush that out yes but you're not going to be able to see the the issue seems to be a lot about how many applicants you have how we would how many we would sequester that starts to get into it if you're getting into the the numbers that we're floating getting 17 applicants and figuring how you sequester 17 applicants that's going to be depending on how long the question period goes that that is you may want to start earlier in the day not later in the day so that you're starting at not what we're scheduling right now which is 4 p.m. to start because we were you know part of the proposal on that was to make it a regular council meeting making sure people were available if they had work commitments so that we could start working into that conversation but again i'm not sure how to answer that question because we're not we don't have all those variables and we won't have those variables until the closing of the application period if i can just make a comment because i i have some of the same concerns because i don't think it's fair to the first candidate versus the 10th candidate and i think and i'd be interested in hearing my colleagues think or you say we're asking each candidate not to listen to any of the other candidates interviews and a question that i would be you know maybe during my time i would ask did you listen we asked you not to do it did you listen it's almost like being on jury duty where judges say you know don't listen listen or read any newspaper they don't sequester on 24 7 unless the most significant cases but i would think that would be a legitimate because i have that expectation because i don't think it's i share your concern mr. Sawyer and even just putting a question like that we're asking you not to do it we should have room available somewhere on this you know city parking lot somewhere where we can have a person should they have no other options but then that'd be a question i'd be more than happy to ask did you listen mr. Tibbets thank you mr. mayor you know i i hope we don't need it but i'm thinking out of an abundance of caution we should set a special meeting date and if the ad hoc feels confident that we don't need it then we don't need it but so what i'd like to do is i'm going to make a motion you all can vote it down of course but shan what what day is would you recommend you all need to check your calendars that's that's what i would recommend doing right now because i again knowing what the lead time is i mean we're talking either the probably the 30th or the 31st to hold a special meeting because i'm hearing some really great concerns here and i and i share them and i definitely share an esto's concern about uh having enough time to to really vet these candidates i i just don't want this to be a rush process and so i i would suggest maybe if there's if i see nodding heads well the the other option is to push it later into january um but that means that the stuff you've scheduled to handle in january will have to be postponed i guess i would ask the council if there's any interest in a special meeting i i offer my support for one should it be needed miss leming i have a couple of questions one is is it possible if we were to push it a week to do the stuff that we're going to do the next week earlier or is it already noticed no we we have consultants that are flying in on the 14th so the 14th wouldn't be permissible we would have to really look at the calendar and make it further determination and we'd have to come back on the 17th with proposed the second set of proposed dates because i can't do that on the fly my other question was for mr soyer you said that there were a problem was a problem that candidates heard the answers that people gave to them before and i was wondering just we've all been candidates before and we all hear the answers and it's all kind of random you know it's the pick of the draw you know you know we we ran together and you know you get asked the same question than i get asked it and then may our sweat home gets asked it i mean you know we adjust our answers based on what we hear and that's part of life as a candidate i think part of what what makes me concerned about it is that it's it is there are some similarities but this is an interview process it's there it is not um it's not quite the same um i think it's one thing that we could change and i if if we can i mean i can't nothing else is flooding into my head about you know that would perhaps necessitate an extra meeting or a special meeting but that one piece um i think it immediately advantages the last person and disadvantages the first person and i and so that that alone makes me a little bit concerned that there's an either there's a lack of parity there that that seems obvious to me and i i understand where you're coming from but just one of those things that we could change that i think will make the process a little more fair when i i was going to i'm sorry i was going to suggest that if the council if that is a concern of a majority of the council is it you give us that direction that you would like us to explore what the options are and be ready on ready on the seventh um we would we will have rolled that out earlier but if you want to just give us direction as to do the best we can in terms of the strongest sequestration method that we can you know that's feasible and practical we can go ahead and pursue that i can then do the legal research that confirms what um you know what what rights do the applicants have to be in the room um what is our ability to exclude people um and and act on that but you will have given us the direction and your preference as to what you'd like to see would you need that in the form of a motion a motion would be great so i'll just move that we um direct staff to research the concept of sequestration and um and provide us a a response to that on the seventh of the of january second and and i would uh it's my understanding that if you give us that direction you would be liking that you would appreciate us to be implementing that as of the seventh because we would need to let applicants know in advance um so if that's part of the motion as well it would be second prior prior knowledge prior um and notification miss viceroy did you second that one you did uh any additional comments on that motion with that your votes please and that passes unanimously thank you mr soya any other surprises no no i'd like to move that that you adjourn the meeting after you have the quite done let's not get there um madam city attorney are there any other items uh on this topic no i think we have all the direction we need at this point okay thank you okay then we'll go to item 18 we had the final map um do we have any other public comments on non-agenda items we do have a card for two uh first up thomas ells followed by alice crown wow it's this i thought this was a marathon i think the next one uh in the interviews that's going to be a marathon um not to be contrarian or contankerous uh but to correct the record and and clear the air a little bit about um community action network at the board of supervisors um there was quite a bit of discussion before the actual hearing uh on the trail issue and it was a professor at dr carillon apple the uh infirm and uh handicap weak individual uh who made a verbal protest and and was asked at the beginning of the meeting to to leave and the sheriff did not escort her out uh so she protested at the beginning of the board of supervisors meeting in which there was a great change of heart uh evidenced by the board of supervisors which they recognized their responsibility to the homeless in light of the settlement uh but i would point out that the county's comments uh as reported in the newspaper uh at that time were we have been doing this all along according to the settlement that uh regarding the closure the court case venucci versus county so uh the point being is that they said they have been doing those very same things that they're required to do by the settlement all along from before so from their standpoint there was no change and neither was there any change necessarily uh in that board meeting although there did seem to be a change of heart and and it was dr carillon apple who was who was escorted or asked to leave so it wasn't there wasn't a big riot it's just dr apple thank you alex kron okay sorry to keep you here for another three minutes for you late um i came here tonight i have printed out seven copies one for this uh city cleric as well one for each of you have eight letters um from congress to the fcc since our last study session of last year and i think you'll you'll see that the message is pretty consistent that the fcc's excuse me for me sorry um i just thought it would be nice to have your attention um okay sorry um i apologize the fcc's current safety standards for radio frequency microwave radiation are way outdated and they do not protect um the american people and the numbers probably don't mean anything to you but the power density that they allow are 10 million microwatts per square meter and the the signal strength is 61 volts per meter 61 000 volts per meter that's the the level where it starts to heat you up and it's been well established and peer-reviewed relevant scientific studies that biological harm happens at levels much much lower than this okay i just want to say that to me verizon has been very deceitful from the beginning of this they've advertised these as these small low powered cell phone towers the reality is is that the radios and the antennas on those poles are the exact same equipment that they put on the large macro towers you see they have just retrofitted them to fit on a pole underneath that antenna cylinder on top are three antennas that go 120 degrees in each direction and those are the same antennas you see on the side of the freeway the reality is is the energy of rf radiation when you're standing at the ground by these towers is actually higher than macro towers and putting these in residential zones and next to schools people are being exposed constantly and they are not up front about that they're also not up front about the reason they're putting these in okay they say things like emergency 911 calls they really like to play on that and that is not the reason they're putting these up okay that data mining in artificial intelligence and 5g is what verizon is putting their eggs in that basket okay and they are data is the new oil and these things are collecting data they're not here to provide us with better cell phone coverage in voice data to my understanding that voice data anyways runs on two and three g frequencies that's seven eight hundred megahertz these towers are using four g four g lt frequencies this is video data so they're putting these up so people can stream currently stream videos faster from the street from their home we already have wi-fi we really don't need these things and it's really a real estate and power grab for verizon they try to get as many polls as they could as easily as they could for future technology so i asked you please not to do the easy thing so please not to do the right thing for our citizens thank you thank you nothing else on agenda median journey