 Good evening, everyone. I'm just waiting for Danielle to pop up before we get started here. We still don't have a quorum, so I have to wait a few more minutes for people to sign on. Do we have people in the waiting room? Oh, we have one that's being promoted right now. For those that are listening in, would we like to give our timeline of getting started at. 605. Um, let's give. Yeah. I might stretch it to 606. Okay, that's great. Thanks. Chair Graves, we have quorum now. We're just promoting member Baldenegro over and we will have. Enough members. Great. Thank you. A minute to spare. Thanks for that countdown clock. And if we can get member Baldenegro and. Barnets on camera, we can get going. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I am calling to order the community advisory board meeting for August 25th. And Danielle, would you like to do roll call? Yes. Member Barnett. Here. Member Baldenegro. He's here. Okay. I'll move on. Member Harper is absent. You're sorry here. Thank you. Member Ram. Here. Here. Member Richardson. I don't see her. Member Roberts. Hello here. Member Square. Not here. Member Steffi. Here. Member Tornado. Thank you. Vice chair. Chair Graves. Here. All right. Let the record show all members are present except for member Harper. And the record is up. The record show all members are present except for member Ben and square. Thank you. Now this time we'll go to public comments if there are any. There are currently no hands raised for public comment. Thank you. And I would like to. Make a change in the agenda. With no objections. to move items 6.1 and 6.2 to this location, so it would become 3.1 and 3.2. And then the remainder of the agenda would become approval minutes, item number four, cab announcements will be five, staff updates will be six, and the standing agenda item and will be, those two items will be 7.1, 7.2, future agenda items will be eight and adjournment will be nine. Do we have any objections? Seeing none, we're adjusting the schedule so that we can move forward with our presentations and with item number three and 3.1, Vice Chair N. Ossensio will be facilitating. Thank you. So I'll probably be needing just a little bit of help to get this going, but, okay. So we're starting at item three, which has just moved to presentation by the Center of the Fire Department, right? All right, cool. I think Danielle, you usually say a few words for each agenda item, right? Sure. We have Fire Chief Scott Westrow joining us this evening to provide a brief overview about the Center of the Fire Department and the services they provide for Center as a resident. Take it away, Chief. Thank you, Danielle. And good evening, Chair Graves, members of the board. Scott Westrow, I'm the Fire Chief for the City of Santa Rosa. And I was offered to come and present to CAB tonight on behalf of Office of Community Engagement. And what I wanna do is just briefly, and I'm not gonna take up a lot of your time, talk about the Fire Department a little bit and then talk about some of the changes we've made, not only as a department, but as a city and as a response community since 2017, and then talk about some of our future vision and future goals that we are implementing. So, Danielle, do we have a presentation to bring up? Thank you. And that didn't translate over well. Next slide, please. So, the Center of the Fire Department was established in 1894 as a full-time fire department, and we currently protect 180,000 or so community members within 44 square miles. So, this is always a little bit confusing, and even my kids get a little confused on this, is, you know, we work for the city. So, we work within the confines of the city limits. We protect the confines of the city limits. However, we will expand and contract our response based on what's going on. So, there's times we are the closest resource that will push to the West. So, we might be first due to say the Santa Rosa Country Club, where it's not actually our response district, but we respond via a computer-aided dispatching system. So, it's whatever the closest resource is. So, sometimes we might be first due out there, but it's not our actual response area. And then the yellow pockets you see within the city of Santa Rosa map, there are Sonoma County pockets. And obviously, Sonoma County doesn't have a fire department. There's Sonoma County Fire District. But we respond to those pockets because we're the first due, and we receive contributions based on that. The fire department's comprised of three bureaus. The Operations Bureau, which is what most people think of is the fire department. That's the fire engines on the street, the ladder trucks on the street, going to fires, doing the things that we all train to do. And we have a fire prevention bureau, and our fire prevention bureau is first class. They handle all of new construction inspections, ongoing business inspections, residential inspections, and really, and we'll talk about this more later, is delving into the world of vegetation management and those inspections and the responsibilities behind vegetation management, weed abatement, and home hardening. And then administration, which are really the unherald heroes of the fire department, that's our administrative staff that runs the business of the fire department. And this is a business. We have a budget of $48 million between General Fund and Measure O. And so we have a business to run and our admin staff is absolutely outstanding and that they keep the wheels turning while all of the firefighters are out doing the funner things. Next slide, please. So a little bit about us. The center as a fire department has 10 fire stations that are strategically located throughout the city limits. In each station, there is an advanced life support or paramedic engine company, which if you look on the right, that's the shorter wheelbase, just one driver, not two driver pumping engine. We have two advanced life support or paramedic truck companies, which is the large aerial ladders that is on the top picture on your right. We have one undue battalion chief, which gives us a daily staffing of 39 personnel. Our total staffing for all three bureaus is 148 personnel, 148 FTEs. Last year, last calendar year, we responded to just over 26,000 calls a year for service. And that's taken into account that the LNU Lightning Complex and the Glass Fire were considered single incidents in our reporting system. And obviously we were exceedingly busy at that time and had a lot of resources out. But the way we keep track of things, it's just counted as one resource. And this is the first time in the history that the fire department that our call volume actually declined a little bit. Typically we see the two to 3% growth in our call volume, but because of COVID and because the lack of, or the advent or really the acceptance of telemedicine and people not wanting to go to the hospital and not being on the streets and not out crashing their cars and all those things. We actually saw a slight decline in our calls for service, but we're already seeing a resounding resilience in that number this year. On top of the calls for service, based out of our Fire Prevention Bureau, we did over 3,000 business inspections or residential inspections, over 13,000 weed embankment inspections. And we've reviewed over 2,100 plans for new construction or remodel construction. On top of that, our personnel are responsible for over 30,000 hours of training a year. So now it goes across all bureaus as well. Got to talk about the pictures on the right. This is where people get confused a lot is the top is a fire truck, the middle is a fire engine and the bottom one is a type three fire engine or a wildland firefighting engine. I'll talk a little bit more about that later. We actually part of one of our plans that we've instituted, we're receiving, we have one of those. We should be receiving the second one we've ever had this week and then another one in January. So I'll talk a little bit more about that later, but just to give you some context and to put some cool pictures in there. Next slide please. So the Santa Rosa Fire Department is what we consider an all-risk organization meaning that we respond to everything. Typically, going back in history, Santa Rosa is known for their urban firefighting. So you put our crews up against anybody else in the nation on a structure fire and we're gonna hold our weight no problem. We probably exceed most departments, but we've always been a good wildland firefighting department. And as we all know, particularly in the Santa Rosa and Stem Accounting community, the wildland fires are a reemerging threat. And I'll talk a little bit more about what that means here, but WUI is the wildland urban interface, which encompasses about 40% of our city. Our crews are trained in technical rescue, so that could be high-angle rope rescue, low-angle rope rescue, trench rescue, confined space rescue. We provide all those services. You see some pictures here of our swift water rescue boat, which can be deployed to perform rescues if we need to put a boat in the water, if not, we can do it from shore. And then we have a class two hazardous materials response team. And yes, we will rescue the cat out of the tree, but our theory is, our philosophy is that somebody calls 911 on their worst day, whatever that situation is, we're gonna respond and we're gonna resolve that situation. Next slide, please. So talk a little bit about the changing environment that we all live in. And I use the word environment in all of its contexts here. So to give you all a little bit of history here, and is between 1964 with the Hanley Fire in 2017 with the Tubbs Fire, the largest fire that we had within the city limits was 42 acres. And if you recall, that was the Lofty Perch Fire in 2004, which led to the fireworks ban in Santa Rosa. So 64 of the Hanley Fire burned almost the exact same footprint as the Tubbs Fire did. However, it took three days to happen and there was nobody living both in the wild and urban interface in the intermix and really in some of the areas that burned within the city. So we really didn't have a major wildland fire in the city limits until we got the Tubbs Fire. And as we've all seen and all are witness to, we've had this continual onslaught of destructive fires throughout the region. So prior to me taking over as the fire chief, there was really no drive to, there was a drive, but there was really no reasoning to change the entire risk matrix of a fire department over a single incident. And now that we see this continual onslaught, we're really trying to change what our risk matrix and response model looks like, and essentially what our business model looks like based on the new risks that we face as an all risk organization, we're always having to adapt. And so this is a big one in, changing your business model takes time and a lot of resources. The slides here or the pictures here on the left is obviously the Hilton up on Fountain Grove that burned and then just a quick snapshot of the history of some of the fires in the area from the Tubbs, the glass, the Kincaid and some of the ones in 2015 that were in Lake County and Mendocino County to kind of get forgotten as part of the change in what our environment looks like. Next slide please. So we put this slide together to show that we're better but we're not great. And so it's a comparison of major fires in Sonoma County going from the Tubbs through the Kincaid in 2019 and then the Walbridge Myers in 2020 and the glass and shady fire in 2020. And if you'll notice the catalyst difference for me is number one, it's the fatalities. Our mission is to protect life first, property second. And so if we look at the life values and how we've improved those lines that's across the entire fire complex. If you look at the bottom, it's city specific. So within the city, we had nine fatalities in the Tubbs fire, zero in the glass fire. And we'll talk a little bit more in the upcoming slides about what changes have been made to improve those things but you'll also notice that the acreage went up. So while the fires are bigger, we're losing less lives, zero lives and we're losing the structures. Now, at the end of the day, I want the goal to be zeros across the board. That's the goal for all of us, right? But this just shows that the changes that we made are working that we have these bigger fires but we're losing less structures, we're not losing lives. And so we're making those catalyst improvements that we need to make but eventually I want this to be zeros across the board. Next slide, please. So talk about some of the catalyst improvements and I'll go through these in a little bit more details but the picture on the top right of your screen is actually I was sitting in the EOC the night the Kincade fire started and this is the network of alert wildfire North Bay cameras that we have. And so when I heard the report on the radio, I went to the camera system. So this is a picture of the Kincade fire at its very start. Within hours, the radio tower that this is sitting on where you see the foreground obstructions is actually a radio tower up in the geysers. It's all gone. The camera was gone, it's been replaced but this is within the first five minutes of that fire being reported. I took a picture, sent it out to our crews and they knew that they had a real fire going in the geysers. And the picture at the bottom is actually Oakmont during the glass fire. And the big takeaway from that was because of the evacuations that we did in the early alert warning that we did that there was nobody there. It was the first time that we've engaged a fire without having to worry about life safety of our residents. So some big changes have been made. Next slide, please. So talk about a little bit about early detection. I talked about the camera network system. You can see in the picture on the left, this is a picture of one of our wildfire cameras. You can see the fire damage in the black end hills but there's growth within that black line. So we use them a lot, they're expanding them. We're actually beta testing some AI software that we'll send and I get them all the time. And so we're trying to curtail this. The AI system learns when it thinks it sees smoke. And so it'll actually send a text to an email saying that there is a wildfire detected. So we're using this to send resources out much quicker. We can use GPS coordinates to get crews specifically located to a fire quicker. And this is throughout the region. And then the remote automated weather stations or raw stations is a network of weather stations. There's so many, as you all know, there's so many micro climates within Sonoma County even within Santa Rosa. We're able to monitor weather conditions very carefully. On top of this, we actually just received notification. We received a grant for seven raw stations. They're specifically for the city of Santa Rosa. So those are gonna go on specific infrastructure so we can actually monitor the micro climates within Santa Rosa even better than we can now. Next slide, please. So an alert and warning, there was really a big change in philosophy and I'm not gonna get into the details of that. I'm certainly not going to point your fingers or anything like that, but there was a philosophy in the pre-tubs and the city wasn't really involved with that philosophy. And we all know what happened that night. There was really no alert and warning. And so there's been some major, major changes to the alert and warning and communication with the community in regards to large-scale incidents. So number one is the city now has access to all systems. So we're able to send our own alert and warning even if the county doesn't, typically it's in unison and since then it has been in unison. But if there was an incident specifically within Santa Rosa that was not gonna get into the county, we could send out all the alert and warning tools on our own. So that's a big change. And we call that system iPause. And that includes the wireless emergency alert system, the emergency alert system, and the no-weather radios. And we just gave out 30,000 or so of those radios. So we can activate those all at once. That's the big red button. Soco Alert is an opt-in system. So you can sign up for Soco Alert and we can essentially do like a reverse line with one call to call your phone. And then we have the high-low sirens on all of our equipment now. So the European siren. So when we drive through neighborhoods we may not be knocking door to door but we'll have our high-low sirens on and that is the indication that it's time to go. And then mixed on social media there's some confusion over that. That's really the tertiary or farther down the list ways that we will alert the public of an emergency evacuation. That's more of a community messaging tool. So that's really the matrix that we're gonna use. srcity.org backslash emergency has more information on it if you're interested. It'll show you how to sign up for Soco Alert if you're not or if your constituents are not. But iPods is already on your cell phone. It's already on your TV, all those things. You know, we're back in the day when you'd get the Saturday morning interruption of the sound. We can actually activate that and then the no-weather radios will actually go off as well. And the great thing about the no-weather radios is that gave us a huge gap. There was a huge gap that we've closed particularly around some of the issues we have with the access and functional needs community. So if you're hearing impaired you're not gonna hear yourself honoring the night. If you're vision impaired you're not going to be able to see the alerts. And if you are a Spanish speaker while we send everything in Spanish and English now we have a Spanish capable radio. So we give specific radios out for those who speak Spanish and the no-weather radios have the ability to have plugins added to them where they can be bed shakers to wake somebody up who's vision or hearing impaired or strobe lights. We're doing much more early evacuations you saw in the glass fire and really in the Kincade fire we did a massive evacuation. But we've been trying to really curtail that system and find the right mix. And I think the glass fire was the best example where it was very methodical how and when we evacuated people and we did it early we knew was gonna create traffic. We let the traffic pattern clear and we'd evacuate the next section. And so while there's a lot of complaints about the traffic that was created it was actually a planned traffic event and as soon as that cleared out then we did the next one so it didn't create total gridlock. And then we've established pre-designated evacuation zones. There's a map here of it on your right. And srcity.org backslash evacuation zones you can actually just go type in your address and it will tell you what your evacuation zone is. So you might get an evacuation notice that says Skyhawk zone evacuate. You just, you have to know what zone you're in you can go look it up real quick and you'll know that that's your area to evacuate. Next slide please. Next slide please, Daniel. Oh, there we go. So and really this is important is the cooperation collaboration. This is breaking down silos across every platform we can. So the four phases of emergency response or preparation mitigation response to recovery and it's breaking down the silos to where everybody's talking to each other are all on the same page. So the city's not doing something that different than the county is doing or that Kenwood's doing or the stomach county fire districts doing we're all on the same page. There's been huge enhancements to the federal state and local government cooperation and collaboration. We've been working with not only local partners but state partners participating with the mayor and other fire experts throughout the community on Friday for a round table with Senator Padilla. And so we're working in avenues we never thought we were before but that's how we're getting legislation passed both at the state and local level to help us with things like bonfire management and personnel and stations and things like that. City managers and mayors are much more involved now they have common meetings and they're all on the same page. Emergency managers are all now on the same page. The fire departments I can pick up the phone and call anybody at any time and they're gonna send help. The fire we had on Lana last week on my way there I called my Cal Fire cohort and I just said, you got any airplanes laying around? He goes, sure do you want me to launch them? I said, yep. And that was the end of the request and we had aircraft coming to that fire. In breaking down the silos even more we've engaged on profit organizations to try to help us both on the front end and the back end of fires and educational institutions are huge not only for educating the youth of our community and members of our community who are in educational institutions but also I'm approaching my fifties I'm not very technologically sound I have a 16 year old daughter who pretty much can work my phone for me and that's about it. So reaching out to those who have expertise in the future generations of firefighters. So we've been traveling to Stanford and talking to their environmental engineering classes and we actually right before COVID hit we participated in, we brought our SIM table down and showed them real time what a fire would look like we showed them the Tubbs fire and then we set a fire locally for them and said, okay, manage this. And then what it turned into was their project for that class was to build a new platform for alert and warning for wildfire detection for monitoring real time situational awareness and we were the judges to see who put the best project together. So it's putting that in the minds of the youth of America to make sure that they know they know that this is a need and we put their good brains to work because my old brains not function on that level. Next slide, please. We've made a lot of operational enhancements not only to Santa Rosa but throughout the operational area. So when you see a red flag warning or a public safety power shutoff coming we're upstaffing equipment so we're putting more resources on the road. We use OES funding for some of that. We use County on OES funding for some of that. And what that does is puts more fire engines on the street more boots on the ground. So if we do get a start we're gonna attack it very aggressively and keep it as small as we can. Santa Rosa doesn't start a lot of fires we end a lot of fires and they come here. So more boots on the ground we're out doing community engagement during that time we're talking to the community, we're on patrol. And if something starts to come to Santa Rosa we're gonna put a line of defense across that thing and keep it out of our town. We now have a County All-Call which we never did before that's the big red lever and dispatch to call every single resource that's available to a certain location. I'll talk more about our community wildfire protection plan and vegetation management program here in a couple of slides. We've implemented a wildland resiliency and response strategic plan. And what that is is we took a look at without adding fire stations which are very expensive and without adding personnel which are very expensive how can we make ourselves better within the city of Santa Rosa? We came up with six strategies that go anywhere from legislative action to capital and non-capital items. This was funded out of the PG&E settlement fund by council and we've actually made some pretty vast improvements to our fleet via that. We have the two type three fire engines which would be the second one or the first one in from the pickup truck there. So we're adding to our fleet with more wildland capabilities. We changed our personnel's gear we're changing our staffing models. So it's really that point in time count of what the fire department looks like and how we can make improvements. And then now we have access to OES's fastest system which is a night flying aircraft that can give us real time data right to my phone or to my tablet or to my computer to give us a real time image of what's going on. This was catalyst during the glass fire. It wasn't fastest that did it to us there happened to be another night flying helicopter up and they were able to look at the fire that was deeply seated. It was the shady fire at the time in the hills between Napa and Santa Rosa. They told us where the fire was, how big it was and they actually gave us a projection. And the story is they came over the radio and said fires 500 acres extreme rate of spread. It's going to be to Howard Park in four hours. And I looked at the fire chief at the time and I said, this guy's lost. He doesn't know where he's at. He's got the wrong park. He must mean sugar low for something like that. And so we're all like, he might be wrong but we're going to plan for it. And sure enough, it was right on the money. So that was huge for us to be able to put the right resources in the right place at the right time to limit the damage, even though again, we had a five mile, five, you know, five mile wildfire front coming at us at 75 or 80 miles an hour. We have more resources in place at the right time. So between fastest and the other resources that the state's added, we definitely have more capability to spot things particularly at night and give us real situational awareness. Next slide please. The community engagement for us has really changed. It's not only how we communicate with the community but how the community is engaged with us and the fire service in general. So changes we've made is, you know, one of my goals was really to bridge the digital or generational divide. So we can't depend solely on high tech. So it's the low tech thing. So we have actually red flags that we fly over our fire stations during red flag fire weather to let everybody know, hey, the hairs on the back of your neck should be standing up. You should be paying attention. You shouldn't be mowing your weeds past 10 in the morning, things like that. And also, believe it or not, we're just getting, we're working on developing and purchasing those smokey the bear signs, you know, the old ones you see where we have to move the arms. It says high, medium, low because everybody sees those. You don't have to have a cell phone. There's colors there. So it's language independent. So it's really bridging those divides and making sure that we're inclusive of all of our community members. There's a lot of other things that we're doing. One thing I'd really like to push to this group in the essence of time is we've developed a new website that came out of our vegetation management funding. It's srcd.org backslash wildfire ready. And it's a central landing page for everything that has to do with preparing yourself in your home for a wildland or an interface fire. So we've really been pushing that hard. There's a lot of tremendous resources on there all the way down to what sort of landscaping you should put in or what kind of landscaping you should take out. So it's a great resource. And then really the community's engagement has changed so drastically. And it's really, I give the community more credit for the improvements that we've made throughout the entire system more than the fire department or the city or the county community is very much engaged. You're part of that. You know, when that red, when that red flag weather comes the wind starts blowing, it gets warm, it gets dry, everybody pays attention differently. And when we ask the community to respond, they respond, they know what to do. Unfortunately, not only does our department and our city have a career or a lifetime worth of fire experience in the last four years that the community does too. And so our community knows how to respond to these fires and they do a fantastic job for it. So that's the last slide of the improvements. The next slide, if we can advance these Danielle is just generally speaking, some of the projects that we're working on. And this is really where I think CAB would probably hold the most interest. These are some of our future priorities. And really I'd like to accomplish all these in the next year. It's pretty lofty considering that, you know, we're in fire season and things like that. But number one is our vegetation management program has been implemented. We received $5.25 million for a five year vegetation management program from city council via the PG&E settlement. The nice thing about that is, as you know, grants are typically given to those who don't have funding. Vegetation management grants are super nuanced in that you have to have a program in order to get grant funding. So now that we have the program we're actually gone out and we've applied for over $5 billion in grants. So we're doubling our money with that program. And so we're starting the community outreach education campaigns. You will start to see qualitative and cumulative work throughout the community here really as we get into this season, but we're really proud of it and we're really driving forward with it. It is probably my number one priority. The Wild Unresponse resiliency plan I talked about, we're really starting to see some benefits from that from the operational side of things. Our diversity and recruitment strategic plan was written a little over two years ago. And it's a plan that's a grassroots campaign and upstream approach to the community. So there's a decrease in number of candidates that we're seeing come into the fire service and into public safety in general. And there's a decrease in the diversity that we're seeing in the candidate pool. And quite frankly, I got a little tired of hearing that there's no diversity in the talent pool. So our idea with this plan is to, for lack of a better term, change the pool water. So it's an upstream investment in our community to give the youth of our community or the members of our community who are interested in this job. Number one, the education on what this job really is. Because I bet if I went through and asked everyone of you to think it's something different than it really is. And then give them the tools to be successful in that endeavor. So we're still getting high quality candidates who are qualified, yet we're growing them from home. So we're engaging kids much younger, we're engaging civic groups, we're engaged across the board to make sure that the diversity of the fire department matches the diversity of the community. And this is not to, and I'll be very clear, this is not to get more funding, it's not to get more people. If I end up with 15 firefighters at the end of the day, 15 of them are gonna match the diversity of this community. So it's a long-term upstream approach, but we're proud of it. We're working with the SEED Collaborative throughout the city to improve that plan. They're gonna take a look at it and give us improvements and ways to go, but it is definitely a focus and it's definitely culturally embedded within the organization to improve that. And we're already starting to see some benefits return on our investment there. I talked about our change of business model. Again, this takes time and effort and resources, but we're really trying to switch from this urban fire department to a wildland fire department to reacting to all the different threats that exist within our community so that we can serve the community with exemplary service like we always have. Rebranding is something that's on my radar and we're working on both internally and externally. So it's bringing the pride back to our fire department for our members to say, we've lived through something very traumatic over the last four years together. We're stronger together and given that ownership and love of this fire department that they have with tangible things. And then externally, it's really expressing to the community that the fire department is here 24-7-365. We just don't show up when it's the Tubbs Fire or the Glass Fire, that we're here as a community asset 24-7-365 and that you can rely on us for anything. And so it's really sending that message more of we are part of this community, we wanna be embedded in this community and we're gonna do everything we can to make sure the community knows that. Our communication strategies, that's some of it's internal, but I'll talk about the external point and it's quite simple to me. It's developing systems to where we're talking to every single member of this community, regardless of language barriers, access, functional needs, socioeconomic barriers, whatever the case might be, we're sending in the same message at the same time in the right way, whether it's an emergency or non-emergency is one of my goals to get our fire department to ask and to take an investment in technology. And I really think we can get there, but that's definitely one of our goals is to change to where we are talking to everybody at the same time with the same message. And it's very important that we do that to make sure that we are not leaving anybody out of the emergency and non-emergency messaging. And then our strategic plan expires this year, it's a five-year plan that expires in 2021. So that means that our last plan was written in 2016 and I bet you can guess by the end of this presentation that the world has changed dramatically. So number one, it's looking at our strategic plan from a standpoint of what we can afford. It looks at it from a standpoint of our risk matrixes and it looks at it from a standpoint more importantly to me is the community involvement. In our last strategic plan, I was a battalion chief at the time. I remember going to every single community meeting and I believe if I recall the total number of people that came to four community meetings was about 42. And a lot of those were the same people over and over. Now my guess is, and I think it's a pretty safe guess is that community involvement in a strategic plan for the fire department now is going to be much more well-received and much more well-attended. So I want this to be a community-based approach to developing the future of the fire department. I think that's vitally important. There's gonna be a lot of great ideas out there. They're gonna be nuanced to neighborhoods or areas. We're gonna have to muddle that through and make it into a strategic objective. But I think we can get it done and I'm looking forward to seeing what that looks like on the other side. So hopefully we'll have, I'm working on the scope of work for that right now. So hopefully we'll see that by the end of this calendar year. So with that, sorry, I meant to be quicker but you got me all excited. So I'll turn it over to you for any questions that you might have. Thank you, Chief. And I will turn it over to Jorge to facilitate questions, the board members as well as public comment. Before I do that though, if we have any CAB members still in the audience and not on the screen, please raise your hand so we can promote you over. Thank you. No one. I think everyone's in. Well, I guess, thank you so much for that presentation. I think growing up firefighters were always something that as a child I always looked up to and even now still. And so seeing how the department's working, I think it's fantastic and seeing how it's responded. That, I think if there are any questions, members, feel free to ask. I'll hold my questions till the end but if anybody has questions, feel free to jump on in. Member Rom, I see your hand is up. Feel free to go ahead. Thanks. Well, first I wanna appreciate all the work that's been done. Living in Coffee Park and dealing with this has always been a challenge. But the engagement since the Tubbs fire has been less than outstanding. One of the things that we've dealt with and we're dealing with now is the fire prevention is the main way of code enforcement and I think a lot more people are more aware of that. I know that my Santa Rosa app, we try to, it's funny they call it an app but it's not on your phone. You gotta do it on a PC but it is helpful. I think that people should be more educated on that and I try to educate our community members on that. But more importantly, inspectors and the quality of inspectors and the amount of inspections that need to take place. I mean, coming from an electrical background, I understand with solar and battery backups there's a lot of discussions going on with that and it sounds like there's a long lead times for a lot of that with the reach goals that the city is trying to work with and stuff. How are we addressing the additional inspectors that are needed to perform that part of the work? Sure, that's a great question. It's a, there is a major gap there. And so as far as the inspector inspectors go, believe it or not, that's one area that we really struggle with. Recruitment and retention is inspectors and so we've had a lot of turnover in those ranks and it's very difficult to hire personnel. So we're short staffed in fire prevention and we're trying to address those gaps. We just currently hired, we have sconded with a stellar employee from Cal Fire who is now our vegetation management inspector, Will Powers, he's outstanding and really taking the lead on vegetation management. So he's doing a great job. Within the vegetation management program, there's actually funding for two limited term fire inspectors dedicated to vegetation management. So we're trying to hire two LT positions there. The problem is we've had an assistant fire marshal retire. There's another retirement pending, an inspector retired. So we just keep having this turnover where we can't get to full staffing there. So we're working on that aspect. As far as the plan review goes, which is a little bit more geared to your industry. So because of, it was COVID related, what we saw and I'm sure you saw too, there was a boom of construction. There was a boom of ESS and solar power. And so it inundated our office and we have one building plans examiner. And so we ended up with a backlog and it was literally about the day that I took over as chief. The first problem I heard was we have a 400 plan backlog in fire prevention. And so we laid out a three phase strategy to address that problem. So for everybody else's history is not in the trades. Typically you submit a plan for a remodel or for building construction or for installing solar or installing battery backup system. And it goes through a plan review and the plan review, make sure that it meets all of the fire code and building code things. And it goes through our pet department. It goes through the fire department. Typically we see a four to six week turnaround time with this 400 backlog we were seeing turnaround times of 10 to 12 weeks. So we developed a short range strategy which was essentially, I walked into our ASO or accountants office and said, you need to find me $50,000 right now. I don't care where it comes from and we put it towards a professional services agreement. So we hired a third party contractor to help us clear some of that backlog. That got us down to about 250 and shorten the lead time to eight to 10 weeks. Medium term strategy as I've requested another tranche of PSA money out of the PG&E settlement to extend that contract and add more contractors to it to try to shorten that time even more. And then the third phase is as part of vegetation management we're hiring a second plans examiner and the other inspectors will be able to fill that gap as well. So part of its staffing and part of it is fixing a problem that developed during COVID that we just, we got behind the eight ball and we got so behind the eight ball because of the boom in the industry we're slow to react to. And so we're really trying to fix it. We made good head roads with what we have and we're continuing to add resources to that to really try to improve that turnaround time because really it does support the economic vitality of Santa Rosa is to make sure that all of those industries are supported all those businesses are supporting people are getting back in their homes. Great, thank you very much. Hi, I'm Roberts, see your hand up. Hi Chief, thanks for the presentation. I've heard a lot recently about departments consolidating and it seems like it's become pretty political and controversial with some of the maneuvers that some agencies are doing to consolidate or prevent consolidation. So I wanted to know your thoughts on consolidation and was wondering if Santa Rosa is in discussions with any other agencies for consolidation. That's a great question. So historically around Sonoma County there's been, there's all sorts of fire departments and it's Sonoma County, if you look at it from a standpoint of as big as it is and as populous as it is, it's interesting because Santa Rosa is the biggest fire department at 10 stations and 148 personnel by a bunch. And there's only a few full-time fire departments throughout the region. And then you get out into some areas as a combination of our more than I have some full-time staff and then some volunteers are paid on call staff. And then there's purely volunteer departments which are becoming exceedingly rare but also it's very, very hard to recruit and retain volunteers right now throughout the industry. So I really think it's a generational thing and I can get into my whole sociology spiel on that. But anyway, so the goal of the county was to reduce the number of fire departments. There used to be 40 volunteer fire departments and reduce that to where it was manageable. So everybody was, again, in that collaborative vein of being on the same page at the same time. So there's been a lot of consolidations. Sonoma County Fire District has consolidated from Windsor-Rinken Valley, Bennett Valley and Mountain and now they're absorbing other departments as they go out towards the river towards the coast. There's other departments that are consolidating. Quite frankly, Santa Rosa is not interested in consolidating at this time. It's really not part of the charter for us to consolidate or to absorb another fire department. So we kind of were the donut hole in the donut and we're holding strong with what we have. We work very closely with our partners and but I would say there's no threat of that. There's no interest in it. We're worried about taking care of the citizens of Santa Rosa and we'll work with our partners on that. So I think it's a good thing. It's just not something right for Santa Rosa. Remember, Barnett, what's your hand up? Thank you. I of course have no idea how to make my hand go down. Oh, you did it, yay! All right, so first and foremost, thank you so much Scott for coming out and taking some time to help us get updated on all things fire department is doing. I have a question that has to do with the fact that I haven't yet really been able to find a definitive answer on and that is watch duty. It is an app that I got sent to me by a number of friends of mine through social media. I downloaded it. It seems to be sending out an extraordinary amount of data in real time. I shared it with the mayor and I have not heard back from him but his first reaction was, who is this? And so I'm like, well, when the chief for the fire department's here for Santa Rosa, maybe he knows something about this. Is it a citizens response app? It sounds like there's volunteers involved. Is it something that you guys in your department are aware of? Have you used it? My first question, you know, because I've seen it both getting promoted on Nextdoor and also on Facebook. And so I'm kind of curious from the perspective of like it sounds like it's in a beta testing zone but I also feel like there's some folks in tech that are really excited about it. So my first question is about watch duty. The second question I have for you has to do on the planning side, but on the planning and prevention side and that you guys are doing vegetation management. I had a question for residents. I live in Northeast Santa Rosa. So there was a big debate about the eucalyptus tree removal behind the rural cemetery. And years ago, there was a very different attitude about those eucalyptus. And I think now people know how problematic they are. And so one of the questions I have is when you're talking about vegetation management, are you also on the planning side of discouraging or are we talking about potential tree bands on cypress and non-native trees like eucalyptus that are fire prone? And is that part of the vegetation management side to have not just like dealing with weed abatement but also maybe not planning things that are highly flammable? I don't know. And wondering about that with the education side of it for people when they are doing landscaping and design or things like that, of that is something that we could get the word out and encourage people for. And last but not least, we used to do a community improvement grants for a neighborhood that would apply for goats. It's a neighborhood right up above me and they did a couple of grants for a couple of different years. Their properties are stationed right by a key site and they did a whole bunch of weed mitigation with goats and I also wanted to note that's something that could potentially be part of this campaign and weed management and is that something that you might potentially, could the fire department eventually have a goat fleet that I would absolutely want them to be branded with hats and vests in the whole nine yards. And I think that if we had a Santa Rosa fire goat patrol, the entire city would want them in the parade and they would be the most beloved goats of all the world. So just putting that out there, as a potential when you're talking about rebrands, goat will be a great mascot, just saying. So those are my three questions, watch duty, eucalyptus and goats, there you go. All right, that was a lot, but I'll fire away. So it's the first I've heard of watch duty and so I'll have to talk to our PIO about it. You've probably seen a lot of people think that Paul Lonethal is the fire chief because he's on the news all the time. It's just because it's not my favorite thing to do, but I'll have to talk to him about it and see what watch duty is. It's the first I've heard of it. So I'm not really, not really sure, but I'll look into it and figure out what it is. It's not something that is sponsored by the fire department or that we're intricately involved with. So it sounds like if it's volunteers, I don't know if it's similar to Sonoma scanner or things like that, I'm not sure. But quite frankly, my philosophy is the more information, the better. And if more information is getting out there, particularly over where we run into a lot of trouble, a lot of times is, for instance, the lano fire that put up a header of smoke that looked like the apocalypse. And the fire was pretty well contained, but as soon as smoke was into Santa Rosa, everybody gets real itchy and understandably so. And so it's those notifications of like, this is where the fire really is. It's being contained and we may be engaged in the firefight. And on that one, I actually, I had to engage, I actually fought fire on that, which was people were freaked out about to see a suit and a tie sticking out of no Max gear. But so we were all busy just trying to protect houses. And so we may not have that ability. So to use a community-based approach on that, I'm good with as long as the information is good. As far as the evasive species, you know, eucalyptus is essentially one of the biggest weeds that we have, specifically the cemetery, the issue with that. And I know it's ongoing and I think we're close to a resolution there. That's been this ongoing issue of jurisdiction and is within the city limits, but it's a county cemetery and who's responsible for it? It's gonna be expensive, blah, blah, blah. The typical old, you know, government fight. So, but that will be part of vegetation management and that's part of the education campaign is what to plant and what not to plant, what to remove, what not to remove. There's a big push in one of our communities to junk the juniper. And so it's a community that's focused on removing all juniper bushes. Well, yeah, juniper is bad, but there's a bunch of other stuff that's bad too. So let's look at it holistically and make sure that we're doing the same thing and we're doing all the right things instead of focusing on one thing. So that's definitely part of it. That's part of the education campaign. That's part of not only vegetation management program and it's something that we're looking at and the wildland response resiliency plan is what legislation needs to change both locally and at a state level to where we can enact ordinances like banning Gorilla Herbark, you know, things like that. We need to look at that. We need to look at, you know, new construction. You know, for instance, when I rebuilt my house I didn't put wood fences up against my house. It's nowhere this in code, but I really think that the fences were one of the biggest problems and it was seen again on the glass fire. The fences are one of the biggest problems. So I've talked to the fire marshal, hey, maybe we should look at this. You know, there's no flammable fencing up against the house, whatever the case may be. So we're looking at all those things and that's all part of the plan. The good thing is an interesting thing because what you said, and I don't know if anybody knows Paul Lowenthal, but he is the vegetation management director. He's the guru here. And I told him he better go get him a staff and a hauler because we're gonna have a Santa Rosa fire department emblem on the side of a cargo carrier that's gonna have goats in it. Those things are gonna have vests that say Santa Rosa fire on it and he's gonna be a shepherd. So yes, it's something that we're definitely looking into. You know, it's environmentally very sound. It's something that's outside the box but we support the use of goats for HOAs or for key sites, a great example. You can look up and pick that hill out at any time because it is bald because it's good to see everything. So we support communities using it but it's also something that we wanna have as an asset. So every minute it's in its infancy to look into that. But actually we may end up with a herd of goats that we will shuttle to different locations and let them graze it off and call it good. So while you laughed about it, it actually is a conversation that we've had and it's a direction that we're probably headed. So there will be Santa Rosa fire department goats someday I would predict. Something I never thought I would say when I started this business 27 years ago but here we go. Nice, you can buy them from the 4-H kids at the fair. Absolutely. Returning to source. All right, so are there any other questions from our cap members? I cannot have a few of my own but seeing no questions so far. So I have just a few questions. When you mentioned the challenges and you're a criminal pool with diversity, what do you think the barriers are there? Or why do you think there's a lack of diversity right now? Great question and I can answer it. And this is, it's an educated guess. I don't have any data to back this up but what I truly think it is is number one, we've been bad at it. We've always had plenty of applicants. I mean, when I first started I would take tests at LA County with 20,000 other applicants for one job. So there's always been plenty of fire candidates. So number one, there's a boom in jobs and so I think there's a generational divide. The desire to serve in the public sector is definitely down and that's not only for the fire industry, it's not for public safety. That's across the board. You can talk to Serena, you can talk to Magali, anybody we're having problems in the public sector. That's number one. And I have teenagers so I get a test and everybody wants to be an influencer and make it quite tough. So it's not the way the world's gonna work for y'all. So I think it broke my daughter's heart that day but what I really think it is, it's a lack of education on what this job entails. So when you were a kid and you saw a fire engine driving around, did you think to yourself, boy, that takes four years of college and all this training and all this money and all these things to get into that position? I think that's the going rate is, an underserved youth in our community, you take a kid in Rosalind sees fire engine drive by, A, they don't know what it takes to get there and B, they don't know what the job really is. A lot of parents have that problem too and I've talked to a lot of parents and spouses, I'm looking at somebody on the screen, spouses that think the job is all tubs fire, it's all glass fire, when really the reality of it is it's 65% medical. It's a lot of cleaning, it's a lot of cooking, it's living in a family environment. So I think it's the educational component of what it takes to get this job and what the job entails that we've done a bad job of telling the story. So for instance, we have the greatest recruiting tool in the world right in our backyard. You could go to the center as a junior college Windsor Public Safety Training Center and get everything you need to get hired with Santa Rosa in two years and you're gonna start making $90,000 a year. If I tell that to a kid who has underserved youth in this community and tell them that, okay, that's the reality of it. Here's the reality of the job. I'm gonna talk to your mom and dad about it and tell them what the reality of the job is. Then I'm gonna put you in a mentorship program, I'm gonna offer you an Explorer program and I'm gonna give you a scholarship to go to school. So it's educating what the job entails, educating how to get there and then giving them the resources to be successful in that endeavor. That's my take on it and that's what we're focused on and what our investment is in. If the seed comes in and they're like, hey, your way off base based on our subject matter expertise or hey, you can make improvements here or there, great. The same thing goes not only in the guys of diversity for ethnicity, but also for female firefighters. There's just not a lot of females that come into this industry. And so it's okay, well, why? And talking to my daughter about it, she all of a sudden had all these questions and you know, you're a parent, you don't talk about that kind of thing. And I had to sit down if they're like, oh, well, this is what the job really entails and you are absolutely capable across the board of doing all these things, you'll be better at it than me. And so it's educating everybody on what this job entails and how to get there and then giving them the tools on how to get there, that's my take on it. And as a follow-up, if somebody were interested in a kind of, let's say, do you guys do presentations to like the local high school or things like that? Or if a high school was interested where we get in touch with you or? Yeah, so we do a lot of presentations to high school pre-COVID, obviously, and went to a lot of career fairs, things like that, but we weren't really involved in the CTE programs. And so one of the things that, one of the catalyst changes is gonna be involved in every CTE program. I've been in conversation with Dr. Rico, with LC, we've been at LC for a long time, but all the high schools and then not only at the high school level, but we wanna bring it down to the junior high, elementary school age to let them know, number one is that engagement of, this is your fire department, this is what we do, and we're here for you, but also here's the opportunities for you here. So I might not see the return on investment of this program in my career, it's gonna be down the road because we're making that investment much younger. We're also doing the same thing at civic groups, we're making the same thing at civic organizations, whether it's veterans, LBGTQI plus, whatever the case may be, we're gonna be there and we're gonna tell that story, we're gonna educate the community to anybody who wants to come into the fire service that, and here's my cultural take on things, is the fire department, in my opinion, has we have one bias and that's dependability, that's it. I don't care what you look like, what language you speak, I don't care what your sexual orientation is or anything, it's kind of dependent, that's it. And that's what the fire service I grew up in and that's the culture that I'm instilling here is, it's just dependability, everything else does not matter to me. So that's really the culture that we've instilled, that's the culture that this organization has taken on and we're gonna move forward with that. So if you have something specific, absolutely you can reach right out to me, I'll put you in touch with the lead for that part of the program is one of our fire captains, Cory Rickert and she will take that and run with it. All right, well, with that then, thank you so much Scott for that presentation, we really learned a lot, thank you. Thank you all very much, appreciate your time. And Danielle, I'll be giving the reins back to Chair Graves. We need to do a public comment first on this item. Oh, of course. So public comment. There are currently no hands raised for public comment, but if you are dialing in, you can press star nine or virtually raise your hand. But at this moment, there are no hands raised. Great, Vice Chair Inosentio, thank you so much for facilitating that presentation. And I wanted to make mention before Fire Chief Westrop goes, is that I'm sure you already know this, but so that everybody else knows this as well, the county has just awarded $500,000 from the PG&E settlement funds for SRJC wildfire resiliency workforce training. So that means that they will grant, this grant will fund up to three years of wildfire workforce training for students beginning this fall. So our resource here locally for more of that in-house training at the SRJC has just been fortified, which is wonderful news. So just wanted to put that out there. It is on their website and SRJC's social medias today. So it's a great announcement. Thank you so much for your presentation. And now moving along to item number 3.2 for violence prevention partnership. And that presentation, I believe is an open house. This is our first open house. So 2021, this is very exciting folks. And I know that there are folks that are in our Zoom chat. If you, you're participating by viewing this open house and our director of community engagement along with staff from the office of community engagement will provide our cab and members of the public with an overview of the Santa Rosa violence prevention partnership. Lots of great information coming right up from Magali, you are taking it away. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chair Graves, members of the board. Appreciate you being with us this evening. And also thank you Chief Westrop that every time I learned something new from his presentations and all important information. So with that, my great days here director of community engagement, I'd like to just begin by, you know, thanking you all again for your service to the community and for the work that you're doing and that you have been doing. And we appreciate you taking on the role of representing your neighborhood and our collective community and ensuring our city council members receive consistent and firsthand feedback from residents' perspectives. So as trusted leaders, it's likely that you've heard concerns from our local residents about the recent violence in our community. We believe this violence is tied to toxic stress that can be prevented and we'll get to some of the root causes in a few slides. In fact, the City of Santa Rosa staff and our partners in violence prevention partnership have spent nearly 20 years organizing community members to offer programs and services to youth and families to help them thrive. And today we'd like to tell you a little bit about the past and some of our recent efforts. Then we'd like to invite you to share your insights as we begin to craft our new plans for meeting current and future needs. And by that I mean, where are we in terms of during pandemic, how we'll respond in post pandemic? So hoping to hear more from you at that point. And if you're curious and like to learn more about what we're gonna be sharing today, we will have the report available later this week on our website, we'll make sure to email it out to everyone so you could take a look. And now with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Serena Leno to tell us about the Santa Rosa Violence Prevention Partnerships History. Serena. Good evening, everybody. It's great to see you all. So my name is Serena Leno. I'm the administrative services officer for the community development and engagement portfolio, which includes the Office of Community Engagement and the Violence Prevention Partnership. I've been with the city for over 20 years and 18 of those years were actually with the violence prevention efforts. So I have a long history with this group and I'm excited to be able to come back and share a little bit about the history of how we came to be where we are today. So as you may recall, back in like the late 90s, early 2000s, our community was really experiencing a spike in violence and particularly with youth and gang violence. And so right around 2002, we had a significant incident with Sink with the Miles. Some of you may remember when folks flooded the streets, there was a lot of violence and at that point, the city said, you know what? We really need to do something about this. And so at the time, then mayor Sharon Wright pulled together a group of community leaders and local partners to brainstorm and think through how can we really come together as a community and determine what strategies we would need to do to help curtail any further violence. So that's why we wanted to emphasize the fact that this is citizen-led because from the very beginning, it was community-led, community-driven. And I think that's really where the power is of the partnership and how we've been so effective over all these years. So as I mentioned, the city council initiated this planning group. We held several listening sessions and planning sessions and to really understand what was going on in the community and then ultimately determine what those strategies would be to address and actually do something meaningful from the community. So ultimately what was born was at the time, the Mayor's Game Prevention Task Force, now Violence Prevention Partnership. And I'll talk a little bit about that change in a future slide. But what really stood out was that if we were gonna be effective, we needed a dedicated funding source in order to be successful. And that was where Measure O was born. And so we capitalized on all of the community interests and efforts towards them making this difference. And we invited the community to help us design what we needed to fund. And so we were very fortunate. So in 2004, voters passed Measure O. It's a 20 year tax initiative. And by an overwhelming, I think 67% I wanna say, which is actually pretty substantial since this is a special tax. And that what that means is it's dedicated funding to it for a very specific purpose. Next slide please. So here's a little bit of a timeline of how, what we've done in the nearly 20 years that we have been doing this. So as I mentioned, in 2002 was where the first initial conversations were happening. 2003 is when the Mayor's Game Prevention Task Force was actually formed. 2004 was when Measure O was passed. And then took us a couple of years to really get everything figured out, get things going. And in 2006 was when the Choice Grant program was born. You'll hear a little bit more about the Choice Grant program in just a bit. But that was really where we started to invest dollars in the community. 2008 was when the first strategic plan was developed. And that's where we took all of the collective interest. And we got the ball rolling and we've always said it's like building a bicycle while you're riding it. Because at the time, game prevention was still a very new concept. And so we were trying to figure it out. We were learning from partners across the state. We're members of the California Violence Prevention Network. And ultimately that all led to the creation of the strategic plan. So we had to educate ourselves and inform ourselves about what was really evidence-informed practices to make these strategic investments in the community. So then fast forward 2012 to 2016 was when we said, okay, we need to evolve. We need to further these efforts. And we need to continue to grow. And then we said, you know what? The Mayor's Game Prevention Task Force served a purpose in the early days because it was truly a task force. It was like, get in, let's figure this out. And then we realized that it became a barrier. The name itself became a barrier and it wasn't as community-friendly. And so we went through this extremely comprehensive process. Again, citizen-led, community-driven because that was really our core. And that, again, how successful we have always been. And so we really wanted to embody that. And so we did this comprehensive community process and ultimately rebranded ourselves as the Violence Prevention Partnership. And at that time was when we took more of a public health approach to violence prevention, recognizing you can't just enforce your way out of the problem. It can't be suppression only. It needs to be this more holistic public health approach, recognizing that we need to address the root causes of violence. And so Magali touched on a little bit and you'll hear a little bit more, but we had to look at housing. We had to look at economic drivers. We had to look at not just crime and safety, but the school conditions. What is going on that is potentially contributing towards the violence that is happening in the community. And so a year later was when we created the Community Safety Scorecard, which is really grounded in what is known as the root causes of violence and in that public health approach. And because the idea behind the scorecard is to develop metrics for us to measure the work that we are doing to see whether or not the work that we're doing is having the impact that we are intending. So the scorecard helps us to identify several different indicators. And you'll hear a little bit more about that, but that really became the core foundation for how we measured our efforts moving forward. Next slide, please. So a little bit more about Measure O specifically. This is a hot topic for us, because we're coming to the end. It's kind of shocking. I was there in the very beginning, and it's like, oh, we have 20 years. We've got plenty of time. Well, that 20 years is right around the corner. And so we're at a point where we really need to focus in on what we're gonna do moving forward. But just to understand what Measure O is now. So it is, it's a public safety tax measure. And as I mentioned, passed by voters in 2004, it's a quarter-cent sales tax. And so it generates an estimated 7 million a year in revenue, but that really does ebb and flow depending on how well the community is doing from a sales tax perspective. And 40% is allocated to police. 40% is allocated to fire. And then the remaining 20% is, oh, did we lose our slides here? My apologies, Serena. I was trying to launch a new PowerPoint as some of the images were skewed here. So if you can just walk me home, I am very sorry. No worries, no worries. Anyway, it's now, it's pulling that up as I mentioned. So it's a public safety tax initiative. So it is split between police fire and violence prevention. And I think that it recognizes that public safety as a whole really is not just about police and fire, but public safety also means investments in our community in a prevention sort of standpoint. I could just keep rambling. But I'll wait, oh, here we go. Yay, saved by the bell. Okay. All right, so actually, if you could go to the next slide, please. Okay, so let's see here. Diving into the 20% a little bit more. I've got to get myself back into the group here. So the 20% allocation, it estimates around a million and a half a year give or take. And it further breaks down into the 35% towards choice-growing program and 65% towards violence prevention efforts. And ultimately when Majora was created and first envisioned by the community back in, well, 2002, 2003, it really needed this oversight body, so to speak, to really manage the overall funds. And that's really where one of the main roles of the violence prevention partnership is to really look at the totality of this funding source and invest in a very strategic way throughout the community. And so the staff of the violence prevention partnership who are all here today partner very closely with Recreation because they are partners who also receive Metro funding. And so we work together very collaboratively to invest these dollars. And that, and so the recreation programs are funded through the 65% side along with the staffing of the staff for the violence prevention partnership. And the 35% is dedicated funding that is for the ordinances. A minimum of 35% has to be spent towards providing funding for community-based organizations and school-related programs. And the 35% does have a blow over the years and it allows us some flexibility to be able to invest a little bit more dollars towards some of, if a need happens to be higher that particular year. So for example, this year we're currently funding around approximately, I think 50% of the of the measure revenue is actually going towards the grant program. So the grant program is really meant to provide additional types of services that the recreation doesn't provide. So they specialize in afterschool and neighborhood-based programs and you'll hear more from them. But the grant program really is meant to look at the totality of the spectrum and see what we're missing. So it could provide mental health-related services. It could provide, we have a Boys and Girls Club inside Juvenile Hall. So it really looks at what is the highest need and then we can invest those dollars where that need is. Okay, I think that's it for me. And so I think I'm turning it back over to you, Magali. Thank you, Serena. So on this slide, we really just wanna focus on the toxic stress as well as other factors that can lead to eruptions in violence in our community that we've unfortunately seen recently in our neighborhoods. And as a matter of fact, our Bounce Prevention Operations Team today was participating in a trauma-informed care workshop led by Hannah Institute, where we talked about not only ACEs, but a new sort of a world that I learned about was positive child experiences, right? And what is it that we need to counteract some of the ACEs and the effects of ACEs and the trauma? So as you all know, Santa Rosa residents have experienced several overlapping crises that contribute to the toxic stress. The fires alone have created trauma for youth all the way to elders in the community. I mean, I'm sure everybody knows, young people who have very strong reactions, when they hear sirens, when they hear or they smell smoke and adults as well. So with the pandemic, the pandemic-compacted employment schools, childcare and housing, in addition to creating isolation and causing some residents to lose some of the services. So the pandemic really revealed that what we've heard everywhere is that it revealed more needs in the community than we ever heard about before. So our community has gone through some very difficult times. But fortunately, we are a strong community and we have dedicated leaders such as yourselves from a cab here who've been working diligently to help heal our community in the many ways and the work that you all do. So at this point, I'd like to introduce our team, our city staff that's, let's see, our city staff, could we go to the next slide please? Okay, so these are the folks from the Violence Prevention Partnership, many of which you will hear from this evening. I would like Madeline to just take a quick second to pull back the curtain. What do you look like? Cause you are our tech extraordinaire and really just kind of a crucial piece. Can you say hi so your face, your bubble pops up? Hi everyone. This is Madeline Brown, senior admin for the community engagement department. It's so nice for everyone from cab to see me as I have been working with you all for just over a year, but all virtually and I'm usually just a black square. I've been with the department for about two years and I assist all the members of our department as far as our choice grant program, collaboration with other departments within the city, as well as outside organizations and community leaders to basically help develop and create new ways of community engagement and violence prevention programs in the community. Thank you so much. So when you hear that magical voice, now you know what she looks like. So in addition to these wonderful folks, we also have two fantastic VISTAs, Maddie Cox and Haley Katz and our intern who is amazing, Rihanna Bazul. So those are some of the folks that work with us. Next slide please. Okay. So part of what has recently shifted in our community includes a greater acknowledgement for root problems like discrimination, a lack of equity in a lot of our systems and poverty. So this idea that there are deep roots under our social problems is an idea that the partnership has been lifting up for the past six years or more. As we discussed earlier, people first describe violence in Santa Rosa as a gang problem that came from outside of our community but upon deeper reflection, we learned that violence is rooted in social structures that exist in our community. So violence often erupts when one or more of these root causes take and hold in our community. And if we look at the list here, we'll see things like feeling like neighborhoods are unsafe, reentry is not supported. Some of our folks that have been incarcerated or in the system, families experience unemployment and poverty, families have poor access to health and mental health care, prevention services are lacking and violence is normalized. So many of these factors have a lot to do with proximity to resources and where people are situated. And that's something that the violence prevention partnership really wants to work on. And our team being sort of one of those bridges between community resources, how are we linking together? How are you working together to link folks? So to talk more about some of those services, I'd like to introduce Juan Flores from our recreation staff and he's going to tell you more about neighborhood services and our rec programs, Juan. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for having me here. So neighborhood services were within the recreation department. The neighborhood services division provides targeted services to youth and residents who need them most at little to no cost. Recreation and academic support opportunities at the neighborhood level are really key to youth development and their wellbeing. So our mission is to provide youth with early prevention services. We do this by casting a large safety net in Santa Rosa through providing programs such as neighborhood after-school programs, evening sports programs, recreational camps. Anytime the youth are out of school, we're providing a camp as well as family of vets. So we run these wide variety of programs which allow us to reach thousands of youths and families in Santa Rosa when in our programs our staff, our coaches, mentors build positive relationships with the youth and families creating a space of trust which will further enable us and our team to identify and provide a continuum of services where needed. So we tailor our approach to each youth based off of their needs. We often see youth grow within our programs from a young participant all the way up to high school as a volunteer at that time. Sorry, and at times even as a staff member coming on board to further help the community. In some circumstances, our programs may not be what is best suited for the youth or their family at that moment. And this is where the partnership between neighborhood services, the violence prevention partnership is really vital. So our ability to refer youth to the community partners allows for the continuum of services which best suit that family. So that is where it's key for neighborhood services and the violence prevention partnerships really work together. So our safety net is really bringing all the youth into the programs. And from there, some may just need programs within neighborhood services but we have the opportunity to refer them for additional services. Thank you. The remainder of the measure funds are dispersed through the choice grant program. Choice stands for community helping our indispensable children excel. The grant review team makes the funding recommendations. This team is representative of multiple perspectives with a vested interest in working toward our mission. Members include community partners such as local schools, law enforcement, probation, recreation, CAB members and city council members. In 2016, the violence prevention partnership created a community scorecard that identified key neighborhood services and key service areas where measure might be invested to help improve the life of youth and families. Madeline, can you go to the next slide please? The partnership then engage in a strategic planning process to help determine the root causes of violence. Factors that influence a community's health goes beyond crime statistics. The factors include housing, financial security, community safety, employment, education and environment. The partnership has deepened its knowledge of the complex needs of our youth, families and communities. The community safety scorecard and a strategic plan work together to address Santa Rosa's unique social determinants of health. The choice grant program provides critical services that contribute to strengthening youth and families as well as building safer Santa Rosa communities. Focus groups with community members and partners who are engaged in prioritizing 10 strategies. Four of the 10 strategies, which are also our pillars were prioritized and incorporated into the 2017 to 2022 strategic plan. We have made strategic investments and measure old choice funds in these four areas. School readiness, student engagement, insurance prevention, street outreach, mediation and workforce development. Next slide please. Over the past year, partnership staff have been working with our funded choice partners to adopt the results-based accountability framework. The framework links the results we seek for our vision with strategies, the four pillars, to our programs and their performance. You will see that results-based accountability, the framework is exciting, strategic and a simple way to track our efforts. We hope you will read through our report and see how the programs have been putting your tax dollars to work. As one example, one of our workforce development agencies is tracking these performance measures. How much? The number of youth served during a choice grant cycle. How well the percentage of youth reporting positive interactions with agency staff. Better off, the percentage of youth that report positive interactions with agency staff. Managing these grant funds is just one of the activities of our staff. We will also partner, excuse me, with community-based organizations and local residents like you to keep these efforts moving forward. I'll turn it over to Danielle, who will talk about our focus on engagement and listening to our community. Thanks, Geraldine. So as was mentioned throughout this presentation this evening, the Violence Prevention Partnership has a history of involving community in its work. Sorry, can we go to the next slide please? Thank you. As the partnership has evolved over the years, as they approach the city has taken with community engagement. In 2016, the Violence Prevention Partnership was merged with community engagement programs to become the Office of Community Engagement. So in order to ensure our organization is reaching as many residents as possible, using an authentic community engagement strategies, we needed to find a model of community engagement to work from. And I believe most of you are familiar with the spectrum of community engagement. So we chose to work from the spectrum of community engagement developed by International Association of Public Participation and updated by Rosa Gonzalez of Facilitating Power by taking a variety of approaches to reach and connect with as many community members as possible. So the partnership currently is taking a significant pivot going back to our roots, moving from informing and consulting with the community which is kind of what we've been doing for a little bit over the past few years to differing to the community so that you can have more ownership in the solutions being implemented to address community violence. We have started this new approach with community listening sessions which we held last year and helped to continue to hold as the pandemic allows us and are including community members in the revisioning of the partnership and its strategies. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Irma who will lead you in a brief activity before we wrap up the presentation. Hi everyone, I'm Irma, the new rapper and coordinator for the Violence Prevention Partnership. Thank you so much for being here. I came to the partnership with at least a decade of outreach and community engagement strategizing and I chose to work with the partnership because I really do put community at the core and part of what we want to do by putting the community at the core is we want to hear back from you. So keeping the roots of violence in our mind, where do you believe the violence prevention partnership needs to invest more to support health and safety of the Santa Rosa families today? And in order for us to kind of gauge that and see where we can reinvest our resources, we have designed a quick survey, a very short survey and Madeleine has put that in the chat box. So we're going to give you the opportunity to give us some feedback. And this survey is based on the four pillars of the Violence Prevention Partnership. So we are going to give you about three minutes and thank you. So it's four questions and again, based on the four pillars of the Violence Prevention Partnership and we want you to rate how important that particular pillar is to you. So I'm going to go ahead and set a timer and we're going to give you about three minutes. And if you are having a hard time opening up the link, please raise your hand and Madeleine or our staff will provide some answers for you, help you out with that. And also with three minutes is not enough time for you to fill out the survey. We will also have this posted on our website. All right, folks, we have about a minute and a half left to finish this quick little survey and thank you so much in advance for your time and your input. All right, well, this three minutes have gone by fast. Usually like a minute on Zoom seems like an eternity. So you have seven seconds left. Again, if you didn't have a chance to finish the survey, please check out our website. It'll be posted on there. All right, that's time. I'm going to hand it over to my colleague Gustavo. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you, Edema. Thank you all for making the time to be with us here tonight. We want to take this time to recruit you as our outreach specialist and tell you guys about the Open Health series that we're going to be hosting. So there'll be two events that we're going to have for our monolingual Spanish-speaking community. One on September 1st at 5 p.m. and the other will be on September 23rd at 5.30. We will be hosting a English open house on September 8th. So we want to invite the cab to help us spread the word of these open houses. They will be through Zoom, similar to what we are doing here tonight. And what we will be doing is giving this presentation and really hope to get feedback from members of the community on the vision that sharing our vision for the partnership and being able to hear some of their input on what they feel or what efforts they would like to see in the community to reduce violence. Next slide, please. And at this time, I would like to open it up for questions. So I know I'm pretty sure that some of you may have some questions for us. Thank you so much for your presentation. It was chock full of information. And at this time, as we get back to where we can see all of the member, there we go. It's great to see everybody's faces and be able to facilitate questions from the cab board members. If there's any questions, please raise your hand or wave at me and let me know. Not seeing any questions at this time. So we did a really good job, then, with the PowerPoint. That answered everybody's question. It was synchronized. It was coordinated. It was collaborative. It was wonderful. So I really appreciate the history tour of that information as well as the new approach that we've seen in action over this past year and giving us that information. My question would be, and of course, Board Member Rahm, I see you have your hand up. I'm going to let you go first. But I do. I will ask a question then. So if this thing ends in 2024, is there a plan to continue to put it back on the ballot? Is it just looking at the 20, 40, 40 split of how you broke the percentages down? Essentially, it's 490,000 for the grants, and 910,000 for the balance of it. I would imagine costs and that's based on the $7 million you were saying. Is that what happens in 2025? Magali, would you like me to take this question? Sure, and thank you for asking that question. So yeah, the split is 40% police, 40% fire, and then 20% is split between us and neighborhood services. And so I think one of the efforts will be from the council to put it out to community to do some polling and to figure out like, this was established 20 plus years ago. We're definitely in a new landscape. Many things have changed. We're just in a totally different space and mind frame. So I think we're going to do the polling to figure out like, what is community looking for today? We want to gather information of like, as we finish out this iteration of measure of funding, what do you all want to see as we continue forward till the end of 2024? But I know that it'll be coming up that we will go out to community and ask community, do you still want these percentages to say the same? How are people feeling in terms of like getting taxed? At what percentage are people also willing to get taxed? If you are talking about like fire mitigation efforts, right? I mean, no one is going to say no to that, right? It's very necessary. So that's a great question. And I know the council will be providing further direction. And I don't know if you want to add something to that. Just really quick, there was a council study session last week on this measure O. So I was going to say, yeah. OK. I would encourage everyone to go and check that presentation out because police, fire, and community engagement neighborhood services provided what that would look like if measure O is no longer with us in that funding way. It's a very eye-opening presentation. Yeah. Yeah, I'm echoing that. And I know that the council has they're putting it towards a long-term finance committee and a subcommittee specifically to talk about this a little bit more because there is an interest in going back to the voters in 2022, which is just a real quick year away. And there's a lot to be done in that timeframe, including like what I was saying around the polling and some sort of community process. We still haven't determined what that's going to be quite yet. But there will be an extensive community process. It needs to be, frankly. So as Danielle mentioned, I'd encourage you to look at the study session from last week because it was quite informative. We only talked about the 20% slice of the pie. But it impacts that police and fire will be detrimental as well. So all the more reason to have CAB support us and help us moving forward. Thank you. Thank you for that question. Are there any other questions from the CAB members? So just a clarity. We're talking about the vote in 2022 potentially. So that would be June 2022? That is a fast timeline. I think November, maybe. I think, Rosalie, I think if they're looking at November. Yeah, I think we are looking at November 2022. We do need some time to give ourselves the opportunity to educate community around. As Serena was saying, I completely forgot that I actually presented last week on everything that would go away, pretty much, if measure O was not in existence. But also with the opportunity of like, now we have in response, which Captain Cregan from our police department has talked a lot about, which is our version of CAHOOTS. I think communities reacted very well to that. And does community want more models like that? I think that's important information to capture. Definitely. So my question is around those 10 grants that are being given out. And I remember getting violence prevention partnership presentation a little bit over a year ago, I believe. And some of those programs were named. And I just think that that's really important, that our newer members may be here, some of those organizations that are being funded by those grants. Can we maybe get the top three or four? Because they do amazing work in the community. I got you. So actually, I have all my reports all around me. And so this report we'll be putting out on our website by the end of this week. But we are working with SAY, Social Advocates for Youth. They do work with us on workforce development, Conservation Corps North Bay. So when Chief Westrop was talking about generating this interest in young people, there are agencies, there are nonprofits who want to introduce young people to the trades. One program that we absolutely love to work with, we love to work with all of them. But the Boys and Girls Club has the REACH program, which is working with juvenile hall youth. And they did a really incredible thing recently where they sort of cross-collaborated. So there were some youth that worked with a couple of other agencies that built full-functioning ADA bathrooms and showers for the homeless. And so these young people got exposure to the trades, how to use tools, like all of this really great and wonderful stuff. And through the RBA model that Geraldine was talking about, which is results-based accountability, we're trying to figure out how much should we do with the programs that we're working with and are we better off? And specifically with this program of 150 youth that participated in the club or the REACH program, 99% avoided incarceration while enrolled, which is really fantastic and really great, and speaks to the work that their program is doing. Thank you, thank you. Wonderful news, and I loved seeing those photos of all the children in the PowerPoint presentation. It really drives the point home that that's who we're touching, along with the families, along with the older teens. And I see Irma here putting some of the other organizations there, LandPass, LifeWorks, CEC, NB, which you mentioned, and the Four Seas as well as the Boys and Girls Club with that REACH program. So I know that there's others as well, but thank you so much for that. And thank you so much for all of the work that this small and mighty team does. The ripple effects are enormous out in the community. So just cheers for all of you, for all of the work that you do, and for the differences that you make. And with that, we're gonna take it to public comment. Are there any public comments or hands raised? There are no hands raised for public comment. All right, well, thank you once again for the presentation. Without any further questions, I'm just looking just in case there's a late hand up for a comment or a question, it doesn't look like there is. So thank you all for joining us tonight and for making that presentation. I look forward to promoting your upcoming events in September. Thank you. And going back to our agenda now with agenda item number four is the approval of the minutes. Those minutes are from July 28, 2021, last month. And we were given a link to go and check out those minutes. Does anybody have any comments about the minutes? I see no hands raised. I had one tiny, tiny note. I don't even know if it's worth the ink to change it. But on item number 7.4, it was regarding the expertise subcommittee and it stated expertise subcommittee needs TO new members. But I don't know if that's two, the number two, or if it just needs no more members or just needs every member that's not already on the other subcommittee to go over to the expertise subcommittee. I wasn't really quite clear what that meant. I will update it. Actually, I'll just erase it. It just needs new members. Okay. Thanks. All right. I don't believe that's enough to hold off on the minutes until next month. So if anybody would like to make a motion to approve the minutes with that one edit. I motion that we approve the minutes. Member Baldenegro. Thank you, Member Baldenegro. Is anybody would like to second? Second. Control. And I think that was Member Rogers. Okay. And that was second. And Danielle, do you want to take the vote? Nope. Member Barnett. Approve. Member Baldenegro. Approved. Member Rahm. Approved. Member Richardson. Just give me a thumbs up. You're fine. Thank you. Member Roberts. Hi. Okay. Member Square. Thank you. Member Steffi. Yes. Okay. Member Tornado had a step out. Vice Chair, I know since it all. Approve. Thank you. And Chair Graves. Approve. All right. Motion passes. Minutes are approved. Great. Thank you. And agenda item number five are CAB announcements. This is a time when CAB members may share. Oh, sorry. Should I go to public comment on the minutes? Yeah. Do we have any public comments on the approval of the minutes? There are no hands raised for public comments. Thank you. And now moving along to item number five. This is a time that CAB members may share community news of interest to the CAB as a whole. If you have any upcoming community events or other items of interest to the board, you can announce that now. Do we have any hands raised? I see. Oh, member Ron. Yes. I'm talking to today. Just sharing that Coffee Park's gonna have a celebration on September 18th to kind of commemorate our park now that we can. And we've got all kinds of food trucks and goats, baby goats. And we have dog park costumes and parades and balloons and bubbles. And so it's supposed to be quite a community event and just wanted to invite you guys all if you are around from 12 to four. I will say at some point when I can, but I'm more in tune with this group and know all the rules and regulations. I'll tell you the permit process in the city of Santa Rosa means a lot of work. I mean, for us to have this event was six permits. And I mean, it's not the money, it's the process and have to have it all done within 30 days prior to the event. And it is, I mean, it was an act of Congress for four people just to have this event for our neighborhood. So that was my, that's my only take out of it, but we're looking forward to having a great party. And if you guys wanna come, please come. All right, thank you for the invite. Are there any other announcements? Seeing none, go to public comments on item number five. There are no hands raised for public comment. Great, thank you. And moving right along to item number six, our staff updates. So Danielle, you're taking it away with these staff updates. Yes, and I will be joined by Magali and Gustavo. We'll be helping me out here. Just pull these up. Community empowerment plan updates. Multicultural Roots Project, we are teaming up with the Museum of Sonoma County on the Dia de los Muertos event happening, I can't remember the date. Starting in mid-October, going through the beginning of November, I'll get you those dates after the meeting. We are planning on setting up a Multicultural Roots exhibit as part of the event series to highlight our community leaders from our BIPOC communities who have done great work in the community and since have passed on. We are also working with that team on featuring a lowrider. Actually, it was owned by a community member who passed away this year. It was a very significant part of the lowrider community here in Santa Rosa. So we are working on getting, hopefully, fingers crossed, getting his lowrider as part of that exhibit. We are still working on the resolution to declare racism as a public health and human rights crisis in Santa Rosa. It's had some hangups, but we're getting through it. It's currently being reviewed by the city attorney's office. And actually, for the next update on the Mary Lou Lowrider, I'm gonna hand it over to Gustavo. He has some really exciting announcements about the car. Oh, just kidding, it looks like he's frozen. So, while we wait, oh, there he is. Okay, good. You're there. No, you're not. It seems to happen like every time I'm gonna speak it, it freezes. I don't know why that's going on. But yes, late July, we were able to take the vehicle. Gustavo, if you can still hear us, turn your camera off. That might help. In my back? Can you hear me? Yes. Hello? Yes. We can hear you. Okay, so my camera is off. Can y'all hear me? Yes. No? Yes. Okay, so let me try to get this in. Can y'all hear me now? No? Yes. Okay, so late July, we dropped off the vehicle for it to begin the process of the hydraulic installation and members of the Sonoma County Law Rider Council worked on the car. And last Friday, some of you may have seen the car being test driven out in the community just to make sure that everything was working fine. And earlier today, we dropped off the vehicle at the body shop where a member of the Sonoma County Law Rider Council who owns the shop itself will be doing the bodywork and paint job to the vehicle. We project that it will take about a month for them to finish that process. And during that time, we hope to be able to start working on the interior and make the strategic plan for the stereo system that will be going into the vehicle. So hopefully sometime early November, we will have the car, the transformation of the car complete. And hopefully my Wi-Fi works and I just wasn't talking to myself. Thank you, Gustavo. I'm also updating the Mary Lou Low Rider Project engagement page on Let's Connect Us R with that update and that update includes a video of the hydraulics in the car. So you'll get to see this retire patrol car hopping away in the video. I should have that posted by tomorrow. Other updates, the city council, oh, moving to open government, the city council's open government task force implementation subcommittee met on Monday, reviewing the lobbyist ordinance and the campaign financing ordinance and agreed to make updates to both of those ordinances. So the city attorney's office will be working on those updates. In addition to that, we had a community member make public comments proposing that the subcommittee review the 2017 update on implementation of the original task force recommendations to see what work still needs to be done, including revisiting the city's mission statements who include community engagements, emergency preparedness, and also cab revisions within the charter review. So cab members that has been brought up and the subcommittee is going to be putting that on their next agenda, which is in October. In addition to that, they also are bringing back to the next meeting, I believe an invitation to the public to participate in that meeting to see how they can support community engagement, particularly our office of community engagement. So we really encourage everyone to attend. The next meeting will be held on October 25th and moving forward, the subcommittees meetings will be held on the fourth Monday of every other month at 6 p.m. Magali, did I miss anything in that one? I'm not sure today how many times I've talked about charter review. So if I didn't say charter review, I wanna make sure that we talked about, did I already talk about the charter review? No. Okay. So charter review, please help us get the word out that is an exciting opportunity. Each council member will be appointing three people to the charter review. The awesome thing about this year is that folks just need to live within the city limits. You don't need to be necessarily a US citizen or resident. You just need to live in Santa Rosa. Another exciting thing is that council members are really looking to diversify the age group. So we can get some young people, some high school students, some college students that are interested in getting engaged. It is going to be a working committee. So there will be a couple of months worth, maybe five to seven months worth of work. Well, folks will meet maybe twice a month and really develop the next constitution for the city for the next 10 years. So if you have anyone in mind, please let us know. I do think the city attorney mentioned that if folks are already serving on one board and committee, I don't think they're eligible to also serve on the charter review. So this is a great opportunity to get other folks engaged. So again, young people, please contact us. We'd love to have you as part of this process. Awesome, thank you. Last update from us is on the community improvement grant program. So for the 2020 grant program cycle, which is last year, we've already had two community groups complete their projects and submit for reimbursement. One was the Proctor Terrace Elementary School campus mural project. They were able to work with two community artists to do two campus murals. So not just one, but two. And students were involved in the creation of the actual templates for those murals, as well as painting. And I do have pictures, so I'll make sure to send those out to you guys. And then the other project was the South Park Community Building Initiative, their neighborhood project. They also did some murals. They created three murals at Martin Luther King Junior Park in the South Park neighborhood. Again, I have photos that I can share with the cab. They all turned out great and super excited to go see them in person. And I encourage all of you to go see them in person too. For our current cycle, I did notify all of the grantees that they were awarded. And their agreements are currently in review by the city attorney's office and most of them are underway with their projects. Again, the next deadline is September 30th. And the decision-making will happen at your October 27th meeting. So please be prepared to be here for that. Really, really exciting news. I actually heard back from one of the attorneys from our city attorney's office. I had turned in an opinion request last year about the grant program and the fact that it's a reimbursement program asking if we could shift from a reimbursement program to providing funds up front. She actually, so I ran into her today here at City Hall and she said, oh, I just reviewed your request from last year. And she is giving us the thumbs up to make that change starting currently with all of our current projects. And so I am working on drafting the new agreement template which she will review and hopefully approve pretty quickly. So that will open it up and make this grant program more equitable for our community members across center. I was just super excited about that. Finally, I am still working on getting that survey together for the project liaison. So everyone can be assigned to one. It's been a very busy month and I was on vacation. So I apologize, it's coming. And I'm still working on creating our engagement page on Let's Connect SR for the grant program. Again, that's coming. Just taking some time. And with that, I am done with staff updates. Great, thank you. And thanks for forecasting ahead and answering some questions right there. You're welcome. Sure. We're opening it up to members for questions at this time about the staff updates that Danielle and Magali just gave us. Are there any questions? I don't see any. And like I said, you answered my question. So thank you so much for working on those grant liaisons and getting that information to us. I'm sure in an email soon. But one other point. I don't know where this was going to fall. And I know that Danielle and I talked about it. So correct me if this is gonna fall later in the agenda, but about communication to CAB members. How best to communicate? You mean how the public can communicate with CAB members? How you can. So, oh, that's right. Yes, thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for the reminder. Yes, one last update, one last request from staff is we wanna know how best to communicate with you. As you all know, I send a few emails throughout the month with updates, with announcements and with reminders about the meetings. However, I have noticed that some members aren't getting those emails or they're getting lost. So if you could reach out to me, you can either send me an email, you all know my email, or I will put the phone number in the chat box. If you prefer text message, more than happy to send you a text, just shoot me a text. Let me know, hey, can you please text me these updates and I'll make sure to do that. If you like snail mail, I guess I could send you a letter, but either email or text or even phone call, that works too. Just let me know what your preference is. Thank you for that. Carrier pigeon is not on the options, just so you know, we're not dialing it back that far. For our smoke, I'm sorry. Now we'll consider a goat, but that's gonna take till next year. So we could have goat delivery. So that was it, so Danielle's putting her phone number that you can text her, which just appeared right there in the chat box. And that would be a good number for everybody to jot down or keeping your phone. And then you could notify her if you'd like a text with the actual information from the emails and updates, or if you would just like a text notification, maybe to go and look at your email because that might be easier too. So let Danielle know how you like to be communicated with because part of what we need to do is just to communicate with each other and be able to have that information at hand. So thank you for reaching out to Danielle. And with that, there's no other questions. I'll go to public comment. There are no hands raised for public comment. Thank you. And moving on to item number seven, which we skipped a couple of those items on number six because those were presented earlier. Item number seven is now the old 6.3 is 7.1. It's standing agenda item issues of concern to city residents. So this is where CAB members can report on any issues of concern to community members that they've heard in their areas. Are there any issues of concern at this time? No, there's no issues of concern. Seeing no issues and I have none to present, going to public comment with that. There are no hands raised for public comment. Thank you. And moving right along to 7.2, standing agenda item, the subcommittee updates. So subcommittees can provide updates as needed. I know that our committee did not meet this past month and it sounds like expertise is low on enrollment as well. So did not meet, I would assume. Correct. So there are no updates for the subcommittees. Correct. Are there any comments from our members on that? There looks like there are none. And I'm going to assume, but I won't assume. I'm just going to say that it's public comment. See if there's any. Sorry. I need to address something with a cap. Okay. About subcommittees, sorry. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. So moving forward, I start my first week of law school officially one year, first year next week, which classes are on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays. So we have two options here. Magali and Madeleine will be taking over the general CAB meetings moving forward. So this is my last CAB meeting for a while. Although if classes canceled on a Wednesday, I may be able to participate with subcommittee meetings. Those are held on the first and second Wednesdays of the month. So with me not being in class and us, or with me being in class and us not having staff to staff those meetings on those days, two options. One, move them to Mondays, if that works for everybody, or two, eliminate the subcommittees and do work here in the general CAB meetings. Lately we haven't had much to do in those subcommittee meetings just because of the pandemic. And it's not a whole lot we can do while we're sheltering in place and not able to go out and engage the community, right? That might pick up. I don't know what it's going to look like for next year. Like I said, the other option is to disband the subcommittees and just focus on doing work at these general meetings. So I will turn it back over to the CAB and let you decide what you wanna do. All right, so I heard those two options being one to move it to all the Wednesday subcommittee meetings, go to the first and third, excuse me, first and second Monday of the month, respectively. And then the second option being disband the subcommittee meetings to have the work done in CAB. Are there any comments, questions? It looks like there's hands raised now. So I'm gonna go with member Roberts. Yeah, I would go along with disbanding the committees. I just feel like, yeah, we could make these meetings more working meetings and I feel like we could be doing more between meetings. I think at this point, the CAB members are doing, including myself, very little between meetings. Especially staff writing it and I think we could be doing more. So I would, yeah, I wanna do more work as a group during the meetings and higher expectations for all of us members in between. Thank you. Moving on to member Steffi. Yes, I agree with member Roberts. And I was thinking maybe we give it maybe a timeframe, like a six month timeframe and then evaluate at that point whether we think it makes sense to reinstate those groups or not, but I agree. I think more of us being engaged in between meetings and having more deep conversation at the meetings would be a good approach, at least for the next, I just chose six months, but a certain period of time and then reevaluate. Thank you. And vice chair and Ossensio. Yeah, I agree with both the previous statements from me. To members, I think it should probably be, I think it'd be a good idea if it were a standing item in the just regular agenda that we could use as needed. I assume we won't need it quite as much, but it'll be there available as needed. I also think if we are gonna add it, might wanna see how we could maybe condense part of the agenda, it'll be pretty helpful. If they're gonna be working meetings, we should probably try to balance that out a little bit. That sounds, as we have eight members here right now, that's about half of us that have spoken for disbanding the subcommittees and bringing it to the cab. Are there any other points of view on this that we would welcome hearing? I know it's a little difficult as most of you are new and haven't even been able to attend a subcommittee meeting. Like I said before, it's been very challenging during the pandemic as there's not a whole lot going on to work on in those meetings. So I like the idea of reevaluating in six months to see where we're at. And I see no other comments from members. I will just say that I think that I agree with what's been stated already by our members and it would feel great to have more to work on here. I do feel like we're a little bit top heavy with staff contributing to the meetings. And last meeting, it felt wonderful to get to work and lift our sleeves up a little bit and work on those items of getting those grants out. And so I realized that we still have that to do once a quarter as well. So if we could take that into consideration that maybe those meetings where we have grant decisions, we wouldn't have a standing agenda item of a subcommittee work because those cab grants can take a little extra time. But I would agree on that. Does anybody want to put forward a motion? I motion that we disband the subcommittees for six months. Member Baldenegro. Thank you. I'll second that. And that was member Roberts jumping in quickly for a second. So at this time, would you like to count us off for a vote, Danielle? Yeah. You need a minute here. Sorry. Okay. And you guys can just do thumbs up. Member Barnett. Member Baldenegro. Member Rom. Member Richardson. Member Roberts. Okay. Member Square. Member Steffi. And vice chair Anasentio. And chair Graves. Perfect. Motion passes with eight votes. Great. I might have just done that a little bit out of order, just acknowledging that because we probably should have just had the motion, had the second gone to public comments come back for a vote. That's okay. We don't have any audience members right now but we should still put it out to public comment. Okay. Let's put that out to public comment. There are no hands raised for public comment. Thank you. I'm sorry about that error on my part but now we're moving on to item number eight which is the future agenda items. And so this schedule is tentative and you can see it on your agenda that the Santa Rosa General Plan update presentation would be next month in September. And then we've got some tentative items to be announced including the Santa Rosa Equity Officer presentation, the Wreck and Parks presentation, the Office of Community Engagement Strategic Plan and last the rescheduling of the Sonoma County Homeless presentation tentatively in December of 2021. So, and that would be before their next count in 2022 and that's why that would be tentative, I would assume for the December. So, although I do believe that December 4th, Wednesday would be the 22nd which is right before Christmas so that's something to take into consideration as well. Are there any other potential future agenda items that anybody wants to bring forward at this time? I don't see any. That seems like a pretty comprehensive list right there. Thanks for putting that together. And can we go to public comment on that? There are no hands raised for public comment. Great, thank you. So, moving on to adjournment. It looks like we're at the end of this road. Does anybody want to make a move? Move to adjourn. Thank you for interrupting me. And was it Roberts again with the second? Three for three. And we're adjourned, I believe. Thank you everybody for joining us this evening and for making great questions on those presentations and bringing forward those couple of motions that went over quite a statically. So, everybody stay safe out there. Take care. Thanks again, good night. Thank you. Bye.