 Hello, hello, hello. Hello everybody. Good afternoon. Looks like we have all of our subcommittee members, and we're just waiting for a few more staff members to join us. Perfect. Gives me time to pull up my agenda. Perfect. Mayor Rogers, I did want to let you know we are aware of the Open Government Task Force meeting start time, and staff is aware as well. Perfect. I was just going to let the other councilman, well actually I didn't realize this is both committees. Hi guys. This will be fun for hours working together. Now, it is four o'clock. Are we still waiting on anybody? It looks like we have the staff members present. So if you'd like to go ahead and move forward with commencing the meeting. Yeah. Let's go ahead. We'll call the meeting to order. Let's go ahead and take the roll call to get us kicked off. Perfect. Councilmember Alvarez? Present. Vice Mayor Rogers? Present. Mayor Rogers? Yeah. Let the record show all council members are present. Excellent. Now, Madam Clerk, could you please go ahead and walk through for us how the public is going to be able to engage on today's agenda and how public comment is going to work? Of course. At each agenda item, the item is presented. The mayor will ask for subcommittee member comments and then open it up for public comment. The host in Zoom will be lowering all hands until public comment is open for the agenda item. Once the mayor has called for public comment, the mayor will announce for the public to raise their hand if they wish to speak on the specific agenda item. If you're calling in to listen to the meeting audibly, you can dial star nine to raise your hand. The mayor will then call on the public who have raised their hands. Public comment will be limited to three minutes and a timer will appear on the screen for the subcommittee and public to see. Additionally, there is one public comment period on today's agenda to speak on non-agenda matters item four. This is the time when any person may address the subcommittee on matters not listed on this agenda, but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the subcommittee. Great. Thank you so much. So we do have, folks, our first item is the draft minutes from our January 13th meeting. I did receive one correction sent in from the public, just making sure that we reflect that the conversation around the ban on new gas infrastructure that it was reflected that our entity had decided that we would look at it at either the next or the following meeting. Obviously, this is now the next meeting. It is, as I understand it, set to be discussed at the next meeting. So I do want to make sure that we have that reflected in the minutes. Other than that change, is there anything from either of the council members? No, mayor. Okay. Let's go ahead and go to public comment on our minutes. Is there anybody who would like to speak on this item? And I see Jenny's hand up. So we'll go ahead and go to Jenny first. Jenny, I have enabled your speaking permissions. One moment while I get the timer up on the screen, please. Jenny, can you confirm that you see the timer on your screen? Thank you. Yes. I just wanted to offer my apologies because in that letter I said that you had stated clearly that the meeting that the ban on gas stations would be agendized for March the 10th. And when I listened to the video recording, I realized actually it said March the 10th or one of the following meetings. And since then I've heard from staff that it's agendized for May the 12th. So I wanted to apologize and say thank you. And I'm glad we're now on the agenda for May the 12th. Thank you. Now absolutely. And thank you, Jenny. Do you have anybody else who'd like to speak on our minutes? Great. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes with that amendment? I think that was the vice mayor trying to make a motion. Sorry. Distant learning. I would like to make a motion to approve the January 13th, 2021 minutes with the amendment that was set forth by the mayor. Can I second it? All right. Let's go ahead and call the roll on that. Council Member Alvarez. Aye. Vice Mayor Rogers. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. Let the record show that the minutes are approved as amended. Great. Thank you so much. And with that we will go on to public comments. This is public comment for non-agenda items. If you'd like to talk to the subcommittee about something that's within the purview of our committee for today but is not yet on the agenda, we're happy to take that down. I will also note we have our first item coming up after this is item 5.1. That's future topics that folks would like to see from the Climate Action Committee. And so that is a pretty broad category as well if people want to talk. So first we'll go to Mike and then we'll go to Woody. Mike, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Let me get the timer up on the screen. Mike, can you confirm that you see the timer on the screen? Oh, Mike, you're still muted. I can. Thanks, Kelly. Perfect. Please identify yourself for public record if you so choose and your time begins now. I'm Mike Turgeon with Friends of the Climate Action Plan. Just to be clear, I have an item that I'd like on a future agenda. Am I too soon? We'll go ahead and take that on item 5.1, Mike. This is... Okay, thank you. Sorry about that. Nope, all good. Woody, followed by Kevin. Okay, you should be able to hear me now. There we go, Woody. Yeah, and I see the timer. Fantastic. Good to go. Your time begins now. Fantastic. Thanks so much. So thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. My name is Woody Hastings. I'm the co-coordinator of the Coalition Opposing New Gas Stations. I live in unincorporated Sonoma County near Sebastopol. The item I wanted to speak on is not on the agenda, and that is okay. I'm going to talk a little bit about the whole gas station thing. But first, I wanted to just say because I spoke at the last committee meeting and I just started blabbing about my issue and I neglected to welcome, congratulate and welcome the two new city council members. So I wanted to just say congratulations and really happy to have you, both council member Alvarez and Rogers. In the mix, it's really great. I'm looking forward to working with you. And I know there was some conversation about learning and expanding on the climate issue. And during the day I work at the climate center, so I'd be happy to help in that matter. But this whole issue that I'm so happy to know that we're on the agenda in May looking forward to that. Part of the reason why we care so much about getting a prohibition like what happened in Petaluma is that working with Jenny on this issue and all the others, we don't want to be spending our time doing this. We don't want to be stomping out these fossil fuel fires. And so we think that what's needed just last night from 6 p.m. to midnight, we were involved in a Nevada city council meeting where they just approved a 28 dispenser gas station at the Costco in Nevada. And we don't want to be doing that. So we want to get these prohibitions in place so that we can really move forward on getting California, our cities and the whole state onto a clean energy future. So just really appreciate you all and looking forward to having more of a conversation about it in May and hoping we'll be able to maybe give a little bit of a presentation because we do have a presentation on the issue. So thanks again. And that's all I had to say. Take care. Thank you so much, Woody. And I checked in on that Nevada city council meeting just a little bit. And it did look like a doozy. So thanks for hanging in there, Kevin, followed by Alexa. Kevin, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Can you confirm that you see the timer? I do see the timer. Thank you, Kelly. Perfect. Your time begins now. Okay. So thank you for meeting and for allowing me to make these preliminary remarks. There is a large group of climate activists who are doing everything we can to reverse the path we're on. And like you, we put in a lot of hours in meetings and money on things like solar panels and heat pump water heaters and electric cars. Because we know that if we didn't do these things, we wouldn't be effective and we would lose all credibility. And on the wider community level, as you well know, we reach out to you, our elected officials, and we attend council meetings and board meetings, and we write emails and make comments and advocate for specific actions because we want to help. And we understand the overwhelming demands on you and the council at large and the city staff. But the reality is in the end that it is you and the council at large and the city staff that has to take the necessary legislative and administrative steps to address this crisis that the speed science tells us we must. And if there are long standing bylaws or procedural hoops in place that prevent you from moving quickly, then those obstacles must be removed. And who knows how that would look. Maybe it's using the police powers allowed for in our state constitution to protect the residents of our city. I don't know, but we have to think outside the box and we have to change the paradigm of how our government works. This crisis demands it. You know, I attended the last RCPA board meeting and I was grateful for the challenging questions that board members had for the staff regarding the climate mobilization strategy. Director Hopkins asked where's the money going to come from for this and she wanted to know where are the specific goals and timetables and director Landman voted not to support the strategy until the issue of equity was better addressed. But I thought that your question, mayor, was the most important. You asked what would it look like and how would we know if our goals for equity were met? What would be different in the mobilization strategy if those equity goals were in place? What a great question and I'd like to ask the same question now. What would it look like if our city took immediate actions to address this emergency? What procedural changes and ordinances would be in place and how would the budget look if we were acting at the speed that is absolutely necessary? So I just want to urge you to demonstrate that you do understand that the house is on fire and you are using your power as our elected officials and the devoted city staff to protect all of us from this existential crisis that we all face. Thank you. All right, thank you so much, Kevin. Alexa, followed by Hoyen. Hi, can you hear me? Yep. Hi, my name is Alexa Forester and I can see the timer. I am a professor at the San Rosa Junior College and I also have two elementary age boys and over the past decade I have become a single issue voter on climate justice. And I also attended the Nevada city council meeting last night for as long as I could. And I was quite horrified that a council that had passed an emergency resolution voted the way that they did. And it sort of struck the sphere in me that these emergency resolutions might just be talk. And so I just wanted to voice my appreciation for the work this committee does and welcome the new committee members, the newly elected committee members and just say that we're watching and we really want to see the results of actual policies that change things. And I will just say as somebody who is very busy, I appreciate how busy you must all be. I would also appreciate at some point whether it's yearly or quarterly a climate communication from this committee that details the specific changes that are being made that would impact my life because I don't have time to dig through to find that information always. And I also don't necessarily understand how appointing a manager is going to make a difference. So if there could be communication, this is what we're doing. This is how much progress we've made. That would be really helpful for the broader public. Thank you. All right, thank you so much, Alexa. Hoi An, followed by Pete. Hoi An, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Okay, can you hear me? We can. Your time begins now. Okay. I'm Yantrum with Sonoma County Climate Activist Network. I am thrilled that the city has formed a climate action subcommittee. I applaud and am grateful to the city for resisting the lawsuit to remove the gas ban. Maintaining the gas ban is extremely important because fracked gas is mostly methane, which is up to 84 times more potent at greenhouse gas than CO2. Thank you, Mayor Rogers and council members for standing your ground on this important issue and for forming the Climate Action Committee. And I welcome the new committee members for joining. There is a 30-year lag between the times that greenhouse gases are emitted and when the effects are felt. The catastrophic wildfires, drought we are experiencing today, are largely due to emissions from 30 years ago. In 2018, California wildfires burned almost 2 million acres. In 2020, a record shattering 4.2 million acres have burned. These destructive climate effects and more will increase for years to come. And as a pandemic related food insecurity were not enough, global food supplies could go into major crisis due to the climate including right here in California. Clearly we are in for some rough times before things get better. All the more reason to act swiftly on the climate crisis. According to the IPCC report and project drawdown, we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere as well as reduce emissions or we will not reach our climate goals. I urge you to meet more than once every two months in order to educate yourselves and our community and begin to take actions. Update the Santa Rosa Climate Action Plan as soon as possible with input from the community. I urge you to find ways to support regenerative agriculture. Not only does it help remove carbon from the atmosphere, it improves soil health and farm productivity which will help us address food insecurity. Please work on transitioning us away from fossil fuels particularly in buildings which are almost as high in emissions as transportation. Thank you for your service. Great, thank you so much. Pete, followed by Mark. Pete, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Thank you. Can you hear me? We can. Your time begins now. Thank you very much. I wanted to first express deep gratitude for you individually and as a subcommittee. I know you all sense the urgency and the gravity of the climate crisis which really is the existential crisis of our time. One of the things that I notice in speaking with elected officials and others is that even though we sense the gravity of the challenge, we haven't yet brought ourselves to change our behaviors, our ways of doing business in order to meet our hugely ambitious goal of carbon neutrality by 2030. Clearly, we need to change our habits and our procedures because business as usual will not get us even close to carbon neutrality by 2030. So I look forward to this subcommittee and all of our other committees and organizations and elected bodies within the county working together in a transformative way to get us to our hoped for resilient, equitable, carbon neutral world of 2030. Thank you. Thank you, Pete. Mark, followed by Tom and Chris. Mark, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Thank you. I see the timer. And Mark Mortensen, friends of the Climate Action Plan, and here I am following these great speakers. So I'll probably come out sounding very blathery, but whatever. Thanks as always for the opportunity to speak. And I've got some ideas for the next agenda item, as do others here, but these are more process points that I wanted to bring up real quickly right now. Yeah, a couple of people have alluded to it already that the CAS currently meets every two months. Yeah, we've got the Sebastible Climate Action Committee meeting every two weeks, Petaluma Climate Action Advisory Committee meeting every month. Here in Santa Rosa, we've got the Cultural Heritage Board meeting every two weeks. The Waterways Advisory Committee every month. Board of Public Utilities every couple of weeks. So lots of them meeting much more frequently. So I'm sure you agree and you're on the committee. And so we know you care about this. You know, that we've got an emergency here and it demands greater attention than meeting every two months. There's just so much to be done. And so I very much encourage the committee to meet more frequently and so that we can get more actions taken. There's so much to be done. I'd also just recommend getting some community members on the committee, which has been done in other jurisdictions, those perspectives. We get the expertise from you folks on the city side of things and then getting some community members in there would definitely benefit the community. Also on the process side, in my opinion, we've just got to find the money to hire a sustainability director, something of our own climate czar, and to convene an implementation team consisting of staff and maybe additional staff. I mean, this is an emergency and we've got to have the personnel fight the fire. There are models in other cities on how this can be done. And I can provide links to resources on that. These community-based organizations such as ours can be a resource for you. We've got to allocate the money and it could be possibly some of that strategic reserve that got built up from the PG&E settlement money. Some of that could be taken to hire these critically important personnel. Yeah, I think we understand that this is a situation, this climate crisis that we're in where we can spend a certain amount of money now or we can definitely wind up spending a lot more money later. So again, thank you so much for all the hard work you're doing and really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Mark. We'll go to Tom and Chris, followed by Deborah and Paul. Tom and Chris, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Okay, hi, my name is Chris Thompson and I would like to say hello to all you council members and welcome to our two new members. Awesome. Welcome and congratulations. Yeah, I'm the vice-chair of the Oakmont Democratic Club and we have the distinction, I guess, out in Oakmont of evacuating numerous times since including 2017 all the way up through this last September. That was pretty horrific. 4,700 people trying to evacuate yet again during a pandemic. We spent our first night after the evacuation, sleeping in a safeway parking lot, but we were doing well compared to a lot of people. I did want to say that I'm proud to be a Democrat this year, especially we've seen a big mess the last few years and now we have a chance to take this climate crisis seriously. And I want us as a local community to try to do everything we can to address it here. I strongly urge you to get a sustainability director on board who would then establish an implementation team. We need focus, we need accountability, we need someone and a team whose primary purpose would be to address this and it needs that kind of support from the council and from this community if we are taking this problem seriously as we need to. That's all I wanted to say today. Hope to work with you all in the future. We have an incredible opportunity this year coming out of the pandemic. Let's go. We're going to make some stuff happen here in Santa Rosa. Thanks very much. Appreciate your comments, Chris. Deborah and Paul. Deborah and Paul, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Thank you. Do you see the timer? Yes. Perfect, your time begins now. Hi, it's just Deborah and I'm Deborah Adams. I'm a member of Citizens Climate Lobby. And I just want to applaud all that was said so far. I'm really happy to find that there is a Climate Action Committee for the City of Santa Rosa. And I would really like to see community organizations involved. So if you take that step, please include Citizens Climate Lobby. And our main path towards working on this problem is promoting a carbon fee and dividend bill in Congress. So I'll cut it off because I'm just repeating the good things people said. We're glad you're meeting. We're glad you're taking action and we'd like to be part of it. Thank you. All right, thank you so much, Deborah. Just so you know, we have sent a support letter for that as well, for that congressional legislation. Next up is Michael. Michael, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Yeah, can you hear me now? We can. Your time begins now. Perfect. As everybody has stated, I really appreciate the convening of the subcommittee. It's been a long time coming. And our congratulations to our two new members. I just want to reiterate a lot of what's been said, but perhaps say it in a different way. You know, as a climate subcommittee, your task is all things climate. As such, we recognize the urgency for action. And your example of adopting the climate emergency resolution slash action plan is evident of that. And the fact that all our current problems are exacerbated by climate change. We need bold action that shows the community that these actions will facilitate an equitable livable planet for generations to come. Actions now be maybe inconvenient, but imagine nonaction now. And the draconian measures needed in the future burdened by our children and grandchildren. We need to start to ask the right questions so we can move away from the culture that has taught us the quick fix as opposed to finding underlying cause or causes and proceeding with equitable, corrective action. So I will leave it with that. And I have more comments when we get to the agenda portion. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you so much, Michael. And that's the last hand that I see, Callie. Were there any voicemail public comments on this item? No voicemail or email. I do see one more hand raised, though. Okay. Christine, go ahead. Christine, I have enabled your speaking permissions. All right. Great. Y'all can hear me? Yes. Let me get the timer up on the screen, though. One moment, please. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Did you get the timer? Yes, I can. Good evening, everyone. My name is Christine Byrne. I am an organizer with Sunrise Movement Sonoma County. I'm also an educator at Sonoma County Water Agency. And the climate crisis is of extreme concern to me. The catastrophic wildfires, the extreme heatwaves, the droughts, the massive floods from a couple of years back that we've experienced have really been unimaginable. And unfortunately, that's with only one degree Celsius temperature increase. We really must follow what science tells us is necessary to preserve a livable future. And that's really why I support urgent and bold climate action to protect our city and its residents. But you and we myself, we cannot and we should not create this plan on our own. We really must include community representation and contribution from those who are most impacted by climate change in our community, the youth, the elderly, and our BIPOC community members. And so, please, let's not just react to climate catastrophe as it bears down upon our community. Let's adopt a plan, create a plan together to build a resilience and adaptive and just Santa Rosa that we all deserve. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Great. Thank you, Christine. So I'll go ahead and bring it back now to the council. Amy, are you kicking us off on item 5.1 or should we just dive right in? Up to you. I'm happy to introduce it or you can. Go ahead. Okay. So up next, we have item 5.1 and this is for future topics for the Climate Action Subcommittee. Great. And council members, just because I know that there is that awkward public comment for non-agenda items and then we're obviously asking for what people want to hear as well. I just want to reiterate for folks what I've heard so far. So far I've heard policy and process changes to expedite climate action at City Hall, the ban on new gas stations, as well as continuing to fight the repeal of the all-electric ordinance that we passed last year. I've heard more updates on climate action, more frequent meetings, more citizen involvement, and an update to the Climate Action Plan. I've heard more on sustainable agriculture, a sustainability director position, as well as implementation of the Climate Mobilization Action Plan. So I'll stop there. I've got a couple of additional things that I want to put on the table, but I'll start with council members. Unless you're comfortable, we also could go and take public comment first and then come back for comment from council members. I'm interested in the public comment if that's okay with councilmen projects. Sounds great. So we'll go to public comment to see if there's anything in addition to what I've already read off that I heard from folks in our first little segment to see if we can add to our list. So first I see Mike. Mike, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Do you see the timer? Ready to go. Thanks. Your time begins now. Mike Turgeon with Friends of the Climate Action Plan. Yes, thank you. It's been great also getting to know the new council members, council member Rodgers and Alvarez as well. It's always great to have, you know, diverse opinions that come to the fore. And the item that I'm interested in is seeing on the agenda would be to bring the Climate Safe California Campaign for endorsement. Climate Safe California Campaign is the initiative from the Climate Center and it's geared to be the way to get Sacramento to enact policy required by science so we can reach negative emissions by 2030. The point of it is to get local jurisdictions, individuals, businesses, government, and nonprofit to endorse so that Sacramento can see that there's a groundswell. Already 800 individuals and hundreds of businesses, governments and organizations have already endorsed it, including our Sonoma County Transportation Authority and the Regional Climate Protection Authority as well. On a unanimous vote just on January 11th. So the basics are that the initiative would be there to pressure Sacramento to start to create policy so that behavior will change. It's a comprehensive program that has the basic four pillars of accelerating the phase out of fossil fuel, increasing sequestration, investing in community resilience, and funding climate action. And so each one of the individual county supervisors have endorsed it already and they'll be bringing it to their agenda in March or April. And I sincerely hope we can get it to the next agenda. It could probably go right to the Santa Rosa City Council. It could probably be done as a consent item. That's how the climate emergency resolution was done at the county level. So anyway, thank you so much for the work that's being done here and highly appreciate everything that's happening. Absolutely, thank you, Mike. And we did, as the representative for Santa Rosa on RCPA, as Mike mentioned, we did sign off on that. So I can check with the city attorney's office and see, I think that as the mayor, since we have direction already, that I can just sign a letter of support for that on behalf of the council. But let me check if we need to. We can bring that back as well. Zincy, followed by Jerry. Zincy, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Do you see the timer on your screen? Yes, I do. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Your time begins now. Okay, so my name is Zincy Tan. I work for Zero Waste Sonoma, but I'm actually making this comment just more of as a resident of Sonoma County. I live in Ronald Park, but I work in Santa Rosa and I spend quite a lot of time in the city. And the topic that I would like to see discussed in the future would be increasing biking infrastructure and making biking or walking more accessible to people. As anyone who bikes knows, you're not just limited, you're not biking only within your city. Usually you're biking around the entire region. And so even though there is quite a lot of biking infrastructure in Santa Rosa already, I'd love to see it get expanded and also make it more accessible, as I'd mentioned, to people who might find biking very intimidating and think that it's just a sport and not something they can do, for example, going to school or going grocery shopping. So that's my comment. Thank you. Great, thank you so much Zincy. Jerry, followed by Jane. Jerry, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your time begins now. Thank you. My name is Jerry Bernhout. I live in Oakmont. I'm a local environmental attorney. What I'd like to see in the climate action update is an expansion of the scope of the greenhouse gas inventory for the city to include transboundary emissions. That means, for example, if you're going to approve a new hotel, you include all the emissions from the traveling of people to arrive at the hotel, including air travel. It also includes consumption-based emissions. I was the lead attorney in the case that overturned the county climate action plan for not including those emissions, but the RCPA has continued to operate on the old standard, regardless of that. So I think it's time for us to get real about the actual carbon footprint of business as usual. And we can affect what we don't measure. So hopefully you'll take that into consideration. Great. Thank you so much, Jerry. Madam Mayor, you have the floor next, on them followed by Mark. I'm sorry. There. We can hear you. Thank you. Your time begins now. Okay, thank you. It has been a long time, so I hardly think of myself as Madam Mayor, but I'm here tonight, first of all, to say congratulations to all of you. You've got a lot of work ahead of you, but to really urge you to bring forward the climate safe California platform for your support. Mike said all the elements in it, but I just know because I sat there and struggled with budgets with you. If we get the state of California on board with this serious, serious issue, there is going to be money, there's going to be work, and there's going to be support for the local groups and the local agencies to do the hard work. It's going to be needed for the climate situation. It's really in your totally best interest, not only for the future, but for your finances. If you get on board supporting this and helping to push Sacramento to adopt these very important four elements, and one of them is funding, the colossal amount of money that will be needed. Your citizens are the ones, your constituents are the ones that are paying the price with the fires and the droughts and the floods. I really believe people will hardly support your endorsement of this resolution, so thank you. Thank you so much, Madam Mayor. Mark, followed by Shelly. Mark, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Alrighty, and I do see the timer. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Again, it's Mark Mortensen with Folk App, and I'll share the list of recommendations I have here and with an email, follow-up email to staff and to council members. And also, I couldn't agree more on the climate-safe endorsement and going forward on that. First off, some general goals for the Climate Action Subcommittee. And what I would like to see is smart goals, and by that I mean goals that are very specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. With this situation, I believe that it's essential that in this emergency situation that as our city's climate emergency resolution says that the actions that we take going forward need to be looked at through the lens of climate. And that includes actions from this council, staff, community-based organizations. We need to look at them through this lens of how will the action affect our efforts in dealing with the climate crisis? How will this action impact emissions or impact sequestration targets? The model, this suggests that we need to, we must model and measure the emissions avoided and the sequestration with the various actions that we're talking about going forward. So I'm getting back into that point that someone made earlier about, you can't fix what you're not measuring. And so I think that the city should have an annual goal for avoided emissions and sequestration in order to get to net zero by 2030. Having that annual goal would be essential. Now for something more specific. There's so much happening around the county, the country, the state, and the county around the climate crisis. And as Mayor Rogers knows, and he was a key part of it, the RCPA adopted the climate, or the Sonoma County Climate Mobilization Strategy this week. And I believe that the Climate Action Subcommittee connect as a driver in leading Santa Rosa to align and extend the actions of the city with those strategies prioritized in that plan, in that strategy. And so the framework, the RCPA's framework has a lot of different strategies in it, and they've got some that they prioritized, starting with a comprehensive transportation strategy, complete streets, transit, bicycle, pedestrian paths, get people out of those single occupancy vehicles, home energy efficiency, and electrification with micro grids. And I can see I'm going to run out of time here. But and also lastly, rural and urban land management program that works with residents and agriculture to improve soil health. Sequestration is what we're talking about. Yeah, and I'll stop there, but I'm sure that some of the other ones will be brought up. And again, I appreciate all you're doing and lots to do. Thank you so much, Mark. Shelley, followed by Gail. Shelley, I have enabled your speaking permissions. OK, thank you. Hello, everybody. I'm Shelley Browning. I'm the co-founder of Friends of Public Banking Santa Rosa, we're a member organization of the broader statewide California Public Banking Alliance. Chris, I'd like to congratulate you on becoming mayor. And it's my first chance I've had to speak to you since you became mayor. And also welcome the two new council members, Eddie and Natalie, really cool to have you guys on board. I'd just like to say that, Chris, as you well know, the city of Santa Rosa currently conducts its banking services at JP Morgan Chase, which is the largest financiers of fossil fuels in the world. Since the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement Accord, they've invested $296 billion in fossil fuel projects globally. In 2019, the California Public Banking Alliance succeeded in passing the Public Banking Act 8857, which enables cities, counties, and regions to establish their own public banks. There's only going to be 10 of these licenses available. And so far, the cities of San Francisco, LA, Oakland, along with the East Bay, San Diego, and cities in the central coast are all working towards establishing public banks. There are only various stages of this, but they're all on the move. City councils are involved. And this year, what we're working on is, among other things, we're working with Assemblymember Miguel Santiago of LA, who has drafted a budget request to the state legislature asking the state to finance up to $15 million in technical assistance grants that would provide $1.5 million to each of the 10 cities or counties or regions that are working to establish public banks. So simply to ask today is that you guys agendize a public banking presentation so that we can really set out to educate you on what public banking means, what would be involved, what would be the advantages. This is something that has never happened at Santa Rosa City Council, and it's really time to make this happen. So that's all I have. Thank you so much. Thank you, Shelley. Gail, followed by Michael. Gail, I haven't able to hear your speaking permissions. Thank you. I see that. Yeah, hi. My name's Gail. Good, Brett. I've lived in Santa Rosa since 1976. It saddens me to see things the way they are. That they haven't really, I don't know any, I don't want to get into all of that. I agree with everything everyone has said, obviously climate safe, California campaign, absolutely meeting more often, grateful you guys are there, want to be a part of it myself. And getting the broader public, as someone said, I feel the community doesn't even know what we're doing, what's being done, and they would like to help if they could. But you know, my thing that I always breaks my heart when I go downtown is I miss those trees and I miss the square that we used to have. And I would love to see the downtown Santa Rosa be community friendly, the micro grid down there, bring back more trees, you know, water, whatever. I go up to Heelsburg because I enjoy their downtown and ours I'm ashamed of. So I mean, I can't even anyhow. So yeah, I'm going to put, and I'm glad that you're hearing us, Chris. I love the way you checked off all the things that people said, you're hearing us. I hope you add this as well, make Santa Rosa pretty again. And also, you know, all those trees are going to obviously help our climate. So I want to be involved, keep me in the loop. And that's it for me. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much, Gail. Michael followed by Pete. Michael, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Oh, OK. Can you hear me? We can. You're time to go down. Thanks so much. I'm back again. Michael LaPel with Working Group for Emergency Climate Action Now. And I kind of want to reiterate what one of the last commenters made and that was we really need safe bike and pedestrian infrastructure. And it really entails creativity because the bike pedestrian master plan since 2010 has been updated. And there are a lot of great plans, a lot of great graphs, a lot of paths that are designated there, but very little funding has been attributed to those. So I'd like to see creative ways where we can use low hanging fruit to create infrastructure to connect North, South, East and West to downtown and rapid transit like the Spark train and the transit center so that individuals can do their utility riding and walk and feel safe in doing that. One clear example would be to do one way, two streets that are adjacent one way in one direction. The other half of that street being used for bikes, pedestrians. The adjacent street moving in the opposite direction and utilizing that extra lane and using physical barriers or trees to separate traffic from bikes and pedestrians. And dovetailed with that are safe speeds. And NattoNACTO.org has a great format for urban planning and safe speeds. And you'll see a lot of cities already have made transitions to lower their residential speeds. And there are a variety of ways in terms of street design that really facilitate that. And using adequate signage and perhaps apps to indicate safe separated bike paths. Adequate bike security stands. A 110 charging for e-bikes that you'd be charging stations and elsewhere. So there's locations around the United States where this is starting to move forward. And I think since most communities are strapped with funding we have to be creative and reimagine how we're going to make this all happen. Lastly, I'd like to see agendized community healthcare vulnerabilities exacerbated by climate change. And as we've seen with extreme fires and extreme climate events that hospitals are very vulnerable. And on the other side hospitals are major contributors to greenhouse gases. One day in a hospital generates 1.3 metric tons of greenhouse gases. So we really need to collaborate with our hospitals, our community healthcare folks to really make this change and make it work for all. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Michael. And really fast, did you say it was NACTO.org? Yes, NACTO.org. National Association of City Transportation Officials. Great. Thank you so much, Michael. We'll take a look at that. Thanks. Pete, followed by Jenny. Pete, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Thank you. I'm going to limit myself to one minute. Many or most of the suggestions that I've heard today appeared on the list of actions that Friends of the Climate Action Plan submitted to the city about a year and a half ago. So I'll have one of our numbers resend that list. I wanted to just highlight one item that you've already heard several times today and that is complete streets. In the city of Santa Rosa's Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan update in 2018, it showed that the majority of people in the United States would bike if dedicated bike facilities were provided. But only a small percentage of Americans are willing to ride if no facilities are provided. So this is something that we've already said we want to do. Let's do it. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much, Pete. Jenny. Jenny, I have enabled your speaking permissions. Jenny, it looks like you're still muted. Okay. Can you hear me? We can. Oh, good. Thank you. Sorry about that. Not a problem. Your time begins now. Thank you. I just wanted to make the point that among all these discussions about trying to reach net zero carbon by 2030, there are two things I'm not hearing that I think are really, really important that we need to have included. One is that the best way to sequester carbon is in existing forest ecosystems. The bigger the trees, the better. The redwood trees, the best of all. There's a lot of logging going on in the county where these forests are being cut down as we speak. The second thing is that we should absolutely resist any efforts at allowing or permitting the burning of woody biomass for energy. Burning woody biomass is even worse than burning coal in terms of carbon dioxide and toxic emissions. And trees are being cut from Sonoma County now and logged out in quantities to be burned in bioenergy facilities out of the county. We don't want them in the county or out of the county. So that's two huge topics which I don't hear anyone talking about in Sonoma County in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Take care of our existing forests and say no to any attempts to bring in burning biomass. It's already happening, but we need to stop any more happening. Thank you. Okay. And Callie, did we have any voicemail comments on this item? We have no voicemail and we did have one email public comment. Oh no, it was not on this item. Okay. I'm going to bring it back for council members. Adam Vice Mayor, do you want to go first? No. I mean, I heard everything that everyone had to say. I see that there's so much more that I need to learn. I'll kick it off and then I've got a couple of questions for both you and council member Alvarez. One of the things that was referenced quite a bit from folks is the climate mobilization strategy that our CPA just passed. I'll go over really briefly for you all. It broke down and for the public. It broke down four major components. One was decarbonization. One was sequestration and ecosystem services. One was resilience and adaptation. And then the final one was equity and community engagement. And within those four buckets, we had 13 specific directions that were given. Some of them we're already doing here in Santa Rosa. The all-electric building campaign is a pretty significant one. Before your time, but many of the folks who are joining on this call today were involved in the all-electric ordinance that was passed at the council two years ago now, a year ago now. But there's also this ongoing conversation around converting existing building stock into more energy efficiency. As I walked through that's the strategy that was being laid out by our CPA. There's components of it that the city has already started to do and there's components that we haven't done. And a lot of it I think is capturing some of the comments that I just heard. For example, for carbon sequestration, I want to know more about what we can do and the scalability of that from a city perspective. And I think we've talked about this at our last meeting as well. So I'm wondering, and I'll ask the two council members, do you think it would be helpful if we bring Suzanne Smith and Tanya Nareth with our CPA to our next meeting to give a presentation on what the climate mobilization strategy looks like to help us to sort of better understand what's happening at the regional level and what steps we can try to prioritize here in Santa Rosa from that plan? Definitely. For me, I agree. There's something that that a speaker said today that really does resonate that if electoral officials act in the manner that matches the emergency at hand, I think that that is really the the difference that we need to conduct ourselves in the future. And to add with this, if this is okay with you, mayor, I'm also interested in the public banking to see a study of presentations from the group on the one we speak of studies that also interests me as well. Okay, and I will tell you council member that's been discussed at long-term finance and if we were going to go that route, it actually would be assigned still to that committee, different council members than the last time that it was presented. But but probably we wouldn't hear it at the Climate Action Committee. Yes, it touches on everything. We have a number of different issues that touch on everything. But probably that would be assigned to long-term finance. Mayor, has this has this happened or is there something that's been assigned to the group? It was something that long-term finance discussed a couple of years ago, but it might be worth touching bases on it and having an updated presentation, especially with new legislation that's been passed and whatnot. So I can definitely talk with that group about that as well. I'd appreciate that. Go ahead, vice. Okay. So I finally understand what you're asking. You want to know how I feel about everything that was said. So I think that I would like to see what comes back for the climate safe California, what you come up with that. And also, I think it is important, although it would be one more meeting for us to do. I think that if we can pull it off, I think there is so much going on to have it every other month. Seems that we are missing some vital time that we could be utilizing and getting things done in a more timely manner. So I would like to see what it looks like for the process for us to maybe meet more frequently because I miss you and Eddie. I don't get to see you guys see you guys enough. And then definitely looking at the bicycle and pedestrian. So if we want people to not use their cars to get places, then we need to make it safe for them to do so. So seeing what we can do about getting that done. And I heard recently that Santa Rosa used to be in the forefront of climate action and now we're kind of lagging behind. And Chris and Eddie, I know we don't want to do anything and lag behind. So we need to get back on the ball and see what we can do to get Santa Rosa back in the forefront as far as climate is concerned. Well, I don't know that I'd agree with whoever is ready to fight and throw down about whether Santa Rosa is leading or not. But I'm with you. I want to continue to drag the rest of the county with us in a more sustainable direction and doing our part. I hear you on bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. One of the things that I signed on to is the bike to it challenge that the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition is doing. It's 30 percent of all of our trips here in Sonoma County are shorter than two miles. And so the challenge is to plan accordingly so that you can bike or walk any trip that's under two miles. If the two of you would like to join me on it I'm sure they'd be happy to hear that the entire Climate Action Subcommittee is going to be doing it. Well, I'll have you know, Mayor, my bike is released from the bike peddler tomorrow. So I get my bike and I'm back on the road. So everybody on the road, watch out. Excellent. I do think what I'm hearing from the public and what I'm hearing from the council, I think what would be a good agenda and I'm with you about doing monthly meetings. Let me double check with staff to make sure that they have the capacity. But I think given that this is a tier one priority for the council, I think that that'd be appropriate. But what I'm hearing is that our next meeting, whether it's in a month or in two months, whatever we can work out, I'll report back to you all on the Climate Safe California Campaign either that I signed on or if we need to approve something to get the city signed on with it. I'll update you all let you know on that. I heard the discussion about the ban on new gas stations, which we were already talking about doing at that point. And then I also heard maybe a presentation and an ability for us to prioritize within the climate mobilization strategy where staff's efforts could best be utilized. There are other great things that we heard as well. We can continue to talk about things like the sustainability director position when we talk about budget. But I think given that we're trying to make or have a regional conversation about this as well, I think it really makes sense for us to start by talking about the climate mobilization strategy. One thing that I didn't hear as much from the public as I expected, but I'd be interested in us starting to talk about is a climate measure, particularly a localized version of the Green New Deal. And when we talk about, for example, the electrification of our housing stock and bringing existing homes up to better energy efficiency, how can we create a funding source to do that? That might also come with it, hopefully a component of environmental justice that trains local workers to do that work that could recirculate that money in our local economy. I don't know if 2022 is the year to do that, to put that on the ballot, but I think we should start to entertain those conversations to start to, and I think that this entity should start to collate a lot of those voices. Obviously, we've got quite a few people from our community who are interested in participating who show up to these meetings and that might be a good place for us to do it as well. So with that, again, maybe for our next agenda, we're looking at climate safe California, one way or another, either already signed on or some direction from the subcommittee to sign on overview and prioritization of steps that we can take in the climate mobilization strategy that our CPA passed, and then as well as the discussion around banning new gas stations. That sounds good with the two of you. There was a comment made of annual goals. I don't know if the energy should be directed towards gauging where we're at as much as getting to what we know the end result will be, but I'm wondering what would the process to produce an annual goal look like? That's a great question. That's a question I think for Amy if she can try to answer because it is something that we've talked about sort of amorphously is updating our climate action plan and that involves with it. We have all of these new goals that we've passed, but we don't have, for example, all of the inventory work that was described, particularly when you start to talk about things like greenhouse gas emissions for people to get here, not just folks who are already here and in existence. So Amy, what would that look like and what kind of direction would you need for us to be able to pursue that? Thank you. So while part of the piece is us having updated GHG inventories and so RCPA comes out with those every few years, so they just released one for 2018 about, I think six months ago. So we can use that information but I think a lot of it is staff resources and assignments to that type of update, getting that information and then pushing it out to the public and then we also have, and this is kind of related, but our existing climate action plan which has a number of goals and actions that city staff are regularly implementing and we do update a spreadsheet. One of the items that we talked about was creating a dashboard that is available to the public so we can look at how we're achieving the goals that have been set by the climate action plan. That's remember Alvarez. Oh yes, thank you. I was trying to find that button. In regards to a comment that was made when it comes to the travel emissions and the emissions produced once a person is here, how, what would be the process to really differentiate and identify the missions that a person actually spent arriving to some mechanic from wherever their home was? And I'm sorry if I'm not clearing the question. I'm trying to understand how much truly is being emitted compared to our model to produce numbers for the public to view and how do we go about linking both? I'm wondering if it might be helpful to have Tanya Narath from RCPA come and she can make a presentation on the GHG Ingentories that they work on because there's modeling involved and it's not anything that I feel comfortable walking through but if the subcommittee is interested perhaps that's something that we can schedule for an upcoming agenda just to for all of our education. Mayor, I know I would appreciate it. I believe we just spoke on inviting both individuals and I'd see that would be very beneficial. Thank you, Amy. And then perhaps while we have Suzanne and Tanya here as well, it might be worth also getting a very quick brief update on we have an ad hoc that's called the Future of Transit in Sonoma County that's looking at better coordination and consolidation of our transit agencies and what the future of our system looks like including better bikeways and whatnot. If this committee was interested I'm sure we could also do a quick touch based on that to see what the process where that was at and if there's future items that we'd like to schedule related to that as well. So in which case I would definitely bring up the conversation of Measure M or the old Measure DD I believe it was called the one that just passed during the last elections and see what potentials and assets and really resources we have there. So Amy I'm hearing we might need to schedule climate action committee that's basically just the Suzanne and Tanya show for them to be able to update us on some of this work that's being done. Sounds good, I'll coordinate that. Okay. And I want to make it clear for folks in public just because we're going to do these things on the next agenda or have a subsequent meeting following up that doesn't mean some of the other ideas that are on the list here won't also rise to the top and that we won't continue to work through this checklist with folks as well. But I do like I said I'm in particular one of the things that I'm really interested in talking about is what carbon sequestration looks like and I think it would be helpful for us to take the climate mobilization strategy that was just passed and really see where Santa Rosa is at on a number of the elements or what additional work we need to do to be engaged on those topics. All right. You both good on this? I am and I believe one of the topics is to identify maybe a point person for the process which I heard a comment speaking against but I would actually really advocate for a point person one for transparency and one for accountability is why I would really advocate for points. Yeah, I'd suggest we do that in the budget with the full council if that works for the two of you. Go ahead. Madam Vice Mayor. All right. It was a different topic. I agree with what you just said. The other topic is what would it take to broaden the membership of this subcommittee? Tradition. That'd be a question for Sue our city attorney. We can certainly have that question but I don't know I'm looking to see Jason nut if you want to promote get promoted and talk as well the assistant city manager. I don't know of any council subcommittees that are made up of voting members of folks who are from the public. Yeah, I thank you Mayor. I'm not aware of a combination group. There are a couple of committees that council has created that are jointly staffed between council and members of the public such as the community engagement group that's being formed but subcommittees are typically just council members. So we can have a conversation if you both are interested as well on whether a subcommittee is the appropriate venue for that or if we need to find a more collaborative approach what that might look like but let me also run that by our city attorney. It's just something that I heard brought up and I don't know how this committee was formed nor do I know how to broaden the scope of the membership so that's why I wanted to put it on the radar. And I'm on the same boat. Yeah, I think this committee was formed by fiat. I think that we heard a lot of public comment from folks wanting to see an action subcommittee and then council member Schwedhelm when he was mayor created it as a mayor's appointment. So but let me get some of those answers and I can report back on that at the next subcommittee meeting as well. Thank you, Jason for joining. Okay, with that let's move on to item 5.2. Is that good? Thanks, mayor. We actually have a request from staff to flip item 5.3 and 5.2 in the interest of time. If that's okay. Yeah, without objection from the from the council members we'll go ahead and do that just for the public. We have a hard stop at 5.58 so that myself council members Alvarez and the vice mayor can all jump off and join the open government task force meeting that starts at six o'clock. Let's do item 5.3 then. Okay, so this is follow up on a proposed reusable and compostable food wear and litter reduction ordinance and Joey Henowitz will be presenting. All right, good evening mayor Rogers vice mayor Rogers and council member Alvarez. My name is Joey Henowitz. I'm an administrative analyst in the Department of Transportation and Public Works. You are all of you are pretty familiar especially mayor Rogers with this item. I've come in kind of before the city council and the climate action subcommittee previously the two new council members you remember this was I believe your first night on the council and so wanted to follow up with a little bit of things I did kind of throw a lot of information out at you going to give you a little bit of a background on kind of where we've been to get to this point and then really want to dial down on to the specifics of where I think we can bring forward a model food wear ordinance and litter reduction ordinance for within the city of Santa Rosa here relatively soon. Next slide please. So I don't really want to exhaust this we've kind of heard all of this through a lot of the public comments that have been made already tonight but we do know that you know climate action is is an emergency specifically within kind of the solid waste and zero waste world we are aware that the production management of single use food wear typically really just use one time and then discarded has significant environmental impacts those environmental impacts are listed down there below on the second the second bullet point there next slide please just for a little bit of some kind of local knowledge. I did mention this in some of the previous meetings but a 2011 study of various street litter revealed that 67% of all the over 12,000 items that were picked up were single use food or beverage packaging bringing that to a little bit closer to home 2017 analysis of the Russian River watershed revealed that a similar percentage about 60% of trash that was picked up about over 20 and 500 litter pieces was single use plastics of some variety plastic wrappers plastic bags styrofoam food packaging, etc. Most of this stuff makes its way from land into the waterways and green plastics microplastics will be most of us might be familiar with have been detected in many human consumption items such as fish bottled water there's even some more recent findings of them finding microplastics completely away from the ocean but just in the atmosphere like in the air and out in the middle before us so it is it is very you know the concerning and and stuff that we need to try to act on sooner than later as you will as you are aware the city council did adopt a zero waste master plan in January of 2020 which I am working to to work on those goals and those objectives and one of the key elements of that was a reusable and compostable food order ordinance was one of the central strategies of that zero waste master plan next slide so just a little bit of prior council review initially we did pass the zero waste plan in January in the summertime in July the climate act subcommittee received their initial report on the zero waste Sonoma model ordinance which is kind of the the precursor for why we're here tonight November 18th we kind of dialed down into the ordinance itself the specifics and looked at some other ordinances that were being proposed and are in effect in other like Burley and San Francisco and asked to try to back a an actual ordinance to the full city council that they would be able to kind of review within a study session that happened in December and then now we're the next step is we're here tonight in front of the climate action subcommittee next slide so zero waste Sonoma formerly known as the solid waste actually zero waste Sonoma excuse me they handle all of the a lot of the solid waste for the entire county for the jurisdictions as far as the reporting the record keeping a lot of the education and outreach as well as household and hazardous waste they developed a model ordinance for member jurisdictions to consider with the title there on the first bullet point and their model ordinance addressed five areas previous polystyrene foam from being distributed previous polystyrene foam from being distributed by retail stores specified products requires food and beverage providers and special events to use compostable recyclable disposable food service where requires food and beverage providers to provide single use straws lids cutlery and to go condiment packages which I'll refer to as as food wear accessories only upon request and it does encourage the use of of reusable next slide so in those first few meetings we did find some jurisdictions that were that had compostable food where ordinances and I was asked to do some research into that and see if we could bring a fully compostable food ordinance to the city of Santa Rosa there are some significant challenges when we when I looked into that and I will kind of detail those now just for a reminder so most compostable food wear it's not just going to be entirely fiber based it does contain PLA a polylactic acid or or a per and polyfluor alcohol what these do is they act as a a grease and liquid proofing agent they're designed to basically you know prevent grease or liquid liquid based foods from leaking out of the beverage or the containers PLA are generally made from fermented plant starch or sugarcane and they are designed to be biodegradable that really should probably say compostable there because the term biodegradable is kind of up for interpretation but this breakdown process can actually happen a lot slower than what commercial compostors permit in their process next slide the drilling down a little bit on on PFAS specifically PFAS they're kind of a family of thousands of chemicals that are found all over the place in common commercial household items such as stain and water repellent fabrics excuse me non-stick products like Teflon polish as wax as cleaning products and the list goes on we are starting to see significant evidence that exposure to PFAS can lead to adverse human health effects and those are detailed down there in the next two bullets so there is obvious concern of wanting to remove some of these these products from from obviously our to go food wear in Santa Rosa next slide so a lot of the issue that really is inherent here within going to a fully compostable model is planned and simply the commercial composters that we send our compost to they don't accept it these products that are containing PLA or PFAS are not accepted and they're generally going to be screened out of the areas where we we take our compost and secondly and probably also just as importantly probably the most important reason is the commercial compost are unable to market their compost as organic as determined by the national organics program if it contains any materials that are considered synthetic and PLA and PFAS are considered synthetic materials so that kind of right off the cuff a lot makes them not want to accept those materials as well as it's it doesn't really make business sense for them as far as their business models concerned because non-organic compost which is hard to find anyways typically resales for up the words up to 75% less than organic compost so from the last meeting I was I was asked to kind of go back and do some further research talk to the compost see what if at all possible sort of program can we put together for a fully composed food ordinance obviously aiming to get rid of the single use plastics that are that are commonly used speaking to all of the compost facilities that we take our materials to cold creek compost up in Kaia we do take some of our commercial food waste compost that needs to be anaerobically digested to our Richmond facility that is a Richmond facility down there in Richmond in the Bay Area Napa recycling as well as the Bedwood landfill just outside of Petaluma and interesting if I could up to talk to one of the operations managers at the Recology Blossom Valley Organics North facility in Vernales down the Central Valley that is actually the facility that supposedly accepts these PLA products from the city of Berkeley and the city of San Francisco which is why they are able to at least claim that they have a fully compostable food ordinance after speaking in length with the Recology Blossom Valley facility that you know accepts these these materials I was I was essentially told that these materials don't make it into the compost stream they are going to be screened out and then taken to the landfill so you know needless to say going to a fully compostable model at this point understanding that these materials are going to be screened out and not making it into that compost stream obviously has some some challenges and some concerns that that that that staff would have as far as moving forward with with a fully compostable option next slide so if we kind of just push the fully compostable option to the side understanding that we do have these issues with and also with the understanding that that the industry and the private industry continues to adapt and change and we might potentially have some sort of a solution or a chemical that are not I don't want to say chemical but some sort of that we would be able to put into fiber based containers that would act as that grease and liquid proofeding agent that would be acceptable for the compostors but we're not quite there yet in the current in the current market so what what staff would like to propose is for staff to continue to work on that policy work with the compostors work with zero waste sonoma on some of this stuff work with our local community members who are very engaged as well and kind of keep our ear to the ground on that element but we do think that there's still some above and beyond elements that we can add to the zero waste sonoma model that that we can actually you know still continue to be that that feeder is zero waste in the north bay so I'm going to go over these elements right now and this is this is kind of really where I'd like to get the feedback and the understanding from council is if you guys feel comfortable with these elements that I'll be talking about here now so first element is to prohibit food wear containing polystyrene styrofoam from being sold prepared distributed otherwise given away that is pretty much one of the main elements of the zero waste sonoma model so we're going to keep lock step with that we have heard from the community and obviously with the understanding of the adverse potential human health effects we want to prohibit food wear that's containing PFAS for being sold pure pure distributed or otherwise given away this was a kind of above and beyond thing that we were looking to do in Santa Rosa but rest assured zero waste sonoma recently made this update to to their model ordinance and we'll be working with their member jurisdictions to to get that also rectified with some of the folks who have already passed that and all the jurisdictions that this is a big one here is to require food and beverage providers to provide food wear accessories so we're talking straws lids cutlery star sticks to go condiments upon request only obviously a lot of times if you get you know to go you get your plastic bag you get your you know your little your plastic cutler you might get some salt and pepper whatever you might you know I think a catch-up the question is you know how many people actually use those things and how much of it just goes directly into the trash so instead just providing that upon you know just you just automatically receive it we would want to make it well known in the community in Santa Rosa that these items are only going to be provided upon request which we believe would save save a lot of diversion a lot of waste that isn't necessary another kind of ordinance element that we'd like to introduce as well as that food vendors with dine-in facilities that sell food or beverages for consumption on the premises they must use reusable food wear and food wear accessories if you're going to be offering dine-in service and not to eating on the premise it needs to be a reusable food wear and a reusable food wear accessory so you know and also condit pack should be offered in both dispensers rather than the single use condit packs that you that you often see as well next slide all right so another big one here which really kind of aligns with SB 1383 which was going to be my other presentation for you tonight that I'm there's no way I'm going to be able to fit that in on your guys of schedule but I'll come back at a future date because it is a very very important piece of legislation that'll be coming forward in the next year as for food vendors who provide solid waste containers for customer use they must provide three separate containers so we need to have the garbage the recycling in the organics and the color guideline should be consistent with program ecology so gray black for garbage blue for recycling green for organics we'd like those to be placed to the extent possible given space constraints adjacent to one another so when folks go to dispose of their their waste the materials that they they you know they have an option of which one they should put that in in that the graphic rich sign it should be posted above so that it allows for folks to be able to figure out what what should go into which bin and those are readily available and can be provided through ecology they already have the PDFs and everything available we can make that available to the public very easily next slide we'd also like to encourage the use of reusable food vendors are encouraged not required to provide a 25 cent credit to customers who bring in their own sanitary reusable food wear containers it is assumed that this will incentivize people to bring in their own food wear containers there was also a law passed I believe it was 2019 AB 619 by Chu which kind of there by some things are sanitary usable food wear specifically when it when it comes to events they were allowing events to use reusable food wear if it was they were able to show that that it was being sanitary and it was actually it was passing health codes as well as clarifying that willing businesses and willing customers that are willing to say if I was to order I don't know to go food from Mary's Peach Shack downtown or something that I could come in with my own reusable food just container and they would place the food wear or the food excuse me in that and I could leave and they wouldn't have to provide me to the I guess the pizza box would really make sense but more along lines of like you know spaghetti or something like that I could get that and do that as well so there are there is kind of some traction moving in that direction I think ultimately the reusable model is going to be where we'd like to further expand and explore this ordinance down the road I just don't think that really coming forward with a fully you know comprehensive reusable program at this point especially during a pandemic is is is going to be the best approach but I do reassure you that that is something that I'm going to continue to explore that we know that zero as Sonoma has continued to explore as well for the region and that my hope would be to bring back some amendments potentially to this ordinance that would expand the use of reusable and potentially a pilot program that we could we could work on here in Santa Rosa next one here common ground ordinance elements is the prohibited polystyrene retail sales so foodware that is composed in whole or part of polystyrene foam I already mentioned that and then some of our other common items such as like the styrofoam coolers ice chests or other similar containers as well as the packaging peanuts and packaging materials in today's day and age there's easy and probably cheaper replacements and more sustainable replacements for these things that we could be providing to the public in our in our retail space next slide so wanting to lead by example and act by example we would I would want to also bring forward that city purchasing this would affect cities purchasing and city sponsored events I would also like to propose that all city facilities internal facilities staff facilities and public facing facilities would use return accessories no longer if we're having a potluck or going away or a picnic for staff should we be using single use disposable plastic food wear we should be leading by example it's one of the elements of the zero waste master plan in our culture change element so I would be proposing that as well and then all the ordinance elements that I've already mentioned they would also apply to the city managed concessions city sponsored events and our city permanent events so would update some of our events as far as you know food wearing zero waste ideals are concerned that I would be working with you know relative staff members on on bringing those changes forward as well next slide just some quick kind of housekeeping elements there would be a waiver process basically if businesses or organizations who are able to show that these requirements for your audience would create an undue financial hardship or difficulty not available to folks generally in those same circumstances they could be granted for up to one year of a waiver with very rare circumstances being allowed up to a waiver for two years if compliance still remains infeasible after that one year time frame next slide so enforcement and penalties we did discuss this a little bit the city council level there was some kind of seemed like mixed bag of of reactions as far as how you wanted me to to move forward in this this space so compliance would be required as of the effective date and would be administered through our code enforcement department if we're looking to have a proactive enforcement mechanism on this we would probably need to increase staffing in our code enforcement division with of one full-time employee one full-time employee would cost approximately $126,000 annually we could also do a reactive enforcement mechanism which wouldn't have that cost for the additional code enforcement officer where we would just essentially be taking and investigating complaints from the public as far as businesses that may not be up to snuff on the update to the ordinance if we were to pass that enforcement would obviously be mostly educational with an opportunity to correct we're not trying to penalize folks we're trying to work with folks to get them you know working in the right space so they would first include that written notice of non-compliance with a 90-day opportunity to correct as often that we're noticing in the public the public space as far as solid waste is concerned is a lot of times folks aren't going to change their habits as far as how they throw things away if there's not some sort of accountability to it and so for the rare cases where a business or organization just refuses to correct and abide by the ordinance there would be an administrative citation penalty schedule and that is listed below there on the final bullet points next slide so this was also kind of a hot topic last time is you know when would we potentially want to propose this will be for tonight and I believe what I kind of heard from the city council last time was the time is now we want to act sooner than later and so with that we're being aggressive with their ineffective data will be proposed of January 1st 2022 this would also align with the effective date of SB 1383 which was going to be that other element that I was going to talk to you tonight about which I'll you know table to the next meeting but it would also align with the effective date of SB 1383 which has some of the similar requirements that would kind of really align well with those two those two measures considering that we are still working our way through the pandemic if covid concerns are present staff will be happy to work with the city attorney's office if you want us to develop some sort of language where we tie the effective date of the ordinance to the cessation the cessation excuse me or the the ending of the Sonoma County Health Officer Order C19 which is which is the health order obviously for for covid 19 the covid 19 pandemic there next slide so main things I'm looking for feedback in direction from the subcommittee at this point is do you think that the elements that I proposed as far as you know elements that I could bring the ordinance elements agreement do you agree with those do you want to add anything do you want anything taken away is the implementation timeline of January 1st 2022 add people to you I guess just any other additional thoughts or questions that you might have and then the next direction that I would be looking for is if you agree with the ordinance as I presented tonight my plan would be to bring forward actual ordinance language and a draft ordinance that would have been a little bit more reviewed at the city attorney level by that point forward to the full city council I would hope I probably late spring early summertime of this calendar year and just wanted reassure you that you know I think at this point these are some very kind of low hanging fruit elements that we can build into this food ordinance I did mention wanting to stay up to date with potential updates to anything that would become compostable that would be you know feasible for all the parties involved so the government our business community and also the commercial composters that we work with as well as looking to potentially expand the reusable element of this ordinance is down the road so I would I would promise to kind of stay up to date with cutting trends and cutting changes and bring those bring those to you as as I see fit but at this point I want to thank you for your time I want to thank any of the the public's time as well for for listening to this presentation appreciate your thoughts appreciate your feedback and I look forward to hearing what you have to say. Thank you so much Joe in obviously we know how much work has been put into this so far and really excited to see this continue to move forward and hopefully get across the finish line soon. Council members if it works for you I'm going to go to public comment first and then I'll bring it back for us to either ask questions of Joey or to give our thoughts specifically on that checklist that he just provided there on the the last slide. So folks if you are interested in providing comment on this item going to hit the raise hand feature on zoom. All right Kelly I'm not seeing any do we have any up we've got one just popped on yeah. Go ahead Deborah and Paul I think that's Deborah I think we learned earlier. Yes Deborah your time begins now. I just think that's a great proposal. We spend a lot of time lugging plastic things around the places to get them filled up and a lot of places won't do it. So getting plastic reduction in our community I just totally approve of that so thank you for your hard work on it. Great. Thank you so much Deborah and Kelly do we have any voicemail public comments? We have no voicemail or email public comment on this item mayor. Great. I'll go ahead and bring it back. Council Member Alvarez do you want to kick us off here and perhaps Joey do you want to put back up the slide of the direction that would be helpful from council? As Joey puts up the slide I want to thank him for the immense amount of work that's been done on the subject and really the second time that I've had the opportunity to see this. So thank you. I'm sad that that ultimately if we were to put in ordinance the ultimate resting place for the plastic would be the landfill. So I do agree that it would be ineffective if we were to put such an ordinance forward in regards to the alternative that you've offered I do agree with it. The one issue that I might that I would take up would be the dispensary the bulk dispensary especially during the COVID times that we're living in. But other than that it's a green light for me and I do agree with the 2022. I don't see the other questions that you posed into the general community I do want to remind them that the amount of plastic that we're finding in our waterways I believe was 80% for me and this is from your last presentation what's coming from from first use or restaurants or the food industry and it's something important for us to really take into account the amount of garbage that we are producing as humans and if we're doing any effort to do such a thing it should definitely be something again according to Pete's comment that we must act as if this is a true emergency. So I do want to thank you and I can't see the questions that you did pose. Kelly do you think you are you able to get that slide back up? Of course I was I was wondering if that's what you or council member Alvarez was asking. Yes please. Just one moment please. No prom and I'm pulling it up if it feels okay orders elements agreement I do agree implementation time 2022 sounds good additional thoughts questions pretty much just a dispensary for bulk during the the COVID and anything else that would be affected by but once the COVID is done I definitely do agree with with more of the bulk for the for the dining in as well as the single use or I'm sorry that the reusable for the dining I think is phenomenal and you're right the city of Santa Rosa is is is at the forefront and we should set the the the the standard and again when it comes to continuing staying up to up to date and cutting cutting edge hopefully someone local sees that there's a need for for compost and that they do take up the issue and the service it sounds like a lot of cities would definitely move in that direction and and maybe it's a call for those individuals out there in the public that that there's a need hopefully they'll step forward and thanks again Jo all right vice mayor okay so I would like to thank you for the presentation again it was totally awesome I'm totally excited to see when we are able to implement this effective date sounds good but I would lean more towards if it is later the end of the C-19 I think that is something that we definitely need to be mindful both dispensary is something I personally I have germ issues so I prefer to to not have myself touch by other people but also I think that packaging stations would be good if restaurants wanted to do that that would be something that they would have to keep clean though but they wouldn't have to worry about taking someone's another one of my germ issue things taking someone's stuff from on one side of the counter and bringing it into what we would hope would be a sterile environment as much as it could that would impact other people's foods and also Recology sent me a reusable utensils and so just if restaurants and things that they wanted to sell those and market those those would be a great way and also to get us in a different mind frame and now I just don't go anywhere without my reusable utensils because I think that they are great but if we can start to get those products out to other people um I think that that would be awesome and uh lastly what was the last thing reusable station I forgot but I'm sure it will definitely come to me I'm sorry Joe just went that way but I'll let you guys know if it comes back before we go all right thanks you too so you're getting a three thumbs up it sounds like from the subcommittee to continue to move forward and bring this back to the full city council for me I hear councilmember alvarez's concerns during covid of the bulk dispensing I do think that you're understanding that particularly given a number of the the conversation topics we need to tread lightly during covid and put in place the the system that that's going to put us a long term successful but make some considerations right now for where we find ourselves so that's fine by me in terms of enforcement and and I'll ask the other two to weigh in on this because I don't think we got a chance to my my initial take at the council meeting particularly given our budget constraints is let's go ahead and be reactive first do education and be reactive and if we are finding that there isn't as much compliance as we would like then we can talk about adding a code enforcement officer to be able to help push this across the the finish line but I what I strongly suspect is with a lot of things that in the first year as education is happening and as as the market is being created for that kind of a service and as quite frankly the expectation is being developed in the public of of how they'll interact with these businesses as well that likely that folks will come into full compliance on it that's at least that's my hope outside of that implementation date of January 1st 2022 makes sense to me again with you know potential provisions for for COVID but I'm certainly excited to see the direction that we're trending in terms of vaccinations and hopefully that's a thing of the past by that point council member any thoughts on enforcement before we end the item well for myself I agree with you mayor and the second point that I also agree with is that it is the 2022 maybe we're at at the end of the COVID and maybe the issue of the book is is not an issue so so in regards to enforcement I definitely want to see voluntary participation I believe that as a city we're definitely moving as a whole towards climate I mean we've been doing this for for a while now and I'm hoping we continue to do so and and I really would like to see really the citizens be responsible for such and I as just just with one representative with the with the food trucks I definitely do see how that falls on on our responsibility especially during any natural disaster as we do feed senate rows vice mayor so that is what I was going to say I was going to say that I think education is definitely the key and I think not only educating everyone but I think that if we give viable options where people can buy things that are not economically burdensome on on businesses I think that that would be a good thing like if we already did some of the research and it's like here is a link to where you can purchase this and it would you know are a few weeks that give them a few options where they can purchase things I think for me if I own the business that would be oh they did have to work for me you know now I just have to click in purchase and you know instead of going through and betting businesses and all that and I do realize it's putting more work on our staff but I'm hopeful that our staff has have already done the work and that is why they are able to bring this forth to us because they know the economic impact that it will have on our businesses yep I will also point out just for those keeping track at home that the zero waste master plan is item number six on the climate mobilization strategies that we are going to hear a presentation on next time so it's good to be getting that jump start on it and get it in place sooner rather than later you got the direction you need Joey I do yeah thank you so I will be bringing forward to the full council here hopefully in the relative near future in ordinance that you folks can we can hopefully get moving here yeah perfect and then we will go ahead and we'll reserve item 5.2 for our our next meeting with a check in on that I don't have any subcommittee report do either of you two I think I think mostly I was going to report out on the climate mobilization strategy but I think we've heard enough of it up to this point and then Amy I'll check with you are there any department reports none from planning and economic development I'm not sure Jason has any on his end mayor no not at this time perfect then we're going to go ahead and adjourn tonight's meeting and council members I'll see you on the open government task force meeting in about 10 minutes thanks everybody