 And members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar. It looks like a glow. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Interpreter, will you please restate this in Spanish? Welcome everyone to our January 10, 2023 Santa Rosa City Council meeting. It is now 301. And we will begin our first meeting of 2023. Welcome Madam City Manager, Madam City Attorney, and fellow Council members. Seeing a quorum, our first order of business is roll call. Madam City Clerk, can you please call roll? Thank you, Mayor. I'm just going to go around the dais. I will start with Council Member Ocrepke. Here. Council Member Alvarez. Present. Council Member Fleming. Here. Council Member Rogers. Here. Council Member Stapp. Present. Vice Mayor McDonald. Here. Mayor Rogers. Present. Let the record show that all Council Members are present. I would like to remind all Council Members to keep their audio on mute unless they are speaking. If Council Members and staff will be participating via Zoom, please remember to remain muted until you need to speak. Members of the public are able to participate in the meeting in Council Chambers or via Zoom. As members of the public join the meeting via Zoom, you will be participating as an attendee. Your microphone and camera will be muted if you are calling in from a telephone and choose to speak during the public comment portion of today's agenda. For privacy concerns, the host will be renaming your viewable phone number to residents and the last four digits of your phone number. To the last four digits of your phone number. The City of Santa Rosa is committed to creating a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption. We will not tolerate any hateful speech or actions and are well staffed to monitor that everyone is participating respectfully or they will be removed. If necessary, the meeting will be immediately ended. Madam City Clerk, can you please explain to those at home how hybrid public comment will be heard at today's meeting? Yes. After each meeting, after each agenda item is presented, the Mayor will ask the Council for comments and then open it up for public comment. If you wish to provide a public comment and are attending the meeting in person, please sign up to speak on an item with the administrator at the top of the chamber. This process is in lieu of speaker cards to reduce height, reduce touch points due to COVID-19. The meeting administrator will ask your name, what item you wish to speak on, and for a one sentence summary for your statement for the record. If you are participating from Zoom or by telephone and wish to make a live public comment on a specific item at the time public comment is opened by the Mayor for that item, please use the raise hand feature. If you are calling in via telephone, you will dial star nine to raise your hand. Generally, the Mayor will first take live public comment in the chamber and then the host in Zoom will be lowering all hands until public comment is open for the agenda item. Once all live public comments in the chamber have been heard in Zoom also, the meeting host will play voicemail public comments. If you provided a live public comment on an agenda item but also submitted a voice message public comment, your voice message public comment will not be played during the meeting. Written public comment received by the deadline on the agenda was uploaded to the agenda portal and made available to the public and council earlier today. Additionally, there are two public comment periods on today's agenda to speak on non-agenda matters and that is under items 13 and 17. This is a time when any person may address the council on matters not listed on this agenda but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council. Throughout today's agenda, when the Mayor calls for public comment an interpreter will be prepared to assist anyone needing interpretation services. For those using interpreter support will be afforded additional time for your public comment as required by the Brown Act. We ask those listening on the Spanish channel but wishing to make a public comment to turn off the interpretation channel entirely at the time you hear your name called so you can join the main channel to make your public comment heard and translated into English. This icon may now look like a circle with an E-S in the middle and the word Spanish underneath. You can then rejoin the Spanish channel at the conclusion of your comment to continue listening to the meeting in Spanish. Thank you. Thank you. There were no closed session items today so we will move on to item 3.1 our study session. I would like to remind the public that there will be no action taken today on this item. Introducing this item will be our Madam City Manager. Thank you Mayor and good afternoon members of council. Item 3.1 is a study session Seed Collaborative Equity Plan. Human Resources Director Reeves will present and leave the discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon Madam Mayor and members of the City Council. I'm Amy Reeve the Director of Human Resources and I'm pleased to be presenting the culmination of two years of initial work and investment in the city's Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging or DEIB journey. As you may recall the council selected the Seed Collaborative as the consultant who would guide the city through this effort and assist the multi-departmental city team as we did the work to create three equity plans and a robust set of recommendations that center equity in policies practices and the culture of the city. As we discussed at the beginning of this process sustained cultural change is more of a journey than a race. While the study session today will provide a high-level overview of the three equity plans and their corresponding recommendations we have yet to begin the implementation phase of the work. After today's study session the city will fold some of the work product into a new recruitment brochure to attract and hire the city's next Diversity Inclusion and EEO officer and we will work to create the first cross-departmental committee task it's an equity task force called VIBE standing for voices for inclusion belonging and equity. The VIBE committee will work in conjunction with similar committees at the police and fire departments to prioritize recommend and fund the recommendations created through the process you will hear more about today. I'm pleased to present Paul Hudson and his team from Seed Collaborative who will be joined by a variety of city employees who were participants in one or more of the three task forces or subcommittees. Today's study session will showcase the considerable efforts of the city team community members and thought partners who participated in this initial journey to create the equity plans through a consensus-based process. With that I'm happy to turn the floor over to Paul Hudson and the presenters today and we'll remain available to answer any questions. I'll start sharing the screen. Thank you Amy and good afternoon Mayor Rogers and city council members. My name is Paul Hudson. I'm a senior consultant and co-founder of Seed Collaborative. With me today is Evan Holland who's also a senior consultant and co-founder of Seed Collaborative and Evan conducted all of the group facilitation in this work and Shana Aloni who is our account manager who has really kept this whole process together. So we can go right to the this slide yes second slide thanks. So this is what we're going to cover today. I'm going to quickly do topics one and two and then city staff will the task force members from the city equity task force will do their recommendations then the fire department will do their recommendations and then the police department will do their recommendations and then we're happy to entertain questions. On behalf of the Seed team we were very excited for this day and I thought I would spend my brief amount of time in this agenda to talk about the process. So if you go to the next slide what what the slides will show is really kind of the structure and the number of staff that involved. What I really want to talk about is the process of inclusion co-creation and shared leadership. So what you have here is an equity policing task force for the police and a recruitment diversity recruitment diversity task force for the fire. Those groups went through it and they'll talk about their process but I want you to know they uplifted recommendations that they all that they agreed that all the members agreed by consensus that these are the recommendations there were no dissenters they all agreed both the fire and police and then those recommendations were uplifted to the city equity task force. The city equity task force then had an opportunity to review them and give police and fire feedback and edit and potential edits but the police and fire did with those edits as they incorporated those revisions and then they got consensus again and then those recommendations went back to the city activity task force with their edits and feedback that they got from the task force members. If you go to the next slide so what the what the task force did is they created three committees and so each committee reviewed the recommendations from police and fire they were asked to go to their committee and then each committee did the same process their group went through a review of the diligence and data and came up with recommendations and then reached consensus around their recommendations and then each committee made a presentation to the full equity task force and each member of the task force had an opportunity to weigh in on those recommendations and give feedback and potential edits. Each committee went through that process and then they went back to their committees with those edits and and incorporated those edits and that feedback from the city equity task force and then those recommendations were shared with the executive management team of the city of Santa Rosa and each department director shared was given the opportunity to share their those recommendations with their staff and then and then each of these committees received feedback from the from the leadership team and any staff members that want to give feedback and then they incorporated that feedback and then reached consensus again. Once they reached consensus on those the fire police recommendations the culture community engagement lifecycle recommendations were shared with with the refinement committee which is a which was a representation from police fire culture community engagement and lifecycle and the refinement committee did a final review of all the recommendations to make sure there was alignment there wasn't duplication there was consistency in language and then those refined the refinement and revisions made by the refinement committee went back to these committees to get consensus again. So what's going to be shared with you are the recommendations that went through a vetting process that was very inclusive that involved this idea of shared leadership everyone having a say everybody having a vote in terms of consensus and then every and then the the process of everybody reaching a consensus. If you go to the next slide this is just a quick slide to show how we reach consensus in these groups. Everybody individually voted three four or five anything that was two one heard didn't had to go back had to had to be reviewed had to be and we had that situation where a couple of recommendations had to go back to the committee and there was a negotiation process it went through but ultimately ultimately the recommendations you're going to see today received the overwhelming majority received a five or a four and only if one or two maybe received a three otherwise there was consensus on all these recommendations and I now want to turn the presentation over to Gabe Osborn to share the recommendations from the Culture Committee. Okay good afternoon Mayor Vice Mayor and members of the council and thank you Paul for that introduction and as Paul mentioned the next phase of this presentation is really going to focus on the specific recommendations that were generated by each committee within the CET. We elected to start with the recommendations from the Culture Committee since culture really is the overarching element that really sets the tone for the recommendations to follow. Joining me today is Serena Lino she is our administrative service officer in the planning and economic development department Serena and I both participated on the Culture Committee throughout this journey we're very excited to present the work that the group has developed today. Prior to diving into the specific recommendations I'd like to give just a quick overview in the presentation format. Most of the committees will have multiple presenters and will do our best to move through the transitions as quickly as possible. The recommendation slides that you'll see today are also going to include specific recommendations as well as a guiding statement. The guiding statement really highlights the area of focus that the committee settled on and they were developed in large part by analyzing the real lived experiences from a large cross section of city staff. Just to give you a quick example when these statements were developed on the culture side it was very open and honest conversations within the committee about personal experiences. We also took a hard look at the survey results that were produced by SEED and many of the members of our committee often reached outside of the larger task force to better understand the unique work experiences that exist within various operational groups throughout the city. Once we had the guiding statements developed the recommendations were formatted really just to start moving a little closer to an implementation strategy so I just wanted to provide a brief overview of that because you'll see this format play itself out with all the committee recommendations. So with that I will dive into our first culture committee recommendation which you can see on the current slide. This recommendation focuses on the city's opportunity to increase resource allocation and enhance organizational structure to foster belonging, maintain a vibrant culture of DEI, TBB and to ensure accountability to those values over time. So there's two acronyms in there that are very important. There's DEI which is very universally known these days diversity equity inclusion. We also added TBB which Paul reminds us is very unique to Santa Rosa and we thought these two are the three components actually in that acronym are very important and the combination of them are equally important. That includes transforming and being a transformative organization. It includes bridging and connecting people and includes belonging. And our culture committee was very strong under the thought process that if you focus on belonging and the fact that everyone belongs a lot of all the other components fall into place. So this particular guiding statement looks at how we take a culture of DIB and a concept of a culture of DIB and TBB and institutionalize it long term. So it really focuses on the long game. And our recommendation here was to establish a standing committee and referring to that as a vibe committee vibe stands for voices of inclusion belonging and equity. That committee is intended to be formed of a cross section of members of city staff and it's really in place to ensure the implementation of the equity plan long term. What you'll see in future slides from police and fire is similar committees are being formed for similar purposes on that front. So the vibe committee will coordinate with other committees that are doing similar work ensure that plans moving forward and that committee will report to exec staff under this recommendation. Next slide please. So the second guiding statement and recommendation coming from culture has to do with organizational structure and best practices. This one is really very specific with the recommendation. It looked at our diversity inclusion and equal employment officer position that currently exists in the city. That position currently exists within human resources and the recommendation is focusing on considering changing that organizational structure to move that position under the city manager's office. The purpose behind that was to ensure the position has the support needed to effectively shepherd the implementation across the city. I think it's really important to note this is focusing on best practices in many situations. There's different means to the same end and best practices can even flow. And we also recognize that organizational structure changes can be very complicated. So I think it's important to understand that there may be other alternate means and measures to institutionalize best practice in the same fashion. Next slide please. So our third recommendation and guiding statement is really very general nature but we thought it was very important and it focuses on the equitable and transparent distribution of resources both internally and externally. Some of the concepts that the committee talked about for external distribution of resources had to do with services such as transit, physical things such as capital projects, internally budget. So we touched on a few different items. Obviously analysis was not performed to determine if they were or were not being distributed equitably. This was more of a landing spot to ensure that when distribution gaps are identified that the appropriate mechanism is in place to fix those. So we just wanted to make sure that from a cultural standpoint being nimble enough to recognize and course correct and be that transformative organization was identified in the recommendation. Next slide please. So at this point I will hand the presentation over to Serena and she will cover the final three culture recommendations and guiding statements. Good afternoon mayor, vice mayor and members of council. I'm Serena Lino as Gabe introduced me already. I'm pleased to be here with you today. So this next guiding statement really focuses on the mission, vision and values for the city. So mission, vision and values are really your guiding statements that help the organization move forward and you incorporate it and it gives staff the direction that we need to work towards whatever the city's mission and vision are going to be and the city council establishes their mission, vision and values but this would be an opportunity to have staff be involved in that process and to intentionally incorporate the DEI and the TVB principles that we have been discussing so far. So and when you know each organization or each department within the organization may have their own mission but they're all driving towards the same vision. So it's essentially creating a north star if you will of what we're all working towards. So this this is the focus of this particular guiding statement. Next slide please. And so this next guiding statement is really focused on communication. So really looking at transparent, uniform, consistent, timely, and accessible equitable communication across the organization because there are many established processes that are already in place but this is an opportunity to really focus in on that and how can we enhance those opportunities so that all staff of the organization have access to information. So whether that is through formal newsletters or emails or maybe it's just open doors and for higher levels of the organization to communicate with staff across the cross-section of the organization. So whatever that might entail we feel like this is an opportunity to be very conscious on how we are going to be doing so moving forward so that everybody has a place to be involved in the conversation and to have buy-in and ultimately that belonging which is what we're striving to achieve. Next slide please. And rounding out the culture committee's recommendations is our final one here which focuses on the culture of the organization. So culture is big, it's broad, it's deep, it's meaty and it can look very different depending on if you're looking at the organization as a whole whether you're looking at each department, each subset within each of the departments or even all the way down to the individual level or the interpersonal level and ultimately that feeds right into the morale of the organization as well. So morale and culture really go hand in hand and this effort that we are doing here working with the C Collaborative is really the city's effort towards paying attention to the culture, paying attention to the morale, demonstrating that the city as an organization really cares about what is going on with their employees and what is going on with this organization internally. How can we really help support and uplift the sense of belonging across the organization? So the culture committee spent quite a bit of time focusing in on this particular one because we felt that we really needed to pay conscious attention to it in order for us to move the needle and move us forward as an organization that collectively we have experienced many different dynamics in you know as individuals from the emergency situations we had to the social things that have been going on in our community and so and when you have so many of those it really is it compounds upon each other so we need to take into account the context of what has been going on in this organization and really drill into it even more and as Amy mentioned at the beginning this is a long-term investment and when you're talking about culture, culture is a long-term investment in itself. It takes years to really influence culture because it is so multifaceted. So the vibe committee the intention excuse me behind it is to really focus in on it work with the departments not exclusively as a committee but really to truly work with each of the departments in order to fully understand what's going on so that we can really help our organization as we move forward. So with that that is the conclusion of the recommendations from the culture subcommittee and I believe that yes so community engagement and communication is up next thank you. If Beatriz Guerrero-Alanat and Yuri Kuzler are here you're up. I think we would need them to be promoted so that they can present yeah there yes we are promoting them thank you it always takes a few seconds. Here we are thank you so much just gonna my screen sorry about that thank you Serena and Gay for starting this presentation and thank you Shayna for letting us in. Good afternoon Mayor City Council members staff consultants and residents for seeing this presentation and being part of this council meeting my co-worker Yuri Kuzler and myself he's part of the transit team and transportation and public works department and me Beatriz Guerrero-Auna I'm an equity and public health planner for the planning and economic development department and both of us will be presenting the community and community engagement and communications recommendations that our community developed together with representatives from all the city departments and this including the communications team as well as a community engagement team. To develop recommendation number one that you're looking at this at the screen right now our team thought about the opportunities that the city actually had to improve access to information and to improve access to community engagement in the context of a community that has an amazing language diversity more than 15 languages are spoken in the city of Santa Rosa and we're 33.9 percent more than a third of our residents speak other language in English so recommendation number one of community and communications community engagement and communications community is develop and implement structures and standards this including policies processes and procedures to foster a culture of language access and justice and communications and public participation in decision making processes by making the most accessible language possible and addressing the language diversity and rights of Santa Rosa residents defining and focusing on specific strategies for the unique needs of districts vulnerable populations and equity priority communities and in relationship to vulnerable populations that we mentioned in the recommendation we wanted we wanted to focus on having policies and processes as is mentioned in the in the recommendation to make the city's communication and and community engagement to be accessible enough for everyone including people who haven't finished high school people who who have disabilities and people who face technologies technology gaps including some of our senior population and focusing specifically on the last part of recommendation number one we understand equity priority communities as census tracts that have a significant concentration of underserved populations such as households with very low incomes and low incomes and people of color this we are with this with this definition we are using the Metropolitan Transportation Commission MCC's definition that was included in the plan Bay Area 2050 and I will pass it to Yuri Kosslin to to introduce recommendations number two and number three thank you so much thank you be a trace I'm Yuri Kosslin transit planner with city bus all members be presenting on the second and third recommendation that came out of the community engagement subcommittee so the second recommendation for the community engagement subcommittee is meant to focus on external communications by the city the goal is goal is to build trust and enhance relationships with residents by effectively responding to the unique needs of various populations the recommendation that came out of this is to implement re-examine and empower equitable and effective city-wide external communication and engagement standards and policies using best practices to remote legitimate transparent information and participatory process processes as the standards and policies are created this may mean that different groups within Santa Rosa see the city's engagement deployed differently as the city seeks to effectively respond to the needs of the many diverse populations within our city this will also ensure that the city's external communication strategies seek to overcome any language socioeconomic or immigrant status barriers that may have in the past felt like an obstacle next slide so the third recommendation from the community engagement subcommittee is meant to focus on those one-on-one interactions that all us city staff engage in with residents on a variety of and variety of capacities this guiding statement is meant to elevate the importance of these interactions and building trust with the city whether online digitally in person or over the phone so the recommendation that came from from this guiding statement is to proactively identify and respond to individual community needs complaints and systematic challenges through listening empathy honesty and collaboration then build assess and reassess how to structure city-wide responsive community service framework systems and principles to meet Santa Rosa residents needs and challenges this recommendation puts the responsibility of responding to the community needs on city staff and then challenges city leadership to understand the larger cumulative concerns of Santa Rosa residents additionally then the city will be able to assess and reassess the systems and frameworks in place to support our front-line staff and enable these front-line staff to build the trust with residents on behalf of the city with this I'll pass it on to the next presenter next we're going to promote Rafael Rivera and Lisa Gibhart Longhurst and Amy Reed who spoke earlier will throw in as she can from her place on the dais live Rafael and Lisa have already been promoted Rafael would you like to take slide one for our committee can you hear me now yes we can okay I don't know about the video but oh okay there all right hi good afternoon members of the city council good afternoon madame naya rogers and happy 2023 my name is Rafael Rivera and I'm a economic development specialist in the division of economic development for the city and then joining me this afternoon on this portion of the presentation is Lisa Gibhart Longhurst from finance just a little background on how this committee came together when the committees were assembling were assembling I expressed great interest in the recruitment hiring retention and professional development committee due to my background and experience and also for having my role as a recruiter for the center was a police department many years ago the community assembled and went right to work there were participants representing police fire public works housing city attorney's office economic development and human and the human resources department as well during our preliminary meetings we review the city's recruitment recruitment and hiring practices ongoing trends and retention policies professional development and many of the onboarding policies as well we met over multiple meetings and realized that there were some recurring things going on as we continue to dive into this topic so some of those were removing barriers increasing diversity within our organization and also creating a sense of belonging within our organization and as we got closer to drafting our first recommendation we felt the city had the opportunity to increase the diversity of the candidate pool and therefore develop our first recommendation which is to have the city increase diversity through the recruitment of diverse candidates equitable hiring and selection process next slide please the committee also felt that in order to have greater transparency with our community and potential employee candidates efforts to improve our data collection were necessary and aspects of this information would also be made public so the recommendation that we came up with was to create a transparent and inclusive public data dashboard to publish recruitment and hiring statistics this is a common trend throughout many other municipalities so we felt it was a good opportunity to to make this recommendation as well next slide please belonging is necessary for bringing out the best of everyone at work if employees don't experience a sense of belonging they are most likely to feel insecure about their place in the organization and feel less freedom to be their authentic selves by following the principles of diversity equity inclusion and belonging that drive innovation productivity employee well-being and equitable community relations the committee also felt that it's crucial to address procedures as they relate to new hires and therefore we came up with a recommendation to improve and implement policies procedures access and engagement to strive for belonging in the onboarding of new hires and I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Lisa who will talk about the two remaining recommendations under the recruitment hiring retention professional development committee Lisa thank you Raphael good afternoon mayor and council members I'm Lisa Gebhardt Longhurst I'm the administrative services officer in finance um moving on from to the next recommendation we moved on from external recruitments into internal um I had a problem this is where I came on so for is that the next line yeah so the city has an opportunity to improve our promotional rates and to do that through the lens of DE ID um moving through using the data gathered by the culture and community excuse me community engagement committees to advance a sense of belonging among current employees the city will update and improve its policies procedures and practices with equity and transparency in mind when you start talking about processes and such it can become incredibly dry but that is the underpinning of a lot of the work that we do um administrative way etc um by increasing a sense of belonging among internal candidates retention and promotion promotional hiring will be more attainable for us next slide excuse me this is a fairly straightforward slide um the last and broad recommendation is really foundational to grow opportunities for employee development training and career growth necessary to implement many of the recommendations that were previously addressed this is basically the conclusion of the recruitment hiring retention and professional development recommendations developed by this amazing group yeah and now we welcome santa rosa's uh fire chief scott westbrook and his team so after you and thanks shana uh good afternoon mayor rogers members of council scott westbrook fire chief of the city of santa rosa uh joining me today for this presentation are several members of our santa rosa fire department recruitment and diversity task force we'll refer to that as the rdt to shorten things up here but first is assistant fire marshal kemplin robbins she's part of the internal rdt subcommittee uh fire captain koreen rickard who's part of the external rdt subcommittee and fire captain gary lopez who's part of the external rdt subcommittee um i'll be doing the presentation i offer it to him and uh they deferred to the fire chief so um i'll i'll do all the speaking but they're here for any questions when we get to the end so just some general background for the fire department um the fire department does have a recruitment and diversity strategic plan and this was born from a white paper in 2019 and converted to a strategic plan in 2020 um that plan has been implemented and we've been doing a lot of strong work for the last two or so years um on our plan we met with the seed what we told the seed and what we've said globally is that while we have well we're proud of our plan we don't have any pride in our plan meaning that we want our plan to be the best it can be both effectively and efficiently to make sure that we're doing what's right for the community that's right for this organization into the future so um in working with the seed we developed a recruitment and diversity task force in november of 2021 um the rdt consisted of 12 members across all bureaus of the organization um representing different ranks genders cultural ethnicity um and tenure to ensure that we had a diverse representation of the organization as we went into this planning phase um under the main rdt we formed two subcommittees the first was what we call the internal subcommittee and the internal subcommittee covered things like culture hiring onboarding and data the external subcommittee handled things like community engagement recruitment and communications all said and done between the three groups we held an additional 31 meetings um to come up with the seven recommendations we'll be presenting to you today so the the three groups as paul explained went through quite a process to uplift our recommendations and we'll bring to you seven recommendations and then we're going to discuss here in just a moment and the way i look at it is in integrating these recommendations in the center as a fire department equity plan with our established plans will memorialize and uplift the cultural and process changes we require and it will holistically set the course for the future of the organization next slide please so for our first recommendation this is out of the internal subcommittee and we're just going to kind of encapsulate what the slides say um there's a lot of value in everything that they say but i'll try to hit all the high points so the first guiding statement essentially looks at incorporating a structure into the management of the rdt plan and with this the recommendation is that we'll form a deib standing committee composed of personnel across the organization with diverse backgrounds just like we did for the the rdt team and it'll be led by a community outreach specialist or designate so this this structure this group will meet very regularly and they will they will look at different things we'll discuss in the upcoming recommendations next slide please recommendation number two the guiding statement is to increase the diversity of the center as a fire department workforce and the recommendation is using the established enhanced recruitment and diversity plan and equity plan increase the workforce diversity by improving the percentage of diverse staff hired by 2025 next slide please recommendation number three the guiding statement talks about improving hiring selection processes procedures and practices to prevent bias and the recommendation from that is we're essentially the standing committee will improve equitable policies procedures processes practices for hiring and selection annually they're going to review all of our processes and all of our policies to ensure fairness make sure there's no barriers in place and they'll analyze the metrics to make sure that we are actually making progress with our plans for if we need to adjust next slide please recommendation we're forced a lot of the internal subcommittee essentially the guiding statement is utilizing data to reach our goals and so we're going to track our data relevant to recruitment selection hiring retention and we're going to develop a dashboard with human resources as i've already been discussed to track our progress next slide please recommend excuse me recommendation number five comes out of the external subcommittee and what we're doing here is we're we're looking to improve the outreach and recruitment efforts to generate a sufficiently diverse candidate pool and to do that we're going to ensure outreach to the diverse candidates within our community with the goal of hiring each cohort by 2025 this is something that we've really seen as a problem throughout the California fire service is that there's just not a lot of diversity in the talent pool and so that's really the nexus of our recruitment diversity plan is to make sure that we're uplifting through a grassroots campaign our own community members to bring them into the fire service next slide please recommendation number six comes from the external subcommittee as well and this is really about access this is diverse candidates sometimes don't have the pathways they're not exposed to the processes or the requirements for recruiting the fire department so we're going to change that by recommending funding two additional community outreach specialists they'll work with our community engagement division to conduct outreach to manage communications manage our recruitment efforts and we really like these employees to be bilingual with some experience in your operations in the fire service or prevention in the fire service next slide please and recommendation number seven comes from the external subcommittee and this is essentially looking at the community outreach and communications perspective of what we need to be doing to generate a sufficiently diverse applicant pool and to do that the standing committee will work with the city communications team to develop an outreach and communications plan designed to reach potential applicants from diverse backgrounds so with that those are our seven recommendations that came out of our recruitment and diversity task force i'm very proud of all of our members who stepped up and were part of this and really did a great job of putting this together and thanks to the seat for helping us through the process and with that we'll turn it over to chief cregan thank you very much chief westrope and so now my name is john cregan i'm the chief of police here in the city of santa rosa and i'm joined by two of our very valuable members of our equitable policing task force it's going to be kirsten lange from who represents as our president of the NAACP here in santa rosa from our sonoma county chapter it was a key part of our efforts and also sergeant chris maher and who serves as our public information officer and again was one of our key creators of this recommendation so they're both going to get promoted as well they're going to join at the end of this recommendation so for us we had the equitable policing task force and we formed that of going and you've seen some of the presentations that will go to the next slide please here we'll go to the first recommendations but the equitable policing task force we're really proud of that we got a lot of voices from the police department we said we had 18 18 different members from the santa rosa police department representing both from our civilian personnel from our sworn personnel we had members of our unions of representing from both sides of the civilian and sworn side of the department and really tried to get a cross section of all areas from detectives from officers from sergeants lieutenants who were involved in this process but one of the things that really set our processes apart is the community contribution so we actually invited six different community members to be a part of that and we're going to hear from kirsten's day but we also had mubia fedia who provided input honor jackson shan tevi turnado shantel risa gestavo mendoza who were all part of that process because from the very beginning when we sat down with paul and evan and the team it was very clear that we can't just internally decide what the problems with the police department are and how we can be better connected with the community without having the community involved and so getting their input and they were involved in a lot of our discussions and a lot of the small committees we formed to be able to look at like how can we really both internally and text and externally providing a better level of service to the community that we serve so the first one of these nine different recommendations we started with look of looking at like hey we had so many discussions so many recommendations how are we going to make sure that we're actually creating this as part of the culture of our organization so the recommendation was to have a permanent standing committee and this committee is going to be part of the accountability for us to make sure that we're staying on track with this not just six months from now not a year from now but in the years to come that we're staying on track with this we're looking at with the principles that were established and we're ensuring that it remains in the culture of the Santa Rosa police department for the decades to come that standing committee is going to be the first recommendation that comes out of there and that's going to be built of a cross section of our department from both our sworn and our civilian personnel from different ranks to be able to make sure that even as new officers and dispatchers and police technicians are introduced to our organization that they're going to get opportunities to be part of this standing committee and they're introduced to it and that we're going to be reporting out to our department on the progress that we've made and that standing committee is going to be leading the way on that next slide please so the other one is one of the big overriding things that brought us to this room is like how are we going to increase the diversity of our police department and we certainly made progress in that area we've launched programs like 30 by 30 we've been out there in the community but the end of the day more work needs to be done and so this was one of the things where we started talking about how we're going to implement not only some of the cultural chains we're looking at our policies our procedures our practices the structures that we have within this organization that make some of those changes so we really see the diversity and the equity inclusion in our recruitment process the selection of the people that we hire ultimately that are going to serve here at the Santa Rosa police department at all levels next slide please so one thing that's undeniable in police work is that our work is influenced by trauma this year we talked about in some of these presentations at Santa Rosa police officers and our field evidence technicians responded to 12 different homicides in the city of Santa Rosa and eight different fatal collisions and dozens of shootings and other collisions that involved a lot of trauma and it impacts our staff and it impacts their ability to be able to serve our community so what we started looking at is like how are we really putting wellness strategies and trauma-informed care really at the forefront and that's been one of my top priorities as chief taken over in this role and we're really looking at some of the things that we're doing with resiliency first and with the six foundation and expanding our employee assistance program and so many things that we're doing about instructing our staff not only to be able to step up when they see a peer struggling but also certainly sergeants and supervisors to be able to be building that into their their weekly check-ins with our staff and make sure they're getting the support and again this is all about building that culture so when you come to the Santa Rosa police department you're seeing immediately there's something different here they have a whole entire focus and we've seen so much support from our city manager from our city council of continuing to give us the resources that we need to embed that in the culture of our organization next slide please this one is really important too and when we started doing some internal surveys and really getting the feedback that we saw sometimes maybe there wasn't as much at least the perception of equitable dispersing of information between our civilian and sworn staff we have different structures where sworn staff members have briefings every day before they go out and go respond to calls for service and we started looking at ways of how we could have more targeted and strategic communication that goes out the department wide that it's timely and that everyone is understanding about why some of the decisions are made from the chief and why some of the things are going with it not only with resource allocation but some of the policy changes so we really have started to work toward transforming our communication process here and that was a big part that we looked at this internal committee about how can we do that how can we make improvements and how making every single one of our 259 employees here at the Santa Rosa police department feel like they have that equal access to the information to help them do their jobs and help them as they plan their path of promotion for the look at other opportunities that we have here within our own organization next slide please so another one is continually looking at the policies and procedures that we have here and making sure that we're incorporating some of this and that's going to be one of the key jobs of that standing committee of saying like going through each one of our policies and looking how diversity equity inclusion and belonging are really incorporated than those and I think that's going to be one of the key jobs and quite honestly it's going to take some work over reviewing the hundreds of policies that we have hired at the police department but it's something that we're committed to doing was one of the key recommendations that came out of the work with seed next slide please so we're going to continue to work so we talked about the hiring part and the recruiting people but here internally a key part is making sure of the equal access for promotional opportunities and mentorship opportunities and career development and that's one of the things we're really proud about the Santa Rosa Police Department that stands aside from others here in the North Bay is the opportunities that we have but it's so important us that every single one of our staff members understands and really appreciates the equal access to those opportunities and that everyone's getting the same opportunities for extra career opportunities for mentorship for training so we really talked about how we can do that to monitor the implementation of that and making sure that we're having check-ins that we can consistently ensure that they're being dispersed in a fair and equitable way for all of our staff members so they have that same career opportunities here at the Santa Rosa Police Department next slide please so another thing is we can talk a lot about that we want to make improvements with some of with the diversity in our hiring the things we're doing but we want to have accountability and so some of that is going to be identifying how we're tracking this with our selections with our hiring with our promotions with our retention with our complaints and so many of those things so we're going to develop a data dashboard and that's going to be putting each one of these key criteria so we can be transparent and we can be accountability not only to our city leaders but for the community that we serve and I think that's really going to be an important part for our staff to be able to look at any time that they can access this data dashboard look at what some of the things we're doing see how we're tracking it and it continues to make me as the leader of this organization make sure I'm using that data for the decisions we make and holding me accountable that we're meeting each one of these recommendations that we came with our committee and with the great work of the C group next slide please so another one that's so important for us is that we continue the collaboration with our community we've done so much with the Santa Rosa Vice-Chancellor partnership and so many other groups and we've had some great examples of collaboration this year with the launch of in response our mental health support team and so many other things but this was one of the recommendations that we need to do more that we need to do more and some of the key areas that we targeted was wellness services for our students and we talk about trauma for our officers our students here in Santa Rosa have gone through trauma through the wildfires year after year through COVID and so so much more that we're seeing on the campuses there for our uncheltered population is something that's one of the primary things that our officers that affects our officers and it affects our community members and really working with some of our recently incarcerated youth and some of the gang members that we have here in the city of Santa Rosa and how we can start building some of those connections of having more support for each one of these individuals helping our officers to understand their needs for each one of these unique categories and what we can be doing more and we're starting some of that with the recently finalized our MOU with restorative justice to start our first ever restorative justice which is deferring young youths from me going through the juvenile justice system those are some of the things we're doing these are some of the things that we're pledging to continue into 2023 in the years to come next slide please so this is our final of the of the nine recommendations and this is talking about how we'll continue on the external side to continue to uplift these values of equity belonging diversity in our community and how we're going to part make that again part of the culture of this organization we've talked to council over the years about our allocated and unallocated time meaning there's so much time that officers are out meeting dispatch the calls meaning they have really no discretion they're going to the domestic violence they're going to whatever the call may be but each one of those officers we work our goal as they would have at least 30 minutes out of each hour we're not reaching that right now as our call volume increases but even if it's 15 minutes an hour that we're trying to say we expect you to be out there engaging our community and we've having I just wrote a department email just this Sunday talking about expectations of getting out of your patrol car walking through parks working through Santa Rosa Plaza walking through downtown in these areas and what we're trying to do is build that in that when they're not on a call that officers are getting out of that call engaging that community and we can focus on some of the areas we talked about with our youth with some of our unsheltered population with so many other opportunities that we have here in our school campuses and others that we're trying to say that's an expectation for me as chief you're going to be using this time you're going to be connecting with our community and that may be an opportunity that we build a bridge for another community connection that we get a program going and that may become by an officer getting out of their car and going to a community meeting or talking to someone at a school so that's something that we're already working to ingrain in our culture and that came very loudly from our community members who were on the sport about talking about that's what they want to see out of the Santa Rosa police department is an increase in some of that time and so we're working to be able to build the staffing and be able to allocate our resources to allow the officers to be able to have that time so if we go to the next slide I wanted to close by having Kirsten Lange and and she was such a key part of this and to kind of discuss like her reflections about being part of this process but how we were able to use that community voice that she was such a strong leader in as part of this process I'll turn it over to you Kirsten if we're able to promote her thank you chief good evening everyone it was such a honor to be able to purchase famous process and to really dive into the policy engagement program and initiatives of the department as a self-proclaimed nerd it was definitely insightful to read through the various elements and areas that the police department has already worked on ahead of this process and to work very closely with the team to provide insight and feedback and to review and to get an understanding of how they review the process and and policies themselves myself and the other community members that joined were all I think really it was a really new opportunity for us to engage in this way with the police department and it was a really eye-opening process into the work with the seed collaborative and how they moved us through a lot of the dialogue where we all found our rub and spend source spots and work through some of those talent conversations together because again a community perspective is very different from someone and in working directly in law enforcement and and really appreciated the ways in which Paul and Shayna frame some of those thought processes to get through to some resolution to hear one another in spite of some of the differences and experiences that we had and I found that really powerful and super transformative and it has really fostered a stronger working relationship not only for me as a member of the community but as president of our NAACP branch locally to really think strategically thoughtfully and fruitfully around how we continue to engage one another but the communities that we so desperately want to serve in a project. Thank you so much Kirsten and last I'm going to close it out with Sergeant Chris Mahurn who played a key role from the internal part of the process but he's so connected also with our community as our public information officer. I thank you council for having me mayor vice mayor all council members so my name is Chris Mahurn I'm a Sergeant with Santa Rosa police department I was actually part of the city's equitable policing task or the department's equitable policing task force as well as the overall city's task forces as well so I was part of a lot of those meetings and it was a very good learning opportunity for me. What I will stick to are three main points Kirsten hit on a lot of them really building those relationships was a huge part of what that process was and not just building relationships to do this task force work and to do what C collaborative was helping us with it's actually to build long-term ongoing relationships. Kirsten I have met regularly on concerns that she's had on concerns that I've had on questions that we've really been able to get into the community together have some tea and have a conversation and that's something that C has really helped move us forward with I know that exists with the chief as well. Additionally part of having us and bringing in community members was creating a conflict inside of a lot of our meetings oftentimes people find conflicts to be a negative factor in interactions but really without conflict you can't have change because if everyone's like-minded in those conversations nothing is ever going to change because no one's feeling challenged or encouraged to make positive growth and improvement in any process in any organization and bringing in community members really helped build that conflict on both sides we pushed back on ideas that community had community pushed back on things there which helped us build those nine recommendations that will be able to build the building blocks moving forward for us. Additionally what I found most important is when these kinds of processes exist you can create a technical solution for a lot of problems the chief could dictate hey do you know what for recruitment we need a diverse workforce I want you to go to the LGBTQ pride events I want you to go to Juneteenth events I want you to table and I want you to encourage people to apply that's a technical solution that we can go out and do that but really what this process taught us was an adaptive change let's identify the barriers to why people aren't applying or why people aren't promoting let's figure out what those long-term solutions are and the problems that got us here and build those adaptive changes because we're gonna change the culture of an organization therefore attracting people to come to us attracting people to stay within our organization and attracting young people to become leaders ultimately to take over what we've already begun and those technical solutions don't get you to that point only these adaptive changes we've made through this process will really set us up for the long term and the community really helped us with that so thank you for that process and we'll go ahead and turn it back over to Shawna and Paul to close out this presentation I'm we've run a little long so I'm gonna stop and just turn it back to Mayor Rogers to the minister thank you thank you and I would like to thank everyone that participated in the presentation but also everyone that participated in getting the recommendations together I am encouraged and happy that we are going to be continuing with some and implementing others I would like to remind the public that we will not be taking any action on this item but I would like to look to council for any questions if there are any vice mayor McDonald thank you mayor I actually just have a couple questions Amy you stated in the beginning that we're going to look to hire a DE and I officer could you explain that role and then I can give you my second question after that sure thank you we do have a diversity inclusion and EEO officer classification we had an incumbent in that position who left while we were on this journey was the collaborative and we knew that there was going to be a large transformative amount of work to incorporate into that classification so we are going to be in the process of recruiting here shortly and we're already incorporating some of the body of work into that classification and the position is just generally going to be responsible for moving these efforts forward as we continue in the implementation phase of the DEIB work at the city and also will be responsible for equal employment opportunity great thank you so much and then the second question that I have I saw that we talked about new policies within this document and creating new policies but I wondered what the process would potentially be on reviewing all of our current policies to make sure that there's a lens of DE and I within that specifically language since we reviewed our charter and we were able to do some more inclusive language within that but is there a process that we're going to be doing to review probably what is thousands of policies that we currently have to make sure that that is also being taken care of that's a great question thank you I would say that the work has already begun and is underway but that is the intention behind having an interdepartmental committee that can uplift the work and carry us on this journey each department had representation for the most part on our committee thus far and that's the intention on a go forward basis so that as policies or procedures are moving forward the representatives on that committee can uplift the DEIB principles in that kind of equity lens in terms of the policy development or revision as needed and councilwoman Fleming thank you mayor thank you staff not just the staff president here but all the staff who've dedicated clearly an enormous amount of time to these efforts my question has to do with is the recommendation to have an equal employment officer as is typical within HR and then have a DEI officer which is typical within leadership of an organization or somehow meld these two positions together thanks for that question it is currently one position and the recommendation is to look to best practice so that we continue to evolve and uplift the position over time um so that that was the committee's recommendation was for the city manager's office to evaluate as we go and consider you know a potentially different structure in the future okay so just to be clear the committee did grapple with the question I've never seen these two positions be the same position in an organization of our size I'm a little surprised that they're recommending one rather than two positions because one is a really a basic HR function and others a vision position so can you talk to me through what some of the discussion points were on this sure you know I think the seed group might have been more directly involved in that conversation so if you don't mind I'll turn it over to Paul or Evan who I know did a lot of the discussion around that topic makes a bunch so council member Fleming you're you're correct they aren't usually together a DEI is a body of work all in all in itself this is the way Santa Rosa structured it and I think the intent was that let's let's let's keep what we have get our feet on the ground get our hands around what we what what our game plan is and then let's reevaluate this position I think if you look at the plan it says to me this is this this would be very difficult for one person to to just implement the plan not implement the plan manage implementation of the plan much less do the work of an EEO officer in addition but you know the the city was in a very different place when they before the city went through two years of work on a building a plan and I think the city just needs time city manager and and HR director to think through a long-term game plan given you know resources funding staff kept capacity and all those issues but as a consultant we would agree with you it's very difficult for those two positions for one person to do both those jobs and thank you and it's my understanding that we didn't even have any EO officer prior to civil unrest a couple of years ago so to my mind it's really important that we not conglomerate one position that's very functionary and another one that is about doing this work on a broader level though thank you very much that's all the questions I have and a and a big congratulations and thank you to everyone who participated with councilmember Rogers thank you so much before we get off that specific position would you characterize the DI EEO position that's being proposed as internally focused or externally focused or a combination between the two the position as it stands now has an internal focus but it does need to collaborate with our other community engagement with the violence prevention program so while the focus might be internal there's definitely the need to work alongside staff who are more externally focused so that there's cohesion and that was going to be my second question was how does this position work with our community engagement deputy director and associated staff they do work with different focus in terms of one being externally focused and one being internally focused as you identified but when we did have an incumbent in the role they did communicate regularly and kind of work collaboratively around shared goals or projects okay so would there two purposes then be aligned during goal setting and during the budget implementation that's a great example actually yes when we were talking about how to make good use of one-time funding with the PG&E funds those two folks actually worked collaboratively excuse me to come up with a list of funding that we would set aside for DEIB work some of that is was overseen by the community engagement deputy director and some of it was overseen by the diversity inclusion and EEO officer classification great and then one of my questions was actually on that funding have we received an update or can council receive an update on how those funds have thus far been spent and just as an example I know that there was funding that was set aside for cultural spaces but I have not yet heard of anybody taking advantage of that funding or us pushing any of those initiatives forward can we get an update on how much money is still there what it's been used for if it's been used and to what extent or what level we've been able to push out into the community these opportunities absolutely we will work on that I can just give a really brief overview because I think it's it's appropriate what we set aside is about $80,000 for an internship program 115,000 for staff equity capacity building and training about 300,000 to move ahead any of these prioritized recommendations that you heard about today through the C collaborative work and then about $50,000 for an equity data dashboard so those are the current projects that are kind of allocated with that funding source and that is a mix of projects that were generated from both community engagement and that diversity inclusion position okay so what I heard was ongoing projects happening and also the 300,000 that was set aside for implementation is still there as we discuss these recommendations that's correct great thank you councilman rogers can I quickly answer your question about internally focused Amy was right about the DEI officer EEO DEI DI EO officer but don't forget that there's the Vibe committee and there are these standing committees they have a much broader perspective they're looking at internal and external and they're doing the heavy lift to support the DI supports the three committees that's very helpful thank you Paul last question that I actually got two more questions there is a lot on recruitment retention it doesn't appear that there's much in the plan about exit interviews about talking to staff who are leaving about why and what that data looks like and how council members and other staff might better understand issues as they arise was that discussed at all in the implementation of the plan thank you for that yes that actually was a topic of conversation in the recruitment committee which I participated in we do currently offer exit interviews to all employees that are exiting the city and we were able to identify trends and kind of talk in a general way about observe trends and how do we combat the reasons that people are leaving employment with the city and I'm sure that there's a mechanism in which we could share that data with the council yeah I think that from a policy development standpoint it'd be helpful for council to have some form of access to that information even if it wasn't individual by individual specifics but trends are things that appear more than once just in our oversight role and then the last question that I had was specifically about city contracting and this maybe this goes to the dashboard that's being developed but are we increasing our strategies for analyzing data on where city contract dollars go as a community investment strategy for DEI I can take that one Amy you want the answer is yes let me preface it by saying the recommendations are part of a broader plan that you all should receive that has specific strategies associated with each recommendation so councilman Rogers some of the things you're asking are strategies that are wrapped in an overall recommendation so if you look at the resources allocation of resources recommendation my recollection is that there are strategies in there that look at contracting how the city contracts with outside vendors they also want an equity lens applied to that as as equitable allocation of resources how we actually spend our money who are we spending our money with and the same thing with the exit interviews that was all discussed in the committee and it's part of the consideration that went into the plan and strategies that are all part of the the written document that you all have right great thank you council member crepeki thank you um and I just to reiterate what my colleagues have said thank you so much to everybody who participated in this process I just have a couple questions my first being the vibe committee what do we have any examples and I don't want to I'm not trying to craft it on the days here right now but just some examples how it's been implemented in terms of makeup is it whole council appointees individual council member appointees is it um you know one or two uh since we're in districts as a districts and then also you know the frequency of meetings in the longevity uh that this intends to be tends to exist since this is a long-term investment I think the current vision for the vibe committee is that it will be internally focused and will be comprised of city staff with um a focus on trying to have representation from each and every department and a wide variety of um staff in terms of level of authority and functionality um so that's the focus of the vibe committee there will also be committees and fire and police as were mentioned and I think that there's um already a good synthesis around including um members of the public especially like in the police and firework so at this point the initial phase would be focused internally with creating a committee of in our departmental staff but we may expand over time okay thank you um in terms of language equity obviously um Spanish is a clear priority based on our population our geography but for the thousands of other tens of thousands of other people to speak the 15 plus languages in the city of Santa Rosa how do we prioritize that or identify what is making that language or making our efforts equitable that's a good question we do rely on the data um I think um correct me if I'm wrong Paul and Evan and Shawna but I think that in this case when we looked at the data for Santa Rosa and we prepared our reports we took a look actually at the the semi-annual transit data that we are required um to produce and that actually identifies the different languages that are typically spoken across the community and in terms of access that is I think the next part of the phase in terms of implementation we've identified it as a need and I think the how we get there is part of the next part of this journey okay thank you then my last question um is more of a so one of the recommendations was distribution of resources externally to making sure everybody gets equal resources um there's an area in the city of Santa Rosa that's been colloquially known by a derogatory outdated term that some people just call the village now or or or Apple Valley because of its name and it's even gone as far as some of these subdivisions are recorded on the city on the maps and which means recognized by the city officially as having these names so as part of this equitable distribution of resources with going through a process to just using this as an example to do outreach and and rename an area that we know to be have an offensive name or also putting in line that in line with other areas or or streets or what have you is that is that part is that paralleled to the review of policies or that have to be a different effort and does that meet what the intent of of the equitable distribution of resources is intended to do so I would say that that is part of the equity lens that we are going to try to apply and reinforce in the culture across the city on a go forward basis so I would say that that the answer to that question is as people are developing maps or are working in those communities it would be beholden on them to uplift that concern and to try and find a mechanism to address it and the city can support that process through the work that we're doing here by providing capacity are there any additional questions from council council member alberus thank you madam mayor in regards to just the efforts overall where are you seeing the most ground being gained and where are you seeing your your largest hurdles yet to be addressed I think that's a great question you know from my perspective I've been really proud of the strides that the police department has made recently in recruitment and staffing for the first time they've you know filled some really difficult to fill positions and we're seeing a lot more diversity in the new workforce that's coming in so that's a proud moment that being said it's also also still a pain point for the city as it is for many organizations right now we have 135 vacancies city wide roughly for at last look and it's an area where we need to continue to move ahead to reach out to our partners to try and get a more diverse and highly qualified workforce so I would say that that's both a success and a pain point right now and I imagine when we talk about workforces and and the team that we're building as a city center Rosa we can actually measure that by the bound people that we're hiring and where those folks are and who they are right in regards to the community and in regards to the guiding statement what type of metric system can we develop use that could get that could gauge how we're doing in that sense so I think that the city under Marquesha's leadership is in discussion about a variety of data dashboard functions and that's to increase transparency and communication to the community and I think that those that concept of a data dashboard will be used in many ways one of them would be transparently communicating out our successes in recruitment and the success that we have in attracting a more diverse population both in our applicant pool and ultimately in the employees that we hire so I would say that that would be one mechanism to address the question that you asked and ultimately I guess this would be the question proceed beyond the dashboard which I think could be a very beneficial tool to to all involved what can we as a city center Rosa do or adapt to help in your efforts that council member Alvarez help in our efforts what do you mean help in our effort well just just anything that you may see as as a hurdle that you may see that we as a city council might be able to address or or or change increase create beyond just the dashboard and anything that in your travels you've seen like or you've asked yourself you know if or if only city council would do this or if only city centers could help us in this fashion so I'll answer in Evan or Sean if you have something to add the biggest hurdle you're going to face is implementation uh the you know as as many hours this as the city has invested in as much effort that has gone into developing these recommendations the implementation is is so hard it and as Amy said it's a journey and people over time lose interest they get fatigue they get tired and staying on point is is is is critical in these sort of things so as a council member I would I would you know put this on the agenda for periodic review to get updates where are we with implementation where you know where we dashboards where with metrics whatever your interests are I would you know at least semi-annually starting you know after the staff has had an opportunity to get their you know get their legs under them to just monitor where we are with all of this work and the final thing I'll say with respect to that and Evan if you have anything to add any city we go to this is a big concern of employees they say hey we've been down this road before this is not Santa Rosa but I should say they've been down this road before nothing happens and so there's a fatigue and there's a pessimism that built that builds into the culture where you know there's these big initiatives city council gets behind it and there's all this you know press and coverage and then you know two years later that the employee feels like their their their life is the same as it was before I completely agree council members may remember who were here during earlier in our process we shared data that talked about the the challenges with staff morale and I would say that this process over the couple of years we've been providing many opportunities for staff input has been a morale builder and so I would strongly encourage city council to support the implementation of this work to continue to build morale so this can be a workplace where folks really feel they belong and really feel they're supported and where equity and justice is a frame and a lens that's in the regular everyday working and feeling of the city and so to to not only do what Paul suggested which is you know put it on the agenda periodically ask to get updates but take you know serious consideration around resources needed to ensure success per for example council member flaming questions around employees that are needed to support implementation or or whatever might be the case so yeah I support Paul and add those comments although it's not the period for comments I must state that within the community of Roseland I've definitely gotten the feedback from my community members that they have seen a great amount of increase of presence from law enforcement but what they haven't seen is uh or what I haven't heard is an increase of negative interactions so I think we're moving in the right direction and that's definitely an unapplauded to to Chief Cregan for his effort so thank you very much if if I can add quickly I just wanted to add to what Paul and Evan were saying that you know implementation obviously is an important part of it and this council to be supporting those resources um sometimes metrics you know some things can be hard to measure belonging and bridging um and I think it's important to take time to celebrate the successes we found at different points in this process that when we were looking back at what we had done with fire with police they had there's such groups of action in the city as well so many things have changed just by opening up these conversations in the city equity task force um and one thing that's possible also is if you evolve a culture of surveys you know to Evan's point we took data points in the past and I think if you check in um with city staff and support that that's also a way that over time you can measure um how people are feeling which may be harder to enumerate thank you are there any other questions all right seeing none madam city clerk can you please facilitate public comment thank you mayor so we are now going to be taking public comment on item 3.1 we'll start with anyone um wishing to speak in the chamber and if you've not provided your name to the administrator at the top of the chamber you can make your way to the podium and then we will be moving on to zoom participants if you wish to make a comment um in zoom please raise your hand if you are dialing in you will want to die hit star nine to raise your hand and all um commoners will have three minutes to make their comment I'm not seeing anybody make their way to a podium do we have any zoom um participants wishing to speak hands raised on zoom and we have no recorded messages for this item are there any closing comments from council okay seeing none um thank you again for uh your participation in the presentation um and also for everyone that participated in the recommendations and I look forward to the implementation we will be going to item five and there were no closed session items so now we will go to item 6.1 which is a proclamation that will be read by council member step thank you mayor rogers I'm I'm honored at the chance to to make this proclamation this evening my wife and I are proud members of the redwood empire chinese association um I'm glad that there's such a good turnout tonight thank you thank you for bringing so many of your members and with that I will I will read the official proclamation whereas the redwood empire chinese association is holding their 2023 chinese new year's celebration and cultural arts display at the finley center center on january 19th 2023 and whereas we would like to publicly recognize the importance of this intercultural organization in the field of cultural education by offering community participation organizational networking public interactions and intercultural activities and there are many additional events which bring members friends and families into social contact and understanding with governmental agencies and diverse people through events such as their chinese new year celebration potluck socials and multicultural poetry reading and whereas we acknowledge the outstanding work done by the chinese redwood empire association in providing programs to children and youth by giving presentations to local schools from elementary through high school for providing lion dancers who perform with three dragons those are those are outstanding presentations by the way I'm I'm so glad that those those students participate and opportunities for children to perform at community events as well as active youth group which focuses on team self-esteem and positive community involvement and for the redwood empire chinese association's annual scholarship for sinoma county high school seniors and whereas we also acknowledge the benefit of the redwood empire chinese association's adult programs including the adult chorus adult cultural dancers and the redwood empire chinese association's community involvement in assisting governmental agencies businesses and schools with requested assistance in matters concerning chinese and asian cultural and language issues now therefore be it resolved that natalie rogers mayor of the city of santa rosa on behalf of the entire city council does hereby acknowledge the successes of the redwood empire chinese association thank you councilmember staff i would like to invite uh nancy wong to the podium or any representative from the redwood empire chinese association after those comments are made madame city clerk if you can please facilitate public comment so um that is great and everyone can actually come down but that will just be in a few minutes right now we're giving you the opportunity if you would like to speak at the podium thank you very much my name is nancy wong 45 years resident in santa rosa i'm really proud of our city council and our first mayor in the history african america and our city council also former vice mayor adi we've been friends for 20 some years worked so much for the community i want to thank you our member today actually we have a youth group the lion team the chorus the dance group and the parents and the members and special our advisor bore from um city sonoma jack ding he served on the mayor so just come down now see city council thank you very much for honor to receiving this proclamation i i know we have a few the mayor and uh some city council cannot make on the 19th but it's such as a family event at the family center the arturian um we had a huge stage the place is big and we're going to have a lion dragon dance tea ceremony and the music the chinese traditional music we call guzhen and you won't be sorry if you miss that you'll be sorry and the children and we have a choreography demonstration and paper cutting for the chinese awarding it's really stunning program and please join us then on and on we have a musings program we have a library program if you miss this one you can catch up something else thank you very much thank you madam city clerk if you wish to make a public comment um on this item you can make your way to the podium for those of you who haven't had a chance to speak came not seeing anyone make their way to the podium um well the host of the meeting do we have anyone in zoom who wishes to make a public comment i'm seeing no hands raised on zoom and we have no recorded messages for this item there is one person at the podium hi mr jack ding would you like to make a comment all right thank you so much mayor rogers and each and a council member my name is ejecting i'm so happy today come to here we celebrate chinese new year our chinese residents in santa rosa in sonoma in all countries have been here in 150 years they were not fully recognized and forgotten for so long times today i'm so not happy so proud your city council give us a chance to celebrate our culture our traditions that is very important again i want to say thank you to everyone and also happy new year are there any comments from council members seeing none i would like to welcome those that are here oh council member alvarez thank you well i just want to say 25 great years nancy it's been a pleasure and thank you for really teaching me everything that i that i knew in actually my first political meeting was at one of the restaurants here in downtown and i asked you what is this world all about nancy and you took the time to explain thank you very much council member fleming i just wanted to thank you nancy for all of your support along the way your kind words and to the whole organization for everything you do both culturally and economically throughout the city as well as particularly in district four and i did have a question around what time the event is on the 19th okay we will not miss it i think that that was made abundantly clear be there or be square yeah okay thank you yeah yeah that's fantastic thank you very much so for those of you that could not hear there is a display currently at the finley center and the event will be from five to seven for those of you that are representing the redwood empire chinese association if you would come down to accept your proclamation and take a photo with the council all right it looks like we still have a quorum so we're going to go to madam city manager for oh it does look like we have a quorum but uh madam city clerk can you please establish quorum um sure all done council members staff york council member rogers here council member okra piki here council member fleming council member alvarez president vice mayor mcdonald here mayor rogers president let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member fleming um let the record show that all council members are president councilmember Fleming just joined the meeting thank you madam city manager take it away thank you item 7.1 is a community empowerment plan update deputy director tell us we'll provide an update thank you good afternoon mayor Rogers vice mayor McDonald my colleague data is here can you hear me okay no get closer closer okay how about this okay sorry my apologies so my galley day is here to give a really quick update on the community empowerment plan we do have a very important event coming up on January 19th we'd like to invite the community out to LCL in high school our in-response team which is our mental health unit will be giving a fantastic presentation on what they've done in this last year that they've been working in the community they'll have some updates we will have a translator there will be some breakout groups so it's a great time to come ask questions get information they're going to have the vehicle out there so also great chance to check that out see what that looks like and we are hoping to have a pretty robust participation from our youth from LCL high school so thank you to LCL in high school for allowing us to be in their space and with that that is the end of my report thank you oh my bad I'm sorry 6 to 8 p.m. January 19th I did bring some flyers so if it's okay to just leave them over there for the council thank you thank you are there any additional questions from the council seeing none madam city clerk can you please facilitate public comment yes we're not taking public comment on item 7.1 if you're in the chamber I would like to make a public comment please make your way to the podium I'm not seeing anyone making their way to the podium zoom homes do we have anyone on zoom wishing to make a public comment I'm seeing no hands raised on zoom and we have no prerecorded messages for this item item 8 city manager and city attorney reports thank you mayor first I would like to thank team Santa Rosa express my appreciation for a job well done while we're still not out of the weather and some of the storms that are expected to come in I just want to take this opportunities to say thank you to the team we don't know how much more rain we're going to get one day they say it's going to rain we're not going to get wind and the weather forecast change but our crews and our teams they're always ready so you'll often hear me continue to say hashtag thank a service worker and with that so while the storms are still coming through and there are some reports of flooding currently no flooding is occurring on any of our major roadways our public lands are within the city limits city crews will continue to respond to calls for service and do some prevented preventative maintenance ahead of the up-and-coming storm the long-term weather forecast predicts and I hope this is correct I'm looking at Jason and actually fire marshal so I hope this has not changed from this morning so the long-term weather forecast predicts moderate to minor rain through the rest of the week the more widespread showers will return on Friday and into the weekend I encourage everyone to visit srcity.org forward slash winter storm for more weather related information and updates on the affordable housing front orchard commons a new 46 unit affordable rental complex located at 811 Boyd Street has leased up and is providing affordable housing rental units to households ranging from 30 to 60 percent of area median income so I'm always happy to discuss and present and talk about affordable housing that we continue to lift up here in the city thank you and good evening I have nothing to add this evening but I also would share my thanks to all of our emergency workers thank you thank you moving on actually we will take public comment on that item if you are wishing to make a comment on item 8 and you are in the chamber please make your way to a podium I don't see anyone making their way to the podium do we have anybody on zoom wishing to make a public comment I'm seeing no hands raised on zoom and we have no pre-recorded messages for this item thank you moving on to item 9 are there any abstentions from council members seeing none we will move to item 10 mayor and council members reports are there any reports councilmember alberg yeah first I had the opportunity to attend the swearing in of the Sonoma County new Sonoma County Sheriff Eddie Ingram who is while being sworn in it's probably the last thing he did for taking the job he's been on it for a little while now he had some great words about working with other municipalities departments and it's kind of cool to see the relationship between sheriff our police chief and the new district attorney as well who for lack of a better term kind of came up to the minor leagues together an hour at the big show themselves and I'll have known each other for years now so I think that's gonna be great for our community as a for working relationship going forward I'm required to announce my appointees for boards and commissions so here we go so first I'm going to reappoint Nathan as Darian to the art and public places committee I'm going to reappoint William Arnone to the board of public utilities I'm going to reappoint Callum weeks to community advisory board as the at-large appointee I'm going to appoint Steve Rom to community advisory board as the Northwest appointee I'm going to reappoint Brian user to the cultural heritage board reappoint genuine homes to the measure oversight committee for new appointments I'm going to appoint Emily Kyle to the bicycle and pedestrian oversight board I'm going to appoint Patty Cisco to the planning commission I'm going to appoint Ernest Wertherich to the design review board and appoint Paul Castillo to the board of community services thank you are there any additional reports councilmember Rogers thank you so much mayor I'm gonna start off with a huge thank you and debt of gratitude to Leslie Graves who not only has been a fantastic community member but has served for the last years the chair for the community advisory board unfortunately for the city Leslie is diversifying her experience working on other boards and commissions and so will not be returning to the community advisory board for the for the foreseeable future but I am very excited to appoint Amy Holter to that position who brings a load of experience in community issues as well and she'll be taken over for Leslie but again a big thank you to Leslie for her service a couple of quick updates for council and another thank you and an expression of gratitude we had a number of neighbors come forward about two weeks ago with graffiti that had been covering a mural that had been put together on the underpass between the west and neighborhood and the st rose neighborhood neighbors got together over the span of a couple of days and actually it only took about an hour because there were so many people that were working and they completely restored the mural under there that had been been tagged pretty heavily so I just want to say thank you to all of those folks for getting together and caring about your community it was great to see especially in the rain a couple of updates for council smart last week announced a new commuter program with our railroad square stop now for commuters who ride the smart train you are eligible for a 72 hour pass that means you can stay in the lot for 72 hours without having to move your car and lots 13 and 14 those are the lots that are at 3rd Street Morgan and 5th Street and Morgan that commuter pass is only $31 for the entire month so a dollar about a dollar a day really great partnership with smart and I want to thank our team our transportation team for working with them on that we do know that that is one of the biggest barriers for folks getting on the smart train is the first and last mile and we've actually seen some statistical data recently to suggest that unlike many public transit agencies around the country we actually lose ridership when it starts raining and that's I we think largely because of that first and last mile issue that people don't want to be in the rain to get to the public transit whereas pretty much everywhere else people take public transit to avoid having to drive in the inclement weather so really want to thank them for that program we also heard some good news from the Sonoma County Transportation Authority front MTC has recommended for obag three funding about $700,000 more than what was expected for our share for the projects that were submitted from Sonoma County for Santa Rosa specifically it looks like we are slated to get 2.58 million for a downtown connectivity project that we have moving forward as well as a $1.32 million chunk for our hern connection to the multi-use path for smart so good work by our team for all of that effort it certainly has been a heavy lift and a thank you to our MTC commissioner Victoria Fleming for helping to shepherd that across the finish line as well councilmember Alvarez thank you I want to inform that I will be appointing Yvonne Sierra to the at-large position on the cab and also I had the pleasure of attending the swerving in for our new district attorney for Sonoma County Carla Clay Rodriguez and it was a pleasure to see everyone there in solidarity and also hearing the words of inspiration of what her brought her to the position and the experience that she's had getting there I have definitely optimistic of what we see with our County partners such as with Eddie Ingram so it's very very good to see what's happening in the County of Sonoma and as a whole thank you councilmember Fleming thank you and as councilmember Rogers went on to say a little bit about MTC we have been lucky but also as a result of our hard work been able to secure additional funding for our region over our ask which is great the other thing is is that at the end of this month we will be convening likely in person to select our new executive director as trees Macmillan is retiring and has done a great amount of service for us I think I may have mentioned it before but you'll forgive me for being overly enthusiastic about housing every time we go down West College Avenue right by the old G&G what's now Safeway you can see that are our building there I think it's aviar is going up really quickly that wouldn't have been possible without the support of the council and the board of supervisors as a result we are going to have affordable housing built and leased up really very soon here I was saddened here that the Canary ribbon cutting was or groundbreaking excuse me was postponed but I will be there with bells on as with any other multi-family housing project and that's transit oriented and makes me very excited so with that one other thing I wanted to remind everybody about so you don't miss it because I thought Nancy Wong would really did a good job in making it clear you cannot miss this stuff okay you will be sorry and you will regret it forever that on April 8th there is a Franklin Park cleanup day and that's obviously going to be at Franklin Park and April 8th so you can't say you didn't get lots of advanced warning so now for the drum roll on the appointees I with that also there'll be a few people who will be appointed at the next couple of meetings so you'll have to stay tuned so board of public utilities Mary Watts has done a great job of serving for many many years and will continue to serve with my full confidence as has on the board of public utilities Charles Carter will continue to be my planning commissioner and manza Atkinson will serve on measure o oversight Melanie Jones Carter will be a new addition to the design review board Carol Quant has served for many years on the board of community services and will continue to do so Elizabeth Riddlington has served one term on bike pedestrian and will continue to do so and then on charter review board and I know we don't need to reappoint today but I'm just making a point of it I have Jen close on that board and I have one opening I also have an opening on cultural heritage board and my community advisory board at large position and then I also have the community advisory board Southwest position which I work with councilmember Alvarez and he and I come to consensus and then we appoint from there in collaboration and that is it for today vice mayor McDonald thank you mayor just a few different meetings that I attended also along with councilmember Alvarez I attended the district attorney swearing in and was really impressed with her remarks as long with everyone else all her colleagues that she's worked with over the years and have the same confidence as councilmember Alvarez shared with our county leadership I was also the speaker at the Sonoma County or Santa Rosa Democratic Party dinner and attended the building trades luncheon recently as well as a North Bay Labor Council dinner and awards ceremony and want to congratulate councilmember Rogers on his receipt of a really esteemed award as well as the remarks that were made that night from councilmember Fleming well done from both of them and then I also was able to attend a leadership in liaison breakfast with the metro chamber and my final comments tonight are I'm only going to do one of my appointments well done to all the overachievers who have started on that process we have a little bit of time and that will be coming forward from me as well but tonight I'd like to announce my appointment to the planning commission it's going to be Terry Sanders Terry is a 23 year firefighter veteran in EMT paramedic fire survivor a small business owner husband father musician and longtime resident of the San Rosa's fourth district in his career as a firefighter firefighter he had experience in reviewing and developing proposals such as site plans and subdivisions site evacuation route planning building construction types codes and areas owning fire suppression systems requirements for large multi-unit commercial and residential developments he's committed to future development while preserving the historic character of the city and Terry and his family have been fire survivors and lost their home during the tubs fire in 2017 when Terry's not spending time with this family he devotes himself to another lifelong passion which is music and he's a lead singer and songwriter and guitarist for the blues band the Dylan black project Terry performs in public events and venues throughout Sonoma County and I look forward to attending some of those we're lucky to have somebody who's so committed to Santa Rosa joining the planning commission so it's my honor to appoint him to that role thank you council member step I was glad with with Jeff and with Natalie to be at the oath of office Freddie Angrum in addition to that I had the chance to attend the NAACP Sonoma County chapter meeting last night the member meeting Kirsten Lange who also spoke earlier regarding her work on the equity plan for the city she's the president of that group and they she went through the remarkable number of achievements that the group has has gone through over the past year and that and Kirsten's actually a great segue to to my appointments again I don't have as many as council member of Krepke but I've got a few starting with the reappointment of Kirsten to the community advisory board as well as the reappointment of Karen Weeks to planning commission and a reappointment of Carolina Spence to the board of community services and then one new appointment at the at-large appointment to the community advisory board Ariana Diaz de Leon for those of you who aren't familiar with her I think everybody is she's she's serving the city also with with her work at Santa Rosa community health and she's a long time she was a long time program officer at the community foundation for Sonoma County so I'm delighted that she agreed to serve on the community advisory board thank you thank you as I stated before I was able to attend the swearing-in of our new sheriff Eddie Ingram and also attend the celebration for our new district attorney Carla Rodriguez so congratulations to you both on January 7th 2023 the pastors of district 7 and their congregations hosted a beautiful event for the city of Santa Rosa and myself becoming the new mayor and lastly I would like to appoint Henry Hong to the community advisory board he will no longer be serving on the cultural heritage board so that concludes the reports Madam city clerk can you please facilitate public comment yes thank you mayor we are now taking public comment on item 10 mayors and council members reports if you wish to make a public comment and are in the chamber please make your way to the podium I see no one making their way to the podium do we have any speakers on zoom doesn't look like we have anyone raising their hand on zoom and we have no recorded comments either thank you we will now move on to item 11 we have two sets of minutes October 25th 2022 and November 1st 2022 council are there any corrections to the minutes seeing none madam city clerk can we please we are now taking public comment on item 11 approval of minutes if you wish to make a public comment on this item you can make your way to the podium at the top of the chamber not seeing anyone make their way to the podium I do not see any hands raised in zoom for this item nor do we have any recorded voicemail when no corrections we will show those minutes as approved moving on to our consent calendar madam city clerk can you please read the consent calendar yes thank you mayor item 12.1 is a resolution making the required monthly findings and authorizing the continued use of teleconferencing for public meetings of the city council and all the city's boards commissions and committees pursuant to assembly bill 361 item 12.2 is a resolution appropriation of funds from national opioid settlement item 12.3 is a resolution approval of an authority to issue design build request for proposals for her community hub and approval of professional services agreement item 12.4 is a resolution approval of second amendment to purchase order 163584 one-year extension with a 5% rate increase and increase in compensation with past past master services LP and item 12.5 resolution fifth amendment to agreement number f 001 005 passport labs ink a Delaware Corporation thank you council are there any questions seeing none may we please have a public comment if you wish to make public comment on consent item please make your way to the podium and Mr. Wayne DeWitt from Roseland it's a good thing that you've had these hybrid meetings going on for a while now and you've become comfortable with that whole technology and the sharing of the technological approach but at the same time it's important we open up the meetings in the future and allow all of the city meetings to be held now as they were in the past before the COVID lockdowns occurred you can keep doing the technological approach on into the future it's a good thing you've seen that it works and nice things are happening there so my concern is that you'll not get back to the way things were in the sense of an open government we really need to have this approach of opening up all the little committees all the different stuff that was going on before COVID came my concern was the waterways advisory committee right now we've got some rains that's nice sometimes rains they bring a little pains though and if we had the waterways advisory committee that have been meeting over all these months and years now it had been more helpful for the community to understand how to deal with some things so that's 12.1 12.3 the Herne community hub should be a competitive bid process back before any of you were on the council it used to be that if something was over a hundred thousand dollars there would be a hearing about it and there would be a bidding process somewhere along the way it's gotten to the point of looking at it like oh well it's no big deal to just go ahead and say it for a million here we're good a million there we're good this Herne community hub as you're calling it will be good for the Bellevue district and it's something that some of you see is very important it should be put out to a competitive bid there's no reason to hurry this especially because it says design build you can get the best team but from what i'm reading it looks like it's already been decided from what you see here in the agenda it says okay we're going to do this and that should not be the case because you're putting it out now for the design bid design should be something that helps with the community the community works on coming up with a bit of this design approach they call that uh collaborative that's it yeah where you involve the community in the design and the bid process i know it doesn't uh perhaps go with some people's preconceived agenda they want to get things done quickly especially the fire department might want that happening but over there on Burbank avenue a lot of people want to keep our rosalind fire station and that had already 3.4 million dollars i think put aside set from us taxpayers in rosalind thinking that we'd be able to be a part of the decision-making process and now we've been told by fire it's just going over to Bellevue to be worked on thank you kindly are there additional public comments i am not seeing any hands raised um in zoom and we do not have any recorded public comments for the site vice mayor mcdonnell can you please put a motion on the table thank you mayor i move items 12.1 through 12.5 and waive for the reading of the text second motion made by vice mayor mcdonald and seconded by council member olcrapki madam city clerk oh excuse me council are there any additional questions or any questions concerning the consent yes councilman albarez thank you mayor uh in regards to 12.3 if if we can get a little bit of detail explanation what the process was to identify uh the architectural and planning uh group in this process yes i'm promoting um staff right now so uh mayor virus midter and council members on camera mcdonnell facilities planning coordinator and i'm happy to help answer your question um we uh we did a request for proposals process and that was uh posted on our planet bids platform and that goes out to the public um a total of 1038 vendors were notified and 91 vendors registered as prospective bidders and um we received a total of four proposals through that process so it was an open public process and uh we appointed a review board to review proposals and the review board scored those proposals and selected group four and they had the highest total combined score of all the um review board numbers thank you very much and in addition to the proposal that was put forth uh what community input has already been uh sought after in regards to the project sorry uh the city is working with rdc architecture and um there's been a community outreach process a total of six community outreach sessions to work with the public to understand their needs and for the the future community hub and um that that report will i believe be before council in coming a future council meeting um that report will also be provided to group four if they are awarded a contract and um their design will be based off of the outcome of that public outreach process thank you for elaborating madam city clerk may we please call the vote thank you council member stapp council member rogers aye council member okrepke aye council member flimming aye council member alvarez aye vice mayor mcdonald aye mayor rogers aye let the record show that um this motion passes with seven ayes we will now go to item 13 we will have our first public comment on non-agenda matters for tonight this is an opportunity for the public to speak to the council on matters not listed on the agenda but which are within the subject matter madam city clerk can you please facilitate public comment yes thank you we are now taking public comment on item 13 if you wish to make a public comment you can make your way to the podium i do have a list of speakers so we will start with tina rogers followed by tom lapenna okay tom lapenna will be followed by margaret demoteo good evening mayor and council uh i came here to wish you a happy new year i know you thought i was going to start out with something else i actually sent you all an email uh and i think it began hello and happy new year i don't know whether you've seen the email yet it was sent on january 4th um we did a great thing or you did a great thing last year but we didn't quite get it to where we wanted what happened um is confusing to me so i waited till the videos of the meeting on november 29th and then the meeting i was unable to attend on december 6th were posted online and that was just probably a day or two ago so you all probably have not looked back on those videos and for the new members of council i say to you please look at those two dates november 29th look at the mobile home rent control ordinance discussion and look at in particular uh around four minutes and 55 seconds into the rent control discussion was a good discussion led by then mayor chris rogers uh and a lot of uh interaction with the city attorney and uh with our now vice mayor the second date i want you to look at is december 6th the date i was unable to attend i was in new york city spending an early christmas with relatives and in that section i want you to look at about three minutes and 48 seconds in and that was the follow-up discussion uh and that passed unanimously as a six to nothing vote the first vote on the 29th was exactly as i predicted all along to our city manager it was five to two on the second vote it was all eyes in favor uh there was one absentee that was uh councilman alvarez and we picked up the two votes from councilman schwellhelm and soyer that we didn't have before so i don't know where the train went off the tracks i don't know why the train went off the tracks i'm not blaming anybody but i've been practicing a martial art for about 31 years and i go back every year to wetland or participate in the summer camp and i live by the motto of that school and that is always do you best and never give up so i'm here to say i'm not giving up on you we're gonna i'm gonna need your help i'm asking for your help and i know you probably can't legally do this and as soon as they say it the city attorney is going to turn and say no you can't do this she's smiling um i want to invite all of you to our february 10th meeting that will be at santa rosa village at 1 30 in the afternoon if you want to have a council meeting there whatever we have to do whatever i can do to help you to help my people i'm confused i really am at the situation because i thought we had this thing taken care of we did for most of the parks we need your help thank you okay margaret demateo followed by doing do it good evening city council and happy new year my name is margaret samadio i'm the housing policy attorney with legal aid of sonoma county i'm here to talk about what mr. lapenna just discussed which is the rent stabilization ordinance that you passed in 2022 the first reading on the 29th and unfortunately i was unable to be here at the second reading and it did take a while for the video to come up for us to figure out what had happened and the reason we were trying to figure out what happened is because a letter was received by city attorney jeff Burke to the mobile home parks explaining that their interpretation was that if a tenant received a rent increase before january 6 the effective date of the ordinance they were not protected by the ordinance and so that left 487 residents without protection residents that were here clapping when you passed the ordinance thinking they were protected the reason they thought they were protected can be found on the video from the 29th at the first reading around four hours and 55 minutes it's about a 10 minute discussion prior to the motion by mayor rogers to adopt the ordinance about urgency about a moratorium about the effective date and repeatedly it was indicated that the factors for an urgency moratorium are likely present but that it would be brought back before the second reading by the city attorney and on the december 6 meeting there's no discussion of anything it's on the consent calendar there's no discussion of that urgency or the moratorium or anything about the effective date or the fact that 487 people will be left out of these protections so i urge you to watch because we watched it we watched it twice we watched both videos and you know i really regret not being here on the 6th i had to be at another city council meeting but i regret not being here because i would have raised it you know and i wish that i didn't have to be here to raise that issue and maybe pull it from the consent calendar because there was back and forth and there was a lot of public comments on it between owners and resident roger mcdonnell who came up here to thank you for passing the ordinance not knowing that he was not protected he didn't find out what your interpretation was of the law until this letter went out from jeff berg and so i asked you to provide them an explanation and consider any retroactive options to correct the issue and i i just think they deserve that explanation thank you yes hello my name is dwayne dewitt i'm from roseland these rains are good i know they're causing some pains but it's very important that we got the rains and they're very helpful to roseland this is a flyer from a meeting back in october about the opportunities for our water future for over 24 years people in roseland have been talking about the roseland creek being used as a water retention a storm water type basin now roseland creek is an ephemeral stream it runs when the rains come but it also leads to the laguna de santa rosa and in areas where it's near we have what are called vernal pools and those vernal pools will be here this spring this year after the sun comes out and things start to dry spring vernal some of those pools will still be here and you may not know but for many years federal funds were put together to put a santa rosa playing conservation strategy for vernal pools into place and that's still in effect that came in before the protections for the california tiger salamander were put into place so one of the things that happens is we get planners without vision and leaders without memory of what's been going on beforehand and the institutional memory doesn't stay because people move on but those documents are still available and they should be put into play as your legal team is looking into putting together what's called an environmental impact report for a proposal for a large park that you folks are making whereas the citizens who live near roseland creek where it's been flooding and i've seen your workers out there they've actually been advocating for years that it be a neighborhood park next to the creek and that the land that was saved by sonoma county taxpayers 12 years ago would be a neighborhood a special use which is allowable under the general plan one of the dilemmas we face is that we can't get the staff at their various levels of their hierarchies their five thumbs whatever they're doing to actually work with the community not just who they pick as community but the people who live in that area where a neighborhood park should be as i was coming over here i went by humbled neighborhood park i love that spot small parks don't need parking they put them in a place where people can get to them by walking riding bicycles protect roseland creek and you'll be helping yourselves with stormwater retention and basins in the future perhaps thank you okay if there's anyone else in the chamber wishing to make a public comment please make your way to the podium now okay don't see anyone making their way to the podium so we will move on to our zoom and participant uh joanne jones has raised her hand good afternoon city council and mayor rogers i was at the november 29th um 2022 council meeting and it was my understanding that an urgency ordinance was going to be put into place once the revised rent control ordinance was voted on and passed on december 6th so that never happened and subsequently 11 just to reiterate what tom was saying out of the mobile home parks are paying a reduced space rent under the new and revised ordinance which is a good thing however there are five mobile home parks including mine that are paying a higher percentage rent increase under the old ordinance which doesn't make a lot of sense so what i'm saying is we have gone too far for so many months spending time energy and resources only to leave the 2023 ordinance revision half done for some of the parks which begs the question for me is how can we fix this it just seems like it's only half done thank you for your work so far i consider this at least half a win thank you hey i'm not seeing any other hands raised on zoom and nor do we have any recorded public comments thank you we will now close public comment and the council will be oh i'm sorry councilmember rogers thanks madam mayor madam city attorney i was wondering if you could give a little bit of an update or context around the mobile home rent control ordinance i know we can't go into too much deliberation but for folks who are wondering sort of what happened or why can you give the latest yes i'm happy to do so the ordinance was adopted was not adopted as an urgency ordinance the we brought it back as a regular ordinance it went into effect on january 6th because the effective date is january 6th any rental increases prior to that date were governed by the prior ordinance any rental increases that are effective january 6th and after are governed by our new the new provisions that were adopted in early december happy to answer any other questions you might have yeah specifically about tell me if i'm wrong in my memory but i seem to remember that we could not the night of the ordinance when it was introduced switch it to an urgency ordinance because it had not been agendized that way and then if i remember correctly the day after the discussion was when the rent increase notices went out trying to get in front of our ability to change to an urgency ordinance or have the ordinance take effect quickly i don't recall the details i'll have to listen to the tape again it was my understanding that it was coming back not as an urgency ordinance i'll have to listen to the tape again but it was clear when we when it was on the agenda that it was a regular ordinance effective on january 6th and so i can go back there's you know it was noticed as a regular ordinance on in the for the december hearing it was on consent but it was noticed that way yeah i i'd be interested to get more information because i my understanding and i think most of council's understanding was that our actions would lead so that there everybody would be covered and so i would appreciate a better understanding of how it ended up that there's 400 and something that are not sure happy to come back with that information and some options going forward madam city manager can you please tell us how an effective date for an ordinance is established the effective date of the of an ordinance is established both by state law and by our local ordinance and it is 30 days after adoption thank you vice mayor mcdonald just to clarify clarifying question on that is that after the first adoption or the second reading it is when it is finally adopted so the first hearing is an introduction of the ordinance and then the second hearing is the actual adoption and so the effective date runs from the actual date of adoption so if we had um something at the second reading would we need to back date it at that time to be able to be less than 30 days or would that be under an emergency ordinance then yeah the the only way that it could be done you know could have a shorter time for effective date would be to do it as an urgency ordinance an urgent urgency ordinance does go into effect immediately it does have certain findings that need to be made of a significant impact on public health and safety and it does require a supermajority vote for it to pass thank you are there any additional questions from council okay um seeing none council we're going to take a short recess for a dinner break and we will be back at 6 p.m. thank you here mayor rogers present let the record show that all council members are present thank you so we can have our public hearings as close to five o'clock as we can we are going to skip over 14.1 and go to uh 15.1 which is our public first public hearing of the night madam city manager can you proceed item 15.1 is the teffra public hearing and issuance of bonds by the california municipal finance authority in an aggregate amount not to exceed four million six hundred and five four hundred and sixty five million dollars for aurora santa rosa hospital a mental health facility located at one two six five through one two eight seven fullton road and two five nine eight gernville road housing and community services program specialist and angela morgan will present thank you good evening council uh angela morgan project specialist and a housing and community services department present an item before you today uh is the request to hold a public hearing and approve the issuance of bonds for the aurora santa rosa hospital jurisdictions are required to hold a public hearing receive public comment and approve bond issuance consistent with the tax equity and fiscal responsibility act of 1982 and internal revenue code this action will not result in any fiscal impact to the general fund and the financial responsibility shall be of the borrower for this project the borrower shall be qcf1 ink a 501 c3 uh nonprofit the project is an existing mental health facility located at 1265 through 1287 fullton road and 2598 gernville road the site is near shopping food a veterinary hospital medical offices gas stations and public schools the existing facility includes uh excuse me the project is an existing mental facility my apologies the existing facility includes 95 the existing facility includes 95 beds with plans to expand to its capacity of up to 144 beds shortly after acquisition its treatment services are for both adolescents and adults on november 16 2021 city council held a public hearing and approved the issuance of bond financing from cmfa for this project however due to unforeseen delays related to the covet 19 pandemic and obtaining hospital licensing the project was unable to close on the bond financing a new teffra public hearing and city council approval is required if the issuance of bonds is not obtained within one year from the initial approval it is recommended by the housing and community services department that council one conduct a public hearing under the requirements of the tax equity and fiscal responsibility act of 1982 and the internal revenue code of 1986 as amended and two by resolution approve the issuance of tax exempt 501c3 revenue bonds by the california municipal finance authority in an aggregate amount not to exceed 465 million to finance the acquisition construction renovation and or the equipping of the aurora sanarosa hospital a mental health facility located at 1265 through 1287 folton road and 2598 gernvill road sanarosa this concludes the presentation and in addition to myself rick needham on behalf of the project and other members of the of their collective team have joined via zoom and available for questions thank you very much for that presentation council do we have any questions seeing none we will now open the public hearing if you wish to make a public comment and are in the chamber please make your way to the podium um zoom host do we have any hands raised in zoom i'm seeing no hands raised on zoom and no public comment for this item seeing no comments we will now close the public hearing i'll bring it back to council to see if they have any questions or comments thank you seeing none council member fleming if you would please put a motion on the table indeed the resolution of the council the city sanarosa approving approving the issuance of revenue bonds in an aggregate amount not to exceed 465 million by the california municipal finance authority for aurora sanarosa hospital a mental health facility located at 1265 through 1287 folton road and 2598 gernvill road for the benefit of qcf-i ink a 501 c3 non-profit healthcare organization in accordance with section 147 f of the irs code and the joint exercise of powers agreement related to set authority and waive further reading of the text second we have a motion from councilman fleming and a second from council member rogers any discussion from council seeing none madame city clerk can you please call the vote council member stab hi council member rogers hi council member okrepke hi council member fleming hi council member alvarez vice mayor mcdonald hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with seven eyes let's proceed to 15.2 madame city manager item 15.2 public hearing on fiscal year 2023 2024 budget priorities cfo allen alton will lead the discussion thank you mayor rogers and members of the council we are here for this public hearing to talk about budget priorities for the fiscal year 22 23 year we are right at the beginning of our of our budget there we go we're right at the beginning of our budget process and this public hearing is required by the city charter to allow the public to come in and provide input on their priorities for the upcoming fiscal year and and council goals written public input for those that aren't able to participate in this public hearing are can be submitted online at srcity.org slash budget comments i can tell you that they there are a lot of comments that come in through there which is a good thing whoops i only have a couple slides here so after this public hearing our next steps is that we will go through council goal setting i believe that's being set up right now the departments are developing their budgets we actually kick that off at the end of this month they'll enter their budgets then we'll review those with the city manager we'll be back to the city council for a budget workshop in may and then the budget book will be available at the on the public counter on june 5th and then we have the budget adoption hearing which is scheduled for june 20th so with that i'm here to answer any questions but really this item is just to receive input from the public council do you have any questions seeing none we will open the public hearing okay our first speaker speaker would be margaret demadio followed by dwayne duit hi again margaret demadio on behalf of legal aid i'm the housing policy attorney and i've been in this role for a little over a year so in trying to find a place to start to advocate for priorities that would best help our legal aids clients who are all low income and vulnerable clients i looked back at the priorities adopted by the council in 2022 three things stood out to me one deliver housing for all for obvious reasons but number two reduced homelessness that's and its impacts and then the fourth one was promote economic and community vibrancy as a primary legal services provider for low-income santa rosa residents we request that you align your budget priorities with these goals again this year in doing so i do urge you to consider that the landscape has shifted data has emerged from pandemic related housing and economic interventions that can help inform your budget and your goals and your goal setting later this year there was a recent report by the economic ground table which is a non-profit research institute which analyzed data from COVID related interventions and some key takeaways that are relevant tonight are that housing and income interventions during the recession COVID recession and the ensuing wave of unemployment reduced the growth of homelessness by almost half and can provide the same protection for future recessions scaling up reemployment reemployment interventions for high-risk unemployed workers would further reduce homelessness risks the moratoriums on eviction provided the greatest protection against homelessness reducing the number of evictions nationwide by half and providing even stronger protections in california eviction moratoriums and cash payments kept households and workers intact during the pandemic they worked these recommendations based on their findings which i'm happy to share via email or these are the following recommendation recommendations based on those findings number one don't rely on the homelessness service the homeless service system to prevent homelessness is largely reactionary and not preventative second be preventative keep people housed prevent evictions while eviction moratoriums are expiring across the county we're seeing and surrounding counties we're seeing local protections being enacted permanently most recently last night in pedaluma they extended their just cause ordinance and we would urge you to consider rent stabilization just cause a rent registry allocating funding for these programs which we're happy to help provide technical assistance for and maintain incomes an emergency rent assistance funds these kind of things will keep people in their house and office in their house and off the street thank you care next speaker will be dwayne dewitt hello my name is dwayne dewitt i'm from rosa and i'm also a member of the Sonoma county housing advocacy group which was founded oh 27 years ago and i support everything that's just been said tonight by that previous speaker i wanted to talk about the budget priorities that would help roseland which is in the words of james gore the outgoing chair of the board of supervisors for sonoma county a disadvantaged underserved community and government has a responsibility he called it a duty a moral obligation to help those types of communities uh none of you were around when 27 years ago the city of san rosa created a county island by annexing the outlying edges the belview neighborhood to put in the belview ranch subdivision in planning circles that's called bad planning to make county islands that county island existed until five years ago 22 years a county island essentially hobbling roseland five years ago the city did an annexation and they ended the county island and brought roseland in to the city after long negotiations with the county always stating that the intention was to bring roseland up to the city standards everywhere else in the city well that didn't happen and it's not going to happen the way things are looking right now so for budget priorities equity making sure that the people of rosland are treated as well as the people of mcdonald avenue of fountain grove that they are given the same types of consideration over in roseland the rains that have come have caused some pains but they're a good thing because if you'll look into the roseland area you'll see where you can bring extra money in from state and federal agencies looking at stormwater i'd like to advocate that one of your main priorities be the mcdonald avenue stormwater project which is on the books but hasn't been moving forward let stormwater be your guide if you will and reach out to state and federal agencies to get extra funding to do stormwater retention basins along the ephemeral creek of rosland creek running from the railroad tracks all the way out to the laguna de santa rosa this could be helping you one of the things that would be also helpful is job training reach out to the u.s environmental protection agency on the brownfields grant programs and try to get job training for our teenagers and let them have occupations where they can stay in our neighborhood and make it better thank you okay if there's anyone else in the chamber wishing to make a public comment you can make your way to the podium okay don't see anyone making their way to the podium we do have some speakers with their hands raised in zoom so with the zoom host please facilitate those commenters yes we'll start with chris eggers followed by melissa husking thank you this is chris eggers i'm a volunteer with vikable santa rosa and a resident in district four and i am urging the city to allocate more funds to building protected and connected bike infrastructure protected bike lanes or lanes that are separated from traffic by physical barriers such as bollards large planters or even park cars connected means the bike lanes are contiguous that means they start at one point and they go all the way from point a to point b without interruption many people in santa rosa would ride more frequently but they don't feel safe on the city streets as they are because currently our bike lane situation are painted bike lanes and often they lead to nowhere we i think we currently have approximately two blocks of protected bike lanes in the entire city of santa rosa in 2020 the city made a climate emergency resolution which stated that the city's support for sonoma county bike coalition's campaign encouraging residents to bike the destination within two miles i would say that such a switch is not feasible for most residents given the lack of a contiguous safe bike network i would like to also remind you that investing in bike infrastructure will help the city meet their recently adopted vision zero traffic safety goals currently as i said we have a disconnected patchwork of unprotected bike lanes an example that would be safe way on fourth and farmers lane if you'd like to get to safe way there's no way if you live in the montgomery village area to ride your bike there safely even though it's half mile or less from the people who live there another example is santa rosa junior college if the students want to go to cotton count on their bikes there's also no way for them to get there because we don't have a way for them to get across the freeway safely we do have a bike and pedestrian overcrossing that's been designed the design has been paid for it's done and the part of the funds are allocated however every year that we don't build it the price goes up and recently the city council took funding from that project towards another project which is also a completely viable project the her and avenue over crossing but i think given our current climate crisis it should not be either one or the other but both thank you next will be melissa husking followed by sarah jones my name is melissa husking i'm a santa rosa city resident and i just wanted to come on here to urge um the santa rosa city council to prioritize budgeting for creating um a safer bike infrastructure around santa rosa as well and also included in that installing more bike parking around town um yeah so i think that biking helps to keep our air clean and incentivize people um having a safe infrastructure and incentivizes people to bike around town rather than drive so people could potentially bike to work more easily bike to the grocery store um it's also an easy way for people to travel if they can't afford a car so um it would help to um it would help out those disenfranchised people in our town and it keeps the environment healthy biking also keeps the residents healthy um i love biking but i don't feel that i can do it safely around town i feel that i have to go to specific pathways like the drover go to trail or the smart trails but those only go so far um i would love to be able to bike safely to downtown or to work or to you know any other place in santa rosa um but at this point i don't think that's really a viable um option so again i just really want to um urge you guys to prioritize biking infrastructure in your budget um for 2023 um again just really healthy for everyone at the planet overall um and also just want to remind you guys that during the pandemic there were so many people who were biking for fun um i saw this mostly on the drover go to trail but i just think that if there was a safer infrastructure around town more people would be incentivized to do so um on a more regular basis especially as the world is heading towards um more zero emissions policies um so hopefully people will be wanting to drive less in the future um yeah again just wanting some protected bike lanes more bike parking all those good things thank you sarah jones will be followed by gregory barron can we unmute sarah jones sarah i'm asking you oh sorry i think i um unmuted myself after you unmuted me did you get there am i can you hear me yes we can okay um so hi i'm sarah jones and i am a math instructor at santa rosa junior college and i've been teaching there for many years and i've been working on the sustainability committee there for many years um it's so important for our students to be able to get to campus for their classes um so increasing bicycle and pedestrian corridors so that they can safely get to campus is really crucial the 101 over crossing specifically is really important the other thing that would be great is more frequent um bus service that's um scheduled to meet our class schedule so getting some work with the city to make that happen would be wonderful um with our disadvantaged communities the best way that you can help them is to get them free and frequent public transportation so that they can help themselves and they can go to school and they can go to their jobs and their kids can get to school so they don't have to be driving them around to get to school and they can actually go to work it's just such a boon for our community and our society it's also great for the community to get out and meet their neighbors and have fun and have a great place to live so bike infrastructure is really important as well as increasing the frequency of our bus system thank you so much Gregory Farron will be followed by YCH shared room good evening madam mayor and members of the council thank you for this budget priority session and i i want to make three points on a single theme um the points have to do with um civic engagement and i want to thank chris and sarah and melissa for participating in the budget priority session tonight usually this isn't a very popular way of trying to get your point across about what the city ought to do that's usually say for the goal setting which is going to be happening in a couple of months but it is important for the city residents to understand the budget it's very important for the parameters of what's possible to be shared with everyone in the community and in that regard i want to thank the city manager for laying out in a budget transmittal um her uh her worries her cautions i'm going to read from that transmittal just a minute she says there are challenges to be faced in the years ahead the city was able to establish many programs in the community with ARPA funds and other one-time funding opportunities however it's unclear if any of these programs should they prove successful will become long-term liability to the general fund the city has a sizable amount of deferred infrastructure including facilities storm drains roads staff will be looking for creative solutions to meet those infrastructure needs she indicates a few more things that you've accomplished but she finally ends with a statement that says which i believe and i want to emphasize where she says i look forward to working together on solutions that will continue making santa rosa a great place to live and do business uh and that in my opinion has to do with partnership with the community it has to do with listening and believing that the community has a lot to offer about trying to help these programs become successful and i and so my second point is i want to thank the city council members for their appointments to the committees and to the volunteer opportunities that you've demonstrated all of you tonight we need to have a partnership which includes and i'm speaking to the residents now that all of us stepping up and participating if we don't do that we're not going to be able to make any of our goals so my my pitch to the council is keep the budget priorities uh capable of meeting these programs needs uh and give the hope and belief to our residents that we can partnership with all of them that's my pitch uh it it's one that i hope all of you already believe uh and uh i'm i'm trying to make sure that we all as a city participate together thank you why C shared room will be followed by jenny bard yes my name is thea hensel hi my name is thea hensel i am co-chair of the southeast greenway camp thank you to all of you for representing the city and it's so nice to see some new faces on city council so welcome to you i want to encourage all of you to support the staff that is working on the greenway process as we wind our way through the acquisition with kelpranz this is going to require work this year and next as the clock ticks towards acquisition many departments of the city are going to be required to weigh in on this process and i hope that you will all support the staff time that it requires secondly i would like all of you to encourage staff to attend the uh biker san rosa project that's going to be conducted at the end of this month by city thread and then ask staff to seriously take their recommendations which will be provided after serious and important input from a variety of groups and supporters of biking in san rosa thank you very much jenny will be followed by adrian hello um yes my name is jenny bard and i live in district five and i want to thank you for the opportunity to speak today and it's really nice to virtually meet the new members of the council thank you for your service and i'm here as the board president of the sinema county bicycle coalition and i really would like to thank um bikeable san rosa for all the work they have done to organize our voices around the city's very important opportunities to improve its bicycle infrastructure so i am here also to um ask the council to prioritize improved bicycle infrastructure in the city's budget planning we know and i i have spoken to so many city council goal setting sessions uh going back 20 years and i can just share that you know we know more people would ride a bicycle if they felt safe doing so and a recent study shows that protected facilities can reduce bicycle crashes by 50 percent and deaths by 44 percent making protected bike lanes the single most effective intervention for rider safety this of course meets one of the city's primary goals uh obviously the vision zero traffic safety goals um in particular the bicycle coalition advocates for low stress bicycle networks and protected bike lanes linking neighborhoods and communities throughout the county because this will improve public health equity and transportation and it will save lives we know that bicycles are the most cost effective and climate friendly form of transportation they're also the cheapest investing in bicycle infrastructure meets multiple city goals improving public health and equity riding a bicycle instead of driving a car immediately reduces greenhouse gas emissions and perhaps most important as i said investing in this infrastructure will enable more people in our city to feel safe riding a bicycle so there are many projects we urge you to prioritize um as was mentioned the southeast greenway and the planned but not yet implemented road upgrades throughout the city including Dutton, Santa Rosa Avenue south of courthouse square where i live, Mendocino Avenue courthouse square excuse me, Mendocino Avenue between courthouse square and college Montgomery Avenue and Sonoma Avenue through Montgomery Village and the Heron Avenue freeway crossing with protected bike lanes perhaps the most important one is the bike ped 101 over crossing providing a very needed and key east west bicycle friendly corridor Santa Rosa has a huge opportunity to be a key bicycle friendly city but only with greater investments in safe protected bicycle infrastructure so i thank you for your time and up next is Adrienne good evening can you hear me yes okay good evening Madam Mayor and council members welcome new council members my name is Adrienne Covertz i'm local lead for Santa Rosa Yambi that's yes in my backyard to new housing and the new transit options to make that housing sustainable and affordable for all i'm also a west end resident and it's January and that means it's nearly time for the this year's annual homeless point in time count i do the homeless point time count for my neighborhood i did a last year i'll be doing it again this year and it raises the issue of shelter we've got one of the least sheltered homeless populations in the united states in the bay area all bay area cities including Santa Rosa only about 30 percent of our homeless population has access to shelter and the nationwide average is about 86 percent so we've got a lot to do and just over in the past few weeks we've seen deaths all across california due to the lack of available shelter due to the cold and due to the rain and this is really ethically morally unacceptable we need to do a lot better all cities in california not just santa rosa but in santa rosa we have an opportunity i think to look at i would encourage the city council to look at the model recently done in sacramento where the city of sacramento entered an mou with the county to jointly expand emergency shelters and interim housing in the city of sacramento through a partnership with the county i know the county is the the provider of the social safety net many of the services that homeless residents need and so i would encourage the council to take a look at that and we're happy to explore that with you the other thing i want to mention as has been mentioned by several other speakers is the critical importance of protected bike lanes about 20 of all car trips in sacramento are less than two i mean excuse me in santa rosa are less than two miles a two-mile trip round trip is very time competitive on a bike than it is on as it is with a car these are trips that we could shift mode shift quite easily and quite a few people would be willing and eager to do it we've got the best weather in the world and a beautiful city to bike around if we had a safe and pleasant option to do it right now all we have are painted lanes it's not safe and it's not pleasant for most people we need a protected barrier lane to encourage more people to bike and the record shows elsewhere in the united states and around the world that if you give people a barrier and a protected lane separated from traffic they'll take it and given we've got a projection for about 7 000 new housing units many of which are downtown to be planned over the next decade or so that's a lot of traffic unless we provide a safe bike option to get people out of their cars and get healthy and get outside and meet their neighbors and if you've ever been on the taco Tuesday ride it's a lot of fun thank you thank you so we're showing uh chris rogers on the meeting is that you okay thanks there are no more hands on zoom and we do not have any pre-recorded voicemails for this item thank you so seeing no additional members of the public wishing to speak we will close the public hearing and bring it back to council for any discussion councilmember rogers my hand was actually up because when we took a break it kicked me off of the zoom meeting not because i had anything to say but i will echo some of the comments that gregory furan made this is a critical uh component of how we do our priorities how we do our budgets and obviously anybody who's been around knows that if you don't fund something it's not a priority and so it really is helpful to hear from folks what they would like to see us working on over the next year or two years uh yes to bike lanes yes to housing yes to our our protections that we've talked about and we've done a lot of work over the last couple of years in particular through the pandemic trying to address the needs of the community and so i look forward to furthering the conversation thank you mayor any additional discussion from council yes councilmember alores are there any fun any projects coming forward when it comes to surpassable road or even make men in regards to water or sewer that that we know yes thank you councilmember for that question jason not assistant city manager uh there there is an active project looking stormwater and around mcminne avenue down burbank avenue and hues it's an area that we know has been problematic we've been working with both our state and federal legislators to see if we can find alternative funding sources above and beyond the funds that we currently have slated for that with our local resources and it is on our list and priority to try to get that taken care of as soon as we can make that available our priority right now and we currently have funded is is working towards getting a design so that we know how to manage what is a really flat area a flat part of town in an effort to provide that secure drainage uh into um into the the the creeks in the area so that is in the process thank you very much sir seeing no further discussion i would like to thank the public that did participate and remind you that no action will be taken today the public comments from today will be considered as the council moves forward with our goal setting and development of the budget now we will proceed to our last public hearing of the night and that is 15.3 item 15.3 benefit valley golf course fees deputy director santos will present thank you for having some technical difficulties thank you for your patience good evening mayor rogers vice mayor mcdonald and council members i'm gen santos the deputy director for parks and uh with me tonight i have members of the touchstone parks t uh benefit valley golf course team we have mark lithman from a touchstone who is attending virtually tonight and we'll be giving a large portion of the presentation and we also have sitting next to me greg anderson general manager from the benefit valley golf course uh attending in tonight's chamber okay so just a little reminder of what we're looking at today we're here to talk about the fees today but a reminder that the golf course is an 18-hole 50-acre course and when we talk about the golf course or the enterprise what we really mean is everything in the golf course we mean all the buildings the maintenance equipment the 150 acres everything involved in that the restaurant etc everything is included in that when we talk about the enterprise of the golf course and we also have a picture there just view of the golf course as a reminder how beautiful is out there so at the time of council approval last year in june of 2022 for touchstones agreement we anticipated returning to council at that time with an update regarding touchstones progress after six months of operations and that included a discussion about fees so we returned to have that discussion with council in december of last year december 6th at council's meeting as part of a study session and at that study session we discussed about 11 key topics it was a really big study session we had a lot to talk about that night one of those was the golf course fees and we were specifically receiving asking direction from the council that evening about the fees the golf course fees and we did discuss the need to increase the fees and the touchstone group went over their market rate analysis and we'll do a little bit of that again tonight and at that study session in december the council asked that we do return in january as anticipated and have a further discussion about the fees and to implement council's direction so today a touchstone will walk us through that discussion about updating the fees based on the market rate research they've done and the work they've been doing for the last six months operating the golf course and with that i will turn it over to mark luthman from touchstone who is attending virtually jen thank you very much for the introduction in city council mayor it's nice to see all of you i was last speaking with you on december 6th and here we are on the other side of the holidays i hope everybody had a good holiday season to all of you we wanted to start off with a little background just a refresher our firm touchstone golf was contracted with the city to manage vennett valley we started our 10-year managing the golf course back on july 1st of 2022 and our arrangement is a management arrangement that is a little different than the concessionaire arrangement that was in place in the past for vennett valley uh the big difference being that the city through our arrangement receives all of the revenue that the golf course brings in and that revenue is used to fund all of the payroll and the operating expenses that are associated with vennett valley's operation back at the beginning of our engagement one of the tasks that we were charged with was performing a detailed analysis of the existing rate structure at vennett valley and providing our recommendations on the best path forward so over the first six months of our tenure we performed that analysis we spoke to all of you a little bit about it back at the study session at the beginning of december the last time that the green fee rates were adjusted at vennett valley was five years ago or now almost six years ago in 2017 and so it had been quite some time since the rates were increased back at that time in 2017 a capital improvement fee was added for every round of golf played at vennett valley currently it sets that that capital improvement fee is two dollars per golfer for 18 whole round and one dollar per golfer for nine whole rounds so with those fees collected a capital improvement fund was established by the city and those funds were used to perform projects addressed deferred maintenance and improve vennett valley golf course next slide so the aforementioned analysis of green fees what we did is we took a look at the closest and nearest competitors for vennett valley golf courses in and around sonoma county in the area that golfers would frequent and analyze their rates and compare that to what vennett valley has been charging for the last five years so you can see on this this is a summary we uh compared amongst others vennett valley with valley of the moon windsor fox tails north course and runner park and rooster run in pedaluma and the goal for us going into this was to charge the appropriate amount at vennett valley and also provide a strong value for all the golfers and maintain the very high and strong rounds level of vennett valley has experienced over the past few years and what we found was that vennett valley because price increases hadn't taken place over the last five years was underpriced compared to the market that put a level of financial strain on the golf course and impacted our ability to generate revenue to provide for a financially stable operation as well as allow for reinvestment in vennett valley so our proposed rates that we've created and are proposing to all of you is weekday rate of $37 and a weekend rate of $52 so you can see on this slide how that compares to the competition one thing i want to underscore is these rates for the competitive set of golf courses these are these golf courses 2022 rates we understand just from anecdotal conversations with the operators of these golf courses that they are planning rate increases as they head into the 2023 golf season above what you see here but we're comparing here in this slide what we are proposing the rates for vennett valley to be compared to the 2022 rates of local competition so we have a exhibit that goes along with this that provides a complete fee schedule showing all of the revised rates next slide so once again the golf fees haven't changed in the last five to six years when we walked in we found that there was over a hundred and eighty different fees that were being charged based on time of day and day of the week and if somebody was a senior or a junior or somewhere in between there was a myriad of different rates so one of the tasks that was in front of us was streamlining that so everyone knows and has a good sense of of what the rates are i mentioned our findings that vennett valley's rates were below that of the market purely because the rate increases hadn't taken place as they had with other golf courses over the last five years and the existence of the aforementioned capital improvement fees that were added on to the existing rates so if a golfer would come into vennett valley they would pay the green fee and then they would also be charged a two dollar capital improvement fee it was something that was separate and apart from the green fee so they would see that on their receipt and they were they were separate so what we're proposing is the updated golf fees still fees that are below that of the market reducing the number of fees from the 180 to a more manageable 20 to 30 fee number based on the time of day and the day of the week in seasonality as well as eliminating that separate capital improvement fee per round so in essence we're taking that a capital improvement fee and then we are including that in the rates that we are proposing so it's just one rate that also includes that capital improvement fee okay next slide here's some of the highlights of the fees and as i mentioned we have a full schedule that we're sharing with all of you on the weekdays a four dollar increase to the full 18 whole fee a two dollar increase to the twilight fee and i'd like to underscore that we have no intention of raising the fees for the junior golfers we want to make it golf is available and affordable to the juniors in the community as as we can on the weekends we're proposing a five dollar increase to the the 18 whole rate the twilight rate and the super twilight rate we're also proposing a one dollar increase in the cart fee a one dollar increase in the super twilight nine whole cart fee a two dollar increase in the driving range large bucket fee as well as a 12 to 15 percent increase in the monthly membership fees for our annual members next slide the budget that we have prepared for bennett valley this year includes the notion that we will raise rates in january so we've included a level of growth in the average rate for the budget that we are in right now and then we would anticipate as we are well into the budgeting process for the next fiscal year we would be including those fees in the in the new budget for the 2023 2024 fiscal year it's our view and our recommend recommendation that this fee increase is important to support bennett valley golf club as an enterprise fund and as most of you i i believe know the golf course operates as an enterprise fund in essence it is self funding the operation of the golf course and the capital improvements of the golf course back in december the recommendation after the study session was the council asked us to come back in january to propose the fee increase that is why we're here this evening again our proposal to fold in the capital improvement fees as if it's won't be separate and apart anymore it will be folded into the full rate structure and we've incorporated that into our thinking we'll reestablish the annual membership fees and at the conclusion of this we would propose that the fees are implemented immediately next slide so gen i will turn it back to you thank you mark so with everything it is recommended by the transportation of public works department that the council hold a public hearing to discuss increasing golf fees and eliminating the existing capital improvement fees and by resolution approve the revised bennett valley golf course fees to supersede and replace the bennett valley golf course fees and requirements set forth in resolution number res 2017 090 which includes an increase in some fees and elimination of other fees effective on january 11 2023 for the bennett valley golf course and to authorize the transfer of the remaining balance from the bennett valley golf course capital improvement fund 1662 to the bennett valley golf course operations fund 1661 and with that we are here to answer any questions you may have thank you for that presentation the council do we have any questions council members that thank you gen mark and greg just a point of confirmation so the transfer of funds from the capital improvement account to the operating account there's still an intention to make the capital improvements this just provides fiscal flexibility in terms of how that how that takes place is that correct that is correct yes we will oh sorry about that mark the virtual versus being in in person but yes that's correct we will still be able to manage the funds as they come in to use for capital and operations and equipment as needed so you'll still have that flexibility it offers us better flexibility as we move forward versus having the two separate accounts right now to move funds back and forth it's just all one so it's a smoother for the golfers when they come as one fee it's also smoother for staff in the background but we still are using those funds for capital as well and i'll look to mark if you have any anything else to add to that nope that's i couldn't have said it better myself jen thank you councilmember rogers first of all thank you so much mark for all the work on this i know you're trying to reduce and eliminate the proposed fees so i hesitate to ask the question but the one that's sort of glaringly missing when we compare to other public courses is a resident reduction or a different fee that we charge for people who live in santa reza to play in the golf course that their tax dollars are supporting is there a reason that that hasn't been considered well it's a it's a very appropriate question and i assure you it has been considered at length and one of the in our analysis over the first six months a key differentiating factor with bennett valley of the courses that i listed there and we analyzed bennett valley does substantially more rounds each year than every single one of those golf courses and so we really looked at that and said why why is this happening and the reason is is because bennett valley's rates are at a similar level as the other golf courses resident rates so for instance foxtail has a resident rate for roner park residents and so we we took a real hard look at that and said all right should we have bifurcated rates one rate for residents one rate for non residents what um what our analysis shows us is that our golfers are coming from all over sinoma county they are not coming just from santa rosa and the key reason for their coming is the value that they're receiving from those rates they're driving out of their communities and driving to bennett valley so our view on this is is that overall rounds if we bifurcated the rates overall rounds will decrease perhaps quite substantially and all of the impact of the rate increases would be lost because our rounds will go down and we won't host as many golfers over the course of the year so what our our view on this and thus our recommendation is that we want to continue to have a rate structure that is attractive and provides value to people not only in santa rosa but in all of the surrounding county and even folks driving up from elsewhere and in the north part of marin or driving in from other neighboring counties so bennett valley continues to perform at the same rounds level that it is right now and i really appreciate that explanation from your data what percentage of the rounds are played by santa rosa residents it's the it's the great majority and and i can't i don't have that right in front of me great do you remember what that is i'm it's about 70 percent 70 per inch in santa rosa okay great thank you so much councilwoman phleming yeah my question was primarily around bifurcating rates for residents i i'm just curious to know when you do do your analysis do you do an analysis like based on 50 cent or dollar increments based on whether or not you think that that will detract from rates of golf and you do sort of like x y graphs or whatever is it down to that level of detail to sort of project how a rate increase will will affect rates of play well it it is it and it's we i i'll uh be honest with you we don't do x y graphs based on 50 cent increases um what we do do is take a look at the competition and the rates they're charging and the level of experience that people are getting at each of those golf courses compared to bennett bound and understanding that if our rates continue to be at a level where they're slightly below that but the value and the overall experience is similar that we are going to do the same amount of of rounds and so and then also incorporating in that that makes the puzzle a little difficult is this desire to fold the capital improvement fund into this so that's really it's two dollars that's being charged right now that we're just folding into the rate so say for instance on the weekends so i mentioned during my presentation that we're doing a five dollar increase on the weekends it's really a three dollar increase on the weekends because we're folding the capital improvement two dollars fund into that and then we're increasing the the rates three dollars yeah the reason why i'm asking about the rate at which you measure your projections whether it's 50 cent or dollar cent increments is because i'm trying to figure out how what kind of methodology you use to make these determinations so that we might be able to offer some nuanced suggestions around perhaps benefiting you know in future when this comes back to us perhaps benefiting our residents here i mean if we have 70 percent of rounds played by Santa Rosa residents we do have to be cautious about a discount and at the same time fuel costs are quite high so if people are coming from out of county or other cities maybe they might not be that sensitive to a pretty small increase over what a Santa Rosa resident might might pay so that's where that was coming from but it does sound like you thought about this really quite carefully so thank you i do have a question around the rate increases on slide six what i do notice is that for many of these increases they they were nice tidy increments of dollars you said five dollars which is really a three dollar increase the impact of that i noticed though is that the most desirable t times got the lowest increase overall as a percentage whereas less desirable play times got the highest increases do you have any concern about impacting rates of play at twilight or super twilight or any thoughts that perhaps the daytime weekend fees could have done with a 16 or 26 percent increase to be more in line with what our evening folks are willing to pay or would be asked to pay so um that that's a very um i'll try and break that question apart into answering the different parts of it first um the the governing factor with the amount of increases that we were proposing were and i just showed the rates in the slide of here's what the 18 hole rate is here for weekdays here's what the 18 hole rate is for weekends we did this same exercise for twilight what is being charged at twilight throughout the rest of the the valley at the competition for super twilight for backman play for senior play for every rate category that there is we looked at it and so each one we did the discussion and debate of okay how much we're going to fold in the capital improvement fee and then how where are we still providing that value so that um we are a still providing a value for the city of santa rosa residents and b it is still attractive for that 70 or that 30 of people that would be coming out to bennett valley to play from elsewhere so it's 68 000 rounds is what we're planning to host this year at bennett valley so 38 of that or 30 percent of that is rough and tough 19 20 000 rounds so that those are really the rounds that are at risk here with this and if we have so much as a five percent drop in rounds that will negate the impact of this fee increase that we're talking about and so the the goal here with this was all right what should we be taking the rates to so as we have comfort level that we are still going to be able to produce that 68 000 round number that's really helpful thank you so much sure councilmember okrepke yeah um you've kind of already discussed this a little bit but i was wondering if you could discuss the process that led you to the determination to increase senior fees specifically because that demographic has a significant population on fixed incomes um can you discuss that a little bit certainly it was the same process that i just articulated with all of our rates so we looked at the senior fees at bennett valley that had not increased over the last since 2017 we folded in the capital improvement fee into it and we determined what is the optimum rate to still be providing the best value for seniors and uh you know in terms of rate and experience at bat valley and um we set the rates at that any additional questions vice mayor mcdonald thank you mayor i just have a couple questions for you one do we currently offer a santa rosa resident discount what's that do we currently offer a discount for santa rosa residents we do not thank you and then um i want to go back for a moment under the capital improvement fees can you tell me what um that has been used for in the in the past and what the current budget is or what do we currently have in that budget that's going to be able to transfer over for um the needed improvements that we still have ten do you want to take that for talking about where it's been used in the past um prior to our involvement absolutely thank you uh in in the past we've used it for most recently for purchase of equipment for its for capital projects as well as equipment purchases so we recently purchased some mowers there uh in the last couple years and uh we also on as part of the council item on uh june 7th to bring on touchstone we also moved about 350 thousand dollars out of the fund um to fund the startup and efforts to get touchstone on board and uh bulk up our reserves as well so we had that discussion then and what's left in the account is about uh 148 thousand dollars so we'll be transferring you know including interest except all the other numbers will be transferred over into another account that is within the operating account that is is used for capital projects so it's still be used for capital projects thank you and then i just have a point of clarification on process on this because there's been a resolution that was done before for capital improvements this fee do we have to eliminate that resolution or just by voting on this increase in fee does it automatically eliminate that old resolution as part of it we did ask to supersede the previous resolution so i'll look to our city attorney for any additional thank you that's correct resolution would supersede the sorry i can't hear you sue sorry um that's correct that the current resolution that's before you this evening would supersede the earlier resolution so i just wanted to make sure that was clear in the motion thank you are there any additional questions from council seeing none we will now open the public hearing okay our first speaker will be richard carlyle followed by lin carlyle thank you i'm uh richard carlyle and uh madam mayor and members of the council uh i want to thank you for moving this golf course along the way you have with a study session and what's before you tonight um as you most of you know i'm president of save bennett valley golf course my wife is also on the board of directors and we represent about 4 000 golfers interested citizens to keep this golf course moving ahead and we're very pleased with what's happened so far with touchstone getting involved in the operations and uh working with city staff to come as far as we have right now it's really looking good and this tonight is just one part of a bigger piece of the puzzle and we encourage you to improve these rate uh increases to help with our budget and get the improvements that we need and the operations going smoothly thank you very much lin carlyle i just want to ditto what my husband said also i am a longtime member with the women's league out at bennett valley golf course and i definitely am in support of exactly what touchstone is recommending for the rates thank you if there's anyone else in the chamber wishing to make a public comment you can make your way to the podium i am not seeing anyone making their way to the podium so we do have one speaker on zoom and i'll let the host um facilitate that speaker thank you gregrie ferran greetings um madam mayor and members of the council as you know i've been before you for years trying to make sure that your decisions around the golf course were fair and uh and intelligent um the problem in the past that i've constantly uh told you about uh was about how you could expect a golf course to pay back a bond issue that was taken out years and years and years ago which artificially inflated the cost of running a golf course having to take out of our fees four hundred thousand dollars a year to pay back a ten million dollar bond issue which i i understand still has three or four million dollars left on it um our made it terribly difficult for any provider any operator to uh to break even uh and what happened is the money that we paid out at bond issue was the money we didn't pay out for maintenance the money we had to have and in battles with you guys over whether or not the fees were appropriate now every time i came before you i pointed out as several of you have done that we don't have a resident fee um comparing us with other operators and other golf courses that do is really you know apples and oranges it's really not an effective way of of running a course now i'm still unclear as to whether or not the current operator and the operating fees that come through are going to have to still pay for the bond issue if not hooray if you've decided that it was a mistake long ago and you're going to pay it out of the general fund or some other way good on you i mean that's the decision you should have made long ago that's the decision that made it hard for the current opera or the previous operator to continue to exist we were always trying to figure out a way of you know keeping the rounds high having the course have enough money to make both things happen and it was a struggle so if you're trying to make it real if you're trying to keep this alive take away the bond issue take away a cap i mean maximize the ability of of our fees paying for golf course legitimacy and fairness um that'll make everybody happy and it it it'll keep me from having to come back to you every year and say hey there's still something wrong we do have recorded voicemail public comments i don't see any other hands raised on zoom so we will um proceed with our voicemail public comment this is kathryn conrado and i'm commenting on item 15.3 related to the vented valley the increase and i'm calling to express my support for the modest increase that they're requesting the golf course is a valuable asset to the community in many ways and not just to golfers and i believe it would be a modest and reasonable request thank you for their support and uh please consider other requests that the golf course may have to help improve it hi my name is Kathy Crowley and i'm calling about item 15.3 regarding the proposed rate increases by touchstone for the vented valley golf course i am in favor of this way the golf rates they are requesting are very reasonable um and i would i approve these thank you calling in regards to item 15.3 the vented valley fee increase proposed by touchstone golf i wholeheartedly support the fee increase before you with a little background information as to why i've been an annual member of the course since 2013 our first full year of moving to santa rosa i'm able to uh play an average of two to three times per week even before retirement i've been an average avid golfer where my typical green peas exceeded 40 at my former clubs what a discovery to come to santa rosa and find a gem of a public golf course charging only $28 to walk $44 if using a power card less than what i previously paid walking at my former venues once a week i play nine holes with three other retired friends followed by a visit to the vented valley grill vented valley nine hole twilight cost is $17 to walk less frequently and largely because of costs they play the winzer golf course with a nine hole fee is $28 the 65 difference i think the vented valley course the community center and adjacent galvin park are vital to well-governed city and value sport and recreation for that reason i strongly support supported the save vented valley network so i'm pleased the city council became part of that movement to keep the acreage green and designated for athletes athletics and social gathering the last increase occurred in 2017 standing a time where inflation and operating costs have risen while revenues remain the same i should also state that i'm a member of the bv advisory committee that capacity i've had the chance to examine the fee increases in detail i fully support the fee structure proposed by touchstone and before you for approval but the course is now 55 years old and needed capital improvement it's my understanding that every dollar in profit shall go into an enterprise according to support capital improvements in the future a new irrigation system being a top priority sometime in the past the city council thought so much of the course that it decided they had a community center and new clubhouse to the venue but that came at a cost one still born by the club to the tune of over 350 000 dollars in annual debt service it's still the course is proven to be profitable as routinely recognized by the press democrat annual rating as the best venue in the county in closing i hope that the city council give unanimous support for the proposed fee increases as presented in item 15.3 thank you this message is regarding the golf fee increase for bennett valley my name is lee williams and i think that this is a very reasonable increase and i look forward to playing bennett valley thank you name is moraine rabolino and i am calling today in support of item 15.3 that is coming up on your agenda tomorrow i have been a golfer at our bennett valley golf course for over 25 years i'm currently a member and present captain of the bennett valley women's golf club i strongly support the two dollar green fee increase and truly hope that our city council will also thank you for your service and time yes this is pam mccullough a golfer at bennett valley golf course who is in support of the rate increase on item 15.3 thank you my name is shila bell and my comment is regarding agenda item 15.3 i've been a resident of santa rosa over 45 years i am commenting today to share my support of the proposed golf course rate increases presented to this council i provide my support for a variety of reasons as we all know cross of living has impacted us all for several years and more significantly over the past two years rates at the bennett valley golf course have not been increased since 2017 when the city of santa rosa initiated a capital improvements assessment fee of two dollars this touchstone rate proposal removes that capital assessment fee allowing revenue to flow into the golf course operating fund enabling a much broader use the proposed increases overall are nominal for example for seniors the increases two dollars and no increases being presented for junior players as important as the cost of living implications at the golf course as you know from the studies is the necessity to support funding of much needed critical infrastructure repairs and maintenance considering the irrigation water drainage system for example significant improvements have not been done for over 40 years still utilizing its wells updated irrigation systems allows the controlled watering of the fairways and greens that is much more in line with current water conservation action so essential to our city this golf course is the only municipal course in our city it supports the golfing community for individuals families and our youth at an affordable cost even with rate increases it is my understanding that touchstone has placed a strong focus on establishing more inclusive youth and mentoring golf programs throughout the city a valuable investment for all within our community beyond the golf force the reopening of the restaurant event center can return to offering affordable events for our entire city as many of you may know there are a few viable affordable options available in Santa Rosa having this facility is the benefit to all and that includes our soccer pickleball tennis and softball communities they can enjoy gathering at the restaurant again for great food and celebrate events to draw people in amenities and atmosphere need to demonstrate good quality and value with the revised management structure of the course and restaurant event center being combined the proposed rate increases can help provide support with these goals as well as the community our continued stewardship is critical for keeping this important treasure alive in our city for that reason i support the proposed rate increases presented by touchstone thank you for your consideration of this important proposal yes my name is steve mccullough i'm calling regarding agenda item 15.3 and i am in favor of the rate increase at the dennett valley golf course thank you seeing no additional comments from the public we will now close the public hearing councilmember alvarez can you please put a motion on the table thank you madam mayor uh before i place this religious resolution on the table i really want to thank the benavite community for understanding the needs and the reality moving forward uh to the car allows thank you for doing what you do uh working alongside jason nut jen santos former councilmembers john soyer and mr tibbitt's it's it's a beautiful thing when the community works together uh and the rally is you guys put your money where where your mouth was you made it happen uh to to district four you have a great community out there i mean they definitely stepped up and so much that i'm inspired to learn how to play golf so maybe one day uh you can take me on the golfing and show me how to swing that thing uh with that said i want to place a resolution on the floor resolution of the council of the city of san rosa approving revised benavali golf course fees and way further reading of the text okay we have a motion from council member alvarez and a second from council member step are there any final comments from the council vice mayor mcdonnell thank you i'd just like to um maybe go back to the capital improvement money um when we get an opportunity to hear how we use enterprise dollars and capital improvement funds when we do budget discussion just because i'm still not quite clear on why we would purchase perhaps lawn mowers or something out of the capital improvement funds if that's something that's owned by the golf course so i'm just curious how that works um with any of our enterprise funds so thank you any additional comments um i just had one comment in that is i would love to see um with the implementation of the new fees um what what that does for for the budget for the golf course so if you guys can come back um at a time that you feel is appropriate to let us know how it's working out that would be that would be great seeing no oh council member flimmy thank you mayor uh i'm prepared to support this increase and enthusiastically today i would like to see that the next time i heard i think three three maybe four of us talk about a resident discount program i would like to see in a few years i don't know how frequently we do this but when we have more data and more information on how this goes and we're ready to raise fees again i would like us to take an even closer look at offering a benefit for our residents here in santa rosa any additional comments from the council seeing none madame city clerk can you please call the vote thank you council member stab i i thank you council member rogers i council member okrepke i council member flimmy i council member alvarez i vice mayor mcdonald i mayor rogers i that motion passes with seven eyes we will now return to 14.1 our report item for tonight item 14.1 is an annual report of the community wildfire protection plan a wildfire annex to the local hazard mitigation plan paul owenthal division fire marshal will present thank you good evening mayor rogers vice mayor mcdonald members of the council my name is paul owenthal division chief fire marshal with the fire department here for the second annual community wildfire protection plan report so the purpose of the plan is as it says enhance the public safety to human uh sorry enhance public protection of human life safety and reduce the wildfire threat to community assets such as homes commercial structures critical infrastructure businesses natural and historic resources within the city of santa rosa so what does that mean i remember a council member making a comment that we cannot let what happened during the tubs fire nuns fire a glass fire happened to santa rosa and so really that's the purpose of the plan is we may not be able to prevent the fire but we can reduce the effects of it and we are seeing the plan pay off the outreach that you'll see about the efforts the plan is doing in fact in uh 2021 we burn more acreage in the city of santa rosa if you take out the tubs fire nuns fire and glass fire then we have probably in in decades we had a 50 acre fire on launo road an eight acre fire off uh gernville road a five acre fire off macman multiple fires burning a lot of acres and what's one thing that didn't happen we didn't have structures destroyed we didn't have lives lost we had people that were taking the information that were giving them doing things with their property educating themselves and it's helping us put the fires out and it's helping fire from spreading to our community so a little bit of history uh the cwp we was funded through uh a hazard mitigation grant program that was awarded to us through caloas and fema we developed the cwp in april of 2019 and the plan went to council in august 25th of 2020 and that was just before the glass fire and i remember doing the presentation on it and identified the greatest threat to the city of santa rosa was the unburned land before the tubs and the nuns fire and having that conversation with council and then literally a month later that's exactly what happened to our community council approved five and a quarter million dollars in 2021 that framed a five year five years of funding for the plan it also included a 250 000 to refund the new plan or a revision to the plan for 2025 we did our first annual report at the end of 2021 and we delayed the second annual report to allow the new council to be set seated to understand to get a little bit of information on the plan itself so the plan as you saw is long it's detailed it's very in the weeds no pun intended but that's good there are other plans that are basically cookie cutter plans that allow people to apply for grants and it checks the box but our plan went into depth and really identified needs throughout our community it broke out whether the needs in skyhawk versus what are they in fountain grove versus what are they in the shanae cobblestone area so it met the the needs of our community based on all the outreach we did and feedback we heard but it essentially broke it down into nine objectives and 46 actionable items they're improving coordination and tracking evacuation routes educating the public improving wildfire paternists increasing structural hardening treating vegetation to reduce the threat improving defensible space and enforcement increasing staffing and then considerations to the wooey meaning is the wooey have good enough i did a very brief presentation to the economic subcommittee last month and it was just a matter of i believe hours after cal fire announced their new wooey maps they're affecting the state responsibility areas right now and will likely risk affect the local responsibility areas which is what the city is and was asked to reach out to cal fire which i did and you'll see that in the plan as to what that will mean to santa rosa potentially so going through them the improving the coordination and tracking so we developed a gis database to track the amount of vegetation management work that's occurring across the city that framework is important so we know when we did work where we did work and we can track it based on what our needs are moving forward into the future we've coordinated with property owners open space management associations hoas to track and assist with large scopes of work and then mapping their activities which also includes grazing i know that was one of the big requests from council last year was to make sure that we're doing everything we can to help facilitate grazing and grazing does happen and you'll hear a little bit more about some of our opportunities in the future and it's providing support to property owners open again open space management associations to assist in treatment design maintenance funding sources and some noteworthy hoas and groups that we've been working with are the oakmont village association open space maintenance association of the found grove and altavista here's an example of what that framework is that are our friends at it and gis built for us thank you to brian tickner and his team but it's allowing us to track work this is a project that we just completed along found grove parkway in between brush creek and the chenille interchange and the database allows us to track that work through shapefiles next is improving evacuation routes so one of the topics that came up is the the need to investigate the use of naturally based herbicides the reason behind that is the invasive growth that we're seeing primarily in our burn scars what is happening that we're seeing more commonly in california is what what used to be oak grass woodlands burns because of the structures and the intensity of the fire and it's changing our ecology and so where we used to have beautiful oak grass woodlands we now have invasive species that are regrowing because there's no canopy because the trees died off and so we're getting scotch broom french broom bay and it's growing at rates that are in some cases making our hills more dangerous today than they were previously so that was one of the the request was to investigate that address the impacts of fire damaged trees to our evacuation routes and in general so we are looking at bringing forward a vegetation management ordinance this year that will start addressing some of those challenges also identifying property owners to perform fuel reduction on we were successfully awarded a hazard mitigation grant program in the amount of two point one million dollars to do roadside evacuation clearances we're in the process of getting ready to roll out phase one that will allow people to opt into it and then phase two would be actually physically doing the work on designated evacuation routes here's some of the examples i was talking about where these are evacuation routes that need work done where we're having growth that again is worse than it was prior to the 17 fires educating the public we are have increased our education regarding defensible space fire safe landscaping home hardening we're doing a lot of one-on-ones with residents neighborhood groups our wildfire ready campaign and then city connections so again a lot of work being done year-round to educate our community we've redesigned our city's websites to keep the information better organized and accessible to the community the two websites that we direct everybody to now are srcity.org forward slash sorry slash wildfire ready and ready sr i did promise i get through this really quickly so i'm trying to trying to power through it another grant that we successfully received is uh an hcd grant through housing community development so half a million dollars we were successfully awarded and that is going to fund outreach we'll actually be able to help with some staffing needs that will be able to charge their time directly to that grant and another example of outreach we're doing is evacuation drills and education we have done evacuation drills with spring lake villages the ova fountain grove so continuing to educate and outreach this is what the website looks like if you're not familiar with it it serves as a landing page obviously gets a ton of high frequency visits especially during our local quote unquote fire season when we declare the start and stop to it and direct people to this resource as a as a great library of information for our residents and then this is the ready sr page which serves as a resource for evacuation checklists alert warning neighborhood travel routes and general preparedness tips some examples of our outreach the wildfire ready was successful program we put together in courthouse square and we already have a date picked out to have another one for 2023 to again focus on being wildfire ready and bringing our community together for it so more examples of of the outreach declaring the start and stop of fire season we'll take the time to explain that really quickly we declare the start and stop of fire season locally in santa rosa because it's tied to our weed abatement ordinances it does get a little bit of confusing because really there is some level of threat year round but our declaration is technically tied to our ordinances whereas cal fire doesn't declare the start and stop anymore they just change their staffing levels to peak staffing during summertime and low level staffing during the times like we're experiencing right now and again a list of things that we do through the year to continue to educate our community working to improve wildfire preparedness so working to increase the number of citizens that are participating in cope cope citizens organized and prepared for emergencies as many even know as a group that started here in santa rosa and exploded across the county after the 2017 fires we're looking at bringing back neighbor fest and again taking more opportunities to engage with our community and making them better prepared we're working with listos coad and developing programs to i'm sorry and it's still working to address the needs of our vulnerable populations increasing structural hardening so the ignition free zone is something that we have addressed in the last code cycle if you remember we just came back to council the new code cycle and it solidifies again the need to have the three to five feet of ignition free zone around homes what we saw in the 2017 fires and then again in the glass fire was that a lot of our structural damage and destruction was taking place because of ember cast so that is going to be critical we also have fire inspectors conducting voluntary home assessments and out working with the community to make sure that they understand what they can be doing to harden their structure and then most notably we received another grant successfully to offset the cost of gutter guards and vent screens for homes throughout our entire wildland urban interface and we're in the process rolling that out as well treating vegetation to reduce the hazards so we have historically used a combination of funds to do vegetation management projects in some cases we use the reserve the leftover funds for our weed abatement annual budget to do projects on city properties and in other cases we tap into our vegetation management funds some examples are the project that we just did on fountain road parkway in between shenate and brush creek road and then work that we've done in lower skyhawk open space we also saw earlier last year that we did persky fire and old redwood highway that was the first time that we used fire as a treatment and we look forward to utilizing it again in the coming years we are also working with the junior college we're actually finalizing an mo u this is an exciting opportunity for us to allow them to teach their new programs to different people that are looking to the maybe landscapers right now that are trying to get into vegetation management and work on defensible space type projects the jc is putting together programs and has implemented programs and we're looking at actually allowing them to train on our city properties and facilities so it's a benefit to us because it's a good relationship with the jc and it allows us to get work done on our city properties primarily in our wildland urban interface we're also exploring opportunities with the conservation core of the north bay and ways that we can utilize their services and as you've heard us in the past we still continue to use SAC supervised adult cruise which is county probation for some of our other field treatments as well here's some examples of skyhawk open space and work that we've done around property owners where our wildland open space meets residential properties and then here is what fountain grove parkway looked like on the left side earlier last year and then what it looked like after the fact and then of course our prescribed fire proving enforcement of our defensible space so a couple things about that so we will be working this year for on 2023 on vegetation management ordinance that we have been educating people about and we'll be moving forward with an actual inspection and eventually enforcement program similar to what we do with our weed abatement program we're also in the process of working with sorry fire safe sonoma and working on a demo garden at fire station seven where we'll have a true fire safe landscape that people will be able to come and look at and have an literally in our own backyard that's also within our wildland of interface and again working to develop an inspection program that'll be a three phase that started off with our education outreach it'll eventually move into an inspection program and then ultimately enforcement staffing staffing was something that was hit on pretty hard by the community so we re-aligned our fire prevention division we created a third assist in fire marshal to assist with the program implementation and we also added three limited term positions we have been able to hire the first limited term fire inspector we have a second limited term fire inspector that's in background right now and then we were unable to recruit a building plans examiner so we're actually converting the process of finalizing the conversion of the building plans examiner to a second community outreach specialist again limited term but a majority of that cost will actually be able to be funded through that hcd grant as a cost savings to us and then what i was alluding to earlier so based on feedback from the community during the development of the wildfire community wildfire protection plan there was a request to move coffee park into the wooey that was evaluated it was not recommended and technically that actionable item was closed out fast forward to last month cal fire announced their state responsibility area maps and it changed what the wooey looks like or at least the threat of the wooey looks like around the city so if you're familiar this is our wooey so we have our four primarily four zones we have the fountain grove the skyhawk the bennett valley and the oakmont and we have the little piece up off of pithian that's our current wooey within the city of santa rosa right now cal fire in 2008 mapped their very high fire hazard severity zones they stuck a plot of it in fountain grove they did a piece of it up above skyhawk they had pithian and then they actually had the south side of oakmont which we hear about a lot with some of the concerns where oakmont is up against annadale state park fast forward to now what cal fire is considering doing is sorry i apologize so this is their current wooey map where you can see their very high fire hazard severity zone so the red actually pokes into skyhawk and it kind of comes down to the north side of fountain grove i'm sorry the north side of oakmont at highway 12 you'll also notice some of the orange and yellow around bennett valley and the fairgrounds area what they're proposing is actually going to change things kind of to a certain extent a little drastically so they are proposing that they are going to pull out right now anything around the north side of fountain grove and skyhawk out of the very high fire hazards severity zone they've also backed out the south side of oakmont and replaced it with a more of a threat above bennett valley which did not exist before and they also increased the level of risk around the end of to allen way linwood quanta springs road they also increased the amount of essentially red that drops down onto oakmont in between stonebridge and kind of if you're familiar with 301 white oak drive the larger skilled nursing home in oakmont kind of in that direction but on the north side of of oakmont drive so i met with cal fire on monday so it was yesterday yeah sorry i met with cal fire yesterday and although the maps are not out yet what they explained to me is where you see red that touches the city you'll likely see their red or their recommendations spill into the city so what does that mean for us in found grove and oakmont and everywhere else we will have no reason but to leave our current wildland urban interface where it is but we'll likely have to come back and potentially look at expanding our wildland urban interface on the north side of oakmont drive in oakmont and then potentially looking at need to expanding the wildland urban interface again around the end of quanta springs road quanta terrace the end of lendwood and allen way once those maps come out we project that they'll come out as early as march but more likely april or may then we'll be able to analyze their information and then make any recommendations back to council on changes to our wui so our priorities coming up is to continue to coordinate on require on sorry on future needs between the vegetation management ordinance the tree ordinance the water use efficiency ordinance we found that there's some some inconsistencies and kind of some overlap so we want to get those straightened out potentially look at the investigating the use of herbicides to treat in the invasive species complete our additional staffing to support the rollout of the grants conduct visible projects we've laid out a lot of the framework to make the grant or the project the vegetation management program successful so conducting visible projects now that the community can actually see continuing to support the partnership that we formed with an mou through fire safe sonoma and then finalizing our partnership with the santa rosa junior college that is it questions jog thank you thank you fire marshal low and ball for that very thorough quick presentation i'm looking to council to see if there are any questions council woman flaming thank you mr lowenthal for i think the mayor put it it was very thorough and pretty speedy which is wonderful when you can do both at the same time we love that i have a question and particularly gloss pretty quickly over the supervised adult crews this is something that i've brought up before i'm wondering on a couple of have a couple of questions about this one is how how are we looking at this and what long-range benefits are we if at all giving to these folks who are institutionalized and have less willingness and ability to make choices and the second question is how have you and your team thought about the use of supervised adult crews in regard to the dei work that we were talking about earlier today so yes thank you for the question so the supervised adult crews is the existing contract that we have primarily for the weed abatement program what we historically found in the past was that we struggled to find a contractor that would actually do the that that type of work here locally because the the contract primarily is there for weed abatement and that's not guaranteed work and so it's hard for contractors landscapers to bid it that was the challenge that we ran into and so the solution that we found to actually deal with an unknown is to use a sack at the same time they do do some of our city properties that are designated by work in between park and red transportation public works and fire is determined what would be the best use for them based on the scope of work and what it would take to complete with potentially a contractor if we could find one versus utilizing their services we are absolutely looking at expanding the type of the contractors that we are going to be utilizing that's going to really come into play especially with the grants that we're getting ready to roll out the fuel treatment along evacuation routes will likely be a good opportunity for us to seek different contractors to do that that scope of work as well as the home hardening project will allow not just landscaping contractors but also potentially contractors to do physical work on on homes the the the relationship that we're forming right now with the junior college i think is going to be huge personally to see the the diversity that they're actually trying to target for that are they feel is actually kind of being underserved and underutilized where they're primarily working on just landscaping or gardening they're trying to help engage that workforce and get them trained so that they can actually perform work that pays more that allows them to do more technical work and we're hoping that with this this mo u that we'll able to be able to foster that relationship and provide them opportunities and areas that are here in in our city to actually do do that work in our community well thank you for such a thoughtful response and the program as far as i understand it with the junior college is really innovative in terms of giving opportunities to folks to do municipal and firework that haven't traditionally had access to great government jobs that still doesn't quite address the issue of the supervised adult crews and so i guess where i would just go with it is just continuing to look forward to ways to adopt certain principles per se from what work from the junior college plan and offering benefits or ladders out of incarceration and into municipal work for folks who do participate in this program i mean the next time that this comes forward i'm gonna ask you this question last time and i keep asking it so just know that i don't necessarily have a problem with it i do have an issue with it where it's specifically a cost-cutting means but i don't have a problem with it if it is an opportunity to empower folks and bridge a gap where we don't have a reliable workforce and and this is but let's be clear it is a captive audience right so i think we just got to be honest with ourselves um and and try to do the best we can and so i thank you for your leadership on this thank you councilmember okrepke yeah thank you thank you uh fire marshal elonthol for this um so first just a point of i i'll say confirmation i'll steal that from councilmember stop step over there but all these uh like the vegetation management ordinance these codes the that if they're through the the cwpp those live within the wooey right those don't expand beyond the wooey correct so technically the vegetation management ordinance would be tied to our existing wild and urban interface fire area which is our wooey yes whatever the wooey ends up being in the near future um and so when this um one of the things i'd like to see with the vmo as you call it i'd like to see is um maybe a prohibition going forward i don't want to go backwards i don't want to retro anything um but looking at the prohibition of non-native species of vegetation trees you know the ones that get brought up constantly bay juniper eucalyptus just do an analysis of those and see if it's worthwhile to ban those going forward on on new construction or um uh and anything that may any other vegetation especially stuff that you know excessive tree litter that causes um you know build up on on on houses on roofs and in gutters um is that something that could be involved in the vmo thank you for the question so yes so you know to clarify real quick so things like leaf litter will be part of our defensible space program so we won't need to worry about that in the actual ordinance we'll just be enforcing technically what's already part of government code the um we will however be looking at making recommendations to essentially quote unquote ban certain things so we're looking at uh like we hear a lot about wood chips for example uh there are we've had concerns that we shouldn't allow wood chips to be in the wild end of an interface wood chips actually do serve a benefit uh if we didn't have wood chips we'd have a lot of our fuels drying out a lot more rapidly than they would because the wood chips help contain some of the moisture in the ground but there are wood chips or or at least bark that are not beneficial to us we saw the effects of for for example what's referred to as the gorilla hair mulch the the shavings from the the redwood bark that caused a lot of the destruction specifically in skyhawk uh we saw another wood ship that was uh a dyed uh chip that led to again a lot of destruction so we're looking at actually banning specific wood chips within defensible space zones and if the request is to also look at different types of species uh of vegetation or trees we can we can do that and look at bringing recommendations back as well yeah i would appreciate that thank you vice mayor mcdonnell yes thank you i just have a couple clarifying questions um on the sat crew i understand that you're not part of the law enforcement but my understanding is that a lot of times those are voluntary inmates that become part of that program to be able to work outside and have that time released from being in jail right no so we have used cal fire's inmate crews which are actually part of the califering department of corrections we have used them for specific projects in the city we have had challenges utilizing them because of the security associated with where they can function and where they can't for example we wanted to actually use them in the open space in skyhawk they come out they do an analysis and they determined that that they could not take the risk of bringing them into that location we have used them uh successfully in a project in um on found growth parkway and in howard park we have not reached out to them recently just because their crew availability has been pretty limited sac is supervised adult crews it's adult it's a supervised adult probation essentially and so that those uh members of sac are dependent upon what the courts deem are people eligible for for essentially work release where they're working their hours in lieu of their sentences and yes and so they are low risk they're typically petty theft things like that duis and they then are assigned to sac and then we utilize their services um i will clarify that when we initially contracted with sac it was not intended to be a cost-saving measure it was all we could find but we are utilizing the benefits of them because we're we are able to with the savings that we had do a lot more work in our wildland interface that's proactive that we would not theoretically be able to do with with our current budget meaning we're able to go into areas that we were not required to abate and we're not required to do work but we're doing proactive work in those areas because because we typically we've had some cost savings with their services and i i i want to say thank you for the collaboration with parks and how we do the vegetation management around the city and i think that it's effective the way that we're currently doing it just want to make sure that that continues um i do have a couple questions around the new annexation and the maps because i've heard from specifically some of my constituents that their insurance has either been canceled or that they have had um a huge increase when they finally have found somebody to take on a new um a new policy for them so i want to know what we're doing and then i want to ask a request of our mayor and the city council to send a letter to ricotta laura the insurance commissioner on behalf of the city letting them know that when we do these updated maps when we do this um which is needed for us to be able to secure funding that there can be repercussions to this and so i think it's important that we let them know yes and we'll we'll have to put that on a another agenda or you could bring it up during council member comments uh next week or next two weeks under council member comments i ask to have that done or can i ask tonight to put it as an agenda item that we send a letter it will go through the two-step process of um and we generally you generally make that first motion during the council member comments i should have done it then can i do we've noted it now so okay thanks we'll come back but i do think that that's an important thing and i wondered if you had heard from any of our community members that this is becoming a problem with these new maps so the first piece of that is that played into that played a piece in our evaluation of coffee park so when we now analyze coffee park it did not meet the definition of a wooey but we still had requests to put it in it regardless and what i don't think people understood was what the ramifications of that are is that yes there you will have insurance issues there's different building construction requirements so just put it into putting it in was not not something that we were willing to make the recommendation for but there is the potential that if our maps do change then yes there are going to be people that were currently not within a wildland or interface fire area that would theoretically be in one now regardless of whether we put them in it or not don't forget cal fire may very well be putting it in their own wildland sorry their own very high fire hazard severity zone within the city either way we'll have to take their information look at it see what their recommendations are and then while all that's going on part of your second half your question was the public's involvement in it so there actually is a public meeting specific to sonoma county this thursday at the board of supervisors chambers i will be there um to kind of hear what the public feedback and public reaction is to at least the states maps um to kind of gauge what uh the feedback may be once they release our local responsibility maps for cities are there any additional questions seeing no additional questions can we please go to public comment i do not see anybody in the chamber other than staff so do we have anybody in um zoom who wishes to make a public comment i'm seeing no hands raised on zoom and we have no uh pre-recorded messages for this item councilmember rogers can you please put a motion on the table thank you madam mayor first of all thank you so much for all of the work on this and you did give a great presentation to our economic development subcommittee and i appreciate you running down some of those loose ends that we had thrown at you at the last minute with that i will make a motion to accept the report uh for mr lowenthal second motion made by councilmember rogers and seconded by councilmember alvarez are there any additional comments before we call the vote seeing none madam city clerk can you please call the vote thank you councilmember staff hi councilmember rogers hi councilmember okrepke hi councilmember fliming hi councilmember alvarez hi vice mayor mcdonald hi mayor rogers hi that that motion passes with seven eyes let's proceed to item 16.1 our written communications as a federal legislative update we have two letters of support submitted by the city first a letter to president biden in support of s 3092 fema improvement form and efficiency act of 2022 and second a letter sent to our two congressmen in support of hr 2573 affordable housing credit improvement act of 2021 are there any questions from council seeing none madam city clerk are there any public comment there's um i'm seeing no one in the chamber to make a public comment and i do not see any hands raised in zoom nor do we have any voice mail public comment thank you we will now move on to our last public comment on non-agenda items madam city clerk thank you there's no one in the council chamber to make public comment on item 17 if you are participating in the meeting via zoom you can raise your hand to make a public comment on non-agenda matters um that fall under the jurisdiction of the council to raise your hand if you're calling in by telephone you would dial star nine i'm not seeing any hands being raised in zoom and there are no recorded voice mail public comments thank you i would like to take this opportunity to thank our teams that have been working through the multiple storms to keep our city safe your service to our community is very appreciate it and seeing no additional items on the agenda this meeting is adjourned thank you