 go that long. So I kind of have a hard stop at 11 30 just to get situated in the chamber for the 12 o'clock. And since I was going to say, let's play it a little bit by ears. We get closer to the 11 30 mark, John, because we also we could push back closed session just a little bit or excuse me, open session just a little bit. Okay. I'm getting past the cold. So I'm going to spare you guys the opportunity to get infected and participate in here. So, well, take care of yourself. No, we appreciate that. It's just we've all become more aware of not not sharing the love. Well, on that note, it is 10 o'clock. So let's go ahead and call our meeting to order. Let's call the roll. Good morning, Mayor Rogers. Here. Member Fleming. Oh, here. Member Sawyer. Here. Let the record reflect that all members of the subcommittee are present. All right, thank you. Glad we have a full boat today. And I see our staff has joined us as well. So thank you. We'll start today with our public comments for non agenda items. For folks who are interested, you'll have three minutes to talk about something that falls within the jurisdiction of the Economic Development Subcommittee, but it's not on today's agenda. Should you so choose? And I'm not seeing any hand. Let's jump right in with item 3.1. Okay, just one moment while I go ahead and pull up that presentation. And I'll just get started talking at you a little bit. While she brings that up. So good morning. I just want to say it's good to be back on this topic after we started in March. And just to give you a little preview. In addition to myself, we have a slate of staff members who are available to answer questions for you on project labor agreements, including beyond myself, we have Assistant City Manager Jason Nutt, Mike Prince from Public Works. I believe Gloria Bannock is on, as well as potentially Jennifer Burke. And then Jessica Mullen from the city attorney's office, and we added Sakura Shields to the discussion as well to talk about or to overlay DEI considerations on PLAs. And while Eileen is getting the presentation up, I do want to remind you we have two weighty issues today. In addition to project labor agreements, we have the short term rental thing. So we're going to try to get through this and just keep in mind that we need to leave enough time for them at the back end as well. All right, next slide. Okay, so to start us off today, we're just going to give you a reminder of what the key policy considerations we discussed previously that brought us to today. Specifically, or as you say, it's specific to city projects. What we have been considering since March based on your feedback is whether the use of project labor agreements is the best tool for to develop and maintain a skilled local labor pool. Whether PLAs can deliver capital projects in accordance with specifications on time and within adopted budgets and contingencies. And then also, do they expand opportunities across demographic barriers, while also being locally consistent with our environmental goals. Next slide. So our end goal for today's meeting is to get the okay from you to take the feedback you give us and put it into report so we can present at a study session, have a discussion with the full council at a study session sometime in July. I think we have held July 12 as our goal date. But to get there, we're going to go through the points that are outlined on this slide. So you can, you know, be informed by the information we've gathered thus far. We've met with a number of current contractors as well as labor. We want to give you some, you know, the background PLA background information that we've researched. And then obviously we want to get to the key policy considerations for feedback, which include definitions, project types, that type of thing. Next slide. So again, as a reminder on March 8, the feedback, the key takeaways we took from from the March 8 meeting was that you are looking to align contract assignments with the Climate Action Plan. The goal, obviously, with it, if we focus on local workforce, it reduces carbon footprint, less travel requirements, etc. Key to that is enhancing the local workforce, so ensuring quality apprenticeship opportunities and support of increasing the diversity in the trades workforce. And then lastly, the main thing that we heard from March was to enhance local preferences as best we can within state laws and regulations, but specific to this really increasing local employee compensation, encouraging local spending, and it's the multipliers of having a well-paid, robust local workforce and being that local employment center. Next slide. So we're going to get into some of the data that we found. So Jason and I met with the North Bay Trades Council, and we had a great discussion with them, sharing with them, you know, sort of the takeaways from March 8, some of what we heard and understand to be your interests in PLAs. And we also asked them, because in the, with our current contractors in Public Works and Water, we did a lot of research, we're trying to ask labor the same questions that we're asking of our current contractors. So we didn't get exactly the same information, but what information we got is here. We do know that there is an interest from all the North Bay Trades Council expressed an interest on behalf of all 18 Northern California organizations that they want to be involved in the PLA. And so when we started talking about what's local or not local and how hiring practices work, we'll get into that a little bit later in the slide deck. But it is good to know to them, you know, sort of what what they consider local or what the what the workforce draw is. So as noted, there are only four of the 18 Northern California organizations, only four have offices in Sonoma County. And then the rest are mostly south of us. But interestingly, you know, we have a good portion of the membership in the North Bay, over 2400 of them, 40% of which live in Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Mendocino, Lake counties, and the bulk of those are in Sonoma County. And then of course, 60% live in Solano County. So this is interesting. Again, now just to note it, we're going to go into I'm going to hand it over to Jason that and we'll get into our other stuff, but we'll talk about what local means on a later slide. Next slide. So Jason, I'm going to hand it to you for this. Thanks, right. So as she mentioned, as we were talking with the trades council and trying to better understand how they exist within Northern California, we also looked at the existing contracts that or that the city has been using over the over the last several years. And and you'll notice we use the term bidders. And what that means is these are companies that have that have submitted bids for specific projects that we've issued RFPs for. And what you'll see is 75% of the bids are coming from contractors that exist outside of Sonoma County. About 25% are within Sonoma County. When we look at the staffing and demographic of those contractors that have Sonoma County as their home, we had about 65 companies that responded to our survey and asked and provided this information about the number of employees where those employees lived by zip code. I'm sorry, 21 contractors responded to the 65 local bidders. And so you'll see about 75% of our local bidding contractors have employees that live in the five Northern California counties that rise that discussed previously, and we'll go into a little more detail in the future with a little over 60 some percent being specifically within Sonoma County. And so that that's where our current contract phase is coming from. Next slide. Trying to just gain gain some understanding about what what you know, project loads look like. And we'll go through a couple of slides here that get to different angles on how we're trying to look at the scenarios. One is we know that a majority of the agencies that have project labor agreements typically are establishing a threshold. And as we're all aware, Sonoma County established a $10 million threshold, and they've not had success really in implementing a PLA for projects that meet that threshold. So for our for our process, we decided to pull a $5 million threshold to see what projects in the next few years are coming up. And you can see that there are nine projects that we are estimating are going to be above the $5 million threshold. They're very substantial projects. They've got a lot of community recognition and they're significant for our community coming forward. And so just to give you an example of how that particular level of threshold would look so that you can see the type of projects coming forward. Next slide, please. How we arrived at $5 million is we started to take all of our data and show it in different ways. And that's what these next two slides will do. This tries to demonstrate the percentile of projects based on a certain dollar amount. And what we attempted to utilize was where do all of these project types merge and what seems to be the point where depending upon project type, they all coalesce under a certain percentile. And that was about that $5 million range. And so that this was an instrumental component for us. But you can also see as we look at the various project types over the course of the last seven years, sort of how they vary as far as the dollar amounts and percentiles. Before you get too far, Council Member Souri has his hand raised. It's OK. I was just going to ask, Mayor, is it OK to ask questions in the interim or do you want us to hold? What is your pleasure? No, I think go ahead and jump in. I think that there's enough data in this that we don't want to lose thread. I appreciate that. Thank you. So if we could go back to slide seven and Jason, could you expand a little bit on that threshold, that $10 million threshold and why it why you decided to move it down to five? I just I wasn't clear as to how that happened, the process. So there are a couple of reasons why we look at something other than conforming with the county's program. One, the county recognized that the $10 million that they established back in 2014 didn't result in actual projects being delivered underneath the policy, that it just didn't that the policy and the threshold just didn't match each other in the reality of implementing. And so we knew that there that we needed to look at something a little lower within the scale and the range with the intent of trying to hit large scale projects. And when we get to discuss the definitions of what PLAs were intended for, the term large scale projects tends to be the primary discussion point. And so $5 million is a point where we established large scale projects exist. It's not the only point and the only threshold we could have decided, but it was one that we felt really established a high quality, high value and high profile, large projects within the city of Santa Rosa that could make this process, especially as an interim phase of rolling out a policy, it could give us an idea and an example of how beneficial or not that policy could be. So that's why we made the decision to go beyond and lower than the $10 million that the county had utilized. So I'm still a little bit confused. So at $10 million was no one interested in bidding or they did not want feel that a PLA was reasonable at a $10 million level. I'm still not clear as to why you had to lower the threshold. If I may, I think, I mean, the thing that we're trying to do most intentionally is to give a range of options. And so if we came in only at $10 million, understanding what projects look like that based on the experience we're seeing at the county, we would see basically the potential of not enough projects that we considered that it would be a reasonable assumption. So what we're trying to do is look at a range of opportunities and $10 million may not be the correct range based on the feedback we received from talking with labor. Certainly the efforts that we're seeing that they're undertaking right now with the county, as well as some feedback we received from council. And council member, I will say during our March 8th meeting, members of the subcommittee did mention that $10 million was too high of a threshold for our consideration and that we needed to look at another point along the scale. And so this is where staff, this is the conclusion that staff came to, at least for this part of the discussion. And that's what the next two slides were to try to explain why we picked that $5 million. This particular table was to show the value and the type of projects that would be included over the next few years, should $5 million be the threshold chosen? Assuming we're moving forward with a project labor agreement policy. And this should be clear, staff is not making any recommendations. We are just giving you a range of options and trying to accommodate the data to support the range. Thank you very much. Great point, right? So thank you for adding that. And then so if we go to the next slide, and actually let's move to the next slide then. Before you go on to the next one, if you go back, I just want to make sure I'm understanding your methodology. So what you were saying is that based on the confluence, if I understand correctly, based on the confluence of projects here, the $5 million threshold would capture, is it 10% of the total project? It would be just, it would be under 10%. Yes. Okay, I just wanted to make sure I was understanding that. Thank you. Yes, thanks. So the next slide, please. And so if we look at that same data set in a different way and just look at the numbers of projects that are produced based on certain dollar amounts, certain bid or estimate amounts, $5 million was about six projects over the course of the last seven years. You'll see that the size and scale of projects that we're anticipating in the next two to three years is actually more than six. And we felt that that was a great place should Council move us in that direction. A good place for us to start to be able to determine if this could be beneficial for us given the key aspects of what we would expect to see as benefits from a project labor. Next slide. So then we start getting into the terms. And so to some extent, these are areas that we've that we utilize to try to better understand the concept of a PLA, the concept of what we're currently doing for contract labor, to think about where some of the considerations that Rice and I were just describing between the demographics, between the conditions and key considerations that you outlined for us back in March. And so we then decided we needed to make sure that we clearly understood the definitions of certain components. Because if we didn't, if we don't have the definition right, it could be very difficult for staff to create something that that either the subcommittee or the council during a study session would be able to follow along and concur that we're accomplishing the goals at hand. And so when we think about what does building trade mean or what does union labor mean or non union contractor. So those are terms that that we'll end up using during the course of our presentations. You may hear similar language being used by members who call in or folks that you may speak with about project labor agreements along the way. And so, you know, I don't want to read these, but I wanted to at least provide you with an opportunity to provide feedback if you felt we were missing the vote here. Or if there was another style of labor or contractor that we need to incorporate a definition of that isn't already shown here. Right. Next slide, please. So when we think about what a project labor agreement is, this is the generalized definition that we've been working off of. And it is it's an agreement between a project owner and a developer that's typically associated with the building trade unions designed to govern the employer-employee relationship of the general contractor and subcontractors. It is a agreement between the city and the trades, as well as the contractor to determine who is going to be staffing the construction activities of that particular project. It is more defined. It is more organized than our current contracts. Under our current contract base, we don't require any specific definition of where the labor comes from. They may be union over trade. They may not be. In this particular component of a defined project labor agreement, we are establishing certain rules associated with how a contractor will populate their labor and workforce during the course of delivering that project. And Jason, I just want to put a pin in something for discussion later. I think given the rules, given the desired outcomes when we talk about workforce development, project labor agreements typically do apply to one specific project. And we're not talking about a specific project. We're talking about an overall climate of how the city utilizes its contracting authority to be able to help develop the workforce that lives here. So perhaps even within the definition, the referral of a project labor agreement, what we're talking about is very different than what the county did with a one-off project where each of those projects have to come in. So even the name itself, we might want to discuss maybe a community labor agreement or something a little bit different. And so there are, as you mentioned, Mayor, there are a few different methodologies that are utilized out there. One is a project labor agreement that is specific to a unique project. There are other project labor agreements that result in more master agreements with various trades and unions that are established and set up ahead of time that would then be applied to multiple projects as projects get put into the bidding environment. And so depending upon how we proceed or the type of recommendation that the subcommittee and future council would like us to move forward with, we would look at either one of those two is the primary mechanism for us to establish that relationship between the city and the trades. And John. Thanks, Mayor. I'd like to drill in a little bit to the fourth bullet that refers to labor disruptions. Is is it our experience that or the county's experience that when there is a a project that is under a PLA that non that there are non union picket lines disrupting projects? So this is then let me clarify. So this suggests that if you have a PLA that it avoids labor disruptions. So that would suggest that there are disruptions potential disruptions by non trade non union organizations that would could potentially disrupt the project. And I and that is one of the statements that's been made over the course of the last decade as Project Labor Agreements gain more foothold throughout the country, that on various projects, there are labor challenges that occur. And if a unionized agreement between the project owner and the trades is established you predetermined the mechanism to work through and around those labor disruptions. We in Santa Rosa to the best of my knowledge do not have a history of labor problems. That doesn't mean they couldn't occur in the future. But I'm not aware of a project at this point that has seen a labor disruption specifically relating to a dispute either between labor and a contractor that stalled or stopped the project for between the labor and the agency or the city of Santa Rosa. So in this case, they are avoiding a problem which we do not at this point have. We don't have experience with this historically. That does it again, given the number of large scale projects coming, that doesn't mean that they might not come in the future. But yes, that is the accurate statement. Right now it is a generally described benefit of a project labor agreement. It does not specifically apply to the city of Santa Rosa at this point in time given our history. And I think and I bring that up because in my experience, and maybe it's because I was not paying attention. Most of the picket lines I see are union picket lines. So I don't remember seeing non union picket lines that's not necessarily because they don't exist. But I just I when I think of a picket line, I usually think of it being a union picket line, which would be a disruption to the project. So I'm just wondering who this is who this is targeting. I guess that's the question. And I will say that I would assume that there are members of the trade council that are on the call and when they have the opportunity, they are likely to either correct the statement that I've made it by the steps or provide additional information as to why this particular item could be a benefit for the city moving forward. Thank you. I appreciate that. I look forward to that. And because I've seen a couple of hands pop up and then go away and then pop up just so folks know, we'll get through the presentation and questions. And then we'll frame what type of feedback we're looking for from the public and from the members. And then we'll go to the public comment to be able to do so. And I think this is an opportunity for me just to make make a statement that the project the team that's currently working on this for the city, we have not eat and breathe project labor agreements in our career. This is a this is a new program that we're looking at. And as as hard as we've attempted to do research to prepare for not just this presentation, but what we expect will be a more in depth presentation to the council in July. You know, I don't want to presume that that I'm going to speak with more intelligence or more certainty than some of our counterparts out there who have been living this for the last many, many years. So so that's why you know, I I believe members of the public will likely be talking to you that may provide additional insight to what I what we as a team will be presenting. All right, next slide, please. So when we look at when we tried to reach out to various agencies and what what we did is a couple of things is we spoke with the League of California Cities. We had the opportunity to get a fairly comprehensive master list in their in their opinion of agencies across the state that have project labor agreement policies in place. A majority of those a majority of those agencies do project labor agreements on a project by project basis. They do not have a blanket project labor agreement policy. What we then spent time as staff working on selecting some of those agencies to have further and additional conversations with predominant looking at agencies that may look or feel similar to ours, whether it's population, whether it's project type, whether it's in the waters case, agencies that do the turnkey type of operation that we do. And so you can see in here the agencies that we've been able to reach out to why we chose them based on population, where they're at and some of the comments that they have about the project labor agreements that they've that they put in place. Generally speaking, water agencies and districts have not incorporated project labor agreements into their into their programs. However, there are a few such as the Santa Clara Valley Water District has incorporated project labor agreements. And but in general, water agencies have have not. And we haven't necessarily received a whole lot of feedback from them. But you can see Contra Costa identified in here that they they've used in the past, but they stopped. As far as I'm aware, we have not been told any specific specifics as to why they stopped in the 90s. But yet we are in the process of continuing to research to understand some of those nuances along the way. You can also see agencies on the right hand side of the slide that we've reached out to that we haven't received feedback from. It's our intent to continue to try to better understand some of those organizations and policies that they have in place. Again, we're trying to better we're trying to just understand where folks are at, why agencies may or may not be using them and how they are similar relate to the city of San Jose. Next slide. So similar to the bullet point that that mayor, you and councilmember Sawyer pointed out, you know, there are a number of benefits that have been described for project labor agreements. And we use the term potential because I think a lot of this depends upon the specifics of the agency, the specifics of the location and some of the challenges or community oriented demographic that you may see in those particular areas. So there there are four that I've pulled out. These are things that I've researched or that we as a team of researched online. So these this isn't necessarily my language. These are language. This is language used from various studies that are out there that promote the value and of project labor agreements. So long term project stability, union conflict resolution, the idea that these promote and produce increased inclusion diversity and safety within the workforce. And it does identify and enhanced training and advancement program for employees or for labor workforce that's working their way through the apprenticeship and journeyman programs. Next slide. On the other side, there are other organizations that believe that there are negatives associated with PLAs. Again, these are potential negatives and they're all similar to the benefits. All depends upon the specifics of that community, including demographics, location and contract types. But there are there is some clarity on the fact that there is a limited number of apprentice spaces that are open on an annual basis, depending upon the particular trade that's out there. Some trades, as we discussed with North Bay with North Bay trades, council are open and don't have limitations. Others have limitations. They do have a cost and there is a timeline associated with that. Many of those apprentices are earning a wage during a course because they're learning on the job. But I think this is an area that we as we as a team know only know a little bit about. And we would like to find out far more information about the in particular, the apprenticeship program. And I know the trades council is very willing to work with us. We just haven't had the time to be able to dig into this in more detail. And this could be an area that a policy could counteract given certain aspects of our interest as an agency, should we choose to go the route of establishment policy? You'll also see there's yes, sir. Can I ask you about number two because I'll I'll note if you look back on your I think two slides ago, I think it was Berkeley had information about paying prevailing wage, which Santa Rosa already does. If we're already paying prevailing wage, how would it increase the cost? So again, Mayor, I'll just mention that that these bullet points are this language that we've taken from other studies, not necessarily specific to our organization. You are right. There's generally not a huge discrepancy and the difference between paying prevailing wage and paying for union labor. With that said, we've heard a mixed results in our conversations with other communities, some of which have stated that there is a higher cost of producing and doing business with the trades under a project labor agreement. Others have said they've seen nominal to no change in the cost, mostly because of the same the same thing that you just mentioned relating to prevailing wage. The other thing is we are trying to understand the difference between product types. So, you know, when we look at the different kinds of things, there might be considerations in product types or like who the lead agency would be, etc. So there are nuances within both the pros and the cons. And then back to apprenticeships, there are nuances even between the different organizations and how the apprenticeships work. So sometimes you're in, sometimes you're not, you have to wait two years, you don't get paid, you do get paid. So, you know, it's trying to take a lot of information and sort of blanket it. And I will say we we didn't write these bullets. We cut and pasted from other studies mostly because we didn't want to a staff show any leaning toward any of the negatives or any leaning towards any of the benefits. I get it. I appreciate it, Jason. Yeah. And so you'll have it. You've had a chance to read through the rest of these. I won't go into more details on any of those bullets. Next slide. So this is an area that Bryce had brought up early on is the question of what's local, what constitutes local for our discussion? What constitutes local should we be asked to develop a policy or if we choose not to develop a policy, is there a change in how we do our current business to better enhance the concept of local? And so we just we determined that there are three definitions and those three definitions do come up. You already saw it on the slide that Raisa presented relating to the North Bay Trades Council that showed three different areas that they identified as local, one of which is looking at labor, whose home address is currently within the city that is that is one definition if we wanted to define local. The next would be expanding the term local to say, well, let's let's say that we need to draw from a larger area and localist snow and Marin, Napa and then Seaman County, those counties that even in our local what we would consider our local contractor base, those are the predominant counties that they're drawing employees run with most being out of snow. And then the third really relates to. Organizations that that may not be specifically located within our our our county itself and and those are where the addresses are within the jurisdictional boundaries of participating organization. And we say trade organization based on the slide that we received from the North Bay Trades Council. There are a number of offices that are located in other parts of the Bay Area. Those offices have members that exist and reside within Sonoma County as well as the five counties that we identified under definition to. But they also have a large number of members that are outside of our of our local area. And depending upon how they get assigned, and we'll discuss that here in just a minute, you know, the the trade, the union hall might assign somebody that they identify as local that is outside of our considered local area. And so what the staff is recommending is that when we use the term local, that local for us fits under the definition number two. And that that is when we can when we try to determine what local means for us, that we use that definition as the standard basis. Again, part of the reason we're presenting this is we're looking for feedback from the subcommittee. And if you have a different definition of local that you would like to see us utilize, then we'll work toward basing our presentation to the full council off of that definition. But we want to at least present you with the three that we've been looking at and which one we recommend at this point. Next slide, please. And so if we got this right after we talked with the North Bay Trades Council, it looks like when they receive a request for members out of their particular trade to fill a project under a project labor agreement, their first their first goal is to assign members that are that are within that definition of local. So, for example, if we were to say the city of Santa Rosa or Sonoma County, we could within the concept of the document identify specific zip codes, identify census tracks, identify particular demographics within it, that would that would then be the first tier of evaluation for that particular trade to assign members to work under that particular contract. If they've exhausted that particular definition of local, they will move to the next tier of local, which, as they explained, would be an agreed upon regional look, which might include, as we talked about local being Sonoma, Marin, Madison County. If there are not enough members to comply with the conditions of the project labor agreement policy within those two, then they will look to their statewide membership and fill in the member gaps along that way. Again, this was a single conversation we've had at this point. It's our intent to have additional conversations to refine this. And hopefully, if we've just stated this in any way, they'll they'll reconcile that when they when they speak during a concession or during open comment. But this is our understanding of how they assign members if they are asked or required to under a defined term of a contract. Next slide. So the next piece that we wanted to just clarify with the sub committee is the definition of project. We are looking at public infrastructure projects as our primary focus for this particular discussion. I've outlined six specific categories that I think make our ways for us to break out. And the reason I'm doing this is because there could be discussion moving forward. Should Council ask for or subcommittee asked for us to have specific focus in the delivery of project labor agreements or of particular aspects of the project labor agreement. Staff believes that these are categories where we could speak to in more depth and more detail and make specific adjustments within these types of categories. And it's just a way for us to provide more granular discussion should that be asked of the subcommittee and the council. And so these will be the six. If there are things that may be missing, we'd certainly look to hear back from you. Or if you have questions about why we've organized these in this way, we'd love to hear. Thank you, Mayor. I'm curious. There's I don't see any reference to this and this slide or the prior slide about earth moving. I mean, I think it's OE three that does. I mean, I'm not. I think that's I just I'm just curious why it's not a clue. And so and so earth moving would be in two in one or two of these projects, either roadway, depending upon the type of construction of that roadway and in the park landscape and environmental component, where we would be looking at those. Okay. We are aware that earth movement as a particular as a particular project component is is something that the trades are interested in. And it just depends on how that fits relationally to the projects that are being released. And if you'd like, we can certainly add earth work as a separate category. Well, it may be obvious, but I just I just know I noticed it as being like it just wasn't mentioned. So that's why I asked. I appreciate that. Thank you. All right. Next slide. So one of the tools that other agencies have used over the course of time to ensure that there is a specific percentage of the workforce assigned to a project is the concept of a community workforce agreement. And some of these some agencies use different names and titles. And I don't want to get stuck on that particular title as being the only thing. It's the concept. It's the programmatic components that exists within that that I want us to really contemplate and again, be looking for feedback from council for a couple of different reasons. One is under the concept of a project labor agreement, this is a mechanism that we could. And based on the subcommittee's recommendation would want to use to create a defined and definitive way of ensuring local workforce under our definition of local for every project that would be implemented under that policy. And these are just two examples City of Los Angeles and Court of Oakland and there are there are many, many, many examples. This is actually a very common procedure. One of the questions that we've started to ask is to whether or not this type of contractual arrangement could be incorporated within our existing contracts for for for construction projects? Do we have to, you know, can this is this only to be used under a project labor agreement or could we utilize the same concept and incorporate it into our existing infrastructure project contracts, requiring that, as you saw, seventy five percent of our current contractors are out of the county. But why couldn't we require that they use a local workforce, whether it's union or non union? So so we've been working with the attorney's office. They're still researching whether or not that's a possible option. We don't have any answers for you at this point in time, but it's our intention to have that as part of the discussion as we go back into council in July, just so that we can see if this is the goal, there may be other options other than a project labor agreement to achieve that and what might that look next slide, and I'll turn it back over to you to close us up. Yeah, so that's the end of our presentation. You know, again, our interest and staff is to get as quickly as possible to the full council so we can discuss this there in a study session. But the feedback from this and of course, the previous conversations will inform what that study session looks like. So the time between now and July, when we hope to go there, will be spent honing in on the presentation report, but also on continuing our outreach and data mining. So we have started conversations beyond labor and with our current contractors and building associations to also reach out to our chambers of commerce, not just the one, but the many as well as other business organizations. And so with that, I'm going to stop talking. We can take the slide back down and begin the general conversation. Mayor, if I might, I do have a question about the framing of it. Jump in. Marisa, could you talk or Jason, could you talk about the any specific points that you'd like to have us weigh in on beyond our general comments? Go ahead, right. I was going to say, I mean, you know, generally what you know, the key areas of discussion for us has been, you know, threshold definition of local like, what are the levers that will are the key pieces that that would make up a PLA or a community workforce agreement? And those tend to be like, what is local? It's those last slides. What is local? What is included? What projects are included? Like, do we need to have parks in there? Do we need? Is it really linear? Is it vertical? I think those are the two terms. So those key areas that was a long let me just be short types of projects. Definition of local interests. Are we having in a range of threshold? And I think that's it. And I think the other thing that's key, though, to Jason's last point on the on a community workforce agreement. Can we do this without a PLA? Can we insert PLA types of things into our policies or do we need to have a full blown PLA and call it that? And I think the mayor mentioned that in the beginning. And I do have a clarifying question. You mentioned that sometimes the the costs for project labor agreements come in over the the non PLA projects. I'm wondering in our jurisdiction, I suppose we don't have any information on that because the county hasn't actually used one. Do we know if that disparity has to do with the the prevailing wage violations that we hear about? You know, council member, I think this is one of the areas that we've been trying to gain feedback on. I can't say we've heard any definitive reasoning why the costs are substantially higher in some instances. But it's also not a uniform piece of feedback. And I'll encourage either Mike or Rory, who have been talking to those agencies specifically to chime in if they feel like they've got something to add on on what they heard from agencies. I heard agencies discuss the fact that less competition has resulted in higher costs, but they weren't really specific. I haven't heard anything definitive. Although I've heard from contractors and there was a recent editorial that I'm happy to share with folks that came nationwide about the cost increases that are likely seen implementing PLAs. And these are from contractors. It's upward of 18 to 20 percent is the number that I've read and heard. And I'm happy to bring back additional information that the council wishes. Yeah, I think it'd be helpful to also if you're going to share editorial to share who it's from, what I've talked to. Yeah, what I've talked to Jason writes a lot about is let's do actual academic studies because there is a lot of bluster, I think, around this conversation, both directions. And typically the newspapers are owned by much more conservative, large corporate interests than they write whatever they want in those papers. Yeah, we definitely know that and we know that from other large policy discussions. So we're looking, I mean, even when we looked at minimum wage, you know, Berkeley was called in the question over Irvine. So we're looking, we're trying to find information from both sides. Right. And I think like Fresno has one. Yeah, what I'm interested in is the the the thing is, is that and we've brought this up before, is having the honest discussion about it because you'll find that if you're in favor of PLAs, there's a lot of solid information. And if you're against them, there's a lot of editorial. So let's see if, like the mayor said, we can get down to the realities on the ground. And to be fair, they seem both to be editorials. Exactly. So the word can be used both ways. So we're trying to localize it and it's very difficult. OK. And I'll add one more thing. One of the pieces that we're looking at is that is the economics of our local workforce. And so we're taking some of the zip code information and we're trying to overlay the data with our our our disparate communities. And it's of course been very helpful in trying to pull that information together to learn where where are these employees coming from? And I think you know, it may or may not demonstrate anything of interest for us because we have because we haven't actually seen the data, but we think that we need to go to that level of depth to try to help understand which which employees, which local workforce is being impacted or benefited by this particular potential action. And so I don't know if you have a comment on that the equity piece that we're trying to roll lens over. And Jessica also has a comment to as well. So we're just trying to combine all of the research we've been doing as a city. So looking at our equity priority communities and taking the data that Jason and Rayza have gotten and Mike from where our employees, the subcontractors and their employees actually are coming from. And if they are in our equity priority communities and kind of using that data to guide these discussions so that we all are concentrated concentrated on the key concepts you brought up early on about kind of local workforce development and economic recovery across the community. Jessica. Just one quick note I wanted to make is I think the key areas where we've been looking for feedback in terms of the definition of local labor, project type threshold. I think that that's what's nice is there's a lot of flexibility here and how we design a PLA type of program. And when you think about costs more generally, you're essentially kind of creating a new overlay on top of your construction program that is distinct from prevailing wage, which is largely tracked kind of by contractors. They're comfortable with it. They use it. This will be new. And so which is not to say that it is bad, but I think that what you have to think about is how we're going to take some of these key policy layers or levers and then sort of layer them into an operational document that then will give some good predictability to contractors so that you get a lot of good bids coming in, more competition, lower prices and then on the administrative kind of administrative side at the city, you know, how do we monitor that? How do we take on that new workload? How do we get the program to like work well? So I think that this committee is really well situated to provide kind of good feedback about those policy alternatives. John, do you have any questions or? No, I think I just respond to the the input that you're looking for. Those what let's do let's do public comment. All right, that makes sense. That works for you. Sure. Victoria, do you have any other questions? No, but I to your point about public comment for the folks out there, I would look to to like to hear feedback around threshold, local definition and the types of projects so that when we do weigh in, we're able to at least have captured some of your input out there. Yeah, I appreciate that. Right. And Jason, there's one variable that seems to be missing from the conversation and that's how long does labor have to respond. And so if if there's a project that falls under this definition and we put out the call for local workforce, how long typically do cities give the union hall to be able to respond before we move on and utilize another contract or another employee from a contractor? And that's a great question, Mayor. I think that's going to depend upon the delivery process. If we're looking at a very specific one project, then we're doing it as part of the the bid process and we're selecting based on not just costs, but the availability and ability to be able to comply with the terms of the DLA. If we're dealing with large scale or system wide policy, we're going to be pre negotiating those terms with the halls ahead of time and have an understanding as to what what membership is available for for us for particular project terms. Yeah, and just to hand on that point, so like some of the some of the specialty trade don't have people here. So like, does that alter how we do or how we what project what kind of projects we include, et cetera? OK, thank you. Let's go to public comment to hear on this. We'll start with Nicole followed by John. If you are interested in providing comment, hit the raise hand feature comment about this item. I will be getting to the rental issue next. Start with Nicole. Hi, Nicole, you have been allowed to unmute if you would confirm your ability to see the timer and introduce yourself, please. Please give me the opportunity to unmute, please. Oh, we can hear you. Oh, you can hear me. Oh, thank you very much. Good morning, Mayor and members of the Santa Rosa City Council and Economic Development Committee. Nicole Gehring with Associated Builders in Conflict Northern California Chapter for a Northern California based trade association with a within apprenticeship school in several trades. And so we train our training for our members all throughout the Northern California and in Sonoma County area. I had some comments and thoughts. You could consider a workforce development agreement where you could put some of these terms in instead of a project labor agreement that way. I'm most concerned with how your local contracting community is going to be able to still work and participate, even if it is that twenty twenty eight percent on that slide, because that the general workforce that lives in Sonoma County, how are they going to be included? If generally under the project labor agreement terms, you're not the reason why you don't see sometimes contractors bidding is because they can't work with their workforce and that's their trusted people. And that's their that's their how they deliver a quality professional job to you. And if they're not able to use their workforce, I mean, that's their secret sauce, then they can't deliver a good project for your city. And so I want to make sure that they're included. And if I want to make sure that all the construction professionals living in Santa Rosa and Orsonoma County that do this work and that includes apprentices from programs such as ours are also included because they are the ones that want to build their community. Other people from other areas don't want to come in and build their those are the people that want to build their community. And another thing to think about for your general contractors that are located in Santa Rosa, a lot of them that are not the large swinterns or the turners, the ones that are based in your community. Check with them to see how much they can bond for. So they can bond for 10 million or 15 million dollars. You may and they are the ones that build fire stations, police stations, community centers. You may want to rethink your threshold because that you want them to be able to to build your community. So that's what my thought on the threshold and or also on your threshold, since you had some terms there on project types, maybe you do thresholds per trade. Maybe your five million dollar is per trade per electrical per mechanical. For example, you do have a large linear construction contractor who is a mixed who is part union and part non union based in your area that does water treatment plants. And they want to be able to use their workforce and utilize. They have a special niche. So I would leave that comment there regards to costs. The Burbank project with the PLA at Santa Rosa City College right out the gate. That was an extra five million dollars more that it didn't need to be. It was a prevailing wage job. Santa Clara Valley Water District has been a job. It was the lowest bidder was a million higher than the bid. So so there are some discrepancies going on. Thank you for your time. I just love to be part of your study session and part of these conversations. Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. We'll go to John. Mr. Medina, I have muted you. If you would please confirm your ability to see the timer and introduce yourself. I see that. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. Thank you, guys. Thank you, staff. Thank you, Council Mayor. This is John Medina. I'm representing the building trades and where my building trades had today. I'm the president of the building trades in the North Bay. I'm also business agent for the sprinkler fitters. Today I was able to get some new information. That information is from the DIR and the DAS Department of Apprenticeship Standards. I sent an email to staff. I've been given staff plenty of numbers and volume of things. And I've seen a lot of the reports come up. And so thank you, everybody. It was great talking to Raisa and Jason. I'm here for anybody's information as well going forward. So is Michael Allen, the new secretary treasurer. Some interesting notes about the apprenticeship. The apprenticeship is needed to hire. You need to have prevailing wage. On prevailing wage jobs, you need to have apprentices. Out of the unilateral programs that Nicole was just talking about, the ABC in general, they have 117 registered apprentices to the joint committees programs. We have 678. And this is in Sonoma County. Of those programs, they have six crafts that make up apprentices. Labor, plumbing, fire sprinkler, electrical, carpentry and roofing. Half of those 117 are roofers, 64 apprentices. The other third, if you want to say electrical is 42, they have three laborers, one plumber, five sprinkler fitters and two carpenters are currently involved as apprentices that are registered with the state of California. Those numbers I gave them, those you can get online. We have 678 apprentices registered. Also pay attention to numbers of graduations. That makes that's basically proof they're not hiring in the local communities. We are and we're trying to, we need to have more jobs, to have the ability to hire more as I've talked to before. And with a lower threshold, we can do that. We've got it already with the school district that has a low threshold. All projects under the bond and on $500,000 for anything that's contracted. The county is considering changing that $10 million threshold and as Fleming, Mayor Fleming or Council member Fleming said we only have one project that's on slated to pay any due to the membership. I'm sorry, I'm trying to speed up here and I'm tripping over my words. But look, if we have the school, the county and the city, it gives us more time and more apprentices and more volume to hire and to bring more people in from the programs. The Burbank Overarms, the Center of Junior College, everybody knows that's due to the design flaws from a 100 year old building and the things that were found that were not part of the first approved program. So anyways, I'm here for any questions you guys. Take a look at the resources and the actual numbers and not from these editorials. All right. Thank you, John. Nicole, you've already had a bite at the apple on this topic. So I'll go to Michael, but feel free to send staff and committee members follow up even if you have more to add. Michael, you have been given permission to speak if you would confirm your ability to see the timer and introduce yourself. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yeah. Hi. I'm Michael Allen. And I think if you know that I've been the new executive secretary for the building and trades council for all of 11 days. So essentially, but I can't tell you that I've been in this community for 45 years. Very honored to be the first Latino legislator from the North Bay to serve in the assembly to be the head of the labor council for many years and now to be working with the trades. I would just ask the council and the staff to work closely with us to develop the data you need, the empirical data to basically show that this is really excellent public policy. I would like to deal with this on like a non-ideological level. I don't think it escapes anybody's notice that when the Democrats administration on power, project labor agreements are very acceptable when the other party, the Republican party is in power, suddenly project labor agreements are not such a good idea. I think that the academic data very clearly shows that these agreements are cost neutral. I think what you find with most overruns, one of the most notorious cost overruns with the city of Santa Rosa was the building of the pipeline to the geysers that was done non-union. You probably have the records of that, but that's a very good example of a project going over budget. Usually it's change orders, poor planning, poor communication and essentially not well thought out projects that cause the cost overruns, not the choice of the labor. The labor agreements ensure labor peace and for me, when I work with this council and all the electives in this area, I just want to look through the lens of social equity. The trades are doing an incredible job of bringing in disadvantaged communities for the first time as their ticket to the middle class. And the lower the threshold and the greater volume of doing work with skilled trade union labor, the more opportunities we're going to give to even further enhance and enlarge our apprenticeship programs that we have here locally and our apprentices locally and I'm talking about the five counties including Solano will do a wonder that I think you know I'm also a chair of conservation action from a greenhouse gas aspect. We don't want our workers traveling long distances out of county for other projects. We want them here locally. And so we can reduce greenhouse gases also create a climate of four careers here within the trades where we're keeping our young people in this county as an older member of the community now we need to keep our young people in house get them trained give them living wages and working conditions where we make this a better community. So I thank you for your time and I look forward to working with you in the future. Thank you. Thank you Michael. I'm looking for other hands. Are there any other comments? We'll go to Maddie followed by Eric. Maddie if you would please confirm your ability to see the timer and introduce yourself if you so choose. Yes, I can see the timer and my name is Maddie Hirschfield. I'm the political director with the North Bay Labor Council. I just have a couple of things to add in terms of overruns the the famous one that you hear quoted by those not approving of PLAs is the the JC library project that was did go over budget. But that was due to the fact that they found major damage in the roof that they weren't expecting to see. And that was also the year of the Tubbs fire. So there were a few other things going on. That is an anomaly. It doesn't usually happen with PLAs that that kind of overrun. I also just wanted to talk about the apprenticeship program and how important that is that apprentices actually make money while they're being trained and their special outreach to underserved areas. They're also working to get women into non-traditional careers. So this is a win-win all around. And I thank you for looking at this issue. Thank you. Thank you, Maddie. We'll go to Eric. Eric, if you would please confirm your ability to see the screen and introduce yourself if you so choose. Yes, thank you. My name is Eric and I'm a concerned citizen that lives in the Greater Cherry Street neighborhood. So as I listen to the discussion I see a lot of information presented and also an acknowledgement that the topic at hand is polemic and political. But what I don't see involved in the discussion is the guidance of a trained economist to be able to formulate the questions that are being asked in regard of pursuing PLAs. I think everybody at the table wants to see opportunity, especially for disadvantaged people that live in the county. But the information seems to suggest that the labor pool comes from a regional area. In fact, you'll probably see in the next discussion how significant housing workers that are traveling regionally to work in the short-term rental community is. And that is actually a very key part of visitorship. And as we complete... So Eric, I'm going to ask you to keep your comments on this. We'll go to the next item when we get to the next item. Okay, thank you. I'll join you then. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Eric. Do we have any other hands for the discussion on this item? I see no additional hands raised at this time. Okay. I'll go ahead and bring it back to the board. And Mayor, really quickly, just a time check because I know we have about 20 minutes. And we could do for the short-term rental thing, we can do the presentation and see if we can do a special meeting for the continuation of it. If that's workable, knowing your time constraints. Yeah, let's finish this item and then let's discuss as a subcommittee. I'm guessing we're going to need to reset the meeting and come back. It's not later today, later this week. But I think anybody who's here for the short-term rental item knows the urgency of it as well. So I don't want to push it off for another month. But we'll come back and we'll talk about that. Perfect. Thank you. All right. So who wants to start? I will ask there was an implied question in there and perhaps we don't have the data. But one data point that would be helpful is to better understand the interplay of change orders within this as well. Do projects that come under a PLA or something similar have fewer change orders? And what is the overall final cost, what all is said and done between a PLA and a non-PLA project? And so that'd be helpful for us to better understand as well. Thank you, Mayor. I'll just say the initial evaluation is that change orders and change orders and will occur regardless of the labor type that's out there doing the work. Things that are project specific and related are going to be and so I know Lori and Mike as they continue conversations with various agencies are asking that question so far the commentary that's come back seems to be outside of a standard change order element but they're going to be digging in in more detail as we prepare for the next conversation with Councilors. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you, Jason. Let's go to Council Member Sawyer. Thanks, Mayor. I will be very brief. So according to the questions that you were asking for input on, I'll move to the thresholds. I will remain silent on the thresholds because I'm still I'm skeptical about the need of PLAs and I don't understand what problem we're trying to solve. So putting a threshold on something I'm not necessarily convinced that we need is a little it's not necessary. The definition of local, I agree with you on number two. I think about Nevada as being, you know, it's right there. It's pretty pretty darn local and I would hate to eliminate a number of workers in our basically in our immediate area and not just have it in Santa Rosa and not just have a Sonoma County but I would want to broaden that to a larger radius. So I'm in favor of, I agree with your definition of local number two. I would be, I'm curious about the CWA's and the but being able to find all the some of the pluses that a CWA can offer without moving entirely into a PLA and I think those with the three questions you were looking for input on I look very much look forward to to the next meeting and I look forward to it being before the council and I'm sure we'll get a large number of individuals and organizations weighing in and then it'll be up to the council to decide what direction to move in. So I think that's it. Did I did I hit the requested topics, right? So did you have any feedback on types of projects, John? No, no, not at this point. Okay. Just, yeah, no, I couldn't weigh in on the types because again, I'm one of the skeptics. So at this point, once we were to move into to making a decision, then that kind of opens the door to the type of projects that I think would be reasonable. So I'll stay silent on the types as well. Okay. And I want to think I do want to do one things. Thanks, staff. This was a great introduction. I thought we would have a hundred slides and for your ability to bring it down to this number and offer a balanced presentation. Good job. I mean, I think it was well done. Thank you. And just to confirm, John, you're comfortable with moving this discussion out of the committee and into the study session before the full council. Yeah, it needs to be yeah, it needs that kind of airing. Absolutely. Okay. Let's go to council member Fleming. Thank you, mayor. So the way that I'll be looking at this has to do with a couple of things. One is making sure that we develop our local work phase at workforce, avoid prevailing wage workarounds that I hear concerns around and then also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by transit. So I'll start with the range of what I consider local is not a really simple one, but I would consider what you could reasonably drive to or take transit to to get to a work site within about an hour. So however, you want to, you know, define that little over little under is fine, but certainly the North Bay. Whether or not it's Solano County, would you include it or not? But so to me that that makes sense on the the radius from Santa Rosa or Sonoma County. And then I am fine with including all all projects. I think that that will help us to deliver. And then it's my understanding that non union shops can bid on these project labor agreements. They just and they don't have to use union shops that they can work around that quite easily and compete, but that they do have to agree to the term. So I'm fine with including all all work. And then we'll find out as we go down the road, whether or not we have enough competitive bids. And that'll give us more information. I think the five million limit is or the five million dollar threshold is. I think it's arbitrary, but I don't say that in a negative way. I just say it in that. Like I get that you were putting this together. You looked at that the county at ten million dollars. It hasn't resulted in any actual contracts under their project labor agreements. Let's try something lower. I don't know if it's the right number. What I think is that when we do take this to the full council will hear from folks who are more intimately acquainted with the industry and be able to give us their input. What I'd say is if I were making a decision today, I would probably accept five million dollars. And then probably say, like, let's do a program that we use for three years and let's revisit it in three years and see what percentage of our projects we've been able to capture and what the impact has been on cost overruns compared with similar project that we had done. Or I wouldn't actually do projects in our past. I would compare it to projects and other jurisdictions because the costs of both labor materials have gone up so much that there's no real way to do a now versus then and get a reasonable snapshot. And then I talked about threshold. I talked about local workforce. Talked about projects. I think I've covered it all. All right. And you're good to send us to the study sessions. Yeah. I think that John and I might agree on that one point that the whole council needs to take a look at this. And I think that it'll have the added benefit of bringing out more of our community partners if it's agendized in front of the full council. All right. Great. Well, so my comments are are going to be fairly consistent with what they were when we first introduced this. I'll start by saying that the five million dollar threshold is not acceptable to me. And that's because it doesn't solve the problem. What I'm looking for in a policy is to use the purchasing power of the city to change the economics of the region by allowing companies that start here or that are located here to actually compete for and have those contracts. One of the key components of being able to do that is having a workforce that can deliver on the contract. When I hear five million, I agree with the council member that's relatively arbitrary. But that's why I asked the clarifying question from you, Jason, about what percentage of projects are we actually talking about. When we talk about fewer than 10 percent of the city's project, I don't care what the threshold is. If it's only going to result in under 10 percent, one in 10 projects falling within it for the businesses and for the workforce to be able to depend on it, that's not going to solve the problem. That's not going to allow businesses to start here and invest in their workforce here. So for me, that threshold definitely needs to come down and I don't want to talk about it in terms of a dollar figure amount. I want to talk about it in terms of what percentage of the contracted projects that we're putting out there would fall under that definition. And then for me, going back to the question of how long does one of the labor shops have to be able to respond? If we have a project that's closer, call it half a million dollars that falls within that range. And we say, you have 24 hours to respond back and let us know if you have a worker who is skilled and trained and able to deliver this work. And if you do, you've got the job. If you don't, we move on and we get somebody else. I think that that's a more reasonable approach and actually solves that problem that I'm looking for. So that's, I'm hoping that that'll come down and we can talk about that a little bit more. In terms of a definition of local, I understand that practically it's going to be damn near impossible for us to have everybody come from Santa Rosa. And so definition to definitely be reasonable to me. I would question or ask why Lake County wasn't included in that just because Mendocino and Napa County haven't do that drive all the time. There are definitely parts of Mendocino County that are further away than parts of Lake County. And so I would, I would just ask perhaps when we look at this again, perhaps we include Lake County. I'd actually rather use Lake County, have Lake County in it. Then Solano County. But I do understand that that's where a large chunk of our workforce comes from. Just because in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, time of travel and quality of life, particularly during commute hours is certainly hard to get to Solano County and back. In terms of types of projects, again, I just want to look at which categories do we have enough projects to sustain to sustain the development of our workforce and the creation of companies here locally that can rely on it. So I don't have a good answer for you on that one. And then, yes, let's kick this to the study session. Let's get input from the rest of the council members. I definitely think that there's going to be some sausage making. And I just want to thank staff for hitting the target as we're moving it on you. I really appreciate that. Council Member Fleming, did you have something to add? Yeah, to your point around five million dollars only hitting a certain percentage of projects, I think there's a couple of points in there that would be helpful when it comes to the full council. One would be like at, at the different levels, like whether it's in half million dollar increments, if you could show us what percentage of projects would be swept up in that. And then also, if you could show us not just the percentage of projects, but the percentage of dollars expended on projects. Because if it's, you know, only a few percentage of our projects, but it's like 90 percent of the dollars when he starts to get above a certain amount, that would be helpful for us to know. And then also, you know, I think there's this underlying piece, which is that it's it can potentially be more, more work for staff to manage these contracts. If you could come forward and let us know what, what, if we implement this, what resources may or may not be needed to execute this and what the costs associated with that are. So we can just have a fully informed discussion about going forward if that's the will of the council. I appreciate that. I did also want to note Nicole made a comment that that struck me as well. She asked about developing a different threshold per trade. And so it might even be interesting to look at if you set a percentage of projects that you want to fall under this agreement. And I'm making this up, say it's 50 percent. The dollar figure might be different among different departments or different categories, but would still achieve that overall goal. And so that might be interesting for us to look at as well. Not that you, I know you all are not a research institution and we've just thrown entire theses at you, but more data is definitely helpful as we try to craft something that is smart and fits for our local community. And I think that that's one of the challenges that we have is some of our usual comparable cities. It's just not comparable in this one. They don't have the policy. They don't have some of the surrounding issues that we have. So, but I do want to thank staff for it. We will go ahead and move on from the item. You do have three votes to send this to the study session. I believe the date was July 12th. And so I definitely look forward to that. And I will say we've heard from some folks. We did see some hands pop up late in public comment. Reach out to me. Reach out to the subcommittee members. I know we're all willing to sit down and talk to anybody about this and hear data that people can present. And so feel free to reach out and not just worry about being in the subcommittee. We'll talk to anyone on it. So, thank you, staff. Now, subcommittee members, we do have the big item around short term rentals. We do obviously council member you said you have you probably need to leave in six minutes to be able to get to city hall in time for budget today. Is there a time this week that would work for the two of you that perhaps we can recess this meeting and then re-adjourn and hear that item? That way, there's some certainty for folks who are very invested in this who want to see the policy amended that they get to be heard this week as well. Or mayor, if I may, another consideration might be next Tuesday so that we have enough time to notice and prepare other staff. We have to have code enforcement, planning, development, finance, a number of people. But then also importantly, there is a lot of public interest in this and we want enough time to let them know of the new date. So next Tuesday looks also to be an option as well. So I just want to throw that out. I think if we did next Tuesday we'd have to start at 9 o'clock because John and I have an ad hoc that starts at 1130 and I wouldn't want to run into the same problem. Okay, so we will work with staff regardless of which week that you choose to make sure that we have representatives from all area. Yeah, Victoria, you were going to say something? Yeah, I was going to say this week is really busy. I've got enough budgets and MTC all week. So if we could do next Tuesday I'm flexible on the time. Whatever works for you and John and staff. John, does that work for you? Yeah, but I would need that you're right about the ad hoc meeting at 1130. So if we could start at 9 that would be it would work. I think that that would work for me next Tuesday. All right. So what I'm going to do for folks in the public we will set a special meeting next Tuesday at 9 o'clock. What I will also do is just hear public comment on that item for now to take notes for myself and for staff and for folks who have been sitting through the previous discussion and want to be heard. John, I know you've got to jump off. Victoria, you also because there's no decisions to be made. If you'd like to jump off you're also welcome to but I do want to make sure that. Okay, people have to say. Okay, John, we'll see you at City Hall at 12 and we will do a special meeting with that one item for next Tuesday at 9 o'clock. And then let's go to public comment on the item before we adjourn today's meeting as well. We're just currently waiting for any individuals to raise their hand. Oh, there we go. Let's start with Dan. And just one moment. Yes, hello. Yep. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yes, hi. Yes, hello. This is Dan Godino. I am a certified vacation rental manager with Wine Country Getaway. I'm also the president of the Santa Rosa Short-Term Rental Association. There have been several issues with the initial proposal and the final enactment of the short-term rental urgency ordinance. One major issue is drafting the urgency ordinance is that there was absolutely no feedback considered from hosts and operators like myself to help address the city's and the neighborhood's concerns. There are plenty of solutions in the short-term rental industry to address issues like noise parking, trash, and parties at vacation rental properties. Proper operation of these homes requires homeowners and hosting managers to set up systems to prevent the affirmation issues. For one, hosts should reinforce the message to guests that no parties or events are allowed in their property. A rental contract with legal records is highly advisable as another preemptive measure should guests decide to break the house visiting rules. Another deterrent is requiring a security deposit where hosts can collect if any violations occur. Exterior security cameras give homeowners and operators a convenient tool to monitor potential parties from breaking off. Finally, a high-tech solution is to install noise decibel meters inside and outside the homes. These noise sensors monitor only the intensity of sound and not any intelligible conversation, therefore protecting the guest's privacy. Noise alarm thresholds are customizable by the decibel level and the time of day via settings in a smartphone app. Should any violations occur, the homeowner is notified and the guests receive an automatic text message reminding them about quiet hours. These are just some of the examples of what responsible homeowners and operators can implement in their homes to keep neighbors happy. Implementing some of these recommendations should eliminate the need to use city resources such as police. Please join the Facebook group Santa Rosa, California Short and Rental Association. This Facebook group is open to all and aims to educate the public and short and rental operators on best hosting practices and as a complaint origination point and solution space to help address neighborhood concerns. I also want to extend my offer to the City Council and the Economic Planning Committee as a short and rental industry expert in providing recommendations in the drafting of the final ordinance. I thank you for allowing me to speak. Thank you so much, Dan. We'll go to Gary. And Mr. Lentz, if you would confirm your ability to see the timer, you have been granted permission to speak. Unmute myself. Thank you. I can't see. Wonderful. Yeah, I do definitely think that the approach to this issue could be handled in a more collaborative way. I feel like 98% of the short-term rental owners like myself want a solution that weeds out the bad actors. And unfortunately, I think the emergency ordinance has a lot of flaws in it in that it sets up arbitrary limits that invite acrimony between homeowners and their neighbors rather than creative solutions to get rid of the problem, which is the people who don't want to follow the rules. For instance, just today, I got something from the city saying that one of my neighbors has complained that it looked like there were more than 10 people at my home, I guess this past weekend, and actually had complaints from the people that there were neighbors peeking over the fence and knocking on the door and trying to intrude on their time. So, I mean, we've set up an adversarial system here, unfortunately, that I don't think is going to solve the problem. And interestingly, the prior speaker talking about high-tech solutions that might give us an actual way to enforce some of these things we're trying to deal with, you know, rather than having arbitrary limits on parking spaces and a number of people in the house let's attack the problem, which is, you know, the noisy people that don't want to follow the rules and especially the owners who don't care enough to follow the rules. So, I hope that you guys will reach out to the STR community because, like I say, the vast majority of us really want to help solve this problem so that, you know, we can have a harmonious relationship with our neighbors and this can cease to be an issue because the way the rule is set up now, it's really very difficult to enforce the poor people of the city don't know what to do. I've talked to police officers, they don't want to get involved with it. There's no arbitrary way to solve this problem, but some of these high-tech solutions that the prior speaker mentioned, I think we have some ideas that really could help in the drafting of this ordinance and we'd love to meet with city staff and or the council to end this committee to talk about this and I guess we'll do it next week at 9 a.m. So, thank you for your time and we'll talk soon. All right, thanks Gary. We'll go to Eric. And Eric, if you would confirm your ability to see the timer and introduce yourself. Yes, thank you. This is Eric Frazier with Truth in Tourism at gmail.com. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today and I'll do respect on a contentious issue and I assume that this doesn't preempt our ability to also contribute our comments next Tuesday. No, absolutely not. You're good. It is a flexible situation. So, to echo the concerns of the previous callers is that we don't really understand why there was this urgent run-up to this ordinance and with a very costly enactment it was like and I as a researcher and hopefully as a respective researcher I think you recognize that I can smell bad fish and so the data that was served up in the run-up to this not only was it not collaborative with the industry but it had no basis. It had no factual basis. And what we see now as our research continues is that same sort of trend. Many owners don't realize that there's a complaint on their record. The complaint process is heavily flawed. The case studies that our professionals are seeing is incredible economic impact to the people that are sort of sworn to protect like our senior citizens. And so it's the whole thing has been a colossal screw-up quite frankly and I think really the only way to reset is to be sure that we have firm fact-finding robust collaboration and dialogue but we also need a commitment to a higher level a higher professional standard and how we go about creating policy. This impacts way more than you know. And I don't understand how people were giving themselves permission to use information that they they must have known was not correct. What type of working environment are you creating for your staff when logical people can look at information and say look at this just doesn't add up. This doesn't match my experience that isn't really the information that I'm exposed to. So there's a much broader issues at risk here. So next Tuesday we'll be able to notify those that have received citations and didn't know about it. So they may also seek to participate but thank you for the chance to talk today. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Eric. Do we have anybody else who'd like to comment on this item? We have no additional. Oh, pardon me. Yes, we do. David Long. Mr. Long. Hey, good morning, council members. We got three talkers that were speaking in a proactive sense about short term rentals. So before we close, I just want to give you a little insight from the other side. No, Eric Frazier touts that there's no factual basis or that the urgency ordinance was rushed through. But I can tell you a first-hand experience. I live in a neighborhood in the Northeast where there are, I want to say hundreds, but there are short term rentals that now blank at the neighborhood. And back when the urgency ordinance was passed, there was just a countless number of homes in the four and five bedroom range that were hosting events that had well, 20, 30, 50 people at them with cars parked on the streets. And so there is a basis for having some kind of control over what Dan Godino actually refers to as a short-term rental industry. So I think we'll hear a lot of information from both sides and we'll get some good change put into the ordinance that should be effective. And I want to thank you for taking up the issue. It's a contentious issue and it takes a lot of time on a lot of people's behalf, but I know that in the end we'll get there. So thank you very much and we'll see you next Tuesday. Thank you, David. We've got Yvonne. And Yvonne, if you would confirm your ability to see the timer and introduce yourself please. Hello, can you hear me okay? Yes. Thank you. Oh, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk this morning My name is Yvonne Rosa Scott. I have a hosted unit. My comment is very short and to the point the charges right now that we have for the permit are way too high over a thousand dollars. We'd like it to be considered to lower this amount based, I don't know, maybe I'm square footage or maybe on the revenue that we're getting but between the permit and the taxes that we're paying the TOT taxes that we're paying basically the income is very, very low. So I'm just asking for this to be considered. Thank you so much. All right, thank you. All right, last call for hand. Do we have anybody else? Hi, I see no additional hands raised at this time. Oh, I, pardon me. We had an individual but they lowered their hands. Okay, I'll bring it back then. Pardon me, Patrick. Patrick, last chance. Keep your hand up. Give your comment. You'll be our last speaker for the day. And Patrick, you have been given permission to speak. Patrick. Can you hear me? Yes. I'll thank you. We have a nuisance problem and we should have a public policy about what is a nuisance and the proper way to mitigate the nuisance. We have a parking policy and it should be a public policy that's understood and it should be broad and everybody should understand it in the Bay. Noise, nuisance, etc. We shouldn't be pitting any segment of our community against another segment of the community if we can avoid it. I'll stop and maybe have more to say next Tuesday. All right. Thank you, Patrick. With that, I'll bring it back. As we mentioned and I appreciate everybody's patience with this. We've got a couple of needy topics here in the Economic Development Subcommittee. We'll come back next Tuesday at 9 a.m. And we'll have only this item on the agenda for economic development and so we'll be able to focus in on it. So thank you everybody for attending and thank you for the data that you all keep sending. Feel free to keep doing it and keep reaching out. And with that, Raisa, we'll go ahead and adjourn today. And Councilmember, I'll see you in about 20 minutes for our budget meeting. Thanks, everyone.