 Good morning, everyone. We're going to call this meeting to order. Could we get a roll call, please? Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of vice mayor Fleming and councilmember Tibbitt. Thank you. Any statements of abstention by council members? Seeing none. Madam City Attorney, did you want to introduce item 3.1? Yes. Item 3.1 is the interview and appointment procedures for the City Council vacancy. And at this step before we begin the actual interviews, we ask that the council confirm the procedures. As you recall, the council met on December 3rd to begin the process. At that point, certain decisions were made. The application periods were open, were announced and opened. The application form was approved. And the council, the mayor appointed an ad hoc to develop advanced interview questions. And then the decision was made to delegate to the ad hoc to make recommendations regarding the procedures for the interviews with confirmation by the council, final confirmation by the council this morning. Council did meet in special session on December 20th and walked through the procedures and gave preliminary approval for the procedures. So I will outline those and ask that the council give its final approval for those procedures. Each applicant will be interviewed in this setting, in this public setting. Each interview is slotted for 30 minutes. It will consist of an opening, I'm sorry, the applicants will be invited to make an opening statement of no longer than three minutes. Each council member will then have the opportunity to question, ask questions of the applicant. Each council member will have four minutes. After the final council member has their opportunity to ask questions, the applicant will have the opportunity to provide a one-minute closing statement. The council did ask that each of the applicants respond to three advanced questions. During their opening statement, those questions are are you prepared to attend the regularly scheduled Tuesday council meetings, of which some start in the mid-morning and continue into late night hours. Two, will you be able to attend the scheduled city council goal setting sessions scheduled for March 12th and 13th. And third, do you foresee any issues with additional time commitments on various city council subcommittee assignments? Again, we've asked that the applicants provide answers to those three questions during their opening statement. The order of the interviews was determined by random draw. That drawing took place at the special meeting on December 20th and the order of the interviews is in your packet and in the agenda. We have scheduled it such that there will be, there are blocks of four interviews with breaks in between. In the event that an applicant is not present at the time their interview is to begin, we will move to the next applicant. But we ask that you consider allowing an applicant that is late to come in at the end of that four interview block. If an applicant does not appear during the time of that four interview block, they will have waived their opportunity for the interview. At the end of the interview process, we will go into the voting. There will be four rounds of voting. During your first round of voting, each council member will vote for four applicants. Second round, at that time, we will look at the voting. Any applicant who receives one or fewer votes will be eliminated from the process at that time. And we will move then to a second round of three votes and then two votes and then one vote. And the applicant that receives at least four votes during that final round of voting will be appointed by resolution to fill the council they can see. I would like to ask you to answer any questions. If there are no questions, I would ask that council approve that process. Thank you. Just to confirm that every council member also received a copy of the question submitted by members of the public. He or she can choose to consider any of them during any of the interviews. That is correct. That is correct. And under our policy, under the policy, each council member may ask any question that they feel is relevant to the applicant's qualifications. And yes, you have all council members have received all of the questions that were submitted by the public. And you are welcome to use those questions if you would like. And I will note that those four minutes are for each council member. And each council member will control kind of how the interview goes during those four minutes. And we do have a buzzer that will sound both for the three minute opening statement and then for the four minutes for each council member, there will be a buzzer that will indicate the end of your four minutes. And I'm sorry, in the one minute for the closing and the final buzzer and the interview will end at that time. And we do intend to keep very strict to those time limitations. Would you like to hear the buzzer? I think we'll have, we'll be able to figure it out. A couple additional things to just for the council members. So I also will advise each person when they come up for the interview that during your four minute segment, if you need to interrupt the person, because you get to ask as many questions and we get the information, I'm just going to advise the applicants that you may get interrupted if, you know, it's your four minutes, you get to use it as you deem appropriate. And then also, just so you know the questions, I'm going to start to my far right. So with our first applicant, Mr. Alvarez will ask the first question and we'll just go through each. And the second applicant, Mr. Soya will ask the first question and we'll go through it. We'll just keep rotating that way through all the questions. So with that council, is there any other questions you have for city attorney, city manager or anyone else? Ms. Vice Mayor, are you prepared to make a motion? You had this item. So moved. Second. Any additional questions or comments? How do we want to do the vote? Well, there we go. Your votes, please. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay, with that, could we please invite our first applicant, Mr. Pedgriff? I'm going to speak to Mr. Pedgriff. I'm going to get you settled in, Mr. Pedgriff. First of all, thank you for applying for this position. I'll just give you a brief overview of the process right now so you'll have a three-minute opening comment opportunity. There will be a timer up there if you wanted to check on it and you will hear a buzzer when your time is up if you have not stopped before that. Each council member will have an opportunity for four minutes to ask you any questions and just give a heads up if a council member has asked a question and you're talking, they've only get four minutes so they may interrupt you in the middle of a question to ask another one but that will be the purview of each council member. And then you'll have one final minute for closing comment. Okay. Questions about that? No, it sounds a little rigid perhaps but I'm sure it will all work out just fine. 19 interviews, some rigidity. Yes, I understand. I don't envy your task. Please, you're on. Okay, thank you. Good morning to all of you. Thank you. During the eight years that I was on the city council, we never had the need to appoint a temporary replacement to fulfill a term. Since I left the council, there have been two occasions where the councils had to appoint someone. I did not apply for either of those occasions. I felt compelled to apply on this occasion due to the nature of the resignation. I voted for Julie when she first ran for the council. She was a neighbor and she worked very hard running for office. After being installed, I felt Julie was unnecessarily difficult to work with but finally it was her resignation that left me in shock. I found it hard to believe that anyone would actually think they could appoint their own replacement. Then she added, if she couldn't designate her successor, she wanted the council to appoint someone she recommended and she gave you a short list of approved candidates. I was left dumbfounded. I asked myself, what would I do if I was on the council and had to find a replacement for her? There would be three assurances I would ask of any applicant. First, an applicant should assure the council they will not run for the council in 2020. We should leave it to the community to decide who they want to represent them and not give anyone a head start by being appointed to the council and then running as an appointed incumbent. Second, an applicant should be able to meet all the meeting obligations including goal setting and subcommittee assignments and be ready to contribute on day one. With an 11 month term, there's little time for on-the-job training. Thirdly, I would ask for an assurance given my vision of how I believe the council should operate. To my mind, the council is a team of seven, not two teams that work across purposes. I'm not suggesting everyone should always be in agreement. Differences of opinion actually make policy decisions more robust if the council respects and trusts each other and confidently work together for a common purpose to do what's best for the community. The third assurance I would ask for is to work respectfully with all the other council members, especially those with whom they disagree that I asked myself, would I be able to make those assurances to you, the present council? I give you my word that without reservation, I can give you those assurances. So rather than wait for someone else to step forward, I thought maybe it's my responsibility. So here I am. Thank you. Mr. Alvarez. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Bedriff, welcome and thank you for your many years of service at the City of Santa Rosa. It is no surprise that our community and the entire region has been dealing with some significant homeless issues. And I'm sure that you even dealt with some of these to a certain extent when you are the council in the past. In your opinion, what is missing from this council's effort to address our community's homeless issues? Oh, my heavens. I was afraid this. My wife, by the way, my support team right back here, said be sure to answer all their questions and don't lecture them. Being a teacher of 40 years experience, that's kind of what I've done professionally as lecturer people, but I understand answer the question, don't lecture them. And you open with that question. So to answer it, yes, we have a problem. Yes, we need to do something about it. And yes, it's complicated. Now, but I don't want to lecture at you. Oh, my heavens. Well, Mayor Tom wrote a letter to the community dated just about a year ago, March of 2019, in which I thought his statement was outstanding. I thought it really explained to the community what the council intended to do, what their intent was, what they have been doing in a brief history of their accomplishments since 2011. I couldn't add anything to that. I think you should be really congratulated for having really seriously wrestled with the issue of homelessness which is a problem the causes of which are well beyond our ability to do anything about, which requires a cooperation of the problem that prompted all this, of course, to Radota. Well, that's county property. That's the fifth district. Have the Board of Supervisors stepped up? Well, in the past it's always been kind of an issue of cooperating with the county and getting along and agreeing on working together. I think they've shown and improved attitudes since I was on the council and I think they've recognized their responsibility, but in some sense the immediate issue that we're working with here the ball is in some sense in someone else's court and we have to work with those people and cooperate and that's the best I can say at this point. I believe in a broad spectrum of responses. Most of the problem right now you're dealing with is what do we do tomorrow? Could we get a problem today? We've got a helicopter by the Sheriff's Department seeing rats running around on the trail. We have to deal with that now. So I don't envy you this. Have you missed your questions of what have we failed to do? I think we're really working hard at it and I think we're serious about it and I actually congratulate you on what you have done. But I think you have been obviously the rest of the community observing and seeing the issue continue to grow. There's a lot of anger in the community about how it's being addressed and I'm sure that you've been aware of some of our efforts to deal with the issue based on what you've seen so far. What is missing? What's something that we're not doing yet that we should be doing? Cooperation with the Sheriff's Department. We're looking at the old senior center over here. I guess we've got to put a new roof on it and there's a suggestion of that becoming a facility. Well, how long is that going to take? I'm sorry. If this is supposed to be a softball question that I hit out of the park, I'm clearly failing. I'm striking out. Yeah. I'm sorry. Thank you, Mayor and thank you, Mr. Pettigrew, for being here and for your service throughout the years. How do you believe our local political environment has changed since you were last served as an elected, if at all? Oh, interesting. Well, we've become more progressive when I served on the council first elected in 1988. I was the liberal general on the council. I was the environmentalist. I was the candidate that ran with the endorsement of the Sierra Club and I served with four people at that time who were all endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce. So housing was the issue and growing slower was what I was supposed to advocate. Well, a lot of that's changed when I look at your goals that you've set for your tier one goals. Holy cow, I don't think those would have been the goals that we would have adopted when I was first on the council. Yeah, we've become bluer than we were when I was on the council, which I guess is the way we're growing. That's neither to be celebrated nor shunned. That's just the way we are. The council and the work that you do is much more complex. You've added a couple. We've got a computer department as a part of the city government. Well, that's all new. There were several jobs that might have been assigned as collateral duties within the city manager's office that now are departments. We've got a homeless, and a full-time job here on housing and homeless related issues. That was just a part-time responsibility. City government has become much more complex. Allow me to shift gears just slightly. What do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess? I'm sorry. Say again, please. What do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess? Getting along with one another, finding a common purpose and working together. This council, as far as I know, I don't really know any of you very well. So I can't speak with full knowledge here. But after I got off the council, there was a decade there in which the council was quite divided and I don't think the community was well served by that. You seem like you're a stronger team than I remember. So maybe that comes and goes. There have been people on the council who just seemed ordinary for lack of a better word. And I don't know how I never saw that when I was on the council. I said I was the environmentalist that joined four folks who were more business-oriented. They never treated me with disrespect nor did I respond in kind. I had people say you ought to be more screaming and hollering down there. No, that's not the way you get things done. You work with people. And if you have a good idea some of the specific plans that we had for the southeast Santa Rosa and here in the southwest, I brought those. We hadn't been doing those kind of specific plans in the past, but this was this was the future. And it was clear to my compatriots on the council that this is what we needed to do. Small, neat approvals. Thank you. Thank you for your service and thank you for coming in today right and early. I'm curious to know going into goal setting, what would your perspective, what perspective would you bring to setting our priorities in March? Thank you Victoria for asking that. You clearly made it clear to everybody that they needed to have those dates the 12th and the 13th of March set aside for just this purpose. And it's clearly an important function. It's the one time in which you can kind of step back. I really appreciate it. Why don't you tell me your perspective because we have such limited time. I'd love to hear what you bring to it. I'm lecturing. Having been away from the council I can take a broader perspective as I look at your goals, the goals that you set in 2019. I don't want to fall to one of them, but none of them really contains what I call a vision. Goal setting where there is no vision that the people perish tells us the Old Testament. Where's the vision? Where are we going? Well I've been working with the Bicycle Advisory Committee. Are bicycles really going to become a serious part of our transportation network here in the future? I think so. Do we have a goal that we want to be working toward that brings us your goals are all functional. They're all five year goals. How about some 20 year goals? How about something further off? I think we have options along Santa Rosa Creek for really making something exceptional for this study, but it may be maybe 50 years out for all I know. That's okay. It's okay to plan 50 years into the future. Hold that vision because that's what draws us into the future. Are there any particular causes or populations that are dear to your heart or that you'd be looking out for that maybe aren't represented well by the council as it sits? No. No, actually your sort of implies a potentially divisive stance. I know that's not your intent. I'm looking for actually just an addition, not a division. I see. Well, I was the senior representative on the bike advisory committee, so I was supposed to represent seniors interest. Well, that's kind of interesting because I don't know that as a senior citizen I have any different opinion in regards to bicycles than with an 18 year old. It always seemed like I was sort of given a special niche, but I don't think there were special needs. There might be for handicapped people, but not necessarily seniors. So, but there I was. We pointed out a potential challenge in that seat that it implies disability with age, and I do appreciate that you don't want to create divisions, but I do really believe that additional perspectives are, especially with this council where we are, as you pointed out, not divisive. We intend to listen to each other are useful when we have vision, when we set visions and goals. I know from the questions that were submitted by the community to be asked, there's an ongoing resentment from people on the west side of town who feel as though they're either underrepresented, even though districtings should accommodate that issue, and I am from the east side of town. I live over by Spring Lake. Does that mean I can't sympathize or help be a part of solutions for people on the west side of town? I think not. Thank you. Waiting for that lovely buzzer. Question I have. What would you consider to be your biggest challenge at the end of the day today? We select you. You start on councils tomorrow. What do you see as your biggest challenge? My biggest challenge? Well, I think when I went through the process of deciding to do this that I tried to explain to you here in my opening statement, I thought having been on the council for eight years and been mayor two times, you know, that I could be someone who could promise you that from day one I'll move right in and be ready to go. No, I don't want to oversell that. That would be false advertising. No, the job is more complex. The community is more complex. The immediate issues that you're dealing with have been there forever, but the responses are as complex as they've ever been. All the faces have changed with all the professional staff here, and I think the effectiveness of a council person, no doubt, is built in some extent on their relationships with staff and all the people that I knew are no longer here. I have some work to do myself to be fully up to speed and I'm older, I'm slower, I know that, and I'm wearing my hearing aids and I would promise you fourth promise, I'd never come to the meeting without my hearing aids or else I'd be going, what'd he say? So I'm just slower, I need reading glasses. I was offered two classes at Sonoma State for the spring semester, which is what I've done for a number of years, and as the budget got finalized, they said, nope, those classes were cut. So I'm not teaching spring semester at Sonoma State. If I were, I couldn't apply for this job. That's a half-time job. This is a half-time job. I'm 77 years old. I don't need a full-time job. For me, this will be a full-time job. And fortunately, I've got the time to do it. In your application, you talked about how you've been staying up to speed with council activities. You called yourself a community news addicts. Can you talk about a decision that this council has made during the last year that you disagreed with, and what would you involve? Oh, you were asking me to step on a mine, aren't you here? Yeah, right. Thanks. Craftfully dons them. Dance carefully through that minefield. Let me give you a perspective. I was in class number one Leadership Santa Rosa. I'm guessing some of you may have gone through the same program. And we get together occasionally our graduating classes, so we had someone brought to us let's do a project. We'll go out, we'll find a sculpture. We'll get a public sculpture for the first responders and the victims from the 2017 fires. Good idea. That's a community-oriented thing to do. Well, we came in at the time, John was mayor, and so we met with John. He may remember it, and he may have a different perspective that he can share. But my takeaway from that meeting from John was that good, good thing. You guys are, you know, good project. Go work on it. Don't involve the city. Just, you know, don't involve the city. You can do better on your own. Well, the sculpture's now out at the LBC, right in the front. I don't know if some of you have seen it out there. And so a mission accomplished with the group. Why not work with the city? We thought maybe that's what we were supposed to do. Well, you were just so overwhelmed with stuff finding a place for a sculpture just fell off the table. No. Thank you. Is that a fair assessment, John? Go ahead. We're into Mr. Tibbetstein now. Thank you, Mayor. I actually do want to try to follow up on the mayor's questions. That's what I had written down as well about. Has there been something recently that this council made a decision on that you may have picked up in the paper and read and thought, you know, I would have done this differently. And if you don't want to know it, I would have done it differently. I would have done it differently. I would have done it differently. I would have done it differently. You have to present it with a land mine. It's to really gauge how we as a body work together because very frequently this body disagrees. And as you pointed out I think we do a good job of being cordial about it and then massaging the outcome to a decent public policy most of the time. So, yeah, if you with that. You phrased a little differently here. About a week ago, the six of you all got a thumbs down from the editorial staff of the press democrat. Do you remember what it was for? It wasn't for what you did, it was for what you failed to do. You remember? You failed to provide laboratory facilities at our courthouse square. Why not? Well, the fear is that if you make it too comfortable for people down at our new courthouse square, it's going to be inhabited by what less desirable elements of the community. Stop and think about that for a minute. What have you not done? How have you made a mistake? Well, on July 9th, you did something that made all of us that have been working with the Southeast Greenway for a decade very happy. But let me tell you, it was a long hard struggle to do work on our own before we got any encouragement from the city council. Now, my leadership in the Southeast Greenway will applaud what you've done. I'm being candid with you. I sat in the office of Chuck Regalia who said this is never going to happen. Caltrans is impossible to work with. We put that property out of sight, out of mind for a half century. Oh my God, who knows what will ever come of it here? And we said, well, we want to do something with it and we want to do it now and we want your help and encouragement. No, I don't have any money. No, and even if I give you staff time, that still has to be budgeted. I don't have any extra staff time. No. The initial response from the city was good work. Go do it on your own and good luck. Now, I resented that myself, but fortunately cooler heads in the Greenway effort who are more congenial perhaps. Well, let's keep working with them. Let's keep doing what we can do and maybe we'll get back to them. And it has worked out. So on the 9th of July, you entered into an agreement that you are going to negotiate with Caltrans. We are going to acquire that property. We are going to turn it into amenity for the entire community. And what's the one thing that gives anyone any reservations about what we're planning to do? The fear that the new Greenway would be turned into another Joe Rodota trail. And that prevents us from doing something good for the community because we're afraid that because we've neglected a segment of our community that they're going to ruin it for all of us. I mean, that's a horrible statement about either who we are or how we see ourselves or how we see ourselves relating to the unfortunate that live among us. Okay. Allow me to thank you for your efforts on that. Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Pedrogrypt. Good. So I'll jump right in. One of the more contentious or difficult decisions our council has had to make was given the trajectory of the Hanley and the Tubbs fire, do you think people from Fountain Grove should have been able to rebuild their homes and should the city have helped facilitate that? I'm not sure. Could you rephrase that? I'm not sure I kind of understand. I mean, it seemed like the question. So obviously, of course, but so there must be something deeper that I'm missing. Yeah. Do you believe, given that we've had two fires of similar paths? Yes. That a third one is inevitable and therefore the city should have done more to try to relocate people out of that path? Wow. Well, you know, along the Russian river, we seem to have a hundred-year flood, you know, a couple of times a decade. And, you know, as people go back into the flood zone and they want to rebuild their homes, insurance companies say, well, we're not going to insure you and then government regulation would say you have to build sort of above them. So you do have to accommodate the fact that you're living in a flood zone and these happen regularly. And the fact that we would put regulations upon people who want to rebuild their home was understandable. Yeah, you don't go back there and do the same thing you did. So now we're asking the same question in regards to fires. Are fires so predictable that we're going to treat fires in the north part of the city here in the county? The same way we count floods inevitable. You count on them. And a fire that happened 50 years before the 2017 fire, with almost the same footprint, now happens just two years later. So it's bound to happen again. Don't rebuild. Wow. I mean, we can't solve the problem that causes these fires. You can't stop a flood. It's going to rain. That is definitely beyond our control. But the ability to stop fires, I mean, haven't we been pointed? I don't want to put all the blame on PG&E. Those were exceptional wins. But can't we do something in anticipation of the risk that we have that mitigates the effects of these things? I would say that'd be giving up if we're just going to turn our back on the people that live there and haven't lived there for a number of years. Just say, well, it's inevitable. Your place will probably burn down. Let me jump topics on you really fast, because it is a tough one. But I do want to make sure we also ask, what's your understanding of the operations? Well, as far as I can impact that the public safety power shutoffs have been having on city staff. What's been going on? I don't know that PG&E has coordinated well with the city. It looks as though power has continued at all the fire stations. So if you happen to live in a part of town in which you're connected on the same network as the fire department, your power didn't get turned off. But if that's not the case, you lost power or you lost internet connection or you lost something. I think there could be probably much greater coordination and advance notice than maybe not only the addition to keeping electricity running for our fire departments. How about our schools? I think there could be greater coordination and cooperation between the city and PG&E. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. All right, Mr. Pettigraf, is your opportunity for a one-minute closing? Okay, yes. Well, I actually laid out my intention of running, but I thought fairly well in my opening statement, I assured you that you can count on me on my sacred honor, that I will live up to the three promises that were spelled out. I will not run in 2020. I'm a fast study. I don't have to go all the way back to square one in learning the job of being a council person, and I will dedicate myself to catching up to speed, and I promise that I will work cooperatively with all of you. I'm not a divisive person. I'm a school teacher, so I've learned how to ask questions and listen carefully when people answer and be respectful. And I don't pose enemies, and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much, Mr. Pettigraf. All right, next is Clint Saunders-Aunt. Well, sir, thank you for applying for this position. Just give a brief outline. You'll have a three-minute opportunity for a three-minute opening comment, and if you'll notice it is being timed, you'll hear a little buzz when your time is up, and then we'll have opportunities for each council member for four minutes to ask you questions. You may get interrupted because the council member gets to use those four minutes as he or she chooses, and then you'll have an opportunity for a one-minute closing comments. Okay? All right. Opening statement. My name's Clint Saunders. I've lived in Santa Rosa for, actually, born and raised in Calistoga, and traveled to Santa Rosa a lot through the last 40 years, and moved to Santa Rosa about a year ago, over in Walter Road. And I see, well, I've had firefighting experience in the late 90s with Napa County Fire and EMS, then I was a commercial driver for a while, then I'm now my realtor for the last two years, and I see about bringing my values or services and skills to the community as a value. Okay. All right, then we'll go to Councilman Mr. Sawyer. You're going to start this round of questions. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for being here, Mr. Saunders. Thank you. What role do you believe personal philosophy should play in your decision making? I would say the knowledge to be able to gather data and experience about each issue, like homelessness in a community, and exercising those knowledge with the team in the community, to overcome the solid plan that'll actually work as a good solid foundation. What do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess? Honesty. And I think that's good. Thank you. That's fine. Thank you so much for coming in. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. Sometimes on Council, we have not so much. Pretty much every week we have two competing interests and multiple different topics where we have to deal with people who are going to be unhappy no matter what we decide. How would you deal with that? Not just from the Council. I mean, we're fairly gentle with each other about that stuff, but the public sometimes doesn't have that same commitment to, you might get nasty emails or people who say things to you. How would you deal with that? That's actually pretty easy for me. It's what it is. People speak their mind to me. I'm like, okay, thank you for your input. It's nothing that's going to bother me. Okay. How would you approach our goal setting process in March? How would I approach it? I would have an open mind to learn and be new to the city member and definitely put my efforts towards helping create different newer ideas to solve the problems in the community. That's a really big question, so I understand. It is. I'm not trying to give you a hard time. Anyway, I'm going to see my time and let the mayor go next. Thank you again for coming in this morning. What do you see if you were to be selected? What would be your biggest challenge for serving on the Council? I think my schedule is pretty open. Right now, my main income is being a ride share driver, so I'm out picking up people in the community all day. I'm talking with them. I'm gathering information and being a realtor, training that it's optional to go to, and then I set up a few appointments for my clients every now and then. But overall, availabilities, I could put it in my account. I probably put the goal setting date on my calendar already. So I'm not talking so much about your availability, but you're actually now serving. You've got the time. What do you see as your biggest challenge with all the issues that this City Council is dealing with? What do you see as your biggest challenge to be able to provide in those services that the community wants from its Council? I don't see any challenges. It's just bringing in different ideas, talking with my co-workers, gathering information, talking with the community members, and ultimately bringing my values of being a voice for the community, and then bringing that as a value to a community within the Council. So conversely, what do you think would be your easiest area of expertise as you would transition onto the Council that this is your sweet spot? You're really going to be strong in this area that the Council deals with? Right now, I'm a little shy in front of a microphone outside of a courtroom. I love talking in a courtroom, but I'm pretty open. I'm very versatile to be able to fit any position. I can go out and talk to anybody in the community. I've talked with homeless people. I've interviewed them. I've gotten different input about some of them want to be helped. Some of them don't. Some probably should be assessed from mental status to what we can do to build a plan to get them back into the community as functional people. Okay. And then I know in your application you'd mention that you attend a number of Council meetings. So we've established some tier one priorities. Do you agree with those tier one priorities? And if not, what would you substitute again, limit it to five different priorities? If you have another priority out there, what would you want that to be and what would you take off our priority list? I don't remember any exact emotions that you guys made for what I disagreed with or agreed with. Okay. I'm flexible as long as it does good for a community, you know, if it's the budget. Okay. Thanks. That's all I got. Thanks, Mayor. Mr. Saunders, you seem like a young guy and one of the reasons why I wanted to sit up here is because I felt like the city wasn't doing enough to create futures for young people. How do you feel as a young person in this community? Do you feel like it's a place of prosperity? Do you feel that it could be improved? If it could be improved, how would you improve it? Could you share your thoughts? Well, I'm not too young anymore. I'm 40. Hey, I'm pushing 30, so I'm going to be, you know, there for myself. You're way behind, but I promise. That's all right. The next 10 years is a goal. But the community is good. I mean, there's always good and bad things about all every community, but each strength and participation of the members of the community to make it a better community is always a plus. Okay. And I still consider 40 young, but as a 40-year-old man, do you feel like there's something specific that needs to be improved? I mean, one thing, let me try to, our downtown, for example, you know, it's been pretty asleep for a long time. This council has made tremendous efforts to try to really activate the space. I mean, the council prior brought forward the courthouse square, the Chamber of Commerce and local businesses are very active in the space. But development there seems to be slow to start. Is there any specific actions that you think, I mean, especially given your background in real estate, that we could be doing to make that a better and more inviting and attractive space to both participation among community members as well as investors? Okay. I think the first problem help is clean up the homeless sleeping in the gutters or the front of the businesses and clean up the atmosphere with that. But that would definitely be something I'd have to go out and talk to the business owners in the community and the people and see if they have any... Assess what their needs are, basically. Yeah, success with their needs are, because I had one guy, he worked at a restaurant down in Tarnia, he said, one homeless guy come in demanding food one night and everyone's like, okay, and I don't know if they give him food or not, but he kind of came in and made a scene in the restaurant. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. You're welcome. Good morning, sir. Good morning. All right. Let's have one step beyond council member. You're suddenly king. How do you solve homelessness? That's a good question because there's many different levels of what the homeless people need individually. As I said, my experience interviewing them, some of them want to be helped. Some of them don't want responsibilities in life and some of them, I think, should be assessed mentally to see because they're using substances or such. So it's a quite different array. And then when you do help someone, I wouldn't want to be on the... Just give them everything because then I think they're entitled. I would give them something to want to build their lives better. So as a council member, how would you balance the rights of a homeless individual versus the rights of neighbors? That's more research. It needs to be determined like doing a neighborhood survey before you put in a homeless encampment or a rehab center. Okay. So if you were going to be working on a homeless center, rehab center, whatever have you, do you have any ideas for current places in Santa Rosa that you would like to see them? Well, there's a corner lot at the fairgrounds over above Berkwood. There's the old Kmart lot and then there's the motel, well, boarded up motel on Santa Rosa Avenue at Mill Street. Okay. Those, prospectually. And maybe the area off of the Stony Point Road, trying to think what street it is, back over by Amy's warehouse, the warehouse for Amy's kitchen, but across that old field. Okay. If you were to serve on the council, which subcommittees would you want to serve on? Could you name a couple? We've got the Long Term Finance and Cannabis and we have the Leadership Council for Homelessness and we have Snop County Transportation Authority and the Waterways Committee. We have quite a few. Okay. Out of those, I want to do the Leadership for Homeless Committee. Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Mr. Allbears. Thank you very much. Mr. Soldiers, in your application, you mentioned the two top pressing issues facing Santa Rosa homelessness and affordable housing. Based on your real estate experience, give me some more perspective on the affordable housing issues and how do we address that? How do we solve that issue here in Santa Rosa? Well, it's been a realtor. The hardest problem I have with finding clients is finding people who can actually afford this area. You know, by the time I put all numbers on the table for them, they're like, I can't do it. That's a solution. Well, I did watch a couple of months ago when I was getting my car serviced, I took my computer and I did watch the California Assembly, went back in the videos where they did have a formula where they were talking about housing prices and where they had to have a guy watch a video again to understand their formula to figure out different housing prices in different parts of California. But I would definitely research that to see what we could do, you know, to help lower the housing prices in the community. Good. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Soldiers, do you have an opportunity to give us a one-minute closing statement? I feel my skills and knowledge would be very helpful to the community as a team on the council member or in the city members and a value to the community. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for your application. All right. Thank you. Welcome, Jacqueline. Thank you for being here on time since we're running an actual little bit early, which is a very encouraging sign for this day for us. So I'm just, I know you've been given these time frames, but we'll just reiterate them. So you will give me an opportunity for a three-minute opening comment. Then each council member will have up to four minutes to ask you any questions here she may want. Just give it a heads up. You may be interrupted because against the council person's, his or her time to actually get the information from you that they want. And then they'll have, you'll have an opportunity for a one-minute closing statement. Okay. Thank you. You're on. Good morning, Mr. Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, council members in the assembled community. Thank you for your time. I'm asking to be appointed to city council because I represent a generation of working Santa Rosaans who are struggling to create and maintain economically sustainable lives. Despite being highly educated and having obtained a measure of professional success, I find it alarmingly difficult to achieve economic security for myself, my family, and my employees. I've lived in Santa Rosa for 25 years and was educated in the Santa Rosa City school system from elementary school through senior high school. I graduated from Santa Rosa Junior College before transferring to UCLA. I'm a small business owner and a second generation family firm. As a licensed California private fiduciary, I manage trusts and estates and I'm a corn appointed conservator for the elderly and the disabled. I'm experienced in investment management and taxation, business operations, real estate purchases, and contract law. I'm a national certified guardian and a public notary and I took an oath to uphold the standard of care that protects the best interests of my clients and to oversee their financial stability for them and their future beneficiaries. I work with senior citizens who have contributed their entire lives to this city. Yet despite the progress our city has enjoyed, a significant portion of this population is being left behind. Many elders face increasingly vulnerable economic conditions that threaten their inclusion in our society. The lack of affordable housing and services for this sector is approaching crisis mode. I'm an elder justice advocate. I serve on the board of Sonoma County Legal Aid and I believe in creating an age-friendly city to ensure seniors vibrant participation in our community. I'm an environmentalist and I support building up within urban centers to safeguard our green spaces. I believe in responsible urban planning and leveraging collaborative partnerships. Yet we must bring into focus established and vulnerable populations so that we include and not exclude or displace them. City subsidized development should continue to be a tool to build bridges between residents and investors while also holding ourselves accountable to the underserved. I'm driven to action because of a deep commitment to climate justice because climate injustice is very real. It is widely recognized that vulnerable populations are most impacted by climate change and as learned from the recent fires, our diverse community is suffering from disparities in recovery. This is a direct consequence of existing income inequality, disproportionate access to recovery services, local immigration policy and systemic racism. As we continue to embrace economic development in Santa Rosa, we must close the opportunity gaps and increase truly equitable investments. My life experiences and my professional expertise make me an excellent choice for this opportunity. I'm able to attend regular and extended Tuesday council meetings. I'm available for March goal setting sessions and I am excited to learn about this subcommittee assignments. I'm prepared to accept this opportunity with curiosity and dedication and I thank you for your consideration. Great, thank you. Ms. Flaming, you're first. Thank you so much for coming in and for touching on so many topics that are dear to our council. I'm curious to know how your perspective on seniors and persons with disabilities and financial responsibility would inform your philosophy going into our goal setting. So I understand that housing and homelessness are the most important topics going into this next year and housing for senior citizens is a very important priority that I think we should be considering. The rise in renters in Sonoma County and on a national scale is primarily due to senior citizens who are downsizing based on reducing their monthly expenses in homes and because they are suffering from isolation. And so unless we begin to consider this influx that is going to be on top of young people and on top of homeless people, then I think we're going to be in a difficult situation. And then apart from that, I'd just like to say that as an age-friendly community, I think that public restrooms are a huge priority for us. I understand that the council just approved public restroom downtown, but public restrooms and resting places for senior citizens is one of the biggest deterrents for why they don't come downtown because it's hard enough to find a place to park, but then once they're walking, there aren't places to sit down. And a lot of people don't have disposable income in their 70s and their 80s to go into a restaurant and use the restroom. Do you have a sense of how open senior citizens would be to an improved and more user-friendly public transportation system within the city of Santa Rosa and if that would be of any use to your clients and their families? Absolutely. I do understand that there is a city bus that goes out to Oakmont. There's only one and there's only one route, but and it can be quite intimidating for seniors who have a lot of mobility access or problems to get on those city buses. I think that also digital rideshare services like Lyft and Uber are very complicated and intimidating for senior citizens. Most of them don't even have smartphones in order to use those. So I think some sort of a city sanctioned taxi service or rideshare or an encouraged rideshare group that senior citizens can trust as city sanction would be most helpful. In addition to restrooms and improved transportation, is there anything else that you could see? I mean my perspective is that when we help any particular group of people who are less than you know standard able-bodied adult that we tend to help everybody. Is there any additional ideas that you have and it's okay if not this is a really broad question that would improve both the lives of seniors and the community as a whole? So one of what I think the most important things is eliminating isolation in seniors and so by having co-ops and encouraging intergenerational co-ops for seniors would be a really good first step. I think also senior villages there's something very similar happening in Petaluma and in Sevastopol right now where many senior citizens live in independent small tiny houses or apartments and there are contractors who are contracted with those groups that charge a little bit less that have been vetted by the community that a senior citizen can call and trust that this stranger is going to come into their house and fix their plumbing or whatever they need. And so I think if the city encouraged those co-ops that more seniors would more especially low income seniors would consider moving into them that's what mobile home parks are right now. Thank you so much for your perspective. Yeah. So keeping one question about some of your comments regarding seniors you talk about seniors coming downtown and some of the barriers are you know parking, restrooms, places to sit down. What would the solution be? What could this council and if you were to be on this council what would you be advocating to attract seniors to come downtown San Rosa? So again public restrooms is a huge thing I think seating places I think one of the biggest deterrents is access and seating and there's been all kinds of studies about this in communities that have increased resting places for senior citizens that they become locations where people a lot of homeless people spend a majority of their day on and that is a deterrent to seniors and so you know something where you know on the bus where the first couple of seats says this is reserved for disabled or senior citizens maybe that would be helpful I'm sure it's a very complicated issue. I think parking is is a huge one for us I'm not sure how to go about that other than the disabled parking also I think that we need more disabled parking all over the city one or two spaces is not enough for the bulk of seniors to come downtown. Okay you talked about those top two issues San Rosa demand for affordable housing and higher paying jobs and a need for urban innovation focused on underrepresented groups. So the housing is one of our tier one priorities what which one of our tier one priorities would you say we should replace if urban innovation focused on underrepresented groups would be a priority for you because one of the challenges that we have on council we'd love to do everything and then the folks sitting at the table with you staff capacity so what would you change and what would you drop off our tier one priorities to hit this I am. Well I don't necessarily believe that we need to drop anything off I think that we just need to incorporate more solutions to bringing up some of our underrepresented members of the community. So for example in our long-term housing policy we should be considering you know catering to communities that may have been displaced from Opportunity Zone equity building and development and those that long-term housing should incorporate parts of the community that are now underserved for low-income people so for example the east side of Santa Rosa bringing in more affordable housing over there and inclusionary developments and then I also believe that that emergency homeless situations could incorporate the the innovative planning allowing for very low-income people to take advantage of some of the emergency housing that we are creating for homeless people. Okay I want to ask a quick question about emergency preparedness as you know this community is experiencing a couple disasters going back to 17 the way they can cave fire in the PSPS is from what your understanding of the city's preparedness to emergencies what do you see as our strengths and what do you see as the areas we need improvement. So I think one of the best strengths that the city has developed in the last year or two has been focusing on bilingual communication. I worked in the EOC during the 2017 fire I did the overnight shifts I was the only bilingual speaker for the telephones for the first two days before I requested that students from the Santa Rosa junior college come to help me to cover shifts as the as media came out that there were Spanish speaking people available to discuss what's going on and how when they might be able to return to their homes the influx of telephone calls increased enormously this year during the fires I was a part of the Corazon Hillsburg and the Undocu fund and I believe that with city attention city sponsored attention that more people had understood that there was access to them. So I applaud the city for doing that. I know that we can get this to this. Thank you mayor and thank you Ms. Ocanya I'd appreciate how detailed and granular you're getting in your policy proposals and I especially appreciate what you're suggesting for seniors but I'm curious about what would you do for younger folks living in this community do you what deficiencies do you see that you could put your policy prowess to work on? So again one of the biggest things is housing I think that if if you're privileged enough to live in a household and go to the junior college or Sonoma State for example and not have to pay rent that your chances of succeeding are far better than someone who does not have that opportunity. I think that it's wonderful that the junior college has created this new dormitory style building. I don't know what the price price points are going to be for that but I think that the city should be in collaboration with that project so that we may be able to substitute or to encourage additional building to to support students who can't afford to live in those dorms. I also think that part of the urban innovations that the city could sponsor is startup capital for young underrepresented people who don't necessarily come from families of educated parents or career parents promoting funds for business improvement for young entrepreneurs. I think a lot of people in this this community is very encouraging to entrepreneurs but it's very expensive to live here and so with some startup capital I think people have a better chance of going farther and that could include something like micro loans or low to no interest loans to young people who might qualify. Okay that's awesome. Looking at the city as a whole right now what would you say is the most pressing issues affordable housing? So I think I think obviously homelessness is the most pressing issue and a huge part of that is because there's no and I may not have all of the information here but I think that the majority of other cities in our county are not pulling their weight as far as contributing to the solutions of homelessness. I think that city-sanctioned homeless encampments are probably the most important emergency thing that we can do there's they just formed a city-sanctioned homeless encampment in Oakland last winter that's been very successful that offers it's a it's considered a city safe zone that offers hot water, access to electricity, food, medical services and social services and the key point here is that the city is fostering collaborative partnerships with private entities including nonprofits, faith-based organizations, businesses and schools so those social services and medical services are being contributed on a volunteer basis by nonprofits and by clinics for example so I think I think the city could contribute to that. Okay thanks I don't have any further questions but you still have a minute is there anything that you wish I had asked you? One I think that so I've been following this CASA initiative with the MTA and I understand that the first renter assembly is coming up on January 25th that's through the Sonoma County Tenants Union so I think that that's something that the city should encourage and be a part of the again those tenants are for that for the CASA project is the protection preservation and production of affordable housing and so I strongly believe that that's where we are going but I think that obviously we have some major crises that we have to attend to right now and I think that that's sponsoring sanctioned homeless in camp mills is probably the best way to get to that. Thanks. Good morning. Hi. I wanted to redirect you a little bit you mentioned climate justice yes and I think we've talked a lot at this council level about how difficult it is to be a part of the solution for climate change when you can't afford to put food on the table so what role do you think that renters and low-income folks in our city have in addressing climate and how would you help encourage them to be a part of the solution? So I think one major thing that the city could help with is sponsoring an organic compostable system through I guess it's the Recology now so right now we have the recycling and we have regular garbage but I think that a lot of people would be receptive to having a compostable container on their property. It's worked in New York City it's worked in Dallas, Fort Worth and that's something that I think has been in the works that we could establish and that's a way for all parts of all economic sectors of our community to contribute. I think making public transportation more accessible to lower-income families the smart train I think is a fabulous idea but I think it's also fabulous expensive and so finding some kind of a median something perhaps like paratransit or you know public benefit recipient discounts in order to use the smart train might be helpful as well. Great and then for the first time kind of on a similar thread for the first time the city made climate change a tier one priority and to the mayor's question do you see it as a tier one priority that you'd like to maintain and if so is there more that you'd like to see the city doing on that issue? So absolutely I think that should be a tier one priority and again like I said I think that there are small things that the city can demand that would assist in making climate change more of a priority for all community members so if you see a compostable can on your sidewalk you're going to use it well the majority of people will be motivated to use it and so if the city demands those small changes in people's lifestyles I think that the popularity of it will be accepted. One of the other challenges that the city really struggles with in terms of long-term finances is ongoing pension obligations. What would you bring to the table for those discussions and what perspective would you have to help the council as we try to address those issues? So pension is not an area of my expertise I'm eager to learn about it I do understand as far as our orientation yesterday that instead of for every two people working we have one person in retirement now we have two people in retirement one person working and so I again I'm eager to learn about that I think that the pension system is what allows people to live their best lives after contributing service and so I still feel that it's very valuable and I would be interested in learning more about it. Excellent final question from me we've talked a lot about recovery at the city that's also been a priority where do you see recovery going in the next year and in particular the council is going to have to answer the question when are we no longer in an emergency have you started to contemplate what that actually means for our city? I don't think we're ever going to be in a situation of no longer in an emergency I think that the fires have put us have put at the forefront the potential of what could happen at any time and one thing we're no one's talking about is a major earthquake so if it's not a fire if it's not an earthquake if it's not an economic recession then what is that going to be and so I think that having a heightened sense of urgency in crisis management is the only way that we're going to get through anything that's going to going to present themselves to us. Great thank you so much. Mr. Kanya in your application you mentioned your opinion that the city needs to be more involved in alleviating emergent issues related to public health give us some ideas about how the council can be more engaged in that. So again my idea of the city sanctioned encampments was where I was going with that so I understand that in today's paper we there's a possibility of opening an encampment towards the airport I think that any location that's in an industrial zone that's going to eliminate complaints by as many neighbors as possible is a good option but that's about as far away from services as you could possibly get and so and it's people can't afford to take the smart train into downtown so I believe that in managing these homeless and if if we do intend to go down that pathway in managing those we have to be conscientious of the whole person and how that person's being served. Thank you. Mr. Kanya thanks for being here this morning. How do you balance the need for infill development for seniors and and others with protecting our various historic neighborhoods virtually which virtually surround our downtown and in other sensitive parts of our city which would and those not only do we need the infill housing but those historic neighborhoods also contain a fair number of seniors how do you balance those two needs? Well I think one of the greatest complaints from people is that infill housing is out of line with the character of the neighborhood and so if we are conscientious about how that infill housing contributes to the vibrancy of the neighborhood then I think people would be more receptive to it. One thing I did want to discuss was an updated cooperative housing ordinance for Santa Rosa. I think that some of these beautiful old buildings in the Cherry Street neighborhood for example could easily be turned into co-ops a lot of them have already been turned into apartment market rate apartment buildings if the city was able to sanction or sponsor cooperative housing in low and high density areas low density areas being the historic neighborhoods that it would foster vibrancy it would it would reduce isolation for seniors and I think that it would allow space for young people who are working professionals who are artists who are musicians to afford to live in downtown that's what makes downtown vibrant we can't just have all wealthy people living in downtown they leave or they don't hang out on the square. Thank you and what role do you believe personal philosophy should play in your decision making? Well I think my background and any personal experience and business experience would guide me in any understanding of city policy and I think that being able to offer a perspective of someone who is bicultural bilingual and who has been a community activist as well as the business woman would would offer a additional opinion additional perspective so I do think that personal philosophy drives an enormous amount of debate and discussion but I also think that it's important to balance that with the greater good and the ability to actually create policy and get actions done. What do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess? So one of the um I gained this perspective because I was on the art council on the art committee and what I learned from that was that developing that wider perspective on why things can or cannot get done or why things take a certain amount of time to get done in a certain amount of expense allows you to developing that perspective gives you a greater opportunity to maintain your goals while also being practical and pragmatic and learning to navigate relationships for people who have different political and world view opinions is in a diverse working style was very educational to me and then also balancing that bureaucracy while continuing to stay motivated thank you okay thank you okay you have one minute for a closing statement okay so I'd like to thank the council for considering my application I'd also like to recognize the privilege that I have sitting here before you today I hope the council will recognize the value of having a young Latina business woman contribute insight from underrepresented communities specifically those of the elderly and of people of color I'm bilingual and bicultural as a Mexican American I'm part of a rapidly expanding Latino demographic in our city this demographic success depends greatly upon the policies created by our city government Santa Rosa Santa Rosa's economy is driven in large part due to the economic contributions of documented and undocumented people yet exploitation of these contributions persist and people of color suffer from a lack of cultural competency across our public and private institutions Latinos and people of color deserve greater representation in policy making and leadership roles if elected I will work to build bridges within the city council and among private and public entities I appreciate and value mentorship and if appointed I will be seeking opportunities to learn from current and formal council members thank you thank you very much welcome Brian thank you for applying for this position you're probably all aware of the timing but I'm just going to reiterate it for you so we'll give you an opportunity for a three-minute opening comment or statement then we'll go around each council member will have four minutes to ask you any questions he or she wants you may be interrupted because it's really the council's person's time to ask the questions that's really relevant to them and then you'll have an opportunity for one minute closing statement so with that please provide your opening statement well hello good afternoon my name is Brian Flores and first of all I'd like to start off that I've been a resident of the Rosen district my whole life and Santa Rosa is really the only thing I've ever known for me my parents coming from immigrant parents this is the only place that would actually give them a chance in order to live and thrive for me for in my mother's words how she would always say that this is the only place that has made her feel like family and home away from home for me I in their instance for my for them to get motivation to work long hours such as my dad who goes up in the morning all the way to Petaluma and come back all the way in the night and my mom to take up as many cleaning jobs as she can it's the only place that she feels like home and it's they have such joy here and it's for me it's giving me the motivation to do whatever I can to in order to help it I have done multiple and feats of community service since ever since nine years ago which I guess if you count the numbers I'm 18 and that's probably literally half of my life I've done multiple different things in programs dealing with drugs and alcohol homelessness and people have just been dealt bad cards also every now and then a couple odd jobs even with the city of just you know some park events and just doing any kind of community service that I can pick up it's from there I've gotten recognized for my community service as in 2019 I was given the youth leader of the year award from the center for well-being and I was a nominee of the press democrat health service award for me community service is just any way I can give back to the community and it's immediate action that I know only works in certain ways but the reason why I've wanted to take the city council step is that it's policy that is more permanent for me I've never been invisible to the problems I've only been recently able to afford a car and parked it outside with the fear of the parking meter but I've been biking everywhere all the way from southern Santa Rosa all the way to my workplace at the airport and I've seen multiple different discrepancies in the community within homelessness I used to bike here all the time to stay informed and I would always see the drover daughter trail slowly increase for me it's kind of a whole thing where I've stayed informed from coming here to the city council meetings seeing everywhere in my community and also going to any locian communities that I could go to it's been quite a problem I guess as of right now dealing with money problems and that's why housing is another thing that's I'm passionate about as I'm trying to I take in a year off school and maybe a second year where the conversation of my parents that basically I'm trying to do whatever I can to help with the rent and allow them to stay in the city and yeah that would be great thanks right what do you see if you were to be appointed for this position what do you see as your biggest challenge actually serving my biggest challenge well for me it's kind of just like staying it's more or less just learning with the curve right here I know I've been able to see it within the public standpoint and also being invited to the dais but I really just want to learn as much as I can for the policies I know working at the airport I've done dealt with multiple like learning multiple different tsa policies and seeing how long gated and informed that they can be but I feel like just learning about all the policies and the different instances and I guess different parts of the city is just kind of the problem as you mentioned you grew up in Roseland so as you're aware in November of 17 we annexed Roseland into the city of Santa Rosa month after the fires what do you see the biggest needs being in Roseland and what do you wish the city was doing that the city is not doing well a lot of people are having problem of just attention they kind of feel like some of the services are just not being spread out evenly for me I kind of feel like it should be spread out evenly as it is I don't want to give Roseland any like I guess higher standpoint but there's certain things like the rosin library that some people are saying or people keep feeling that the homeless problem is just being pushed on them and as they do solely feel that they have a right to be here and have accommodations but it's the whole thing where some people feel a bit neglected as some of the problems are being more prevalent in their area and just being pushed off as it is okay one of the priorities for this city council is climate action and coming before the council in the coming weeks will be a discussion about whether or not the city as an entity should go to evergreen which is a little bit you know clean energy but it's probably going to cost approximately a million dollars what are your thoughts on that and is that the direction you think the city should be taking well personally I've always focused on local problems as it is within homelessness and all that but climate is a big thing I guess nationally and everywhere so it's kind of a whole thing we're taking that big change I would agree with that seeing how the I guess the news as of late with how climate change and problem problems within the environment are really becoming more prevalent as like Australian bush fires and other things like that it's it's quite scary and I'd rather do whatever I can to help the environment as well so one of the benefits of being on council so if you want to go in that direction there's a cost-benefit analysis the benefit is the environment the cost would be what would we stop doing what million dollars worth of services would you recommend we tell the city manager stop providing so that we can go evergreen when it comes to that that's more or less another one of my problems to understand all services that are provided areas as of when I would be here I would like to take an account of all services that are being provided different areas because I'm not entirely sure of all services there are areas that can be considered I guess not needed so from there I would just want to learn okay one of the things that we were trying to focus on is a revitalization of downtown Santa Rosa do you have any suggestions for that the city should be doing to help revitalize our downtown well it was a whole thing of maybe like I believe we had more things out there but modern art as it is any kind of art that is allowed and maybe more allowance of community events maybe some things like rosin and their dancers and everything that's kind of like anything that revitalizes rosin as just you know more than just the city but just like the culture of the city and inviting different I guess standpoints of people who've come from all over as I've seen in my place thank you Mr. Flores it's great to see you here I think you found your stride with the public microphone I mean that sincerely I wanted to ask you so of the the vast number of public policies that we deal with up here what would be the area of interest that you are most compelled to work on or interested in I should say well as it is I do understand if it becomes second priority but more or less proper annexation of rosin and bringing services to them but the main problem that's really striking me at the moment would be homelessness as seen like I'm saying biking here from the joe redotta trail and seeing it's kind of heartbreaking seeing the joe redotta trail slowly in large as it was over the course of a couple months and seeing that became one of the biggest in the city I mainly focus on homelessness and housing as it's a problem within housing is a problem within my own home and homelessness is a problem within my community any specific policies around homelessness that you would want to employ as a member of this city council is there anything let me try to drill down a little bit more specifically is there anything that this council is not doing that you believe should be done well for me it's more or less just like the long-term standpoint would be a come and housing for these people if it is just a big shelter unit that gives them off their feet but more or less I didn't want to at least grant services that allow their safety and more or less just I guess protection of them because there's a whole thing with I guess just a crime that goes on there that's kind of scary for all of them and it's sanitation services so it's sanitation and police kind of bringing security there in the moment as a short-term solution okay one thing that I've been asking a few folks as has the mayor is there has there been a moment or a time when you picked up the press democrat and read about a decision that the city council has ruled on or decided upon and you thought this really missed the mark or they decided the wrong way or they missed an opportunity to do it better well coming there I never really gotten to press democrat but more or less coming here physically as a I used to be able to come here more prevalently but it was a whole thing where it was a can like a cannabis dispensary it was a whole thing where I didn't really get to see the ruling act of it but they were they were fighting with a local preschool and and basically that whole factor of a local preschool and I forgot but basically it was within traffic solutions and it was kind of interesting the rerouting way of traffic that whole thing where I felt like people should have been fine for like smoking outside or anything that would have been basically basically it would have been harmful to any of the students around the area and scare them off in any way just something that would allow penal action for I guess smoking around the preschoolers in any way so you felt like the and I if I'm paraphrasing for you incorrectly please jump in but you were it was the trailhouse decision trail and you felt as though it was just probably too close to proximity to the preschool because you didn't want children to be exposed to cannabis smoke yeah yeah that's okay well hey is there you got 30 seconds is there anything that you want to say that I didn't ask that you wish I had asked you I mean for me it's more or less of just what it might take on Rosen isn't just growing up there I guess okay thank you mr. floors morning morning so one of the things that the council has discussed and struggled with over the last couple of years is development in the fountain grove area and specifically after seeing the trajectory of the Hanley fire the trajectory of the tubs fire the trajectory of the king cave fire if you were a council member would you want people to rebuild them in fountain grove would you want to put new development in fountain grove and should the city help people with that well I definitely feel there should be new development considering I get a whole loss of housing that is there and it's basically still an area that is still usable but the only thing that I would really know is more fire services and more I guess recovery options that would allow for I guess roof fire prevention in a certain way keeping everything up to code and making sure that everything is not basically not in in direct harm of it but the only thing I would really know is to just make sure that fire services are always there to at least defend the fire or if anything I mean it's kind of thing but controlling I don't know if it would work too well but control burns around the area or keeping less flamble areas in the border of it okay so this march in the primary there will be a ballot measure that's on fire services in hopes of fun fire services have you had a chance to look at that and if if so do you have any thoughts on what the county is proposing from there I can say I have not had a chance to look at that okay go ahead take a look at it it's something that we talk about in conjunction with our fire services as well is there anything else related to emergency services that you think the city should be doing better or could do better it's more or less just a thing with emergency services just as police I know they are busy and offhand and how there's vacancies but again just keeping more I guess in the area of homelessness for security okay I guess for the residents but also the homeless as well they don't deserve to be defted or assaulted anyway okay how would you build relationships in the community to make sure that you're doing adequate community engagement around the decisions that you're making as a council member well as it is I've already been doing community service for as long as possible for me I have been doing it within programs but I kind of want to do something well do it more or less on my own and on a tackle of homelessness I want to I guess regularly go there and I do I have in contact with one of the homeless advocates with an Mike Chase who comes there regularly and I mainly want to focus on my public relations with homelessness on the Joe Goddard trail okay thank you so much Brian I'm very impressed with your work so far as it relates to community engagement and your civic engagement as as a young man what are your ideas coming to council in helping to increase youth civic and youth civic engagement in center rosin well personally one thing that kind of helps is more more city involvement as it is to know that the city is prevalent I know another thing with rosin is that's a problem is that they didn't really feel the presence of more of a government there of like who are the people in the head some people don't even know the city council names or anything like that the department heads it's more or less of just coming to these schools that are in the rosin area or coming into schools in any other area and and choosing yourselves them see what they do and want to make them more interested in the city and make them feel more part of the city for me it's just kind of that way of just being feeling more part of a greater action that led me to go to these services and give me the motivation to go out and do whatever I can your work has been primarily in the rosin area how would you go about uploading more civic engagement with youth in other in other parts of center rose as well well that's a whole thing of just being more prevalent like I guess it's still the same thing of coming to the other schools and being more prevalent there and more or less just saying what could be done the city city services or even city jobs I know a lot of students would be more interested in that as well it's more I remember getting higher into the city was not a thing that I really knew of and I only really learned it once I was coming here and that was on the website and not many people were very like very much knew that and all the thing where I had a problem where I didn't know the services as of earlier but it would be nice to know I guess the extension of services that we do provide and tell exactly what I guess what to them what we are doing thank you Brian a follow-up question to is what ideas do you have for the city council the city to be more engaged with our rapidly growing Latino community oh I'd say I know there's more of an obligation for city council members to I guess come to some of the events but you know come to more of events as it is I mean I still remember like it's kind of seen someone in power in any case just dealing with the city it's kind of like a capturing thing coming to your event I remember I guess when I was little in the fifth grade I still remember with Tom Shredhelm he came to a pozole feed when I was in Rosen and I still remember to this day and it's kind of a whole capturing thing that you know someone from the city that deals with the problems and deals with the policy comes here to care thank you Brian this floor as you mentioned in your and first of all thank you for being here this morning it takes a lot of guts for someone of your age and your background and your position in life to be able to come and apply for this kind of position so I really I honor that and I appreciate it thank you you mentioned in your application the second pressing issue was the proper annexation of rosin what is the proper annexation of rosin look like to you well for me it's um as it was um it is annexed but what I mean like I guess proper integration uh more or less just uh feeling as it was more a part of the city because it was a whole thing where a lot of people didn't even know a lot of people already knew like already thought that they were annexed and they just thought that they were a part of the city this whole time and they just kind of went along with it it was just a whole thing of maybe more services coming to them about um I guess mean more informed if that is like more of the city council members or other people coming here to I guess either teach anything at the rosin line berries or just make sure that like the people are updated about services that are coming to them and what like I don't believe that many people do know but when with the annexation of Santa Rosa many people didn't know the services that came to them so it was more or less of just information and more help also like you know updates within to them about um the certain issues like homelessness thank you and um you mentioned the it's a communication issue also a couple of times um the communication with the rosin um neighbors has been challenging what would be your way to increase that communication to bring the information that's that is important and necessary to the rosin community uh I'd say one big factor that actually does scare off a lot of people in the rosin community um I'd say I know we have done things like with coffee with a cop if I remember correctly but uh more duration of also the police um I know that some people are more scared authority there because police but more or less uh showing them that they're more of a helpful figure uh I mean I know within my family and go into Mexico and in Urapan which is kind of I guess card tells it if you actually looked at it people are scared of the police and authority and coming back from there those areas and corruptions and basically all that they come that with that same sentiment and it's more or less just a thing to come over there and show like the police and how they're more or less like they're an actual like uh valuable authority that are not there to just harm them or call for bribes or anything like that it's just to help them by um showing that they're a friendly figure that they can trust thank you and what does governance mean to you governance is more or less um I know with me there's certain things of immediate action that um that I've done over the course of years that provide a short term solution but governance for me is more or less um I guess proper proper delegation and debate of policy that creates more of a permanent solution thank you mr floris thank you mr floris for coming in you're quite impressive I don't know that any well I will speak to myself when I was 18 I could not have done this nor done this as well as you have done it today it's been said before and I did not make this up um but I wish I had that you can't get ahead if you can't get around and you touched a little bit on that you would bike up to your your workplace near the airport until you could afford a car and I'm curious to know what you believe or your philosophy toward the future of transportation as it relates to pedestrians bikes cars parking and public transportation not a softball question I know but as it as it pertains to you and your generation that are this year getting the ability and the right to vote uh well more or less it's just like an expansion I mean I don't exactly know if there's a call for this but expansion of routes within the bus routes or anything like that because it was a whole problem with me where there was only one bus that went to Santa Rosa but it was more of like that sound to the airport and it was a county transit that would only pop up at very inconvenient times that would never work with my schedule uh it's kind of a thing where like not only I was just like more or less different routes that would go into the areas because it was a bit of a troubling problem having to go over the airport it was an hour bike ride and all that and I'm so glad that I've gone a car before the rain season um and it's a whole thing we're even just parking that that's a bit of a problem as well for people I mean this is the first time I ever parked actually at a city to pay and I'm a little bit scared of the meter still but and a lot of people are scared away from certain services in the city as well because some people will be attained like in rosen some people more likely to stay in rosen because they know that they have to pay for parking in city service like pay for parking in more areas of time in the city that's how they'll avoid the city do you believe there are ways that we can more tangibly improve bike access and pedestrian access for people from roseland and other areas that are immediately surrounding the sent the courthouse square area in the downtown well if I if there's anything that I do know um it's the I guess would maybe reduce some of the hours of payment of parking uh one of the biggest things within growing up my my mom and dad they they would avoid the city almost at all cost I've I almost never went here as a kid uh because of parking they they felt like they had no reason to be there at all because they could have all the services provided them in rosen and not have to pay it's more or less just a another expenditure that they didn't want to deal with and with the children problems with the rent that they already have they can they would want to save as much money as possible so the parking is a barrier to people coming downtown are there other ways that you envision that we can encourage people to come downtown regardless of their neighborhood that are not in their vehicles not in their vehicles well you're particularly good with the bike it sounds like yeah um more or less I guess this would less your people but another thing with like a common housing with the homeless some people are scared to use some of the bike routes because the homeless I know myself that you can't just assume that they're all criminals in any way but some people have that sentiment and are less likely to use the bike routes around this area and basically they're just fearful of anything that to come here within bike routes a lot of people feel like they're gonna get robbed I remember buying when I told people that I was biking everywhere they they would tell me every instance every location of where something where I could get robbed or anything like that that's their fear there so improving the safety of the existing bike corridors is what you're saying might be helpful yes okay thank you all right all done thank you brown k you have one minute for a closing statement okay um I know as it is being there before at the dice that this is still a really wonderful group to work with and how they come together not exactly debate I guess two opposing solutions but more debate how to go about the solution so I know that this is a wonderful group to work with and improving delegation in policies for me I believe that this is just you know it's just a great play it's a great city I really do love it and I want to do whatever I can but it's a bit of a problem of staying here and I just want to do whatever I can for as long as I can afford to live here if I could really say I just this place has really come out to be my family and I don't want to I guess lose it in a certain way great thank you very much Brian okay with that little head of schedule we will take a break now we're gonna go every interview do four interviews we'll be taking a break so I'd ask the council to be prepared to start the next interview at 11 10 thank you 11 10 was the next call so we'll reconvene the city council meeting welcome Judy I will give you a brief outline that you're probably all well aware of but as we start the interview you'll have a three minute opportunity or three minutes to provide an opening statement and we'll be rotating through the council members each council member will have four minutes to ask you any questions just give you a heads up they may choose to interrupt you if they've got enough information they have had the questions because they're each of them only has four minutes and then you'll have a one minute closing and there is a bell a very sophisticated sound that will be the clue that your time is up and you also have the timer right okay so with that Judy please give us your three minute opening okay Doug good morning Mayor Schwendhelm and council members city council is an elite group of elected officials but but today you offer 19 city residents an opportunity for a position on city council and I thank you for having me here today for consideration in this appointment process if appointed I'm prepared to attend all regularly scheduled Tuesday council meetings I'm available for the city's goal setting sessions scheduled for March 12 and 13 since I am retired a free agent and very flexible time wise I see no issues with additional time commitments on city subcommittees or other assignments I look forward to attending city celebrations neighborhood events and special sessions with other city county or state entities in addition I would be happy to take on any of Julie combs commitments to city and county agencies and fill in where needed in addition I will not change any of Julie's appointees I trust her judgment completely I live in district five and have no desire to run against Councilman Rogers in the 2020 election my first priority as an at-large council member is to represent all residents and neighborhoods in Santa Rosa with determination and thoughtfulness something I have done in my own neighborhood for years Miss combs was twice elected to this at-large seat in 2012 and 2016 I cannot fill Judy's shoe Julie's shoes but I can work to fulfill her pledge to Santa Rosa's voters and eventually I look forward to handing this seat over to a new district election elected council member next year I have been a neighborhood advocate and an arts advocate for many years and I look forward to working with council in these areas in the future whether I'm appointed today or not again I thank you Mayor Schwendhelm and I am ready to answer any questions from council great thank you Mr. Titus can start this round hey Miss Kennedy good to see you good to see you I have a couple of questions for you what policy issues are of the most interest to you well as I said in my application the homeless issue is a serious problem for the city and unfortunately it is impacting neighborhoods which is something that I find harsh and hard as a as a person that lives in a neighborhood I know that this is causing a great deal of problem the second issue of course is climate change for me and and I think that's a big issue for the city council as well you've already done a lot of good work the city council in the city at large has done a tremendous amount of work putting efforts into your plans for climate change building your buildings and wastewater treatment and all and the the green building codes that have been implemented I would like to see neighborhoods which is sort of my bailiwick to come forward with some efforts like we did when we started talking about water wise planting and I think and a lot of people took advantage of the city's opportunity to take out their lawn and put in water wise gardening and I think that's things like that can happen in the neighborhood that would can really help climate change so those are the two issues in fact I think the homeless issue and climate change are hand in hand because we are seeing degradation of property and the creeks because of human waste and human ignorance so I do see that this is those are my two main concerns and I look forward to working with Mayor Schwendhelm in his task force and any of the supervisors that it's amazing how many different ideas are coming up I mean just this morning I talked to Mayor Schwendhelm not long ago about the it's not possible to put the homeless out at the airport and now just this morning there's a new idea about putting the homeless at the airport and and I'm I find it unfortunate that there are people like the man that was interviewed in the paper this morning who says I'm free I'm living the dream I'm living America's dream because I get to live in a tent you know and poop in somebody else's yard so I'm really upset about that kind of talk when someone is not interested in helping themselves or you know being proud of the neighborhood that they live in even if it's a tent city but one thing that I like to ask and this is not meant to make you lose your footing or be a landmine but you know we all disagree from time to time and has there been an issue or two that really stuck stuck out to you and I know that you track us very closely and you're very active and engaged is there a decision that we made that you felt was boy they really missed an opportunity to do that right and if so what what issues were they and can you tell us what you would have done differently um I'm gonna say the when you reunited courthouse square and there was absolutely no curved lines there was no flowering trees um I think that was a mistake to have it so clean and neat maybe a little too neat so we'll come back to that in a minute I've got a couple minutes here to ask you some questions so first and foremost we met years ago when you were working on the art and smart project that's right we got to know each other a little bit better as you were doing the crosswalks in Burbank Gardens what piece of art or project that you've done in the community are you the most proud of I think I'm gonna say the the wall that I painted at the redwood gospel mission I'm really I was really excited when um the when Jeff Smith of the bike partners and um the director of the redwood gospel mission asked me to come up with a mural for that wall and um I have never been a drug abuser but I did smoke for years and I know that when people are in recovery or quitting um you know a really bad habit there's a saying another dawn another day and that saying that pledge sort of reinforced to me what this wall could look like um it's it's a wall of hope it's um it it's sunrise and it's on the side of the street where the sun rises and what I really I really feel like I stepped up to the plate by not only incorporating the people that live that were living at the time at the redwood gospel mission but also the neighbors that lived that live in the west end neighborhood I had the opportunity to go to their neighborhood meeting and explain the um the mural and ask for people to raise their hands if they wanted to come forward and I had so many volunteers from the west end neighborhood and that's a tough one because they have had a lot of conflict with the redwood gospel mission but when it came time to work with them on a project like that I had more people than I could use that's great it was and I don't want to cut you short but I did that's okay I thought it was an important question as well you've been involved in the um putting the square in railroad square you've been involved in the downtown specific plan I just wanted to give you a minute and a half what's your vision for railroad square for the santa rosa corridor and for downtown what would you like to see well in this the courthouse square comments I think are a part of that yeah so um yeah I I'd like to expand on that I'd like to see um both railroad square and courthouse square have rotating art exhibits um I would like to see a lot more um events going on I had an interesting conversation with Ernesto when I was showing him the uh my plans for the railroad square and he said you know if the if courthouse square is our front room railroad square can be our den and I really like that idea that we have a large capacity event place an open air courthouse square and then we have railroad square that would be a small capacity event area and also people get off the train they're right there so I'd like to see a lot of programming that that develops the tourists and the train and my vision for santa rosa avenue of course is the road diet and the bike lanes are so important again climate change if you see this Judy Judy uh you mentioned that you would be willing to take on um former council member combs's committee assignments that's right if those are not available what would be your top three choices for committee assignments oh well I would love to be on I don't want to push anybody off but I would love to be on the downtown subcommittee because I've been going to that subcommittee for 15 years um as a I consider the burbank gardens and the juliet park neighborhoods as downtown neighborhoods anything that happens downtown is going to affect those two neighborhoods so I've always been very keen on finding out what's going on I want to be ahead of the game um so I would love to be on the downtown subcommittee um the I don't know what other I don't know what committee's that julie was on so I don't know the top three but the downtown subcommittee would be one that I would like to be on and anything I would like to be on the mayor's task force for the homeless situation you know because I think that I can bring something to the table as a neighbor and a person who was advocated for neighborhoods but I also understand that we need to show a lot of compassion for these people that are living homeless especially um people that are in recovery or have lost recovery so that would be important to me also I know that there is a there's a committee for for climate change and you know that would be right up my alley too I would be happy to be on you know I those three would be really good for me but I'm open to filling in wherever I'm needed thank thank you julie you're stating your application that you are ready to jump in to hold the fort uh and that you are willing to educate yourself on subjects that you're not familiar with what kind of subjects are those and how will you go about educating yourself on some of these things that you're not too well one of the things I don't know anything about really is waterways and um I would have to start either going to that committee and or going back through um minutes and agendas to see what is going on there and how how I can be effective okay you also uh stressed in your two top pressing issues for Santa Rosa climate change what do you believe would uh should be the next steps that the council should be taking in the area of climate change you know whatever you can do as far as getting rid of single-use plastic styrofoam I don't know how you do that you know on a major scale with large retail businesses and large grocery stores but I would really like to see a ban on single-use plastic if the if the council could do that I would be very excited if we could you know really eliminate plastic bags even the little thin ones that you use in the grocery store for your tomatoes and your you know and your string beans if there's a way for us to get away from that um I would be uh really um a proponent I would get out there and talk it up that's for sure thank you Judy it's good morning yes good morning Judy thanks for being here this morning um you mentioned a new opening statement and in your um uh you're in your application um about the importance of our historic neighborhoods how do you balance the need for infill development and housing uh with the protection um of our historic districts which almost entirely encircle the the downtown and um they are um sensitive areas how would you balance that um I would first look at the edges of the historic neighborhoods where where um development would be less impactful for instance in the Santa Rosa on the Santa Rosa Avenue um you've got Juilliard Park on one side Burbank Gardens on the other in Cherry Street you have a whole residential neighborhood and then right up against it is downtown uh I think we have to look at those those zones those transition zones as the place to do um infill that makes sense housing in particular and I know it's going to be a hard task when when members of the public come forward constantly and say not in my backyard not in my front yard I don't want that even I don't even want to see that you know a block away we just went through this at Burbank Gardens because someone had come forward with a hotel idea on where the economy in is and people were without even really paying attention to the the the structure itself and where the shadows would be cast on people's houses or backyards people just from the whole neighborhood came forward and they were very angry they don't want to you know I don't like tall buildings that kind of thing I think it's going to be really tough John really tough but I think we I know we can do it I know that that with step backs you know you can provide neighbors with you know less of an intrusion and I think if you look at how the shadows are cast from larger buildings you know how to and and also I would encourage that when someone says oh I don't want that three-story building next to me plant a tree you know and and have that be your your horizon your trees and not the building next door thank you it is tough what do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess probably tactfulness how to handle those awkward situations where people just come up to you in the grocery store or on the street and go well what were you thinking when you voted that way or what are you why are you doing this or whatever I think tactfulness and keeping you know keeping the good face and keeping the face you know um I think that's going to be a hard one for me because I tend to speak the truth sometimes when I should be a little more cautious but yes I think compassion and tactfulness are really important in that when you're out in the world and when I'm sitting behind that desk there you know it's listening it's listening to everyone listening to council members and your opinions listening to the audience and paying attention to staff you know and that's our tactful bell today isn't it much nicer than the buzzer yes I'm glad we went with that and I do appreciate that you brought up tact and listening and just generally keeping it together and one thing that you've done really well is keep the faith for our town for a long time and your tenacity is is noted thank you you're welcome I'm curious to know since you are probably our most visionary public art and public places citizen as far as I'm aware I know offense to any others but you're the most active and in terms of where we should go and how we should do things I'm curious to know if you have any ideas on how we can create stronger connections between downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods through the use of public art well as far as public art most of the neighborhoods around downtown have a park Juilliard Park is one of the parks in my neighborhood west end has two parks the there's you know little little parklets even over in like around Montgomery Village there's small little parks I would like to see a public art program where all of those parks are used for art on a rotating basis either small scale sculptures that maybe are environmentally correct and made from environmental materials or or stuff that can be put together and taken apart I think you can have fun with public art I think you can certainly engage families and kids we're getting ready to paint two benches in my neighborhood that were used as bus stop benches but they're no longer a bus that goes through the neighborhood and we're looking forward to putting together some ideas with kids and painting those benches to keep them from being graffitied do you see there I'm sorry to cut you off go ahead but I wanted to be more specific okay see that there's a way to use art to encourage bike and pedestrian connectivity between the surrounding neighborhoods and downtown I absolutely paths that are underutilized for safety reasons right or just because people aren't aware of them or they're unattractive I think wayfinding is so important as far as what you just said people may not know that the trail is right there or they might know that there's a bike path here or a you know I know that we're trying very hard to connect Santa Rosa Avenue south of highway 12 to the city to downtown with wider bike lanes but I think that you can use wayfinding strategies that are can be very artful and and and not only the wayfinding but also the idea of neighborhood identification when I did these banners that you see in the different neighborhoods I would like to see that expand so that people have a little pride you know have pride like oh yeah I live in this neighborhood and and I'm proud of it you know I do I really do and I had some ideas several years ago about wayfinding in the south part in Roseland that was they were trying to put a bike lane and trail lane somewhere and I can't even remember now between west and Dutton or someplace and and we had idea I was on the art and public places committee at the time and so some of the ideas were using art to make the signposts that lead people to the trails thank you thank you so I'm gonna follow up on some things we've already talked about so we talked about the railroad square making that a square and I loved it when you know shared that idea with me ideas are great and then up here implementation can be the challenge yes you're now one person's up here what steps would you advocate for us to make that a reality to make railroad square reality well there was a lot of ideas at the meetings that I was at with people in railroad square the merchants and the business owners and the property owners and they had hoped but it was never made clear that when there's new construction that there's funding for parks in new construction and there's about to be some major construction going on right now there's the new hotel that's being built they just added rooms to the to the Hyatt and the the whole backside of the train station is going to be you know on the other side of the railroad tracks that whole thing and then there's I mean there's just so much happening in in railroad square and in the west end neighborhood I would like to see those funds be specifically earmarked for railroad square for the square in railroad square and um yeah I just yeah that would be my first step is to see if we can get our hands on some of that park funding money okay one of the things you talked about was about climate change too in your application you mentioned it several different times one of the upcoming topics that council be dealing with is should the city go to evergreen what are your thoughts on that say tell me briefly whatever green 100 renewable versus the way we're now where it's not 100 renewable energy for the city well we already we do have Sonoma clean power right correct okay so um whatever council is considering as far as um building green or evergreen or you know totally renewables I'm definitely in favor of okay I think I think we're already too late so okay that discussion when we come to the council then the other decision that should we choose to let's go evergreen it comes at a cost preliminary estimates million bucks a year so how would you pay for that million dollars to go 100 renewable energy what are your thoughts a million a year doesn't seem like very much so maybe what would you suggest we do where would that million dollars come from well I'm going to have a really long look at your budget and maybe we can figure that out um I don't I don't have um an idea without knowing you know the budget and okay but I think evergreen is a great idea if we're going to build rebuild let's say this um building um I think it could be a model okay I also want to ask is uh I know you're big advocates of neighborhoods and uh recently back in 2017 the city annexed roseland what are your thoughts about uh enhancing the um roseland into our Santa Rosa community what things could we be doing to better accept them into the community okay number one um I would hope that everyone on council would consider putting roseland um residents on boards and commissions and and sort of um you know foster a real political movement so those are the questions to now but wait there's more an opportunity to provide a one minute closing statement thank you thank you it has been a pleasure it really has been a pleasure to be here this morning to answer your questions and to give council members um a chance to get to know me a little better I would like council and voters to know that I will continue Julie comes tradition of being a compassionate trustworthy and dedicated council member thank you thank you hey thank you welcome Mr. Herman thank you for applying for this position uh so the process will be following you'll be given an opportunity provides three minutes is an opening statement then each council person will have about four minutes to ask you have questions just be aware you may be interrupted by the council person because it's it's rather um aggressive time frame so if they have more questions within those four minutes they may catch off and you'll have an opportunity to provide a one minute closing statement okay so with that three minute opening statement hi thank you for the opportunity of being here I'm Penny Herman uh I've lived in Santa Rosa for 15 years moving from uh Pacifica uh where uh I came from Iowa I'm a business owner and I've been in business since 1999 with my husband I have three kids and all of them are uh one is in college and two are still in high school um I do uh have the the time and the opportunity of being able to uh give all my Tuesdays uh all day long for my husband's very supportive of me doing this unfortunately uh I'm not able to meet the March 12th and 13th um way back in July and my extended family from Iowa uh we set up a cruise together for one of my cousins turning 50 however though I am able to set on any kind of subcommittee and um meet all the needs for Tuesdays miss Rogers you're starting this question thank you well good morning almost afternoon now thanks for for being here uh one of the issues that we struggle with sometimes as a council is balancing the rights of homeless individuals versus the rights of neighbors that are being impacted by encampments how would you approach that balance uh and in that topic you know I really feel that everyone knows that they have their own rights and re doing all the research that uh the city is doing and all the I don't want to really use word complaints from the neighbors um but I feel that that I feel that oh sorry I'm so nervous I do feel that thank you um I do feel that um it's a matter of involving the residents more of whether they want to help or maybe getting more of their input on what they think needs to happen for current future uh and going from there so do you think that the city should have the ability to just move people along if the encampment is becoming a nuisance you know I think when it comes to safety um and I feel that a lot of the residents because it looks bad for our tourist it's it looks dirty um so I think if it's a safety issue they do need to be moved along as a business owner I've had to deal with the homelessness I haven't called the police but I think working with them of explaining why they shouldn't be there they've moved along I know that the city is really doing a lot of research on trying to find places for them but I do feel that when it's an unsafe environment and there's crime going on that they do need to be moved along so obviously it would be a contentious topic if we had a sanctioned encampment neighbors would want to be involved how would you reach out to those neighbors to make sure that they understood what the impact is going to be on the immediate neighborhood versus what's the benefit to the whole city um I would go door to door if I needed to or try to put out flyers of trying to have some kind of local neighborhood or making sure that they knew uh of a meeting set up so they could either give their input that way or possibly email their concerns or you know needs for their neighborhood okay and then obviously we're in year three now of recovery from the fire from the tubs fire how do you think the city has been doing in terms of recovery and what would you like to see us focus a little bit more on in this third year um I've never been involved in that kind of catastrophe and I think the resilience of how the city came together the neighborhoods came together and just individual families my daughter herself immediately went to her closet to go through all of her clothes to give to her friends that were impacted by it so I think that santa rosa is going to be the one that that other cities are going to look at for the resilience that we did and I think that that it's been phenomenal on on what what you what the city has done and how uh how the rebuilding has been going great oh thank you so much Mr. Herman I want to follow up on the homeless topic uh clearly that's the big issue for us here in Santa Rosa for many communities across the country and there are times where we may have to have people move along but moving the people along isn't really a permanent solution to deal with homelessness what do you see as some things that we should be doing as a council as a city as a region to work towards ending homelessness you know I from the research I've done I see that there's some beds for them I think that the Catholic Charities has an emergency shelter right now that was about 130 beds um it seems like that that's been a lot of talk on having an area for them to go to uh my thoughts are though people can't really live for free so there needs to be an accountability I think that it brings pride when they have that accountability and I think that we just need to work together to try to find that housing solution for them so that they have some kind of plan set in place that they are accountable on their mental health or if it's drug addiction and those type of resources that if they're doing that then they have their bed that they can be in or apartment to share with someone uh so I do feel that it's more housing that they're in need of and you mentioned housing as another another big issue for Santa Rosa so what are your ideas and meeting some of those housing needs you know it looks like the that finally we're doing a lot of rebuilding or not rebuilding I'm sorry but we're doing a lot of building for low-income housing or low-income families um I've heard just snippets and read a little bit about the old hospital um I know that that would take a lot to change that into some kind of facility that they would be able to live at but with all those rooms you can get a couple of beds in there and I feel that that would be a place for them to be able to go to thank you good morning miss Herman thank you for being here and thank you for your willingness to serve you mentioned in your um application that you wish to make a difference in the city that that in which you live what would that mean to you making a difference you know I feel it is bringing the neighborhoods together more um I know in some of the questions that were put out there that it seems that there was a difference between the east and west side I personally have never felt that way but by seeing that there's uh residents out there that feel that way um that it that there needs to be more um community uh through the parks of having neighborhood um like the city where they have and you know their little communities that they're doing festivals and I think that having a little bit more festivals at the various parks from the east side to the west side and letting the residents know that that that would bring our neighborhoods together thank you and what do you believe is the most important ability a council member needs to possess um all basically all the aspects of what's going on I in doing this application process I never realized really how much of a responsibility that you guys do have to uh the residents and the city workers so I think it would really just be my knowledge of knowing what's going on and better serving it that way thank you and what does governance mean to you I would say knowing the aspects of government and um the ability of who can do what thank you thank you so much for your time today miss herman and um I'm um impressed with your experience I sat on the Sonoma county commission for the status of women for a few years and I noticed in your application that you sit on the um human trafficking task force I'm curious to know if you think that there's a great a role or a greater role for Santa Rosa in addressing the scourge of human trafficking and what the nature of it in Santa Rosa is from your perspective I do in doing a lot of the research I was surprised that it's a lot of the homelessness and I couldn't really find a lot of anything dealing with the trafficking that's going on right now in Santa Rosa in Sonoma county and I feel like it's really gotten worse with the rebuilding and the construction coming here um so I I know a lot of the residents don't realize the extent of what's really going on in the city right now so I think that it is a matter of trying to set up narratives been very good on going even to the hotels and training people on what to look for and I feel that it would be something to expand on on letting residents know what to look for and that human trafficking is not all sex related trafficking exactly lots of different things I'm curious to know as a parent what you think a couple of things the city council could do to improve family life and the participation of working parents in our city government and generally in our community I think it's really going to the schools you know I think a lot of the students nowadays aren't involved or know what's going on in their community so it would really go into the schools to talk to I know ASB is kind of the main one that does the organizations on the on what's going on in the school so I think it would be great going to the various schools in trying to expand on getting them involved and whether it be them sitting in on a city council or having issues that they're maybe they're having at school that they would love the input of the city do you have a vision in terms of how the city could best or better partner with the school board in the school district to improve those types of programs you know I think it's again just goes back to trying to figure out how to tap into the students you know I feel that they're I feel that they're not as in touch with their city and wanting it to be better and grow I myself feel like the even students kind of look down at the homelessness where you know maybe they could do that blanket drive you know they can expand on their you know being a little bit more human I don't know if they're all that way but I've seen some of and just kind of getting the students more involved on partnering with with you know various issues I think compassion is a huge thing I get my most vociferous constituent is my daughter and she constantly gives me a hard time about why I'm letting homeless people live under the bridges so that's one thing that I think that you you might be able to bring to it would be some ideas about how we can partner with the schools you've got another 40 seconds is there anything that I haven't asked you that you would like to comment on no thank you thank you for applying for this what if you were to be selected what do you think would be your biggest challenge for serving with this council I think at this point not being able to be at the planning meeting okay and then we talk a lot about homelessness so in our community who do you think is responsible for ending homelessness you know I don't think there's one person responsible I was actually trying to look for a poll to see if the majority or some of them were we're in that position because of the fires I feel that we live in a promised land but you know our city is beautiful everyone strives and wants to move to California and I feel like it's really trying to figure out if these are residents that have become homeless or if it's spilloff coming from the city and I think that it's really trying to plug the hole in that boat before taking care of what's going on in our city almost and so I think that I think that that is kind of the one thing that we need to look at we live in the promised land people want to come here and we need to just remind them and give them that sense of pride again so on the same note City of Santa Rosa has about 1200 employees so with homelessness if the city of Santa Rosa has a role in any homelessness what direction would you provide the staff saying we should be start to do filling the blank and if you could be as concrete as possible what steps would be should we be giving direction to staff to do yeah I I really feel that it's housing that we need to and to go that we need to establish vouchers I know and because there's so many questions on the homelessness that we got on our questions it seems like going to research what other cities are doing that they were having these homeless people set up and giving them jobs to go clean up in a sense their own trash and that helps them get money it helped them start and this was somebody coming to pick them up take them to an area to clean up and paying them every day so I think by them having money in their pocket it would cut cut down on thefts and break-ins for the various neighborhoods that they're living in but really starting to give them a job right away but setting it up in the fact of you know someone's picking them up someone's taking them whether it be trash whether it's cleaning up our parks pulling weeds and it will give them a sense of community too okay the city of Santa Rosa is a pretty thorough and comprehensive strategy policy regarding cannabis businesses in our community you live in the northwest part of town some residents in northwest believe there's an over-concentration of these type of businesses in the northwest Santa Rosa what are your thoughts on that and if so what would what solutions might you have to that potential issue um the ones that I've seen are tend to be more in the industrial area so I don't feel that it's um in the neighborhoods and it's spilling out over there I feel like it's around the automotive businesses it's in the area where it should be that I personally haven't seen it that much I mean out on the open it seems that it's more in the industrial okay and um how are you planning on dealing with some of the issues that surface with council discussions where um you're not pleasing everyone in other words we receive feedback from the community sometimes it's not always pleasant have you experienced that and how are you preparing yourself to experience that I haven't experienced that yet and I don't know if it's a matter that you uh that and I don't know how you guys have dealt with it if it's a matter that you're at a council meeting and there's somebody that is saying something wrong or attacking you personally of whether you can go talk to that person at the end or maybe address it at the meeting um whenever I've had confrontations like that um thank you Ms. Herman I wanted to ask you have you been I assume you've been following some of the decisions the council's been making in the last few weeks months or potentially even years and one question I've been asking a lot of the candidates or the applicants rather is was there a decision that you ever watched us make without yourself there was really a way to do this different or do this better you know um that's why I did apply to this position because I'm not I don't know the extent of everything that you guys do I've recently just started watching some of the videos and you guys are very thorough I feel on what you do and um make the decisions I think for your neighborhoods and your community okay well thank you I don't have any further questions and thanks for applying great let me show you okay you have one minute for closing statements thank you again for letting me apply for this position it's really taking me out of my bubble in my box so um I I just want to say thank you again thank you for joining us in our bubble thank you Dwayne while you're hydrating thanks for participating in this process as I know you've received some documentation about how the interview will be going so I just want to remind you that you'll have three minutes for an opening comment and then we'll have each council person we'll have an opportunity to ask you questions for four minutes and then you'll have an opportunity for to provide us with a one-minute closing comment just to give you the heads up there will be a buzzer after each of those timeframes and also council members may interrupt you during their four minutes as it's their purview to ask you the questions and try to get the information that they want from you so with that please provide us with your three-minute opening statement thank you sir Mr. Mayor and council members my name is Dwayne DeWitt and I'm from Roseland and I'm here today to volunteer to try to be the best city council person I could be in the next 11 months to help the city the first questions are will I be able to attend I can attend everything and I'll try to be there 110% for all the meetings goal settings and deal with all the issues of time I specifically wanted to say today to us we should ask a question what is the biggest challenge in public policy decisions for Santa Rosa now until 2030 the next decade in the next 11 months my efforts will be to complement and enhance the ongoing priorities of this council housing downtown concerns could be better served with more people living downtown more multi-story and multifamily residential buildings are needed as soon as possible the council members need to be fair courteous kind and humble while trying to serve the taxpayers and residents of Santa Rosa meet in the middle is what a good public servant should do for our community people are elected to get things done and get goals accomplished to solve our community problems lack of affordable housing has been a problem in Santa Rosa for over 25 years the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group was formed in the late 1990s because the city at that time was not meeting the regional housing needs assessments from the Association of Bay Area Governments the city never has met those goals since new faces and new perspectives are needed to solve the old lingering problems please do not appoint a previous member of this council because this council has not solved our problems please appoint me to these next 11 months of service to our community working together to solve issues in a complimentary and collaborative manner utilizing the recommendations of the city taxpayer funded open government task force we can solve some of our city's problems by focusing like a laser on housing matters and fiscal responsibilities first and foremost we can make a difference on past problems we can be visionary to solving the challenges of 2020 to 2030 first housing second climate adaptation with better urban forestry and urban green with good green infrastructure to diminish greenhouse gases with carbon sequestration more trees please i will fit in wherever needed i will do what's needed by you and i will do it in a collaborative manner in which you will find i am probably one of the better people that you may have worked with through all the issues that you will come up with though you may disagree with me i'm a polite guy thank you so much for your time thank you mr. DeWitt mr. Alvarez you're starting the question thank you thank you that mr. DeWitt and thank you for your continued interest and watchful eye on the work that we do on our services as a regular and close observer of the issues that we've been grappling with over the years you are aware of the great challenges we face related to our homeless issues with the large number of our residents who do not have a home to live in what do you see as critically from these efforts as it relates to our council political will we've talked about it for decades there's been homeless in our city for decades i think you could make some issues be solved by working with the county to get some of these homeless people on government-owned land we could utilize the fairgrounds we could utilize property right next to the Sonoma county administration buildings we could do things but unfortunately what occurs is often that lack of motivation if you will between the bureaucratic agencies that are involved sometimes they don't see it as if it's an emergency even though you've declared an emergency certain i would say vested interests in jurisdictional agencies bureaucratic approaches they're not necessarily interested in solving this problem tonight whereas the homeless person outside he knows it froze last night there was frost on the ground so they want to get it solved so again looking for specific things that you think that were we have not been doing because it sounds like we were talking about it's almost like we're housing people put them someplace how does that end the problem of homelessness because there may be others that will become homeless as well so i'm looking for long-term solutions to our homeless issue not not just based here in Santa Rosa but across the country as well yes thank you sir well first you deal with the root of the problem some people have various societal issues that might have to be dealt with but give them a roof tonight first we could do that by providing perhaps a single wide mobile homes that are used in what are called employment enclaves when a large business starts to build a new refinery or a new manufacturing plant they house their construction crews on site they put them in small single wide mobile buildings that house three people per mobile that has three bedrooms and three bathrooms we could do things if it was a true emergency like after hurricane Katrina and get people into housing once people are in housing those that might have mental or societal issues they could deal with that through a societal safety net those that want to perhaps not be i guess you'd say members of our society they want to be free they want to be outside they could do that somewhere else what we need to have is a bit of structure to it the fairgrounds the stables they could be cleaned out people couldn't be living there right now i really find it difficult because the county has land and they have funds and they want to spend a lot of money but they want to do it in long protracted responses rather than trying to do it like an emergency tonight or like right after the fires you get people into the veterans building i just left there i was there today for vet connect we have people there who help veterans who are homeless we give them goods we help them but they have to have a place to stay why not open up that veterans building and let them sleep in there three hots in a cot that's what people do when they're in the military thank you mr do it thank you sir thank you for your very comprehensive application mr do it and i have no further questions thank you sir thank you for your time and your ongoing interest in our community it's my pleasure miss would you be willing to talk about what you think the greatest personal quality that you would bring to our council what what you would bring based on your character and your disposition would be most necessary for our council the ability to compromise i believe i can collaborate with almost anyone and i've followed orders before from other people when i couldn't do anything different so i know how to play with the team and do things that need to be done for the good of the community it's not about me in any way share perform it's about trying to solve the problems that you as a council have already decided upon you have your priorities right now and for the next 11 months you need somebody to hit the ground running come in and work with you and get these things solved on what you want to have done by december when i'll leave the council thank you thank you for your time miss thanks again for participating in this doing my pleasure you made a comment about when you were working with the county regarding our homeless issue what efforts do you know that we are working how we are working or are not working with the county and what would you if you're one of the seven up here what would you initiate one of the dilemmas right now seems to be that because the county has a responsibility for the joridota trail some people in the city say well it's a county matter and then the people who are out there living right next to the joridota trail are in the santa rosa city limits and they're saying hey i have elected officials and those officials should be helping to solve this problem which is affecting me and my property right here right now there are people who are so i guess you'd say angered by what's occurring they don't see the need for compassion that some of those people are disabled some of those people have wheelchairs and use crutches and they can't get around real easy so what i would like to see happen is that the city and the county through the police departments and the sheriff's department go out there make sure that there's a law enforcement approach done within a humane way also dealing with health safety and welfare those folks that have warrants or have problems they need to be taken care of and perhaps not be sleeping in a tent the health issues such as using propane tanks it's very dangerous one is exploded and it's burnt a person's tent those things shouldn't be going on the idea of putting porta potties out and saying that that's a good response i don't think that's solving the problem of the pollution that's coming from those people who still may be utilizing the outdoors to relieve themselves there's a lot of very serious societal issues that are going on the city and the county could be working together i know you and miss hopkins from the county of the fifth district supervisor you're giving it your best but jurisdictional agencies aren't becoming as collaborative as they need to be to solve this in a timely manner right thank you as you're aware our community has experienced a couple of fires since 2017 the most recently the arcade what's your evaluation of the way the city has responded to that and what suggestions would you have us in preparing for unfortunately the potential next one well i believe there'll be another one we should be preparing by not having housing built in fire prone zones and i believe we should also be working with the people who actually make the decisions on where housing gets built the finance years the insurance companies and we say no there's certain areas that are fire prone and we're not going to submit our community to having to perhaps deal with another emergency secondary to that the city did a very good job in some ways to respond to the fires the last two times we've had them recently but for people who lost housing i heard there was a lot of concerns that they weren't able to be sheltered as quickly or as well as they would have liked to have been there wasn't as good of a warning system people would like a better warning system people who lived in the journeys in mobile home park who were unexpectedly burned out they basically had never gotten that resolved yet that's two full years they're still trying i saw on a future council agenda there'll be a matter to deal with them and try to talk with them and help them in my last three so i just want to confirm what you're saying so i heard you say don't build in fire prone zones do you consider northwest santa rosa fire prone zone some areas specifically up in the found grove area where the hamley fire burned up close to the community hospital so i can't change what's happening but that's a historical fact and you would be an advocate of not allowing building in those areas not new building what's already there is there and we can't take it down thank you hey mr. do it thank you sir i wanted to ask you a little bit about affordable housing you know we've had the opportunity to speak over the years about your ideas for affordable housing you're a member of hag how would you know obviously the biggest issue with affordable housing is finding the money to build it how would you if you're on this council find the money to build it well right now there's a project going forward called lantana it's being built out on the farthest southwestern border of the city not city-centered directly in contradiction of city priorities and yet it's the city housing authority that's been directing millions of dollars to that housing which was originally planned to be apartments multifamily rental and now they've switched it up in the middle of the game almost like a bait and switch after receiving millions of dollars and say it's going to be self-help owner i think one of the problems is is that the council's directives are not being followed by staff or members of boards and commissions they neglect to follow up on what your true priorities are your priorities are as i understand it to have affordable housing city-centered as close to the downtown area as possible what i would see having going on there is to work with the developers who are already doing things like this and make sure that when they say they're going to put housing in they do it such as what happened with the atnt building it was originally slated that yes we'll help you get that building because you're going to put in housing and then they didn't do that now the empire building across the street it's being built to put in housing for tourists a hotel to bring in money for various factions that'll be using it downtown perhaps but that doesn't house santa rosa residents the three tallest buildings in santa rosa are here in the downtown area for senior citizens apartments we could be doing more of that in closer to town and the seniors would like it i know veterans would like it recently i tried to help a veteran with a hudbash voucher get into a room we found him in a boarding house on college street and actually the city stalled him from doing that saying the window was not big enough to be an accident of fire then citing that boarding house and telling them they couldn't rent out any more rooms now so for an emergency please treat it like an emergency let people get housed and do our best to use our housing authority monies to be used in the downtown area where the downtown specific plan is now being thought about roberts avenue right over here less than a quarter well half a mile away as the crow flies that's a perfect site brownfield's money has gone there to help that get redeveloped we could get in there and get housing close to the railroad multi-story multi-family rental housing we got over 400 units of new ownership housing being built out there in the southwest what we really need is the multi-family and multi-story buildings close in to here too i mean we shouldn't look at it like you can't put something somewhere because we've decided that area doesn't want to have it it shouldn't work that way it should be fair across the city that we can put up multi-story buildings in areas where we've already made the plans for that santa rosa avenue is a perfect example mendicino avenue college avenue many of the houses along those roads were turned into businesses putting people out of housing so you folks have the power to solve these problems if we just put the energy forward in the next 10 years i'll give it my all in the next 11 months and do the best i can to help you sir all right thank you mr. duet i appreciate your contributions to our policy process but i have no further questions thank you i appreciate you giving me the time and mr. duet how you doing good thank you sir so you've been a very frequent and active participant in the open government task force it's been a focus of yours and a priority for the city at times what would you like to see most implemented from the original open government task force report as well as having participated in the new iteration working on a sunshine ordinance well i believe we should implement all of the recommendations from it and we should begin starting now i mean that to me is the true sign where do you want to start well i believe the agenda for next tuesday's meeting and all the information packets should have been available yesterday we should be working on looking at what's coming up next those things aren't compiled yet and there's matters on there that are of concern to public members who'd like to have more than just a few days to prepare for that upcoming hearing so the sooner information is made available to the wider community and as much information as possible it helps all of us it's something that's a real positive to make people think that our government is helping them there's a lack of trust out there in government right now we can build trust by being those people who say yes let's share the information let's make it available and let's help you find the information if you're a property owner who has a permit issue or you're a person who has a parking ticket issue the parking district itself is a concern to many people they don't understand it okay recently within the last couple of weeks you wrote a letter to the editor about this appointment yes calling on the council to appoint a new young fresh perspective if you end up getting the appointment from the council what will you do to try to cultivate new young fresh leaders throughout our community i'll be talking to that young man from rosalind that was ahead of me on the agenda i'd never heard of him before i'll go reach it out to him right now as a matter of fact and say let's work together i'm not just a one-trick pony though i'm not just about my neighborhood i'm about everybody in the community from benna valley to rink and valley over to the northwest being able to be a part and parcel of how we make the decision making that's not happening right now the young people they'll feel empowered if we reach out to them and say hey look you know we got this issue coming on we'd like for you to come and give us your point of view not back up our point of view come and tell us what you really think you as a young person who in 2030 will be dealing with these issues as an adult so i'm a real strong believer in youth we used to have a thing called youth build out in rosalind which helped teach young people to build some houses it went away because of federal funding but we could be doing those things especially now so i'm all about helping young people and the 11 months that i'm on here i will be that person that goes to high schools and talks with people and says hey can you come down here and be a part of our teen council can you be involved to learn the issues for what's important to you and your peers not your parents not me but your friends the people that you hang well i won't use that word the people you spend your time with that's what a teenager needs to know i think okay and then obviously you've done a lot of work with our veterans in the community what if you could select one thing for the council to do to try to help veterans what would it be house those homeless veterans first and foremost and then let the veterans work on the projects the veterans have advocated for such as the veterans trail over in rosalind we had come down here and asked you to let us save four houses and let those houses be moved by veterans and rehabilitated by veterans so homeless veterans would have a place unfortunately we weren't able to convince the city's bureaucracy although we might have gotten some council members support we lost those houses i think you just do it we've now come to the part of the program we have one minute for a closing statement well thank you very much for your time today i appreciate that you've been worn out already by probably listening to so many people speak with you about their pet projects this isn't about me and my projects at all it's about me trying to give you 11 months of my unrestricted time to do the best i possibly can to help you on what you chose as the priorities for the city you already have your marching orders if you will if you give me orders and say dwayne we want you to do this and this that's what's going to occur i'm a person that can follow directions get things done and make sure i do it in a pleasant and polite manner with everyone no matter how much they may not personally like me i get along with folks because i understand that in our land we still have the right to disagree and we can agree to disagree politely and do it in a positive manner and make santa rosa the best city and not just the state of california but i'm shooting for the entire night thank you mr do it it's been a pleasure let's relax another time i didn't get to tell you but we're having a a roseland event welcome this week uh as i know you're fully aware but i will remind you the way the process will be working today will give you three minutes for your opening and comment then each council member will have four minutes to ask you any question here she she chooses just as a heads up you maybe stop by a council member if they've heard enough and they want to ask another question and then once we're done with all of us having an opportunity to ask our questions you'll have a one-minute closing statement to make okay so with that please start your three-minute opening statement thank you mayor schwedhelm vice mayor fleming members of the city council i want to thank you for this opportunity to talk with you today about my qualifications to fill the vacant council position i have a unique perspective and a wealth of experience as current vice chair of the planning commission for a member of the major oversight committee and the open government task force as well as 28 and a half years as an employee of santa rosa in two different departments as stated in my application i'm a lifelong resident of sonoma county and have lived in santa rosa since 1978 my involvement with the city began in 1985 and continues to this day my background has a direct relationship to this opportunity in 1985 i was hired as housing program specialist with the city's department of housing and redevelopment my experience in homeless and affordable housing issues and programs will be valuable in the work being undertaken by the council as part of your tier one priorities in 1999 i was promoted to the position of administrative services officer in the police department i was part of the executive team leading that department my experiencing experience includes the preparation and management of a 44 million dollar budget personnel issues including hiring and labor negotiations in 2008 with the economic downturn i was part of the team making the tough decisions including the very difficult elimination of positions and laying off of employees in 2013 i retired from the city and since then i have taken on more and more challenging opportunities continuing to serve my community within one month of retirement i was appointed to the major oversight committee due to my knowledge as a major as the police department's major o contact in 2014 i was selected to fill a vacant position on the mayor's open government task force and in 2017 i was appointed to fill a position on the planning commission of which i'm now vice chair i was successful in both of these roles as i had been following their efforts and became immediately effective and i see this as parallel to this opportunity to become an effective contributing member of council you have a very aggressive work plan with your tier one priorities as well as decisions coming up such as the p3 labor negotiations the general plan update and the downtown station area plan i can be effective in helping getting things and helping to get things done my familiarity with rosenberg's rules city processes and procedures make me an ideal candidate for this position i have the valuable foundation and real life experience for this next step in my community service i ask you for the opportunity to bring my skills and practical experience to your vital role on the development of public policy and your ever important decision making with respect to the questions asked in advance i have no time constraints that would limit my ability to be available for all meetings regardless of the time both council and any great thank you probably a new sound for you uh mr schorger you get to start this round thank you very much for being here this morning this afternoon now um you mentioned in your application in your opening statement that your work in our police department what would you say are the pros and cons of having worked there uh pros and cons of being a city employee in the police department specifically in the police department uh as it relates to this position yes i think definitely a pro is that i prepared and administered the budget uh it was that department's one of the largest general fund uh at least at that time uh it was the largest general fund department budget and so i was intimately familiar with how the budget is developed and um then the administration of that so to me that is a definite pro uh also the fact that i was involved with uh in personnel issues and provided information for labor negotiations gives me benefit that some other candidates probably don't have as for con i can't think of one it was a great place to work just as a city was a great the city in general was a great place to work for those years thank you and what do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess that's probably a two prong answer if i can uh i think the first is to be able to listen you have to listen as a council member from what i've observed over the many years i've been watching council is to be successful you really need to listen to all segments of the population and the community and come to uh issues with an open mind and seek out information i think that that is probably one of the biggest uh biggest things a council member needs to have thank you um there you're this speaks to your experience on the on the planning commission perhaps and there's a uh we are currently involved in a fair amount of discussion around infill housing and sometimes that that infill housing is no proposed in our downtown and we are downtown is surrounded by historic neighborhoods and sensitive areas how do you balance that need for for affordable housing and just housing in general uh when it butts up against some of our historic neighborhoods it's interesting you should ask that since that issue did come up when there was the joint planning commission council meeting uh regarding the downtown station area plan there was some there were questions uh at that time and then we also received some public uh correspondence uh one of the things that we talked about there was to have uh kind of the height for infill development tiered towards or tiered away from the historic site so there would be a buffer that from the historic neighborhood so there would be a buffer between infill development uh in the downtown area uh specifically and uh the historic neighborhood so i think uh issues like that also one of the things i had experience with when i was in housing was the deter commons project next to the deter brown barn and that project became a much better project after we received a lot of input from the neighbors uh and there was those were very tough community meetings that we had back in the 80s or 90s uh but the view that we were going into that neighborhood with was ended up being totally different than what was actually built because of listening to the neighbors thank you not for showing up but for your decades of service to our community um it's really quite notable how much work you've done both as an employee and as a resident for our community i'm curious to know different from your experience on the planning commission and measure oversight you know the council takes on issues where we set policy and are going beyond interpreting policy and you're an excellent team player i've watched a lot of your work and you do a really great job working with your peers in a respectful way to implement policy i'm curious to know and this is a bit of a difficult question not intended as a gotcha but just to get some insight into your thought process about what you think some of the the biggest missed opportunities or mistakes our city has made since you started working here and i know that's a really big question and it's fine to just pick one mistake and it's not intended to be a landmine and it doesn't have to be from this council it could just be something that had you been in control or been the dictator of our fine town what you would have done differently and a dictator with a bigger budget than we have wow um probably you know this goes back a ways but perhaps actually it does go back quite a ways i think courthouse square should have been unified earlier i think that was a missed opportunity it should have happened earlier probably never should have been divided in the first place but and to be honest with you i was not a proponent of the unification of courthouse square i was looking at it you know the dollars and cents and thinking there's different ways to do this but i will say seeing the vitality of different events in courthouse square i think it was a good idea and i am totally supportive of it and i wish that could have happened earlier perhaps you know in the 90s it would have helped create a more vital downtown earlier and going along with this line of questioning what would you do what would you take away or add to our goals as we head into goal setting uh one of the things i would i don't think i would take anything away uh you have accomplished some of the goals already or you're pretty well into a number of them one of the things i would add is uh around employee morale and recruitment and retention uh and i think that that carries over into a number of your goals such as housing and infrastructure uh it's hard to attract employees when they can't afford to live here and and to retain employees when they can find you know a different you know that they can go from say being a renter to a homeowner in a different community uh so that's one thing but that also has such an overlap with all the other goals that you have and has there been a decision that we've made in the last year that you would have done differently the only thing i can think of is in two instances where um there were projects that were appealed to you uh that had come to the planning commission and instead of making a decision right then and there you uh asked people to get together and come up with a solution and i think that in the long run that was a good thing but at the time i was thinking make a decision make a decision but in the long run i think it ended up being better it is hard to make those decisions but i'm sure you know that thank you you're welcome i love i love that i love that twirl sound it's not giving you too much credit quite yet so the um on the same lines of the the council decision you just agreed with because i find it interesting you know on the planning commission and so yeah appeals do come here how do you reconcile that when the council disagrees with the decision that the planning commissioner you personally disagreed with the council decision when the planning commission was going in another direction uh you have a different purview than the planning commission does uh the planning commission's purview and is to follow the city's rules and regulations and codes and the general plan there's not a lot of discretion when it comes to some of the the decisions that we make um and you have a lot more discretion uh to make decisions and you disagree with me you disagree with me that's not i try you know i mean you disagree with me i'm not going to take it personal okay or personally one of the things just not taken personally because i know you watch a lot of council meetings you attend a lot of them and sometimes uh some of the conversations in here can get somewhat emotional and um how would you plan on dealing if you are chosen to deal with that we make a decision but some folks take it personal make it personal against you how would you plan on reconciling that and dealing with that well i have had that this that experience both as a staff member over my tenure working for the city as well as as a planning commissioner and i think i would go to what the city's basic principles are and focus on the issue not the person and people are get emotional emotional when it comes to certain issues and and i would try not to take it personally which is probably easier said than done but i would try and just focus on the issue that's being discussed in your application you talk about uh when you began working with the city there are no programs to assist in creating or funding homeless shelters so we've come a long way since then what do you think we're not doing that we should be doing in the area of homelessness uh putting more pressure on the various communities that aren't having taken in their fair share uh and what i mean by that is i see i i've always seen santa rosa as being the leader in the homeless issue and there are certain communities within this county certain cities and towns that aren't stepping up and i think as much pressure that you can bring to bear on your colleagues on other councils um needs to occur uh i think the coordinated effort that's now being worked on as part of the continuum of care leadership council is a great step in that direction i just would like to see some of the smaller communities um be a participant a player just because i'm pretty sure you've already looked at our review or upcoming agendas and one of the items that we'll be discussing is uh going evergreen sandworth going all over and what's your position or what are your thoughts on that not your position what are your thoughts on that well it's a very expensive proposition uh and i know that you have a study session uh coming up on that and i think the end of this month beginning and next month i think that um i would need to see what the cost is and what if the city does go evergreen what else can't be done and i think that's something that you need to look at in any decision that you make is you know the pro the um if you do this what can't you do and do you have any thoughts about what would be on that higher list of the city can stop doing this and redirect resources whether it be to ever pay for evergreen or any other count city priority no i don't my turn this week's like first i just want to tell you uh publicly that when i was reviewing your application i was really in awe of how many years of service you've had in various departments and different initiatives and there's somebody who has not been involved clearly as long i appreciate that on a deep level thank you one thing that struck me was your involvement affordable housing and that was an area of your background and expertise that i wasn't too familiar with and specifically in nonprofit finance of of funding affordable housing construction what do you see as the biggest flaw right now in the construction of affordable housing finance and what would you do assuming you could do it in 11 months to remediate that well it's it's very expensive as you will know to build any housing but an affordable housing in general um i think uh one of the things can be to help leverage funds that could that will be coming down from the state and hopefully at some point the federal government to build affordable housing to pull the money together to make sure you have you can have a project that is feasible also uh to really when projects come before you really look to see their timing i mean you don't want to commit money to a project that is going to be you know five or six years down the road and you don't want to dribble the money out to a lot of projects so that you can't uh really make one a project work uh so i think did that answer your question i think yeah okay that was pretty sufficient um but you know following up we heard from somebody earlier who believed we should target these funds for affordable housing downtown how do you personally feel about downtown being areas of affordable housing development would you do it all entirely and i'm asking especially as in your capacity as the vice chair of the planning commission because when he brought this up i thought to myself maybe that actually would result in something happening downtown but i also thought well what you know are there are there downsides to doing just affordable housing in the downtown should it be mixed etc what would your thoughts be i think that in the downtown area there should be a mix of housing for all income levels and all all types uh i don't think it should any money should be targeted um just to one area in the community i do believe that should be spread out affordable housing and it should be spread out as as much as possible in all areas of the city but i could see perhaps allocating a certain portion of the funds specifically for downtown but i don't think it should there should only be affordable housing downtown okay thank you and my last question is one thing that's become apparent to me is we've had a lot of interest from people in roseland to take this seat and in there throughout the course of the interviews it became apparent to me that some still feel as though we are underserving the community and that to me was a little bit eye-opening um how would you try to whether it's accurate or not how would you try to do better and at the very least uh change perceptions that that we are really in court doing the best we possibly can and really going out of our way to um not only want to say change perceptions but to actually do it i guess because it's been a common narrative i think one way is to uh have neighborhood get-togethers in roseland area uh you know working with the the beat sergeant or the beat lieutenant to have um did different neighborhood events and community events uh reaching out to perhaps reaching out to some of the people who applied for this position to be continued this week so you actually uh out of all of the applicants have a really unique background having both served as staff for the city and then also having served on numerous boards and commissions can you talk to us a little bit about with the second pat on a time where you disagreed with the staff recommendation that came before the body that you were sitting on how did you handle that and how did you end up voting on that uh when i was on the major oversight committee uh i felt that the committee was not getting all the information that we should have had as it relates to the budget uh and i had um an advantage that i knew what was kind of under the hood so to speak of the budget and but the other members didn't and so then i ended up people looked to me to ask those tough questions and there were times uh when especially when uh there was some reallocation of positions in recreation and parks at the time that i disagreed with uh and i felt we weren't being provided all of the information that we should have to be able to make an informed decision uh and i disagree respectfully i am a respectful person i don't personally attack people i just you you ask questions in a respectful manner and you keep asking questions in a respectful manner till you get an answer so in that in that instance did you end up asking staff to go back to get more information or did you end up voting on it uh yeah i think we ended up getting more info going back and getting more information if i remember and this was 2013 or 14 yeah i understood and then i think uh all of us uh up here one of the things that we we all collaborate very well we know the virtues of collaboration but we also also bring our own core values that help guide us in our decision making what do you consider to be your core values that are non-negotiable my ethics i think i'm a very ethical person and to me that's non-negotiable okay is that yeah that's helpful we have uh you've obviously looked at our priority list you know what our top priorities are as it pertains to serving on subcommittees which ones do you want to plug in on and how do you think that that best serves us in getting our tier one priorities addressed uh in knowing what your committees are i think that the two that really would resonate with me it would be the uh long-term financial stability and audit committee and because of my background in city budget i think that i could be very useful there and then also the cannabis subcommittee as being on planning commission every time we have a meeting we see one or two cannabis applications come forward and there are things that i think could be tweaked in the ordinance and i would like to see the cannabis subcommittee look at that ordinance and i have actually spoken to the chair about that to say we've really asked before we're out of time if i could ask you a specific question within that do you think that the city's set back requirements are adequate within our ordinance i think they need to be expanded to include um other educational facilities and what's in the education code so you still do the 600 feet i'd have to to take a look at where um what other communities have done but i still i do think the 600 feet is probably adequate okay thank you so much i thought i knew you kieran i want to focus a little bit on affordable housing uh your your experience goes back to redevelopment for example uh so looking at things today where we're heading and trying to achieve as it relates to affordable housing how do you go about identifying and processing what may be the best uh funding mechanisms for specific needs as we address our affordable housing needs well it it kind of i look at affordable housing kind of like as a patchwork quilt when it comes to all the funding because you need to cobble together funding sources from everywhere to be successful um i think some of the as i said before some of the funds that are coming down from the state uh will be helpful if the red gets off the ground some of that uh funding source um i think uh looking at tax exempt bonds which i know that the city has a long history of using for affordable housing so and and once again looking at what projects can get off the ground quickest we don't want to spend our valuable resources on projects that are you know 10 years down the road five years down the road we want stuff we want stuff on the ground that answer the question it does thank you thank you very much uh then the other topic these are important topics because this coming year we'll be getting into obviously our budget process and labor negotiations as well with the majority of our our units uh share with us some of your experience and things that you bring to the table with both of these processes probably interrelated as well uh but you touched on some of them being involved with the police department's budget but what do you bring to the table as far as the entire overall process and both of these employer relations and the budget what i bring is the fact that i would know what questions to ask um having been in the role of preparing a budget knowing what um the different line items are uh you know i hopefully wouldn't tend to get in the weeds too much uh so that and then also what it's like as with the labor side i was a founding member of the san rosa management association was one of the managers were not did not have an employee association and back in o five for a variety of reasons we banded together and i was one of the founding members so i saw it from that side of the table and then when i was in the police department though i didn't sit at the at the labor negotiation table i was instrumental in providing information knowing what kind of information is needed to provide um so i think i have especially with labor i have experience on both sides of the table and with budget i have experience on how to prepare a budget and how to read a budget and the kinds of questions to ask thank you and you touched on this earlier as it relates to uh our homeless issues big issue growing and growing uh and you talked about the need for other uh communities to be engaged as well what other solutions do you bring the things that we may not be doing now as a council to address this and trying to end homelessness overall i think one of the things that which i i know that you all will be looking at it is um sanctioned encampments and is that is something that the city should be doing um i know you have the um i can't remember the acronym the program where like churches can have people uh at their places and reading the paper today the county is going to go towards that but i think that's one step that needs thank you once again for this opportunity i hope through the process that i've demonstrated that i'm clearly the most qualified person for this position i've had a constant commitment and service to the community for almost 35 years and i hope that you that i will get your support thank you thank you so much okay council we will be breaking out for lunch break please be back ready to do our next interview at 130 130 thank you i'm getting blown up you reconvened this afternoon's meeting um welcome is minor thank you for participating in this application process i know you've read all the documents but i'll just rehash what you'll be experiencing uh we'll give you three minutes to make an opening statement that each council member will have four minutes to ask any questions um they want within reason and any that they say the attorney allows uh just give you the heads up if um council member wants to ask another question they may interrupt you because they we each only got four minutes and we want to get as much information as we could and you'll have an opportunity for a one minute one minute closing comment and then you also that there is a new refined buzzer so please be respectful of the times if you hear that stop and we'll be moving on okay so opening statement thank you city council for giving us an opportunity to present ourselves to the community as a whole and to you as a as well i am available for all the city council meetings and also for the goal setting meetings i was able to participate in that last year and any other additional meetings we may have i'm available for that as well i've rearranged my schedule i'm ready as for today one of the things i want to do is tell small story student one lived in an area that had guns drugs gangs and violence such as being woken up to the neighbor next door and front neighbor being murdered a childhood fear being shot in the head before the age of 18 experiencing the 92 rides and fearing whether or not they would see the next day running from drive-by shootings from walking to the grocery store three home burglaries friends experiencing teen pregnancy and more student too played the violin for many years met many stars such as Muhammad Ali jesse jackson chico de bars cast from cheers and star track next generation participated in school clubs neighborhood watch performer on television taught sunday school participated in academic pentathlon decathlon junior high school valedictorian all these things that these students have in common was that was me so that brings us to today why i do the work that i do in the community it has a lot to do with my upbringing it was difficult but yet i'm still here it i'm telling you the story of this because it shows the perseverance that you have that don't let your circumstance dictate what you do in the future so as of today you can find me on many boards and commissions you can find me in the public working with different people in the community you will find me in rosa and cbi doing work over there some of you i've done work with as well as well as some of the staff of city of santa rosa you'll see me vice chairing measure oh you'll find me also on measure why oversight committee and participating in the public with various meetings meetings and things and activities within the community why choose me i have stakeholders i have relationships with people in the community as well as in the county so as we're moving forward and you're taking the time to digest what you hear today let me be part of the team we all have a common goal and that's make santa rosa great again okay thank you miss one mean you're first all right make santa rosa great again wow so miss minor thank you so much for coming in today and thank you for all of your continued service to our city i'm curious to know you have a very um you know a specific background that you detailed for us um and we share something how many played the violin and we're obsessed with star trek the next generation i'm not afraid to say live long and prosper and i can do it both hands but at any rate i'm curious to know how your experience would inform your views and your goals as we go into goal setting and budgeting this year um like i mentioned before i was able to attend the goal setting last year both days and i got to see the process so i also participated as a community engager and spoke on the behalf of the community so i clearly understand the procedure that is needed in order for us to move forward so when it comes to that information everything that i've experienced whether i'm in rosa and whether i'm in panoraila vet district or coffee park it all pertains to the city as a whole so it is important that we take those goals and i'm going to stop because i want something really specific and it's good to get this context but what i want to know from you is what you would bring to our goal setting what you would add what you would take away what you keep i would add my personality of course but also the relationships i have within the community i would be able to do the community engagement that is necessary to bring forward policy and changes in policy find out from both parties what that looks like for them and then bring that back to the council and discuss it with you all are there any specific goals that you have that are not on our tier one or tier two priority list no it's pretty much the same um like i said before you'll find me in the community currently working on some of those policies with other agencies and the tier one and tier two i believe in those on those policies and those changes and i look forward to adding to to the to the policy change is there anything that we are doing that you would change or suggest that we approach differently it's a really broad question well because i'm a community engagement i think it's very important that the council as well as the city continue to build those relationships with the community and continue to listen to what the community has to say that's very important when we sit in these meetings and come to city council and we hear things being reported out and that's not what was said at the meeting it's very disappointing so continue to build that community engagement that would definitely help with with the city moving forward are you suggesting that we could use an improved fidelity between the specific feedback from communities and it's um translation to us but there's something that gets lost in the process yes for sure uh i work with rosin cbi that group is predominantly latinx and so it's always important to have that communication and so i'm the lone soldier there but we make it work if we can make it work the city can make it work too but we may not have the time to get into the specifics today but as always when someone comes forward with a very specific and achievable problem i like to ask them for specific and achievable goals to to solve it i know that you're uh have a lot of work in your place but i would look forward to hearing more from you thank you thanks again for participating in this um first one i just want to ask you what would you anticipate being your biggest challenge challenge to being a successful and productive council member if you were to be appointed the biggest challenge um at this particular time i feel i'm ready because of the work i currently do it would just be shifting my priorities which i've already done so it would just be a learning curve of just getting in there and continuing the process that i'm currently doing now okay specifically if you talk about one of our focus areas has been downtown and revitalizing it what thoughts or suggestions or things would you be in favor of continuing to do or do that we're not doing now to revitalize our downtown for the downtown there's some other issues that's going on as far as like safety and moving forward with the building we also have other specific plans here in the city of center rosa so it's not just downtown so even though we're moving forward in regards to the downtown please don't forget the other areas that we have available we have specific plans for those so we need to make sure that as we're moving forward in regards to downtown that we're doing the same for the other areas but as far as downtown some of the movement that's happening right now is good movement okay and when you talk about a lot of needs across the city so this i know you come from the rosin part of town let's talk about infrastructure priorities for you where would you suggest those and what would you be suggesting for the infrastructure it would have to be with collaborations with the city staff along with city council and also with community members also some of the physical infrastructure as far as the streets and the buildings that we have we have some dilapidated buildings that needs there's a dire need of repair so the infrastructure is key not just for the state the city as a whole but for everyone here because if we don't take care of what we have it's going to cost a lot more later well so tell me a little bit more about how you do those priorities so when you talk about infrastructure and capital improvement budgets we do have this building is built in 1969 but we also have a lot of roads out there that community members drive in all the time how would you set some of those priorities for staff what they currently have been doing has been working it would be continue working with those entities and continue to expand on what we can do to improve that and what we can do to improve it in a way where it doesn't cause a lot of money there are some creative ideals out there that could possibly work and also possibly looking into more funding there's other entities out here that we can collaborate with and possibly receive more funding okay and i know you've attended some council meetings and every council meeting we get to make decisions can you tell us about some decisions that this council has made that you would disagree with and what direction do you think we should have went gone in something that i disagree with you may have agreed with everything we've done well there have been times when i have disagreed with something and when i come to the meeting and i hear both sides it changes my opinion so it is important to hear both sides so once you hear both sides then you can make a more valid distinction between okay that's maybe i can see that now so it's it's here in both sides and they're making a decision from that okay and as you you may be aware that the county is proposing a half-sense fire-related sales tax what are your thoughts on that well the public they do have concerns with the increase in taxes but if we continue to collaborate with each other and find other ways to maybe look into providing that fund that would be great thank you wait for me thanks miss minor i want to thank you for being here i remember when i first met you over at the rosin village neighborhood center and getting to know you since i've always just been so impressed and grateful and inspired by your level of engagement in that community and i want want my first question is going to be based on that experience that you have with rosin we've had a number of candidates come through who have made pretty stark points that they despite annexation despite a lot of investment that the city has made into rosin they still feel as though that they're not they're being underserved compared to other parts of town you know somebody who may even have lived experience with that what would you say or do if you're on this council to try to correct course with those constituents well a little bit i do a little bit of that now what i'm in the community doing surveys of wherever it is that i'm doing and i make it a point to express to them the difference of before annexation and after annexation so the narrative has to be clear and when santa rosa took that that area over and then explained to them what happened before versus what's happening now i did hear some of the community members say that there was a difference with the policing and that was something that was complained a lot prior to annexation so it's really making sure that the narrative is clear and making sure that we continue to communicate with the the people of rosin and when if we're having that dialogue and they feel like they're in the loop some of the issues we have now will dissipate so you feel as though it's it's really a communication shortcoming that the city has less so than an actual practical boots on the ground investment kind of it would need to be both need to be definitely have the education and definitely having the open forum for community members to speak on and then also having boots on the ground okay how do you see yourself as that conduit of information between city hall and rosin what would you do to practice what you're preaching oh i'll be out there in the streets talking i'm talking talking and making sure that people understand what the city is about and what we're where we're trying to go as a city and making sure that people understand what our goals are as a city in relation to rosin and what rosin goals are in relation to the city okay um that's all the questions i have you have a minute 44 is there anything that you hope that i had asked that you might want to talk about no i look forward to working with you guys and being up there okay thanks just minor hey miss minor how are you doing i'm good so one of the things that you allude to in your application is the potential to run for city council representing the roslin district in 2020 how would you balance the need to introduce yourself to that district and focus on those issues with the reality that the seat is in at-large position with six other districts that you'd need to introduce yourself to an advocate for well i have a good uh background in collaborating with everybody across the city you can find me in various areas talking and communicating working with different entities within the city uh my son was in the pine island district when we dealt with the fires of coffee parks that had a direct relationship with that being displaced from the school for two months and dealing with being in other areas so i have a clear understanding that yes it's at a large position i have a lot of contacts and people that i speak with across the board in the many works that i do so i get to hear from every district about some of the issues that's going on in their district that's great uh and we first met also similar to jack uh meeting with roslin cbi talking about the rental inspection ordinance that rental inspection ordinance is going to come before the council with a new council member on it being as involved as you have been in that do you feel like it's been crafted uh appropriately or what changes would you advocate for to it as it comes to the council well being i attended some of those meetings uh we had input in the crafting of that so as we're moving for it i feel it's it's a pretty sound policy and i just hope that we're able to execute it as a city as a whole and that it works the way it's supposed to work okay we obviously we've dealt a lot with emergency response over the last couple of years how have you seen the evolution of the city's response what do you think we're doing well and what do you think we need to do better on as far as the emergency response um i'm partial to fire and police and parks and recs because i do sit on the measure o oversight committee and the work i've seen has been great one of the things that i experienced as a community person was being able to participate in a tour of the city and what measure o funds have to do for the city and i appreciate everything that was done in regards to that and learning about the recently purchased long ladder fire truck prior to the fires and that being available for the fire so as we continue to move forward and not only the fires and other issues we have here in the city our team that we have here in the city our chief and our police and fire they're doing a great job expanding on the funds that they have and as we're moving forward i hope they continue to be able to be supported on the behalf of the city and the and the council and with your measure o hat on uh somewhere in the not so distant future will be the reauthorization of that measure o at that time do you feel based on where you sit today that you'll advocate for its continuance or would you want to see some reforms to how that measure was drafted i would advocate for measure o because of the if you take the fire and the police out of it what it does for the city and what it provides for the children of the city that is awesome being able to participate in activities that are free free of charge that is something that helps keep the youth off the streets so i would definitely advocate for the continuance of measure o excellent thank you so much diva can you share with us some ideas that you might have as relates to media some of our affordable housing needs so for the affordable housing um some of the things that could possibly help with that is maybe increasing the fine um that is associated with uh providing affordable homes make the fine a little higher so that people can make sure that it's put into the projects that they're bringing forward and then also continue to work with the community and find out exactly what the needs are because we have a large number of market rate facilities that will be coming into town but we also need to be mindful that the workers here they're not in market rate income brackets so we need to make sure that we're able to have things available for our hard worker families in service or the fields or whatever it is so looking into maybe increasing the fines a little bit and you mentioned uh earnings and wages how do we address that uh to make things more affordable in our community well you took the first step by passing the the 15 an hour rate and as we continue to move forward and look at the cpi and the cost of living and all of those issues we would have to move accordingly to that so as we're moving forward as a city and some people need additional money or help that's something that we need to continue to look at and move forward again thank you for the work that you've done in your neighborhood you continue to do that in your and your engagement with uh city board as well uh what ideas do you have for uh increasing civic engagement by our by our broad community as a part um well part of that i am a community engagement teacher i teach an elective class to seventh and eighth graders so starting young and teaching that to the students in how to engage the community and showing them that they have a voice so i tell my students hey look at me today so hopefully they're watching i don't know but getting into the community and really teaching the concept of community engagement and what that looks like everybody can complain but what are you going to do about it are you going to just complain and do nothing or complain or do something so it's making sure that the community understands how they can get involved we are in need of people to join the commissions and boards and committees and people are not stepping up so we need to engage in that aspect and educate and make sure they understand that this is where changes can happen and then once they understand that are you available to participate maybe even changing the meeting times i don't know that is something that we have to look into as we're moving forward for it as a city thank you even good afternoon miss minor thank you for being here today um what would in the in the spirit or the conversation around affordable housing um what would you uh what are your thoughts about infill development as a strategy and how do you how would you um kind of mitigate the fears or concerns of the neighborhoods especially our historic neighborhoods when it comes to infill development um to mitigate the concerns again it goes back to educating the public um there are times when we see signs that go up and say hey come speak at council come speak at planning commission if they don't understand that concept and understand what that entails it means nothing so and and moving forward and mitigating some of the fears is just really educating and sometimes we might have to pay a little extra to get that information out to the public whether it's in the flyer form newspaper radio facebook uh the flea market whatever that looks like that's what we need to do do you support the philosophy of infill development yes to some degree well they just recently had a fire and on jenice and one of the concerns was the density so to have it it would be great but then there's other fears that come along with that what do you think is the most important ability a city council member should have well is that again what's the most important ability you think a city council member should possess being personable being able to be accessible to the public and just being someone that's listening to the public and then finding a solution that might work for that citizen or that group thank you and what does governance mean to you governance means a body of rules and regulations to help everybody move forward so something that works today may not work tomorrow so you would have to change it so as we're governing whether it's the city or or a committee you have to make changes so as we're moving forward and things change you have to change your governance thank you all right those are all the questions from council you now have a minute for a closing statement thank you once again for giving us an opportunity as you can see we have a lot of people that apply today i hope that you take everything that i stand in consideration that this is an opportunity for you to make a big statement as we're moving forward and pick someone that really understands both sides as a as a community engager as a city council person as a mom as a business owner i understand all those avenues thank you thank you welcome david thank you for participating in this process so just give a quick overview of the material you've already read but we'll provide you a three-minute opportunity for an opening comment then well each council person will have four minutes to ask you any questions he or she would like you may be interrupted because again it's we're very time sensitive here so if they got enough information they want a little bit more than me interrupting the middle of that okay then you'll have the final word you get a minute for a closing statement so all right please three minutes for your opening statement all right thank you very much nice to see all of you um uh ma'am at home vice-mayor Fleming and council members thank you for allowing me a few minutes of your time this afternoon i must say i am heartened that there are 19 candidates for this job i'm sure that you're probably heartened that with me you were just over halfway there so we'll continue on from there but it is heartening to me that so many people want to step forward and help the city of santa rosa and contribute to the city of santa rosa and fill this vacancy left by miss combs so that i think is only a good thing and it's nice to know that there are so many people who want to make santa rosa a better place to live work play raise the family and just generally enjoy life it's important to me to be here today because public service is a core value of mine my father was a council member to small town bellingham washington and i have served on a number of commissions uh santa rosa library commission and it's a core value of mine it's important to me to be here and it's important to me to serve and contribute to where i work i am prepared to regularly attend scheduled council meetings i have the council's goal setting session in march on my calendar already should i be selected to fill this role and i'm taking an extended leave from my employer in may prior to my official retirement date in july so i do have time available to devote to the council meetings to subcommittee meetings and to being an advocate and an ambassador for the city of santa rosa so let me take a couple of minutes and tell you why i am your ideal candidate to fill this position i'm results oriented i believe in a quick fix when it's available maybe some market umbrellas down on that square until those trees come in you know i'm also gonna i'm someone who looks at long term sustainability i'm going to tell you a quick story about that i met a young woman from a local health care organization the other day and she introduced herself to me and said that she had met me before i didn't remember her but we had met nearly 20 years ago and she was one of the first graduates of the health care workforce development program which is now part of the junior college health occupations program and nearly 20 years ago i was on the original steering committee for the group that developed the program and we founded a home at the junior college and it's been producing health care workers and leaders in our community ever since then so i share this as an example of vision of implementation and of sustainability to improve our community some things just take a long time and there are things that i'm doing today that i may never live to see the results of but that's just okay with me that's fine you know i'm good at playing that's that buzzer that ends the opening comments okay thank you council comments and i get to start um so dave can you share with us what you believe is the most important thing the single most important thing about you that will convince us you're the right person to fill this vacancy yes um i am a quick study i have been in government work before with the Santa Rosa library commission i understand budgeting and the main thing that i think sets me apart is my collaborative informative and communicative style and i'm a fun guy to work with i take things seriously uh because they are serious um but there is room for um having a good time while we do it okay and with your experience in the library system what suggestions or uh offerings would you make for the city of santa rosa in ways to enhance what we currently offer the community and way of library services well definitely rosalind let's make it a real part of the library system not just a temporary part as it is now and like most things like the city it needs and continues to need ambassadors and spokespeople i would encourage all of our council members to be ambassadors for our library system it's a valuable asset in our community so one of the things because we have had this discussion and this council has set aside some funding for it but not a hundred percent of funding so where do we come up with the funding or what will we stop funding so that we could fund the rosalind library you know i think uh within an organization like a library um there is a library foundation um it is not but there is no reason why it should not be a multimillion dollar foundation uh so a public private venture to help ensure a new library and rosalind to make sure that our current libraries are functioning and are in good spaces and are meeting the technological needs of our community so i would say a public private venture uh is really a great way to go forward with that and there's already those building blocks in place and so with your employment in the healthcare field it offers you i think a unique experience with those experiencing homelessness so that's one of our council of tier one priorities here what thoughts or direction would you give the city as to ways to help and homelessness in our community you know homelessness uh i don't need to tell you it was a complex issue and in the hospital setting i can tell you that a lot of the people we see have mental health problems right a lot of them are there on 51 50 holds and how do we treat those people well first of all we need to treat them all with dignity whether they have mental health problems financial problems or whatever the issue might be why they're homeless so how do we make sure that we have a dignified system for treating them meeting with them hearing them and also how do we include them as our neighbors they're not foreigners they're not aliens there are community members so outreach from individuals from organizations like the ones that are currently doing some network catholic charities for example and i think we have opportunities to use existing facilities to house people some people say they might not be dignified enough the fairgrounds for example but i think we need to look at all opportunities and see where can we house people especially during inclement weather and i'm a big believer in a housing first solution to solving a lot of homelessness issues great i know your application you mentioned you've been a resident 30 years here correct so you obviously experienced the october 17 fires can you give us a letter grade for our efforts towards recovery from the tubs fire uh yeah i'd give everybody an a you know and i'd give that an a for effort it's an important issue and i think we all pulled together we were all there we were all helping each other thank you mr ebright i want to thank you for for being here and thank you for all the work that you've done as a library commissioner towards advancing the interests of a rosalind library in rosalind just for the sake of the public i remember working with you and you were really instrumental in making that become a reality and i'm with you and that i hope it can move forward in the future uh one question that i want to ask and it's not meant to be subversive or create a land mine for you but what have you read in the paper in the last few years or you know of course of 10 years that were decisions that this council has made actually i want to refocus that to this council because this is the council you'd be joining what decisions have we made that you felt were bad decisions or incomplete or missed opportunities to do something better you know i'm not going to lay it at the feet of the council i understand the city government is a large organization but you know i'd be really happy to move into a downtown condo and people keep threatening to build them and by golly i'd love to see him be built so how do we expedite that process so i can move downtown and live in a nice place we're working on that but do you have any ideas potentially concrete policy solutions that could help advance that goal well i don't know what barriers stand in the way of developers um and are there ways that we can provide um not just financial incentives but other incentives so that people will want to move downtown i have friends who say i don't like going downtown i don't know why they say that i love our downtown i love our square uh so again i'd say part of that is ambassadorship advocacy and it's the role of all of you and i think other people in our community to do that and put those benefits forward so that people know what they are so if obviously homelessness is becoming as you put it in correctly a very complex uh and dynamic and sometimes fluid issue but um if you had ten million dollars how would you invest it in solutions and in what solutions would you invest first of all given homelessness i would say that ten million dollars isn't a lot of money great answer okay um just to put things in scale um but um you know part of it there's suffering out there first thing i would do no harm i would believe as much suffering as possible as quickly as possible and if that's moving people into temporary housing let's do that identifying those people who need mental health and other health care services let's get that for them let's make those people part of our society again so they do not feel ostracized so you have just over a minute left and those were my core questions i wanted to ask you but is there anything that you wish i had asked you that you want to take this minute to share yeah i'd like to know or let me tell you the answer to the question why is this important to me and why am i even here i love the city of santa rosa this is my home i've been here for 30 years my wife and i live here my daughter lives here my granddaughter lives here i expect to live here until i die i'm not going to retire someplace else i'm going to retire here and very soon actually um so that's why this is important to me and that i think is one of the things that it may not set me apart but it certainly gives me the heart to do the work of a city council member thanks for that addition i have no further questions thank you mr e right how are you doing good thank you so one of the things that you obviously have had to deal with grapple with and adapt to is the public safety power shutoffs from your role in the health care industry can you talk a little bit about what evolution uh you have made or or the organization has made that you could bring to this city as suggestions for ways we can do it better or things that we should consider as we go through the the public safety power shutoffs yeah i mean i think we need to identify who's vulnerable for starters i mean they are blanket power shutoffs uh but they do affect people differently so how do i identify the needs of people when the power is off am i on some sort of medical device for example that's what's familiar to me um and do i know who those people are and i do know and do we know how to help them and get them a battery backup whatever it might be um so identifying the needs of people during a power shutoff and i will say i was heartened by um how everyone pulled together i was fortunate i lived in an area uh without power and without i mean with power and without uh i was not in an evacuation zone i wouldn't exactly say it was a party at our house but there's sure a lot of people there i think one of the interesting things about sitting in this seat is you both advocate for city response to address the impact but also have a role to play telling santa rosa's story more broad in the state and in the federal if you were in this seat uh not just advocating for changes to address the public safety power shutoff but would you be advocating to the state for pg need to be able to shut off the power or do you think that that process needs to change you know i will admit there's some of that that i don't know the technical details of so public safety i guess would be my first priority um and is a power shutoff the best way to achieve that i'm not sure it is it certainly creates a lot of habit for people i know that um and what are the reasons for a power shutoff do people understand that i'm not sure they do uh we know that we think or we've heard that some of our fires have been started by equipment out in the outlying areas um but what does that have to do with us here in santa rosa so making people understand the connections between what's out there and their lives here and how it's affected is very important okay we talked a little bit you gave a letter grade on how the city has done on recovery we're going into year three are there any blind spots that you think that we have that we should focus on in the third year um or are there any policy changes that you think we should consider well again it is the city council you do make policy and set direction for our city but how do we get more people involved in the recovery again i think uh in our permitting process has improved i think there's room for continued improvement there um why aren't we building more homes why aren't we building more multi-unit homes what sort of financing can the city help support in any number of ways maybe not in a dollar amount but how do we help builders build and we also want to make sure that we are keeping our valued citizens here in the city of santa rosa so that they do not leave we talk about um the fires i think we talk a lot about homeowners there are a lot of people who didn't own own homes who were very much impacted by those fires and i think we need to keep all of those people in mind great thank you thank you for your service and congrats on your retirement thank you david talk more about the housing needs we had some shortages before the fires so this really set us back so what ideas do you have in continuing to meet our needs as it relates to just overall housing but more specifically with affordable housing well there are government definitions of what affordable housing is um and obviously as a government entity you need to pay attention to those um but also what is affordable to a family of four people who might be at a hundred and forty hundred and sixty hundred and eighty percent of the poverty level how do we keep those people here how do we keep our firefighters our police officers other public servants in our community and how do we keep our schools functioning so i wish i had the answer for you to say this is how we're going to solve our housing crisis and it is a crisis um i hesitate to use the image of a house on fire but i'm afraid there has been and it's very important and i think that should be at the top of everyone's mind in almost every discussion that the city council has is what are we doing for recovery what are we doing to keep our people safe and what are we doing to increase housing stock and i'm also a big believer in not having all the rich folks live in one part of town and all the poor folk live in the other part of town i'd like to see everybody live and work together another crisis that we are facing that continue to face is our homeless issues and not just Santa Rosa but around the region and i think you bring a unique perspective from the health care profession is kind of almost using that lens is there anything that we're missing in our approaches to deal with this issue um again i don't need to tell you that that it's a a complex issue um but at its root it's a human issue um it's an issue of compassion um and how do we translate that compassion uh into action so that we can get more people into homes and into homes where they are comfortable um it's not a confinement program that's not what we want what we're looking for is someplace that people can call home and how do we provide that for them or how do we help them provide it for themselves so a large part of this is also employment wages um how do our people make a living here in the city of Santa Rosa and how do they make a living that they can afford to live either by renting with subsidies or with a down payment on a home and making a monthly mortgage payment so how do we supply them with that type of information and the encouragement to do so do you see any immediate or long-term solutions that we're missing not thinking about now you keep asking me for answers and it's like i wish i had them um yeah i think it's one of those things that um as much as people feel on on a certain level i think you could put it more in people's faces every day every single day uh as an advocate i view you all as advocates and ambassadors for our city um it needs to be in people's faces uh it can be very uncomfortable uh we can do it politely but we need to talk about it all the time thank you david good afternoon david and thanks for being here you bet appreciate it oftentimes well luckily not as often as it could be our personal philosophies um but up against important decisions that come before the council and our ability to move forward despite our personal philosophies what do you believe is the role of our own well-developed philosophies personal the evil all of them may be shared by others what do you believe the role is of your personal philosophies when making decisions with the council it's a very interesting question i'm going to go back to saying a couple of things that i've already said before at the risk of repeating myself um i think compassion is very important this is a community that's raw uh we've been hurt we've been damaged we need to be nice to each other so uh that's one way i would go about decision making is make sure that we communicate effectively honestly and compassionately with each other so that's one of the main things i think is how do we talk to each other how do we talk about heart issues i think that's important in addition to um compassion what do you believe is the most or what be the most important abilities for a council person to possess um a couple of them i think you need to have a strong belief in the goodness and value of the city of santa rosa you also need to have a strong belief and value in government that you are here that our government is here to do the work of the people um that it's not too big that it's not too expensive that it doesn't get in the way of things it's there to serve a purpose so how do we make sure that people understand what that purpose is and i think that the council has a large role in promoting the work of government not just in making decisions but in talking about how those decisions are made and who you're talking to um talking to business owners is important talking to school teachers is important talking to students is important talking to young parents is important who's in our community um and how do we talk to them in that vein what does governance mean to you i'd say that governance to me is deliberation right thinking and quick action thank you hello thank you for your time and your interest today and all of your service my question is i've heard nearly everything that i would ask asked and so um i want to give you an opportunity for a fun question which is if you were a dictator for a month so you can do policy you can implement it but you've got to do it quickly and the staff and your disposal what would the first thing or the first two things that you would do if you had that power for a limited time be i find a way to get our homeless people housed notes how would you do it because you're the oh how would i would do it so you can do whatever any way i want to any way you want um i would open up all of our shelters i'd find vacant spaces i would find contractors and people and volunteers to go in and make those places view beautiful and inviting so that we welcome our homeless people into homes so they're no longer homeless as a dictator i would go out and rob the coffers of other large government entities that aren't related to the city of santa rosa so that we had plenty of funding for going forward i feel like the supreme court would definitely hear a case so thank you for thank you thank you now you have one minute for a closing statement thank you um as i mentioned before um crisis is no stranger to me i've evacuated a hospital uh twice uh and stood those hospitals back up again um and i think we are in a crisis in santa rosa right now uh with homelessness with housing with ongoing fire recovery um and i think we need to make sure that we face that crisis head on with heart uh together uh and bringing more people along with us and advocating for what we have here which is a very beautiful city thank you okay thank you so much sure thank you it's been so long i haven't gotten a good afternoon and thank you so much for participating in this process so although i know you already know this i just want to reaffirm the process will be going through you know three minutes for an opening statement then each council member will have four minutes to ask you any questions here she wants i just give you the heads up you may be interrupted because again that we're very time specific so if they've got enough information from me ready move on you may get that and then you'll have the final word for a one minute closing statement so with that please start your three-minute opening statement okay i'm very glad to thanks as always for your service to our community and for the opportunity that you're granting the public to participate in this process um i am aware of our limited time so i'll get right to the business at hand uh with respect to the three questions you've asked all the council candidate applicants uh to answer yes i will be able to attend council meetings uh yes i am familiar with your budget and goal setting uh dates in march and uh no i don't anticipate any problems with your budget or excuse me your uh boards and subcommittees um quite able to fulfill all of those requirements it has been a privilege to serve our community previously both in your boards and subcommittees on the planning commission and on the city council following my retirement as our community struggled through the 2017 wildfires i have looked for an opportunity to once again serve our community and to give back so i'm delighted to once again be here with this application for to fill the vacancy and the opportunity to serve in brief um my sense of my application is that i present to you a unique set of qualifications given my work in the community on the planning commission as a former city council member and vice mayor and now in my private practice assisting with thoughtful sustainable development and the creation of a new job space here in santa rosa so i'm delighted to once again have the chance to serve with you and i look forward to your questions great thank you uh mr dibbons you're uh thank you miss carlstrom i appreciate you being here one of the things that you mentioned is the new job space and i'm really curious to know as somebody who's been really involved in both the creation of the cannabis ordinance here at the city of santa rosa and a practitioner what actions would you take to help make that ordinance better because my understanding is right now it has some shortcomings it's a really great question and i appreciate the opportunity um in my experience uh within the industry on the ground um there's an incredible amount of volatility um and that's not ever going to be completely dealt with by the council's ordinance or any ordinance um the council has done a remarkable job creating a predictable entitlement process and i think if you speak to any industry that's what they're looking for your staff have gone above and beyond facilitating the introduction of this industry of course there are always going to be shortages within the staff itself and you know of course you're always faced with the opportunity to continue reducing staff burden in order to deal with some budget shortfalls but um really what we're seeing is that uh with the introduction of the ordinance back in 2016 and its development over time um there's been a lot of quite frankly chaos um early adopters to the industry incurred incredibly inflated real estate prices um they had they had to withstand uh grueling entitlement processes in in summonses particularly with respect to the retail ordinance and the retail applicants many of whom took two two and a half three years to wind their way through the city process and that's incredibly expensive um so those businesses a lot of them are now at a point where quite frankly they've run out of money and so they are looking you know they're out there they're trying to shop their projects which of course was was something that um the ordinance had hoped to avoid right um part of the the um competitive process was designed to flush out applicants who were really committed to our community and I think that you did a really good job with that um but unfortunately sometimes those people run out of money and uh they have to look for outside investment so to the extent that um the subcommittee and the council have readdressed that um and particularly with respect to your retail applicants um it's my suggestion that you revert to a standard entitlement process it's fine if you want to continue reviewing these projects through a full conditional use permit um I think that we learned the competitive process doesn't necessarily leave you with the best project although of course I jokingly refer but I think that you did a bang-up job in all of those competitive processes um but that would be one area in particular that I would like for the council to consider taking a look at just revert to a normal entitlement process I think with respect to the other elements on the delivery and supply chain the the review processes are doing a fine job um again they're predictable the staff are much more comfortable with these projects now so they're better able to understand what if any impacts they're going to pose to the city and that's going to help those businesses get operational faster and the faster they're operational the faster they can hire people and the faster that my clients and others in the industry can start creating these really well paying jobs that are heavily regulated and highly trained okay thank you that was a great answer um I wanted to also ask you along those same lines and building off of your works and planning commissioner and somebody who stayed involved here for the last few years housing what maybe I don't know three things or a couple of key points that you think the city has not done or should do more of to help affordable housing and make it more accessible in this community sure um you know the councilor are already tackling a number of these issues I'm thinking specifically of the commercial jobs linkage um encouraging uh the actual development of on-site affordable units as opposed to paying in lieu fees um which I think the department has me disagree with typically units that we're looking for is that my time or his time there we go but I'll give you a few seconds to finish your answer if you'd like thank you I appreciate that um and and quite frankly the the housing department has done an admirable job also of streamlining the entitlement and review process for housing um the density bonuses and the reduction in permitting fees I think are generating a lot of interest in the private development side um and I'm certainly experiencing that in my private practice so I think one of the historic tensions that Santa Rosa has had and you certainly had to navigate it as a council member is between the need to develop housing and protecting our open spaces and for this council where that's really come to a head is the discussion around uh and Fountain Grove's obviously poster child for that discussion we've been dealing with it from the fire front uh with a history and a path of fire that goes right through that area would you as a council member be supportive of rebuilding homes in Fountain Grove and adding additional new development to the area that was not there prior to to any fires assuming the council and the city are able to adequately incorporate the rural urban interface development guidelines and building codes I I believe that I would support people being having the opportunity to rebuild their homes I would not likely support an expansion of development in Fountain Grove even once those rural urban interface ordinances were put into place it's a very hard nut to crack to tell someone that they can't rebuild their home um the 2017 the 2018 the 2019 fires were an incredible trauma to our community and so as a council you do have an opportunity to help people work their way through that and and trying to say to somebody that they can rebuild their home I think um does the community a disservice but you do also have an obligation to acknowledge that building codes building standards development standards and that rural urban interface have not been adequately addressed you have that opportunity to do that now and that is the the approach that I would take great and then obviously we continue to have a re-trauma each year as we go through these public safety power shutoffs do you think PG&E should have the ability to shut off the power and if not who should be able to make that determination and what do you think the city needs to do better to prepare for those instances I think that the PSPS is our one tool that has been haltingly implemented it was terrifying the first time I will tell you and and especially for someone with young children at home having schools without power without power the interruption to their schedule only magnifies the trauma and the impact of these situations but yes in short they should have the opportunity they should have the power if you will to shut off the power when the need it presents itself assuming collaboration has been had between Santa Rosa's public safety departments in the overall county public safety framework great and one of the hallmarks of your council career was working on the open government task force obviously not all of it has been implemented yet if you could pick one or two things to really put your shoulder behind its shove as a council member which would they be the less flashy one would be the reinstatement of the community engagement director I do understand that the role of that has been allocated under assistant city manager David guin's leadership and I appreciate that that commitment to our community remains in place one of the other areas that did not get as much press or discussion amongst the council would be to actually pay the council the council and the city have finally are now finally experiencing the benefit of district elections paying the council is the next step in ensuring that the council reflects the makeup of the community excellent and in your last couple of seconds here I know you've been an advocate particularly for working family members have done more friendly things around the city is there anything on that front that you'd like to tackle early on as well well I think really tackling the housing issue is a is a family friendly issue I'm speaking in the in the green room today as a tenant in this community great thank you so much Erin you're you work downtown and you frequent downtown and what I wanted from you is to give us a little bit of your perspective on downtown there's been the reunification of the square a lot of activity going on a lot of future planning what's your current assessment of our downtown I think downtown is fantastic of course it's experiencing some reverberations from reunification a long history frankly of mistrust of downtown you know I I come from southern California I went to school in large cities I hear from downtown business owners that you know the homeless problem is really a deterrent and I can understand that that is Santa Rosa's perspective but we are a big city and there are always going to be people coming to our community for a variety of reasons being able to watch the activities that take place in courthouse square is so it's such an honor to have been able to work on that project I saw a boot camp out there one morning you know right there on the grass and and all of the community events that we've been able to host from Iron Man to weddings on the square that's a true testament to Santa Rosa's willingness to re-envision itself about downtown business owners of course they are struggling retail itself is struggling making downtown more attractive to our residents to our visitors to our families that remains a challenge that the council is facing you know going back and forth on whether and how much to charge for parking that's going to be an ongoing issue and we're going to disagree on that on occasion but you know my my business partners at least one of them are in the audience they keep trying to move our business out of downtown and I'm adamant no we are staying downtown I love working downtown because this is where the heart of the city is to me this is where the action is and I'm I'm delighted with the work that we've been able to do what kinds of things can we do to make downtown more attractive to families as far as the place besides just the shopping well one of the things that we've been tackling for a number of years this is going back to my time on the planning commission and in service with all of you on the commission or excuse me on the council is to introduce housing to downtown if you'll recall the AT&T project was originally slated to incorporate two stories of housing the developer felt that he couldn't make that pencil out and we as a council really hadn't been handed the tools yet to say no that's not acceptable come back to us with better numbers there's a lot of interest in there is a lot of interest in residents to live downtown there's a lot of interest on the development side to develop the downtown quite frankly unfortunately there are a lot of large albatross buildings downtown that you know there's only so much the city can do to incentivize their development but filling those vacant commercial areas bringing housing to downtown that'll change the tenor of what happens on a daily basis in our downtown core in your opinion what are the three most important qualities that council members should possess an understanding of the job itself a willingness to be exposed to the public and to be truly in service this is not a this is not a part-time job you are always immediately accountable and you should be always available to the members of the public when that when their concerns are facing you and then an ability to collaborate within and amongst the council itself and that's one of the areas that I think I bring some of my some of my strongest suits to you is my training both as an attorney and and and I'll turn to the speed resolution but also my relationships with many of you having served with you previously or worked with you on other avenues thank you good afternoon Aaron thanks for being here in the same continuing the conversation of housing in the downtown we have on several sides of the of the downtown and very close to our core historic neighborhoods and given the reality of in-built development how do you feel you could balance the needs of the neighborhoods the historic neighborhoods that are very concerned about the changes that could be happening right across the street from them and the need for housing and and in-built development well just because you make it more attractive to develop in the downtown doesn't mean you're inviting terrible development and I think that's really the tools that the council have been handed in the last number of years is this understanding that there's a limited amount of this resource which is our land right and we can demand the best type of projects to come forward you know speaking specifically from within experiences on my client side there is a lot of interest in in bringing a mixed use model to Santa Rosa and of course that's going to bring with it some concern because that's a bigger city model that Santa Rosa has had only limited experience with but just like we're seeing as the cannabis industry grows quite frankly in in our community what we were afraid of has not come to pass and these are exceptional projects and an exceptional experience for Santa Rosa so too I believe housing development in downtown would would mirror that experience we've seen that on 7th street we've seen it in railroad square and I think that over time the community's fears will will not come to pass with respect to that but yeah there are going to be more people there are going to be more cars and that is part of what drives a vibrant economy and a vibrant community thank you as a forward council member it's just a few years ago how do you think the local political climate has changed since you were a council member if at all well your workroom is a lot nicer than it was when I was on the council I'll tell you that I think that I was very privileged to take some of the positions that I did on the council and and that was not always without its detriment and I think Santa Rosa is much more comfortable now with the idea that you can be both quote unquote pro development on the development on the quote business side but also maintaining the integrity of our community and in fact that's what really attracted me to Santa Rosa when I moved here more than a decade ago I come from a community that used to grow oranges and was very attached to that as its economic and job space and its leaders unfortunately made really terrible decisions with respect to development in its borders and they ripped out all the orange groves and they built houses and strip malls and warehouses and the entire character of the community changed Santa Rosa and Sonoma County has done a remarkable job of not doing that we do have our growth boundaries we have our community separators and that is a wonderful legacy that leaders before us have given to us so that's really what drives my approach to politics in Sonoma County and and I think that unfortunately following the fires and and the collective trauma that we all experienced there has been this really wonderful consolidation and a really well surprising opportunity to create community and to sort of hold one another close and and to protect what it is that we have here that is so remarkable and I think that that is reflected in our politics and and indeed the public's expectations for how the council will comport itself and the issues that you're tackling and I think that that's a testament to you all and the votes that you've been able to take. Thanks Erin. Hi Erin good to see you and when I first came here there was no mirror in that California and I was like how are you supposed to put your lipstick on before a meeting so you know anyway uh Julie and Liz got to work fast on that and now it's real cute in there I'm sure everybody enjoys the mirror much as I do so at any rate um you know you uh you mentioned something that I think is really important and in a way you said you placed a trail for those of us who would come after you by uh taking the bold step of showing that business is not fundamentally at odds with environment and so I'm just wondering um since I think that you were a little bit ahead of your time in that what you would see philosophically and vision-wise for us as a council going forward in the next year if you were to be seated with us. I appreciate that that's very kind of you to say um that wasn't the intent at the time um it was really just a reflection of my values um and and those values remain the same today um I'm six years older uh and and with a little bit thicker skin and you know maybe a thicker waist um but I think that that would absolutely continue to be my approach um I do work in private practice I do work on the business and development side um that will not cease because I have a child to feed in a roof to maintain over his head um but approaching the very valuable resource of this community which is our limited land space um that will continue to inform my decision-making on the council um you you may have seen it those of you who served with me any of you who watched the votes that I took on the planning commission I do demand better from applicants that come to our to our chambers asking for entitlements asking for tax benefits um asking for staff time and asking for the public's trust and you have the opportunity and you have done that um and and that would absolutely be uh how I would continue to approach serving with all of you I'm very cognizant that uh this is a little bit like being a pinch-hitter um you you need one more row or one more ore in your boat and you guys have done an admirable job there is herculean efforts underway to help the city recover from the fires to continue moving forward to rebuild your your budget surpluses and savings and and my approach would be to continue supporting you in that you know I I am a person in the community I do have a track record um and and my job is to continue uh serving the community in the way that I know will make my son proud um in the future because I had one more question regarding that which is um as the parent of young child and in the center of the city schools how does that inform your approach to because that is you know your child is in school now so how would that change your perspective or augment it going forward obviously it immediately informed my service the first time around um not having an opportunity or a location to to safely breastfeed him um was I think one of the first issues that I brought to the to the council and and to city staff because that had never happened before no one had ever needed to deal with that um but you know my son is is in kindergarten he's at Cesar Chavez language academy which is on the cook middle school campus sabasa pole and stony point road um that's the intersection that a lot of you have heard about where there's all kinds of pedestrians getting killed um because the pedestrian access out there is is lacking um so knowing that I have connections here within the city the parents group have asked me to get involved to talk about what are our pedestrian access opportunities because I do you know hold my tiny little six-year-old's hand as I walk down sabasa pole road taking him to his kindergarten class and that's just one kid and there are thousands of them out there um you know we have limited opportunities as a council to really address those educational issues but there are opportunities for overlap both with our our bike and pen uh advisory board as well as our city schools um and and those are opportunities that I will continue to look for thank you okay thank you for participating in this process so since you have the benefit of having actually been up here for a term um can you share upon reflection about how you're four years on council where are there any things that you would like to handle differently and what were they and how would you handle them differently after experience the council I would say that my very first term my very first year I served on something like 11 subcommittees and um that was an incredible workload and and I was gratified that the mayor at the time had that much faith and trust in me um but I I think that that was too much there was little opportunity to really delve in to um some of those subcommittees issues um you know we had a very contentious council quite frankly um despite the fact that a large majority of us did agree um you know in my in my first term this is 13 and 14 um the majority of us did agree on on many policies there the tone was quite different um you you know you can't serve on a board and not take responsibility for that um had I been in a different place in my life I would have done more work um to to directly address that um I also think the city had a number of opportunities to show leadership where we we failed to do so um I was reminded of that this morning um actually just speaking about um the shooting of Andy Lopez uh that was not within our jurisdiction that was not one of our officers but the city had an opportunity to embrace a community that was hurting and was scared and and I think that we did not address that as well as we could as well as this council may have been able to do um so those are two things that kind of come immediately to mind um you know when you're in your first couple of years on council as all of you know um quite frankly you spend some time just learning where the bathrooms are um let alone how does the city government actually run how does the interaction with city attorney and city manager actually function and how does that impact the policy of the city um and I think that uh spending a little bit more time on those those seemingly minute details may have served me better so with that with the second example you gave the tragic candy Lopez shooting what would you have suggested the city do differently at the time I don't recall that the city ever had any formal response um I we had difficulty even getting a press release out um and that was part of why we formed the open government task force because it became clear that you know you and your role as mayor have uh you are the voice of the council are you the voice of the city is the city manager the voice of the city where is that coming from where does the city look to the the public right they look to the council members who look to the mayor um so it became clear that we needed to develop more strongly the policies and procedures that would guide the council's response and situations like that um we have had unfortunate opportunities in the years past to implement that and I think the city has done an admirable job of responding to the public in the Tubbs fire in the Kincaid fire and following the 2018 fires response and its impacts to our community okay great um we have some items coming up regarding our climate action committee subcommittee specifically the ever during policy what are your thoughts on that and which uh what would be your recommendation I think the city has uh an incredible opportunity to take to continue its leadership um on climate change and and our response as a city um I look at these opportunities just like I look at our housing policy you've got a number of arrows in your quiver and you need to try all of them um so you know to the extent that the city can take that leadership role for its own infrastructure its own buildings absolutely um and in fact uh to council member Tibbetts question um I think that there are opportunities there for implementing and uh influencing the the cannabis ordinance in the same way that the county did um requiring applicants to participate in Sonoma Clean Power's Evergreen program is just one element that I think you could address um but I'm I'm absolutely in support of those okay I was going to ask you how we're going to pay for that but the so instead I will give you one minute for your closing statement uh just once again thank you very much I really appreciate the conversation I know how much of a workload this process presents having lived throughout myself so I commend you for your your patience and your dedication to our community and it would be truly an honor to have the opportunity to start with you all once again thank you very much welcome mr is it petker it is mr petker thank you um I know you've received some documents about the way this uh interview process will go but I'll just reiterate it so we're crystal clear on it we'll provide you an opportunity for a three-minute opening statement and then we'll rotate through the council members and each council member will have four minutes to ask you uh questions uh just give your heads up you may be interrupted because again the time is limited if they want more information they may stop you where you're at and then you'll have the final word for one minute closing statement so with that give you your opportunity for a three-minute opening statement great mayor vice mayor council members thank you for this opportunity to be here to try to get this council position a little bit about me I have been in Sonoma County since I was eight years old and then I've been a resident of the city of Santa Rosa for six years of that we lived just outside of the city limits so I always felt like I was from Santa Rosa but I was just outside of it so and then I went to Sonoma State I studied economics and city and regional planning which is under the environmental studies umbrella and then I also studied public administration while I was there and I actually had a few classes with the council member Rogers and that's about it for my opening statement thank you Mr. Rogers you start the question yeah I get to start us off with the questioning and and actually yeah I one of the things that we talked a lot about in the NPA program was budgeting obviously the city has gone through natural disasters we've gone through public safety power shutoffs can you talk a little bit about how your NPA experience and your economics experience would really be best utilized as a council member to help us with some of those issues yeah I believe I have a lot of experience learning about different types of budgeting and being able to figure out the priorities that the city would like to look into and what they would like to solve with their budgeting issues and I would I use that experience to help work on the budget yeah from a from an academic perspective and from a council member perspective do you have a philosophy around how you would try to craft the budget or try to as we're always trying to do squeeze in more priorities in with city city staff time and with with the dollars that are available yeah I think you would start with the current like past five years of budgeting and see what those trends are and then figure out what the hot topics are that you'd be going forward with and then look at staffing and then work on either moving the budget either more or less in different areas depending on what's needed more so we've spent a lot of time working on recovery for the last couple of years we're going into year three of full recovery uh how do you think the city's done so far are there things that you would do differently in what perspective would you bring to the council I think the city's done a great job of bringing in outside help for people that are rebuilding their houses I know that's been important for people to be able to get permits quickly and to get the rebuilding process going and I believe that the city has done a great job of getting resources working on the fire department figuring out where the new firehouses need to be and different opportunities like that so I think the city's headed in the right direction and we're always a balancing competing interest for priorities particularly our tier one if you have five things that you could put for your tier one priorities what would you put housing is a big issue right now economic viability for businesses especially in the downtown they've had a lot of changes in the downtown recently homelessness so it just kind of goes hand in hand with housing but housing for all as well as homelessness and then budget for the city to be economically viable to help work fix on the structural deficit that the city's facing and then the last one would look at the infrastructure that the city has that has deferred maintenance so work on that with your planning background have you had a chance to look at the downtown specific plan and if so what are your thoughts on it I have started look at the downtown specific plan I think it's definitely a good idea to work on getting the grocery store work on more housing downtown I think that's going to be a great way to do economic viability downtown for the restaurants and the different businesses that are associated right and we'll be launching and working on the general plan update as well is there anything specifically that you'd like to see addressed in the general plan that maybe hasn't been addressed previously I think community engagement and different community activities and local parks getting people more community oriented excellent and that's about my times thank you so much thank you I want to go back to the topic of homelessness and thank you for your past work with the redwood gospel mission what is your assessment of our efforts to deal with this issue of homelessness and what do you see as missing in her efforts I think the city is doing a pretty good job with it I think it's a tough issue for just the city to deal with because it's a it's a big topic in the state with the loss of mental health services and so there's the mental health services there's the addiction help that people need to be able to get into recovery programs and then there's also the people that are either unwilling or they prefer the lifestyle to live out on the street so there's there's different areas that we need to figure out how to get services to those people and I think more outreach is needed that for people that want to help the homeless that we need to educate them to direct the homeless people where to go and not just provide them food right at that minute but provide them information of where the homeless can go so they can get connected different services and there seems to be a lot of frustration right now from the public as far as what they see may perhaps a lack of response what do you see as some immediate solutions for some of the things that are going on out there right now or this relationship in campus that we have I yeah I think more shelters which I'm not sure where we would house the people but having shelters that we can have people and direct people to that we can have like different business cards that somebody can hand to a homeless person like this is a map to where you can go to get either shelter or food or different services I think that would be a very helpful opportunity thank you good afternoon Mr. Petker thank you for being here this afternoon appreciate it in the realm of housing and downtown and the city in general infill development has been seen as a threat to some of our neighborhoods regardless of the what some consider a necessity to for us to be able to reach our housing needs what is your attitude toward infill development and how do you think that it affects our historic neighborhoods I actually have an infill development it's a five-story building in the cherry historic district and I believe that we do need infill development especially downtown I've seen several different proposals of them building on mendicino and fifth street building about a seven-story building there and then building where the theater is on third street I think that's a big opportunity to be able to build downtown and we do need to have the historic district remain in place but I also think there's opportunities that we can build infill like at pettersons where the furniture store is a different store now thank you what do you believe is the three most important abilities a council member should should have to be able to serve well I believe meeting with the public because that's who they're representing having a calm demeanor that they can get along fairly well with others and being able to represent the city well and then the third would be to be task oriented so they can make sure that they get the business of the city done in a reasonable manner thank you and what role do you believe personal philosophy should play in your decision making I believe it should play some decision because then people are nowhere going to stand but I also believe that you represent the people of the of the residents of the city so you also need to listen to their what they want for the council to be able to go and do so it's a mix thank you what does governance mean to you governance means that you're elected to make the decisions for the people that you're governing thank you hi there thank you so much for your time this afternoon I'm curious to know you live in district four and in the northeast quadrant we have quite a bit of representation your seat would be at large and I'm curious to know do you have existing networks across the city or how would you approach being somebody who typically comes from an area that's well represented and tries to represent areas that have never been represented yes I do have a network of friends and people that live in all over Santa Rosa and the 20 signatures I submitted I had I believe I covered every area code in the city of Santa Rosa and I would reach out to them to help get their neighborhoods to figure out what their interests are that's interesting in your approach I'll follow that up with a how would you take that approach of the you brought to getting your ballot designation signatures to filling your boards and commissions I believe I would look throughout the city and hopefully get recommendations from people that would like to represent their area and different committees what kinds of qualifications would you be looking for as you went about that I'd be looking for people that are subject matter experts people that are really interested in filling that position and being able to learn about what their what kind of information they need to be able to learn to fill in that position are any personal or demographic would you take any of those characteristics into play not necessarily I think anybody has the ability to fit whatever position they want to learn to be able to fill thank you thank you again for participating in this process what's the most important thing for us to consider when considering you for this position that I would really like to be on the council and I have a lot of education and experience working with the town council and Windsor I wasn't on the council but I got to meet with a lot of the people and have that experience of working with the elected officials as well as department heads with the town of Windsor so further if you were to be appointed on this position what do you think would be your biggest challenge your greatest learning curve area of learning curve it would probably be with the community engagement because I don't have I have a little bit of experience dealing with the residents and the town of Windsor when I work there but having different meetings with people the different interest groups that would probably approach me okay so sometimes in either public meetings or on social media in the newspaper people point fingers specifically at the city or the city council for things that may or may not be within their control what would you think would be one of those areas that the city of Santa Rosa the council fingers have been pointed at them that is unjust that's unjust for the council members or it's an unfair criticism they point the finger you guys are gals the council's not doing a b or c when that may or may not be a responsibility yeah probably for the business community and how long it takes for them to get permits and to get businesses open okay and then you spoke about the downtown and some of the interesting dynamics of developing and energizing our downtown is to get housing there and I've heard a lot of people say well I don't want to move downtown because it's not a grocery store I've talked to a grocery store owners and say well I'm not going to build a grocery store until there's housing how do you deal with that conundrum I live downtown and I go to four street deli and get some of the small groceries there and then there's other places that are close by that are within 15 minute walking distance and I would just tell people that people live in suburbs now drive to grocery stores so so the said the though do you have any suggested solutions for actually concrete plans for actually getting either that housing downtown or the grocery store downtown I'm here and driving out of downtown is an option my question is more of how do you get in the downtown area I think trying to work with different grocery stores and doing a small market because I think a full-blown grocery store would be a ways out but getting a market that's has more day-to-day groceries and stuff so working with the business community getting some interest for a smaller market convenience store okay those are all questions I have uh Mr. Petkirk I have just one question for you and then I'll surrender my time to you to say anything extra that you may have not already been asked but you would like to talk about and my question is is have you observed this council in some capacity over the last couple of years where there was a decision that you felt that we decided wrong or we could have done a better job in creating a better policy outcome and if so what was it and how would you have done it differently yeah recently the council had a decision to make for a marijuana dispensary and I thought some of the subject was brought up like the front-facing door the door facing the street was kind of obscured by the bike shop and I thought either more discussion on that to either say what the actual policy is and but I think you guys made a relatively decent decision on that okay thank you and you still have three minutes of the time I get to ask you questions is there anything you wish I had asked you that you'd like to share now I think we pretty much covered it okay all right well I want to thank you for applying that's why I don't further questions thank you all right thank you you now have a one-minute opportunity to provide any final comments to the council yeah I would just like to ask you guys to make a decision on somebody that's interested in running politically again so they would have some accountability to the residents of Santa Rosa and not somebody that would just want to do a short-term position because they and they wouldn't necessarily have accountability for the decisions that they make over the next year so that's about it okay thank you very much for participating thank you all right we will take another break and please be back ready to start the next interview at 340 thank you all right you will reconvene our meeting here welcome mr. wasaki thank you for participating in our process here so I know you've you've read what's about to occur but let me just reiterate two timelines so you're aware of them sure we'll provide you three minutes uh for your opening comments and then each council member will have four minutes to ask you any questions you or she would like you may get interrupted because again these are very time sensitive questions if the council okay I've got enough I need to move on and then you'll get the opportunity for the final one minute to share with us what you would like to regarding your um candidacy so with that your three-minute opening comment well thank you mr. mayor and and council members I must say it's a unique perspective in this room on this side of the table uh I appreciate your efforts it's been a long day I hope that uh it's a successful day for all of us uh I'll first turn my attention to the three required questions uh yes I'm prepared to attend regularly scheduled meetings yes I can attend the goal settings and no uh my time is flexible so I can handle any additional assignments uh this is a unique job as you all well know you don't really know what you've got and on yourself until you sort at least I didn't uh it's one of one of you recently said even as a familiar with the process until they're actually sitting in the chair you don't know what's coming at you and that what makes this position right now with this short term remaining I think even more unique uh I want to thank my neighbors and friends that have asked me to consider it and I have considered it because of the short term you're going to have most of your decisions in the year financially coming right at you January February March as you know from going through the budget process last year uh that is where I think I have a unique skill set that I could offer to help this council you've got uh some challenges not unlike the great recession when I started serving in 2009 when council member alvaro and council member soyer when it was all about resources and where to find them but with uh what's cropped up with homelessness and affordable housing you're going to need to find resources and I have a track record where I would I've been able to do that in short term in the long term for instance in 2009 I noticed our toot transclot occupancy tax was less than wins in ronald park working with industry hospitality group I got to their level saved some positions in economic development and was able to keep the visitor center open additionally at that time the waste hauling track uh trash waste hauling contract came forward I was able to as a lead negotiator get four and a half million dollars for the city and a royalty rate three times a county that was an immediate benefit that's part of my business I've been a sole proprietors of cpa for 35 years in our professional code of ethics they want us to be a skeptical financial professional so I question I'm happy to do that you get such a fulfillment for the intangibles helping your city and this is one way I can give back as you all know from serving it's certainly not going to be financial or monetary serving on the council you're wanting to make the place better uh long term I'm very proud to have participated in measure o reform the intent of that ordinance was for supplemental resources as my two police officer I'm already done holy cow it's been a long time anyway uh I could go further I think you get the gist I'm happy to be holy cow Mr. Hall you're gonna start thank you mayor uh Gary based on your experience what are the most important qualities of a council member listening and empathy and intellectual curiosity I'm sorry listening listening empathy and intellectual curiosity thank you and what makes you the best applicant for this position I don't know if I'm the best among the other 18 because I can't qualify then I wouldn't want to say it my experience certainly being a parent with two daughters that are strong I'm not afraid to give their opinion that that's on a daily basis you better learn how to listen but you're going to get it every which way as you all know going through the market going through town how come the street isn't fixed we haven't gotten that pothole and or why are you allowing that to go through and most times the folks just want to be heard and if you can do that that makes them part of the process that makes our town better thank you um this is an interim position it's going to it's through the through the year and uh after this uh there will be new elections a new council member coming on board what advice would you give to a new council member coming on to the city council in their first year in the first year it's going to take five times the time you think you're going to think it's going to take to to get up to speed that would be the advice you're going to need a lot of time it's such a short condensed timeframe for this first year for this first term which is why I'm considering it I think if you didn't have the experience by the time you got up to speed the term would be over or close to it to make a meaningful contribution and I must say that uh this council has worked well together and I would view should I be the lucky appointee my role is being supplemental you all ran for election it's your terms whatever I could do to help achieve the goals that would be a primary consideration of mine and and based on your familiarity with the goals and the issues that we're facing right now what would some of that advice be to that new council member coming on board as a part because some of these issues are going to go away the next year they're going to remain no they're not where there's disasters the homeless issues the housing issues they're going to remain and this new person's going to have to prioritize as they come on board so what advice would you give them I would say it's not like private industry or any other job there's no one silver bullet uh because you don't really get to pick the issues you work on I know why I ran I still haven't been able to work on that one issue that I worked on right now we've got an unacceptable situation I think we can all agree on Joe Rodota trail and while I would like to see housing for everyone that's not going to happen quick enough if you look at some of the proposals you've got was a voice street project coming up with a $20 million bond for 400 units I want to say no no no it comes out to $450,000 a unit that's a lot of money so you're not going to be able to house anyone right away so my advice would be to be intellectually curious and try and find the best solution so we can at least get these folks out of the winter thank you gary thanks for being with us afternoon you're willing this to serve again how do you believe our local political environment has changed since you were last uh at the day as if at all that would be your mayorship uh you you change the tone that council changed the tone we we became inclusive and I was proud to serve on that and I thank you for that and it's not just because you asked the question prior to that it was it was turbulent but uh the conversation that I'm sure you remember when I said I would like you to consider running is we need to be more inclusive on this dais and not have an information drop Friday before the Tuesday meeting or not being called on or not being included and I think uh this current council has that has that quality and uh the counseling between had that quality and I would like to see that continue because that's truly the best for this town thank you what role do you believe the personal philosophy philosophy should play in your decision making it should be prime primary uh all of you ran because you have a personal philosophy you had that philosophy and then you communicated to the voters and the voters enough of the voters saw that philosophy and agreed with it and that's why they voted you in so you should have a personal creed so you you may have to make uh concessions to compromises to get to go forward for instance uh I'm not particularly wild about setting up permanent encampments but we can't leave them out where they're at right now and back to homelessness I would do my best to try and find the money to set up something so we could have some control over the situation so we don't have propane tanks going off we don't have rodents or any other infestation coming coming into an area that should be a transportation quarter so to circle back to the original question it should be why you serve but you have to be willing to concede I'll go one step further courthouse square personally I didn't like the idea streets on the sides but I thought that was something we could achieve in that council term primarily because utilities had a big uh main replacement and there's going to be a lot of money spent and that's the opportunity if you're if you're tearing up the streets you might as well leverage that and go forward and it came in under budget as you know or not necessarily under budget because there was some cushion in that budget but it came in uh under the original cost and it's prudent to have cushions thank you how do you balance the need for infill development while at the same time protecting our historic districts you know the the station area plan is really clear about the need for infill and the potential change of they don't talk about that all of the changes that will take place but I know that many of the neighbors are concerned about the changes to their neighborhoods visually and otherwise not only in the downtown but around the city how do you balance those two needs that is a very good question because I firmly believe as a former neighborhood leader you you need to listen to neighborhoods when any project comes in I also firmly believe and that'll make them part of the process it'll make a better project I also believe with the infill especially as it regards to downtown you have to if there's going to be a higher building you have to set it back so it's not imposing on the on the parcels next door as best you can there are opportunity sites there for instance on 4th street near the big O there's one that's going to go up there there's not too much around it Sears that's abandoned now in Santa Rosa Plaza that's an opportunity site so but to circle back to your original question councilman sir you listen to the neighborhood you make sure the developers are aware of the neighborhood because if he gets buy-in from the neighborhood it'll be a better project so but the setbacks would be a primary primary tool I would hope thank you or if she is the case it might be I've never met a female developer but we really hope that we do soon point well taken they're out there so at any rate I'm curious to know in the couple years at three years that you since your time on council what what you've observed change with and what you think this council is what do you think we're leaving on the table that you might do differently on this council that I would do differently I'm very happy that we have a smart board representative now I mean I would place that back to myself because of the what I see Jennings in the impasse there we haven't had an effective voice for this city in my humble opinion on the smart train in terms of that east-west connectivity for this council itself what I would do differently I again I it has a good reputation of working together and that's you don't want to change that you've got a curve but go ahead so what I'm trying to get at here is you bring a really strong set of financial skills council experience I'm wondering about if there's something that you really disagree about with us how would you approach it working with us going forward because we would like to maintain that reputation and I think that is something that would like to comment on oh I would you know I'm I'm not shy of expressing my opinions especially in closed door or but I would approach you one-to-one if we had a disagreement I would say here's why I feel the way you do please tell me why I I don't think anyone likes being quote-unquote ambushed on the on the dais with an unexpected question I would hope to have that beforehand which is why I'm always available it's why I reached out to all of you prior to this you want to have a conversation I'm more than willing to have a conversation but so you live in district four a well-represented part of town and you were serving at large and your position would be at large so how would you approach reaching out to the areas that have less representation and why should we put somebody from a well-represented area on the council at this time good question I taught at piner high school for five years and know a lot of people on the west side my office I believe is in district four but I'm downtown a lot it's in district four okay well you know better than I my office at home are both in district four it is a good question I would be open to any qualified applicant or other citizen that wanted to serve in government to bring them in for the year that I would have on this term for an appointee on a lower commission so I was curious to know what your approach to appointees to boards and commissions might be given that you would have an at-large position and many of our appointments typically come from the northeast quadrant well I've always geography's never been an issue for me it's always been what are you bringing to the table and how you can better our city I'm very happy that I see two of my appointees up there former appointees right now there have been two former appointees on the council and I've had a former appointee serve in the higher level of leadership in the state assembly as well as on congressional staff so it doesn't matter where they live to answer your question it what they bring what I'm getting at and I have had the pleasure of working with three of your appointees who are all very able people what I'm wondering is would you consider using your appointments boards and commissions as a tool to improve diversity and specific participation well that's certainly part of it I mean it's you want to have it's not all of it but it's part of it you certainly want someone that looks like you behind the dice as best we can get but it's it's like the old bumper sticker they used to say the best man for the job as a woman you have to flip that around for that to be true I hope we get there someday I mean but that's ultimately it comes down to the individual thank you appreciate it sure thank you for being for participating you serve two terms on the council looking back on those two terms are there any actions or votes that you took that upon further reflection now given you've experienced it you've been offered you would have changed either the way you handled the situation or a vote that you would have changed in what was it and how would you have changed it you know there was one vote that I did reconsider I didn't sleep that night it was on a parcel on the east side of town that it just didn't sit with me so I did do that overall it was such a reactive time serving during the great recession we had such money issues and at one point we had 10 weeks worth of cash in the bank if you'll remember that because it shocked me we had projected that we had 10 weeks worth of cash on the bank so between that between Occupy Santa Rosa there was a lot of reaction one thing that I would change I would make more of an effort with some of the labor groups I listened to there and and had an exchange with their leaders but I just felt that their mind was somewhat made up prior to the meeting and I should have I would have gone back and said let's have another conversation but at that point there's one group in particular we had a six-year contract that we were locked into and we had to get out of that contract it was really hurting our overall budget and that's where my skeptical financial background and what's prudent again we at one point were projected of having 10 weeks worth of cash and that shocked me okay thank you and then you're familiar having sat on the desk for two terms our current pension situation what specific strategies would you bring the table or what would you recommend we do that we're not doing now this specific council boy that's the specific council it's tough because you're locked in I mean a specific promise is made at the time of appointment they need to be honored dignified retirement is due after a lifetime of work but should there be a cap on some pensions probably is that going to be the the silver bullet no because most of your pensions are what three thousand a month they're lower and those need to be protected what you specifically can do is just try and keep realistic investment goals returns because those that's that's part of the reason why you got into the trap we got into the trap we're in is we're expecting six percent forever and rather than focus on that you focus on let's try and better the rest of the economy so people have more disposable income we have more revenue and we can pay those pensions okay in your application you mentioned about the most pressing issues of the city homelessness and housing and you further state that the city should continue to work with the county to supply additional sites for temporary shelter temporary shelter is one aspect of a homeless system of care are there any other investment strategies that you would recommend that the city go into or they shelter the primary need of our homeless system of care that's a good question mayor we if you look at the county remba numbers it's going to be over a billion dollars to based upon the project coming in front of you it's going to be over a billion dollars just to shelter everybody so we don't have the wherewithal to do that neither is the county the county is the top provider we want to help them with sites because of urban growth boundaries we want to make sure that and the reason why I say that is we want to be sustainable environmentally as well as economically and so we need infill that's where the city's role is the county is the mental health or is the health provider and the homelessness provider they need to be helped to do their job and that's one thing I see this council doing very well is to help the county stand up okay thank you thanks Gary I wanted to ask you you know I think your tenure on the council will always be remembered as your great contributions and towards understanding the budget finding the budget the money to fulfill certain council goals have you had the chance to review the current budget and are there areas that you could help us identify that we could put towards things like affordable housing that you mentioned put towards things like homelessness etc well that would be the deeper dive I would offer if I got selected it's it's more than just a half day or two hours three hours looking at the budget I remember when I was serving labor was 70 it's up to 79 percent now and it's perhaps because we're being more real with the benefit calculation okay that's I've shown in the past I can find things yeah I'm not guaranteeing it but that's that's what my skill set is okay um with the other thing I've been asking folks and it was briefly touched on earlier but I've been asking folks what you've watched this council uh as it's done its work over the last few years have there been a decision or a couple of decisions that you can point to as an example of where you would say I didn't agree with how the council ruled on this one or the council made a decision a policy decision and I felt as Gary Weisacki was a missed opportunity to do it a little bit better and I don't mean throw that out there to be a hand grenade or subversive but I ask it because I think it helps paint for the council you know where your voice would make an important addition where a voice may not currently exist the reason why I'll hesitate answering answering that councilman is is I didn't read and in any manner I did not read all the staff reports I did not sit through all the testimony and one of my creeds personal creeds that I had when I served was I don't give absolute commitments walking into the hearing because you don't know what you're going to hear you don't know what you're going to be presented with I might be leaning one way for me to seize on an issue now I haven't followed you week by week and I don't want to do that to you that's that's that's hindsight and that's a voice that's saying and you know what you really messed up you want to ask me in private I'll do that but I don't think that's fair to you up there you've got enough on your plate you don't need a next councilman saying you're really messed up here okay that's that's fair I've been asking it of everybody because I'm just curious about that that additional perspective what it would bring you got cut off in the beginning of your intro and I just wanted to there's a minute 30 seconds if you want to take it to finish your thoughts well the thought I was just I was just going to come back I'll come back to it on the close I appreciate that just the uniqueness of the position in the union and the the shortness of the term okay thanks Gary you bet hey Gary good afternoon one of the things that you touched on a little bit was being a little bit uncomfortable about sanctioned encampments which I think this council has had in-depth conversations about but if that's the direction that we're going to go what type of approach would you use for trying to find an adequate site both within given restrictions but also working with neighbors to find a site well ideally if the property owner says yeah I'll accept it that's that's your ideal site number one you don't want to be you don't want to go eminent domain or any heavy-handed move on that so that ideally if you have a willing landlord sure the neighbors have to realize it's a it's a community-wide problem so it shouldn't be focused in one area we want to try and spread this around it's it's part of why I always did not like in loophies with development proposals I wanted to see inclusion inclusionary units make the lower price unit next to the laundry room downstairs there's weight the builders they're the ones that do that they're the ones that should be able to do that giving us a stack of money doesn't put a roof over someone's head I would like to help have the private end private industry help us but you know as for where the encampments go I haven't studied it I would want us to work with with the county I would hope the county would have their mobile health units they were always talking about expanding it when I was towards the end of my term I never actually saw that come to fruition it seems like they're always backfilling that department which was a shame but one of the things that's going to come before the council and before the public this year is the reauthorization of measure M the road transportation funding measure there's 45 percent of it five percent from the initial startup costs for smart and 40 percent for the widening of 101 that no longer is needed in the measure what would you advocate for for that 45 percent from a city perspective in the newly crafted measure coming back to the public what would you like to see you know of the eight years I served I had maybe two years where we had discretionary funds so that would be a new thing for me but the as we don't have the freeway widening it's almost done I would look at access to smart I would look at emergency evacuation routes we have a fire issue it's not going away and therefore we have bottlenecks choke points in this community so what whatever we could do to help people get out of there out of harm's way that would be a very good use of those funds traditionally in Santa Rosa and in Sonoma County we've we've had sort of a split between folks who want to defend our open spaces and our environment and then folks who want to build housing how would you bridge the gap between those two entities to try to make sure that we're addressing everybody's needs well it's the policy of infill helps bridge that gap tremendously I mean habitat and you want to be environmentally sustainable that means we have to have habitat with urban growth boundaries that's the beauty of urban growth boundaries it allows for habitat for wildlife and so we perhaps can have trees that will help put co2 suck it out of the air and put oxygen into the air the fact that some folks are still saying that tiger salamanders going to be the solution will be if we peel the back those restrictions I don't think that's going to create enough units we need 2,900 units has the environmental act been abused sure the landfill for the compost site on top there when they said it was close to a potential not a verified but a potential site that the salamanders would have to crawl across roblar road and then go up a 45 degree slope that's ludicrous that was basically a nimble lawsuit but to take away an active area of that habitat is not going to solve our problems it's going to make our county just like san jose and I know people don't like to hear that but thank you so much there's a magic term you're up for you're now one minute closing statements well I would just want to close and say I appreciate what you all do I think that it being such a short term because it is a short term it would be and it's not just I'm not the only one that can come in and make a contribution there's others and it doesn't necessarily have to be a council member there's others I acknowledge that I know where I can help you I think financial resources are always needed for what you want to do with where we're at we need to do something about the redota trail has to happen we have to find the money and there's not a lot of room in the budget I would pledge that I'm not going to run for a seat first time my time came up because I don't think that's right to to get an advantage for anyone to get an advantage because an incumbency is a huge advantage so between that and wanting to support this council you ran for the terms I would want to be be helpful and work with staff I've shown I can do that when I left one of the senior staff members said you know we always had the Gary question they kept us on our toes thank you Gary all right thank you all welcome mr martini thank you thank you for participating in this process and I know you've read all the documents but I'm just going to remind you that we'll give you an opportunity for make a three-minute opening statement and then each council member will have four minutes asking any questions he or she would like just to give you a heads up you may be interrupted because we are very time limited here and then you'll get the last word for a minute to give us some final comments as you choose so with that please provide us with your opinion statement well thank you and thank you all for even considering my application I had the great honor of sitting in the chair chairs that you guys sit in and I can tell you it was one of the most positive experiences of my life and part of the reason that it was so positive it was the people that I served with and I served with the council very similar to this and what by that I mean there were differences of opinion but there was respect for those differences of opinion and we operated with great levels of civility and I will promise you one thing if chosen I will do nothing that will disrupt the council and the working of the council this is about the community and moving the community forward and that's one of the reasons that I threw my hat into this ring the other piece to this is that I want you to know is I stepped down early from the council and I needed to do that because of some demands on my business I can tell you now my son has joined me in the business and I'm turning most of the responsibility over to him and that is now freed me up having served in your seats I understand what the time commitment is for the council and I'm prepared to give 100% in order to do that the second thing that I promised is I am not running for office again I've served I've had that pleasure but I think I bring with me some skill sets that can help over the next 10 months in moving it forward and finally I just want to say that how much I respect what it is that all of you do I had to check back through my calendar but I was able to ascertain that this is the second time that I've put a tie on since I stepped down from the city council the only other one being the wedding of my son I look forward to your questions thank you for acknowledging that because I almost didn't recognize you okay what's the Mr. Shor you're going to start the questioning thank you Mayor and thanks Mike for for being here this afternoon I this is one question live revert reserve only for former council members how do you believe our local political environment has changed since you were a council member if any I don't know that it has changed a whole lot I'm going to change that John I'm sorry yes it has changed it's gone through some ways and it's interesting to me being a policy nerd that I am and watching other councils operate I was always very proud of the city of Santa Rosa and its city council and how it operated and how it was able to respect differences of opinion and move the the ship of state forward and watching other councils you'll oftentimes see something will occur one individual will get on or two individuals will get on and all of a sudden the atmosphere gets a little toxic and all of a sudden it's just not as rewarding to serve and the city of Santa Rosa has been fortunate I think you know not to see a whole lot of that but it has seen some of it and I think you know this council is the council that has kind of brought it back to that level of respect and civility that has existed before and and I applaud you for doing it thank you I've heard you say in the past that you love governance what does governance mean to you participation you know it is so important to be involved in your community and I understand that you know people are raising families they're working a career there's a lot of pressures on on on your lives but you need to get out there and to participate and if you don't participate you get what you deserve so governance to me especially at the local level is all about participation at whatever level thank you the stationary plan of course needs to to acknowledge the need for infill development not only inside of that area of the stationary area but throughout the city that can put pressure not only on historic neighborhoods but neighborhoods in general but one day they have they there's an empty lot across the street or next to them and then in no short order there's the potential for a for developmental larger building um how do you balance the needs of infill development with the protection as much as possible for the existing neighborhoods that is a very difficult question as you know and it's one that you grapple with often and I think you have to take a look at it on a case-by-case basis housing is not something that you can cover in a three-minute segment so I just want to point out three things about housing and I works into how I would respond to that question and the first one is the policies that we've adopted in this community over the years have actually benefited our homeowners and Santa Rosa still a community of better than 60% home ownership that appreciation that they've seen in their property borders on falls but if you want to talk about a third rail in local politics it's property values and what you're starting to touch on is exactly that it's not only the historic neighborhood but it's what is that project going to do to the value of my property and to the perceived value of my quality of life that's that's the thing that you've got to find the balance over I believe it can be done especially when you're dealing with downtown areas in terms of density because it can be a little bit gradual more gradual than say if you were out in a community or you know cul-de-sac neighborhood and that's why I applaud the station area plan I think that is the place where you should be putting your efforts but the issue for me is that balance thank you how's that for timing thank you for coming in today and thank you for your your previous service to our city I'm curious to know since you have a pretty well-known track record and that it leans more conservative than councilmember combs how you would balance the fact that while she may not have been overwhelmingly popular amongst staff and her colleagues she was overwhelmingly popular amongst the voters more than once you know I think one of the things that I'll point out that I believe you're aware of and I was aware of when I served the vast majority of issues that come before a city council are unanimous in their decisions maybe there'll be one maybe there'll be two but more often than not all of you are in the position of doing the business of the city and as such it's those flashpoint votes that I think oftentimes are blown out of proportion to the action I'm sorry to interrupt but what I want to get at here is really specifically I don't believe the seat belongs to anybody what I believe that it belongs to is the people who sent councilmember combs to us and I think that you bring a wealth of experience my main concern and I'm hoping that you can allay it a little bit is when it does come to those flashpoints she was always clear and I'm wondering how you would maintain fidelity to the will of the voters if it was ideologically at odds with your perspective I um you're going to respond by by suggesting that I fully agree with you that no seat belongs to an individual I'm going to differ with you a little bit in terms of who has ownership lack of a better phrase of this particular seat and I would say because of the circumstances this council has ownership of it not necessarily the people who voted and I think for the 10-month period that you're filling this out it's as important that the council works together addressing some of the issues that it's facing and less so that it's representing any particular constituency of the city so going with that topic around constituencies of the city we've had the pleasure today of seeing a number of people from the northeast quadrant come in and have you know great perspectives including yours and I'm wondering what would your pitch to us be on why we need another person who comes from the northeast quadrant of town when lots of parts of town have yet to be represented I cut my political background in the late sixties I'm an old white guy and in many respects that's probably my damning feature but in cutting my political path down the road it was all about civil rights and I long for the day that we no longer worry about or are concerned about the first black council member the first gay senator or the first woman astronaut or the first person from the northeast or the northwest you know who is representing the community I think it's more important what the person brings to the table I think the optics are important though and if that's the optic that's important to this council I think you need to follow that I believe differently and I think at this point especially for a 10-month service you need to have somebody who's coming forward with the ability to hit the ground running and not to have a steep learning curve and if there's a better person I think you guys are in the perfect position to choose them all right well I have I do have one last question for you is I've we've seen a lot of rose lapel pins is that a martini yes it is did you bring any real ones not with me but I just I have 20 seconds the mayor had you done that when I was mayor I was given this pin by my good friend and I was wearing it one night and a woman came up to me and said mayor martini I think that's a lovely pin but why do you wear that and I asked her to start from the beginning all right well thank you very much for your time thank you nice transition first of all thank you for applying for this position and I also just want to publicly thank you because I haven't had an opportunity just the assistance you've provided me with your ag background in the ground our sustainability agency some of the connections that you've introduced me to to some of the ag community because it's not just Santa Rosa it's in the basin so I do want to thank you for your assistance in that area and just tied into that on your application you talked about your three passions the second one being a multi-generational agricultural production can you talk about what impacts and what are your thoughts are of the cannabis industry specifically Santa Rosa's strategy with our policies procedures regarding this do you see those two worlds climbing no and the reason I say that cannabis if you follow the news yesterday at all at the board of supervisors they ended the moratorium on commercial hemp production here in the county which I think was a significant step and and the reason I bring that up is because hemp is a legal commodity in the United States it's not simply a California cannabis is a slightly different thing and the way that the law was written in Sacramento it is not an agricultural commodity it is a product and that makes it different I think the the whole issue around control over cannabis is significant and is appropriately in the hands of the local jurisdiction I think hemp because of it's not being a what is it a title one substance I can't remember what title it was is a different issue and when I talk with growers and I interact with them quite frequently I can tell you that their interest in growing cannabis is rather small Coppola has done a little bit with it but they actually do it with some people outside of the area but the mainstream farm of the multi-general uh generational farmers that that I deal mostly with they're not interested they are however interested in hemp and I think that one of the things you have to take a look at with agriculture we've got this incredible heritage and that heritage is the result of some men and women and family who were very able to adapt to the changes in crops we used to do a lot of hops or apples or prunes and now obviously grapes are the predominant crop but grapes may not be there later on and and one of the lines that I use all the time around agriculture agriculture provides us with this great community separators and great landscaping but at the end of the day the last crop you will ever plant is a house so preserving the land that you can grow something is very important outside of the urban growth boundary so also since you do have the experience serving on council what have you learned from your past years on the council that you'll be able to apply to be a better council person should you be appointed I think the the two things that would immediately come to mind you know the first one is going to be around housing and while I was on the city council the tiger salamander was listed as endangered you know we're now almost 15 19 years or 14 years later and we still have not accomplished one thing about increasing the habitat for the tiger salamander I've been fortunate to work with the federal fish and wildlife service we have brought forward some an application for safe harbor on some vineyard replants which we expect to get within the next three months and that has opened the door to some really great opportunities working with the county and hopefully the city and its board of public utilities in a potential of an hcp that would significantly streamline the cost and the process around housing the second thing that I bring to the table is the issue of budget I have operated my business for 40 years and one of the things I like to say is nobody should ever serve in an elected capacity unless they've had to meet a payroll I've got that experience that I've been down that road before thank you Mike I'm going to follow up on what Tom said about appreciating your perspectives that you bring on agricultural I didn't have the opportunity to work with you on the groundwater sustainability work I am grateful to have the opportunity to do a little of the California tiger salamander work with you and I appreciate everything that you're doing there because I agree with you that it is one of the major impediments to housing and one of the cheapest most developable areas within our urban growth boundaries one question that I have and I'm hoping it's one that you will enjoy is and it's one that I give to every single person who's coming before us and that is in the last couple of years has there been a decision or a few decisions that you have watched this council make that you felt were not on the mark or a missed opportunity to create a better public policy and if so what are they the short answer is no and it's not because I agree with everything that this council has done I agree with the process and one of the things that I was certain of when I stepped away from the council is I stepped away from the council and I believe it's the council's job to make those decisions now I appreciate the opportunity for input and I'm not without opinions anybody who knows me knows I'm not without my opinions but at the end of the day I respect the process and I respect this body and the decisions that you make okay now getting issue specific one of the big issues is homelessness we have the chance to discuss it a little bit can you tell me and somebody earlier posed the question is how would you handle it if this was a benevolent dictatorship of Mike Martini around this issue how would you solve it where would you try to source funds from to solve it assuming funding was needed to adequately address the problem I'm hoping you'll run with this question and spare no expensive detail I wish I had more than two minutes and six seconds any approach any response to the homeless issue I believe has to come from a position of compassion that was something I learned while I was mayor and while I was mayor the city council created the first shelter across the street from the police station which was later expanded into the acquisition of the Samuel Jones hall and subsequent councils enclosed the first shelter during that process this issue of compassion came up and the question was always asked if not here where and that always stuck with me but I want to point out very quickly that compassion does not mean enabling I camping out outside of a legitimate campground that has services is not an allowable activity I do not believe it to be a an option I do not believe it to be a right I do believe we have a responsibility as a community to say to answer the question if not here where and that process starts with an emergency opportunity that may involve camp because we can't get enough under one roof initially but that going to that camp is not without restrictions or rules no matter what your situation in life mental illness substance abuse economic used to we we still have to follow rules and those rules are pretty simple I'm here to help and I'm going to provide whatever it is necessary to move you to a place where you've got some secure housing but you've got to meet me more than halfway in order to do that so the initial emergency shelter is a triage situation and we'd set it up in such a way that people are accepted into it and they're evaluated and then you try to figure out where they're going to go from there and what specific needs they want you raise the most important issue well the most important issue is that determination to do that second one is money when we built the first issue we were able to go to the building community Ken Martin then a builder in town did all of the improvements for it I believe that between the the business community easy try to get under that but between the business community and the local community foundations and non-profit foundations as well as potential monies raised locally we can meet that need all right my turn mr martini so you mentioned the flash points I think that's a really important thing to consider when you talk about council because you're right 90 something percent of of our decisions are fully collaborative one of those flash points a couple of years ago was the housing bond around an issue that we all agreed we need to build more housing you've seen this both from a councilmember perspective as well as from an advocacy perspective using the housing bond was there anything that could have been done to get that passed and if so what would you have advocated for you know I one I had met with councilmember tidbits and supervisor hopkins with the ag community and when originally the bond was going to be countywide I can tell you the ag community was not in favor of that agriculture just by its very nature is land rich and cash poor but I was very supportive personally and did endorse the bond measure at the city level it intrigued me in terms of process why labor took the position that they did I would have worked hard to see or somehow to nullify that and work a little bit harder on getting it passed you know the issue of housing and the subsidy of making affordable housing we when I was serving on the council we actually had a better situation we had a better situation for two reasons one reason and that was redevelopment existed and redevelopment at that time we allowed 50 percent of the redevelopment dollars to go to housing we use that to support the programs we use that to support the homeless shelter it worked really well we needed more money and I thought the housing bond was appropriate I also want to remind you though that prior to my being on the council I think the city took one of the biggest steps ever in terms of finding resources to support housing and that was the increase in the documentary transfer tax I think it's got a different name now but we doubled the tax in that conversation I was on the planning commission I was not on the city council but that conversation was very clear that that money would go to the support of affordable housing subsequent councils made the decision that they needed that for public safety and we were never able to get that money back but if that money if you think about who should be paying for affordable housing going back to the appreciation that we have given through our policies to homeowners it's such a natural that some of that money come from the profit on the sale of their property unfortunately we miss that now we're stuck we don't have that I think there is an opportunity to bring back a bond issue and take a look at it and see if we can structure it in a way to get it passed okay and so obviously recovery has been a big issue for us as well there's going to be a ballot measure in march on fire fire services have you had a chance to look at that and what are your thoughts on it I'm going to answer this in two ways one is a resident of Santa Rosa and one is the resident of the county and I know we probably shouldn't have that kind of a boundary I think the city of Santa Rosa has served really well by its fire department and the men and women who serve in it I know it's one of the more difficult kind of bargaining opportunities but between our public all of our public safety people are incredible in this community and I will do whatever is necessary to continue to support them I think the issue in the county wide is very similar to the school system and I know that there's conversation about consolidation and getting some economies of scale as part of that I think that needs to be worked out ahead of time Mike excuse me Mike what do you see as the major environmental issues facing our region today and how would you address those you know the easy answer is climate change but climate change is affecting everybody so I want to take a look a little bit closer home and what is what are the issues that we have to deal with and they are related to climate change I bring it back to housing and transportation you know the more that that we look to sprawl as answering our question we actually are contributing to the problems around climate change the issue of city-centered growth and urban growth boundaries are issues that I've supported all through my tenure on on the council and outside of it I think we need to look at village city-centered growth kinds of things in order to do that I think water is critical and the quality of our water supply is critical I think the issue while I was handed down by the state in terms of the Sustainable Ground Water Management Act this community has done an incredible job in terms of Santa Rosa Basin and its watershed I know Petaluma has done the same thing in making sure that we have adequate water supplies I know that the Board of Utilities working with the water agency and working with our contractor and providing municipal water has done a pretty strong job but there's some issues around demand that they're going to have to deal with but one of the kind of the more interesting ones to me to answer the environmental question brings you right back to the homeless one of the comments I've made recently quite a bit is if the toilet overflowed at my winery I the county government would be all over me in terms of fines and everything else and what we're seeing taking place in the homeless encampment along Joe Rodota Trail I think is a true environmental disaster that really locally is one of the biggest ones thank you Mike looking at your agriculture experience and if you were to be selected for this position how would that benefit the city the council and the issues that we're facing you know I'm not really sure I can answer that Ernesto because a lot of the issues that you're dealing with aren't necessarily directly linked to agriculture but what is is the quality of life that we have here and a lot of the things that people come to Santa Rosa for is the landscape and it's not just the vines in agriculture but it's the coastal redwoods it's the ocean it's all of those kinds of things what's intriguing to me in working with agriculture now isn't so much what the city of Santa Rosa can do for agriculture it's actually what agriculture can do for the city of Santa Rosa for the first time I've seen farmers interested in who's serving on city councils because they know that they're going to serve on regional boards they know that they are going to impact they know that they're going to have something going on in their lives and impacting them and that ability to continue to get them involved locally as opposed to just on a county-wide basis I think is an important thing and speaking of other government bodies share with us your experience in building relationships with other government bodies at the regional and perhaps even the state level so starting with the city council I mean one of the things the city has always been very active in working with state legislators as well as its county but I can tell you since being off of the board of off of the city council I work very closely with the board of supervisors I do a lot of stuff with supervisors hopkins rabbit and gore also pretty accessible to both senators maguire and also the agencies I go over to sacramento quite frequently and dealing with the state water board as well thank you that's right you started this mr. soria so you have one minute for a closing statement mr. marty um thank you again I think you know I as everybody else has in the community has looked over the the list of people who've come forward and one of the things that makes me so proud to be a santa rosen rosie in is the way that people participate here uh in the community and I respect that and that is something that means a whole lot to me I appreciate what you do I appreciate the fact that you're even considering me but I know whatever decision you make is going to be the right one so thank you thank you so much for your participation all right it's welcome yeah thank you welcome mr. beach and thank you for participating in this process so i'll give you a brief overview that you've already read about how this interview will go so you'll have an opportunity to make a three-minute opening comment and we'll return to the council and each council member will have four minutes to ask you questions and just give you the heads up you may get interrupted because time is limited here and if they wanted to ask another question that might happen and then we'll provide you a minute to give us a closing comment final words you'd like to leave the council with so with that you're ready to start three-minute opening statements okay I thank you for the opportunity of letting me speak here today I threw my head into the ring because I believe in representative democracy my father was a child of the depression he had to join the navy to find his way out of indiana he found himself under attack by the japanese at pearl harbor my father wanted me to be a businessman I went to sign up for classes at UCLA in 1965 and found that the undergraduate school of business no longer existed only graduate school my father said take economics excuse me in the 70s my buddy from second grade had a brother graduating as a doctor from ucsf bank of america said he should open a general practice in santa rosa which was an up and coming area we all moved here and he went broke in two years he moved to redding where he became a multimillionaire my father gifted me some money in 1986 and i went out with friends and clients and bought a commercial property six months into the deal the prior owner gave me a postcard that he had received from the north coast regional water quality board saying that the underground gasoline storage tank on the property he had owned had to be tested and or if it were found leaking legally removed in the process of installing monitoring wells we discovered an underground concrete vault used by the northern pacific railroad to store bunker oil associated with a railroad spur when caltrans built a 101 freeway through downtown it encountered the vault caltrans according to its own records broke the lid letting the pieces fall back into the vault splashing oil up onto the adjacent building from the parking area which years later i now owned with my partners from the beginning we charged 35 cents a foot which was above market 35 years later having made a 33 percent yearly return on invested capital and selling it two and a half times our historic purchase price i have no reportable assets as demonstrated by my form 700 i come before you saying that i might be the best qualified candidate to represent the homeless the disenfranchised the everyman as a property owner north of railroad square i have been in continuous contact with the homeless and had given many work and at the work above a living wage i understand the frustrations i have numerous certificates of recognition from the city for my efforts in picking up trash while mowing managing and maintaining public lands and improvements in that it thank you sir so we'll now go to the council mr beach uh thank you for taking the time to come in this afternoon and for your ongoing service to our community i'm curious to know if you had a chance to review the voting record of council member combs no okay uh she regularly was one of the most progressive voices on this council and though i don't believe that the seat belongs to any one person in particular i the voters to make their will clear on more than one occasion and i'm wondering what kind of philosophy you would bring to your decisions that you would make following the council you are homeless how do i get your attention i am homeless but live in the best of neighborhoods i have a roof over my head you are lucky to have a tent how did we get here and at what cost do we continue to survive this way maybe we should look at each other and conclude that this is just not working our hearts are strong our efforts well in tension to be or not to be shakespeare says nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so i do not propose a solution for homelessness i only propose to open another perspective okay so i'm gonna um i appreciate that quite a bit i'm gonna change gears a little bit here and ask um you know our part of town is very well represented and i'm wondering what perspective you would bring that would diversify our council or promote diversity of future councils or employee populations for the city of santa rosa well i would say that um again i feel like i'm on jeopardy almost i'm not trying to give you a hard time right no no but the thing is is that um again i would have to explain all my history and all the things i've done in uh well you only have you know 11 months i considered yeah i consider myself uh very much a progressive no i i get that um i'm curious to know how you would approach being a progressive specifically well i think i said my five or seven questions that i feel like i'm a great salesman and i would definitely become the voice of the council i hate to be so egotistical well i do appreciate you taking the time to come see us today okay thank you thank you miss reach a question i have read your application and i'm interested to hear from you is what is the most important thing for us to know about you and your qualifications for being on this council i wish i was more prepared in this i think um i i think as i was discussing uh i'm a sudden cardiac arrest i died and i have had that experience of dying seven times i was resuscitated by my tenants on site and uh memorial hospital refrigerated me froze me and i woke up 10 days later um i have done nothing but i experienced the hospital as a cardiac client and visit the cardiac clients there so i just became uh it allowed me to open up and become more verbal okay and what would you see should you be selected what would you see as being your biggest challenge for serving on the council my you know here i've said a lot of this today my father was a republican because he was at pearl harbor and he hated roosevelt um i'm very conservative with money i like to see money um uh with a return i'm a commercial real estate and uh i say to people when i started out in commercial real estate it was a dollar fifty a square foot for good real estate in sonoma county i have a barber that just rented good commercial space for a dollar fifty a foot in sonoma county i mean what does that say about our development in the commercial area what does it say about our potential in anything have no more questions thank you mayor mr beach thank you so much for being here i was reviewing your application and i saw that you know one one of my takeaways about you was uh you seem to be very compassionate i mean i see that you spend your time volunteering in the cardiac wing uh your role with goodwill industries and why helping yeah people who would otherwise have difficulty getting placement into employment you are helping facilitate that and receive an award for being one of the best results yeah no i was surprised so so looking at that do you see parallels between your experience for example with goodwill industries uh to the homelessness situation yes yes yeah i i feel like uh as i said um when i was here for the monday meeting i complimented the current chief uh i see what they do with the homeless i'm um i certainly would be overwhelmed uh but again i i've i've hired homeless i've they most of them know me by you know know me and so i don't know if i have an easy answer all i was saying was that uh again we americans have lived and have prospered through the efforts of long gone generations we must atone and find the real peace for which they struggled and died for no one is separate we shall find and make community by including everyone thank you i agree with that philosophy and um no further questions hey mr. beach how's it going good thank you so one of the things that you put in your application was a strong desire to work on litter and community policing can you talk to me a little bit about what community policing means to you uh what you think the city is doing wrong and what you'd like to see us do better like again i always i was just discussing this uh a friend suggested that in the homeless community we hire the women the mothers to be the policing agents there uh and we work through let's say a hierarchy of ladies who are employed by the city to police their own people okay have you brought any of those ideas to council subcommittees no how would you go about implementing that if you were on the council okay well now you're the mechanics of it all um i feel i'm only one voice and um i would enjoy the debate and opening it up to see what kind of um eventuality we could create all right thank you so much i have no questions for mr. beach thanks for being here mr. beach appreciate it thank you for your willingness to serve the one question i have has to do with housing and the impact on neighborhoods both just all around the city and also historic districts infill development is important to our future as far as being able to to satisfy our needs for housing in general and also specifically um the our our low-income housing affordable housing how would you go about balancing the need for infill development with the needs to protect both our historic districts and just our neighborhoods in general beautiful question i how much time do we have left three minutes okay i don't have a closing statement anyway but i believe we've got to go up you know i i just don't understand why we aren't the one on the freeway when he's up maybe and um i can't remember the future trail you know he's doing the five story uh we've got to go up um my ex-wife rebuilt her house uh from the fire a 2000 square foot house that cost her 1.3 million i was speaking with the gentleman who wrote um in dc for senators he wrote speeches and he said his estimate of cost per square foot was 550 a square foot if you're working for 15 bucks an hour you're never going to pay for a 550 square foot house i believe once again since i was in commercial real estate and i was constantly confronted with issues that were beyond my control but i had to control them it's almost like you have to loosen up uh i understand the pressure from a different from all the different directions but you've got to do something that's outside the box you got to excuse me if i'm stealing from other people that have talked to me but you've got to think further in advance and as one woman said you have to pass a bond issue you got to have some money and you got to get to it thank you okay miss reach those are all the questions council have you you do have an opportunity give us one minute closing statement well i my my closing statement was essentially no one is separate we shall find and make community by including everyone okay thank you for participating thank you that was wonderful i appreciate afternoon miss wandale thank you for participating in this process so i'm sure you've read this but i just want to give you an overview of the way the interview process will go so you'll have an opportunity to provide a three-minute opening statement and then each council member will have four minutes to ask you questions and just give a heads up you may be interrupted if the council wants to redirect the question and then we'll let you have the final word with a one minute closing statement so with that please go forth thank you uh good afternoon mayor schweldem and council members thank you for the opportunity to interview with you today giving back to my community is a passion of mine i applied for this appointment because serving as a city council member will allow me the opportunity to both give back and to learn more about my community our city has changed a lot over the last several years resulting in increased need to pay attention learn and participate in community improvement efforts working together with the city council city employees and committees to improve and change our city for the better is i believe a civil duty that each citizen should embrace and work hard to achieve making changes will take creativity as our resources are limited prior to seeking this appointment i have served as a volunteer a school board member for 12 years as well as a current board member on a city appointed advisory board for the last two and a half years treasure of the recently established non-profit santa rosa police foundation and founding member of the love harder project serving and a broader population outside of sunoma county as there are recurring regular business new business and urgent issues in the city council faces start each year in my opinion i cannot rightfully come to this position with an agenda other than to simply work hard and collaborate collaboration with all pertinent parties to continue to keep our city financially solvent safe and to work to address the issues facing the city of santa rosa as they are presented taking on this position in a limited capacity i will require time to come up to speed and learn the inner workings of the job that the job entails but i look forward to a challenge as i have mentioned in my application i am a full-time employee at med tronic santa rosa offices keeping this position is important to the financial stability of my family having said that i have made arrangements with my employer to attend regular council meetings in both the mid and late afternoon meetings that last until late night hours is not an issue for me or my family with respects to meetings beginning mid morning and additional time needed for city council subcommittees with as much advance notice as possible i will do i will be able to arrange attendance as needed and as my schedule permits there are only a couple of meetings on the city council current calendar that i have a conflict with at this point the march 12 and 13 states for the city city council goal setting sessions are not a conflict thank you for your consideration and time today great thank you so what's the single most important thing for us to consider when considering your application for this position um say that again i apologize single big biggest thing for us to consider in your opinion for your appropriateness for this council um i think that there's something to be said about um not having experience maybe fresh minds fresh eyes um a little experience to the knowledge of the workings of the city i have exterior knowledge but maybe not the inner workings of it and so go share with me a little bit more about that what do you think would be your biggest challenge if you were to be appointed um it would probably be just learning i mean i there's a lot to read a lot to know um there's so much that happens that is obviously there's big issues going on and that that kind of take up a lot of time but there's just the regular work that has to be done too so there's a lot to learn in that respect and that would probably be the biggest challenge not necessarily time i don't mind reading i've done a lot on the school boards so i understand that um but it would just it would just be be understanding at all and probably have a lot of questions are there a couple things that um just from your perspective there's being a resident in this community that you go why isn't the city of santa rosa doing something about filling the blank what would those be and what suggestions would you have that this is what we should be doing yeah um you know to be honest i'm not sure that um there isn't anything that you haven't looked at that you're not considering and that you're not doing yeah potholes are a pain but it takes time money and um there's just a lot to do so um i think that there's a lot to be done and creativity there's a lot to be heard i think a lot of the citizens um have great ideas about a lot of the things the topics that come up and some of the issues so listening to that i mean not that you haven't because you do but i think there's a lot to be learned from a lot of different people india any thoughts or suggestions that this city could do to improve its community engagement so we get more dialogue amongst our community members um i'm not sure i i would encourage them you to encourage others to maybe even have neighborhoods just you know neighborhood groups that could maybe come here and present problems or issues that are um plaguing their neighborhoods outside of homelessness there's probably plenty of other things that groups have a lot to say about so i would encourage that i know that there are a lot of neighborhoods that do that already but i think that some are some complacent and might have a voice and a lot offer a lot of suggestions on what could be done it's it's tricky obviously money money and time it's it's limited in in your application you talked about the most pressing issues facing the city san rosa and you talked about homelessness uh that will require creativity patients and more than one solution to improve what are some of your suggestions for creative solutions or ways we can improve our response to our current homeless situation um so the homeless situation i think that um believe it or not uh this morning i was looking at the facebook and brunt ferris had put out there that you know hey put your suggestions down and i was reading some i think that's a great avenue to start getting some ideas and let's hash it out i know it's time and a patience is is is hard to to do it's a challenge of mine so um i think my suggestion would be to actually listen to some of these and obviously not every single one but some that are truly thank you thank you my name is jack and um the questions that i wanted to ask you uh was mostly about and i've asked this of every council member if you've been following what the council has been doing over the last couple of years whether it's watching it through the live stream reading about it in the paper seeing it on facebook was there would would there ever be and this is not meant to be a subversive question or um take out your footing the question is really meant to kind of frame a reference for the council about what voice you would be bringing to us because sometimes actually in my what i've learned is that dissenting voices are important and has there ever been a decision that this council has made that you have sat back and thought you know i wouldn't have made that decision or i would have made it differently or i think they missed an opportunity to make it better i'm not a specific maybe a specific example but i know that there are times that decisions are made to spend money in certain areas um you know consulting or those kinds of things and they can be pricey and i think that it's important to get that outside opinion but i also feel like there's um maybe more kind of discretion and looking closer at those kinds of decisions would be a good thing and something that would be help with financial situation yeah so i kind of taking a deeper dive can we do that in-house ourselves kind of conversation i appreciate that um i guess another question i would have is we have a lot of times actually some of the applicants today who have applied who are from the roseland community or southwest area part of town have come forward with pretty much a common theme which is that community has been underserved for so long they haven't always had representation on this body you know how what steps would you want to take to ensure that that roseland is continuing to be brought into the fold is there a better outreach that we could be doing to to make them not only understand they're part of the city but figuring out how they can invoice their concerns and get action in their community i think one of the biggest things that any one of us could do is actually go there and listen and talk to people um town hall sounds a little cheesy maybe but i actually find them very um informative even it's just a citizen listening and maybe not saying anything but just to hear what those types of issues are and to try to bring it back and actually make it part of your decision making process that there's another group that isn't heard on a regular basis or as loudly as other groups yeah good point um i don't have any further questions for you but is there a question that you wish i had asked you you'd like to talk about while you have a minute left on my questioning time uh no i'm good thank you though good early evening at this point uh so one of the things that we've talked a lot about as a council was the implementation of district elections which obviously is going to give our city better geographic representation what would you do to try to increase our demographic representation as well so the council and the boards and the commissions better reflect the community that's a tough one um because there has to be a passion a desire to want to serve demographically i feel like at least these applicants that i i've read their applications and i sat in yesterday at the orientation and got to see some folks i i think it's a little better i don't know for sure if the demographics is better but to try to encourage folks maybe education to what do elected positions what do you do um because i know some people think you just sit there and you don't know anything about i mean this is what i hear you don't know anything about what's happening and um but i i think it's just education i personally take the time to try to understand i know the job is hard um again i was on the school board it was a small district but not everybody knew how did we spend our money i had to explain it why couldn't we give the more to the teachers it just takes time to kind of explain that i think that education might might go a long way in that yeah so we uh just like you on the school board we have a lot of philosophical conversations as well about the direction of the city one of the interesting ones has been what to do with fountain grove when you specifically look at multiple fires following the same travel path through fountain grove would you as a council member advocate for allowing people to rebuild would you advocate for new development in the area or how would you approach such a touchy issue yeah that is a touchy issue um um i would probably advocate that that folks could rebuild there i'm not so sure that i would advocate to have new projects um again there would have to be an understanding i mean insurance is an issue even just fire you know fighting the fire what kind of challenges there might be there's people who already own property up there i think it would be a hard a hard thing to pass or say well nope you can't build again when they put their harder and money there um that's just my point of view on that place it's a tough one yeah one of the other issues that we've grappled a lot with uh as a community but also as a council is the public safety power shutoffs uh do you think PG&E should have the ability to shut off the power and how could the city respond and work with neighbors so i i do i probably in the minority but i do believe they should have the authority to do it i'm not so sure um the parameters they're putting out there are the best and i think they need to revisit that and maybe that's something that the city could work with local power about what does it mean when we have these types of weather situations that are coming up what does it really look like for us but i think that it's important from a homeowner's situation too that i would rather have my power shut off than the possibility of something catastrophic again great thank you so much sandy thank you for your service on the board of community services it's been what two and a half years now i think or so can you share with us what has been the most rewarding project you've worked on on the commission and maybe the most frustrating one that you've worked on i'll start with frustrating sure and um that is actually learning um coming up to speed there's some wonderful people season people have been on that commission for quite some time and um frustrating for me was just learning uh it took a while i haven't visited all of the parks but i've been able to visit quite a few more and learn about that and what it takes to take care of them and um that would probably be my most rewarding is learning about the parks what does it take who's behind it how many people what is it you know it's it's an overwhelming effort to take care of the city in that respect um you hear a lot about families wanting to go to parks and people there and garbage and needles and whatever else and um and what it takes to the money in the time and the effort to make sure that places are clean for those families and those kids to go so just learning about it and experiencing is kind of both frustrating and rewarding at the same time thank you i'm interested uh actually eager to look at the list of ideas that have been presented to Brett Ferris related to homelessness uh if you'd have been a contributor what would you have contributed as potential solutions to our homelessness um i think and i and i said this earlier to a friend that again one of the biggest things is actually going and talking to some of these folks um i feel like that i know that when my guard is up and i've got anger directed at me all the time is somebody just takes the time to talk to me and listen to me that i open up a little bit more and that i can offer um my opinion and my perspective and i think that that's an important thing now given what that said there are some folks that are just going to be angry and um you may not get through that anger or maybe they can't vocalize what they really want to say because they have a disability or mental illness or something of that sort unfortunately on drugs but um i would i think one of the things is just walking about to learn from these folks what is it that is truly because everybody has a story and who knows i don't know what each one of those are and i think that's important because it's extremely complex there's not one answer thank you sammy good evening because one day i'll thank you for being here thank you for your service on the board of community services and your willingness to even do more one of our challenges here in the city is something that we've been faced with for quite some time that's of course this housing and one of the tools that we use to increase housing and density is infill development that infill development can put pressure on certain neighborhoods that are used to things being the way they are and the way they've been for many years including our downtown and our historic districts how would you balance the need for additional housing and affordable housing and all types of housing with the reality that that housing once built could change the nature and the neighborhood that would be concerning to some of our residents living in a neighborhood that is mostly residential homes um there are some apartment buildings but they're not very big um i could relate that it's i think that what could be done you don't want to necessarily just put people in places that just because there's an open space i think that it's important to incorporate but maybe not you know a large scale maybe in just phases so that that community has a time to grow with the amount of people with traffic it changed a lot after the fires that happened a lot of people moved around so traffic patterns changed so the same kind of rather than all at once but kind of a phased approach might be helpful growing or building more buildings um that's a that's a tough one obviously um at this point some places in the city including downtown you just have to go up there's no out to go and is that what you want to do i i don't know i i you have to think about people's perception of what does the city look like um not just where the people live that's just another something that people would consider i don't know i would i'd probably just go back to phases it would probably ease into it i know that again that's a patience thing it would take time but i think it's necessary thank you what do you believe is the most important ability a council person should possess listening thank you thank you for your service and your time today i am curious to know you served for 12 years on school board that's really impressive um what is your uh proudest accomplishment and greatest regret in terms of a vote that you took while sitting on the school board a vote um our school board being that it's a small district so there wasn't a lot of controversy um i would say one of the the toughest votes would probably be lack of of income or finances to support a greater increase for the teachers or the staff i should say in general is certified and not certified because they're those are our kids that's the future um that's probably the one thing that i regret the most um greatest accomplishment can i just take you back to that yeah what about it did you regret i regret that i couldn't give them more money okay there was an increase there's only so much there's a pie no i understood yeah you know you get that yeah i know i know you understand completely um but greatest accomplishment was um learning to read the budget and understand it all it was quite um daunting at first to be able to understand that and to communicate that and be able to explain that to other parents and citizens around that so that they could understand better so you participated at the board level in labor negotiations i'm wondering what your philosophical approach to bargaining is um my approach was a little bit unique in the sense that um a few of the folks worked in city or county positions i work at medtronic i work at another business around so um to hear some things that you know about evaluations and those it was a different perspective i didn't get a choice i didn't have a voice i don't have a union to to um to stand with as a group so it was it's just me so my perspective was a little different and in many times i was told it was appreciated because i could say why why why do why are you against that particular you know evaluations was always one tenure those kinds of things why are you against that explain that because maybe because it's not something that i necessarily have so it was nice to kind of have that balance did you end up adopting some of the principles in your own perspective in your own work life that you learned from the relationship between the board and fiscal responsibility and the responsibility to the employees as well absolutely um you learn to be very uh open and transparent with the money with what's going on um policy uh you know you with a school board there are something i mean your hands are tied in many situations when it comes to policy because there's an ed code that you must follow um but there is some areas that you can um there's that's lenient that you can change to make fit what works for you and your school district so yeah you have to learn to be flexible thank you all right those are all the questions that council has for you so you have one minute for your closing statement okay thank you again and um i appreciate the opportunity to answer some questions from all of you if appointed to the vacant seat i commit to working hard come up to speed as quickly as possible listening to the city of san aroza on what is needed desire to improve our city and doing what i can to make changes as one person on a city council team if not selected today's an interview and appointment process is not the end of my involvement it's just merely a step in my journey thank you great thank you very much for participating thank you okay council we're running early which is good news um so we will take a 10 minute break and we may start be per be ready to start again in about 10 minutes if we have all the other applicants here we could actually start a little bit early okay so 10 minute break we'll reconvene the council meeting welcome mr. down thank you for agreeing to participate in this process so i'll give you a high-level overview of things you've already read probably already know about how the interview is going to be going so we'll give you an opportunity for a three-minute opening statement or opening comments then we'll come back to the council and each council member shall have four minutes to ask questions of his or her choosing we also have questions that the members of the public have provided us that they may work in there and then it'll come back to you for your final comments you will hear of entertaining ding when your time is up please respect that and also during the council portion of the questioning they may stop you to ask some more questions because we are somewhat timely so with that you have three minutes for your opening comment okay thank you mayor for them and members of the council thank you for this opportunity appear before you today to further identify my reasons for submitting my application for appointment to the city council most of this was included in my application which was deemed complete by the city clerk's office on 12 16 however i do want this evening to reinforce some of those reasons however i first want to address the questions to what the city clerk requested that we all applicants respond to first i am able to attend the regularly scheduled Tuesday meetings of the city council second i am able to attend the scheduled city council goal setting sessions for march 12th and 13th and third i do not foresee any issues with additional time commitments on various city council subcommittee assignments and i appreciate the value of the work done by those subcommittees to make the work of the city council more efficient and effective now i'll address the items that i put in as reasons for me submitting my application first the city and the region as a whole is facing a growing problem with homelessness affordable housing in general and a need to replace some of the city's public infrastructure such as streets sewer water etc which have been damaged by wildfires and the rebuilding activity over the last several years in addition the city needs to commence examining how to eliminate or at the least significantly reduce the negative impacts to our residents and commercial entities of the public safety power shutoffs psps as it's known by sacronum created by our major power provider pg&e to accomplish this the city in general and the city council and city departments specifically need to work collaboratively on finding meaningful solutions to these issues second as i mentioned in my application i have been a licensed general contractor both a and b in california and a professional engineer civil also in california for approximately 40 years neither of these licenses are currently active due to my retirement from the activities that i obtained them for however my experience in general engineering and the development fields for many years may be helpful to finding solutions to the homelessness housing affordability and infrastructure replacement and upgrade issues third none of the solutions are going to be simple and they are very complex and we'll have to look at ways to solve those problems and lastly i want to say that i find uh and very impressed with this and that's a good way to end it mr tiddies or if you'd like to end it you're welcome to take some of my time mr dowd or i can jump into the questions okay what i was going to say is the thing that has impressed me as i've been watching you over the last month or two is your collaborative nature and it makes it a very seamless situation because you listen to each other and collectively you make your decisions so thanks i want to first before i jump into the questions thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the service that you've done for the city and i had the pleasure of serving on the Board of Public Utilities with you and i'm amazed at how much public policy and public works projects you have moved arguably as much or more than most of us up here on this council most notably the geysers and sonoma clean power and i just didn't want to i want to take some time to make sure that everybody understands that the other thing i guess i'll jump right into my my questions now is homelessness is arguably the the big issue that we're going to be dealing with and if you join us on this council we're going to be dealing with it together and what immediate policy solutions or ideas do you have to addressing that problem simply stated um i would suggest to you all that the homelessness issue is a tremendous impact on our community and but yet the solutions because the causes of those homeless situations are vast and varied and so we can't just put everything in the same box but we have to look at trying to find living situations most likely temporary to start with and then more permanent over time but while we're doing that we also have to deal with the causative factors of those reasons for them being homeless and whether it's mental health or drug issues etc and so the solutions have to be varied to match the recipient thank you another question that i've been asking all the candidates and i asked this question but not to throw you off guard or help make you lose your footing it's actually to figure out how you would add kind of a dissenting voice or a different perspective so my question is of all the council meetings you've observed in the last two to three years was there ever a decision that this body made that you thought you know i don't think that was the right choice or i think there's a missed opportunity the public policy wasn't as good as it could have been and if so would you mind sharing that example i'm not quite certain i've understood your your question but i i see some of the solutions have been to identify where the homeless are staying and move them and all you do that's moving from the sixth street under crossing to ninth street and that's what we have done we haven't gotten to the root causes of why they're homeless and it can be it could be the tubs fire it can be drug it can be other things but we have to give them help to get them to move on and in part of those policy solutions do you think do you believe the permanent support of housing is the ultimate goal if so how do we get there more quickly understanding that the development housing construction timeline has to run its course and what should we do in the interim well i think it's when you identify that you're going to start with something temporary i think the community needs to recognize that that's what it is i also think that we need to spread the problems across the say four quadrants of our community so that it isn't all dumped in one place and it's solutions like that that have to be thought through and i i think you are right hey mr dad how you doing hi mr rogers so one of the things historically in san aroza that has been controversial or has driven uh some of the politics in particular has been the development of fountain growth if i remember my san aroza history i know you were very involved in that project as well now on the flip side of that having watched multiple fires uh how would you approach rebuilding in fountain grove and new development being proposed in fountain grove to make it safer well uh first of all i would say that i was quite fortunate eight months before the tub fire my wife and i moved from sky farm area after living in that area for about 25 years and we didn't suffer losing our home in the fire because we were already out at oakmont in april of this year we repurchased a new rebuilt home not one of our former homes back in the fountain grove area the thing that i would address in your question mr rogers is we have to make the building uh much more fire resistant and we also have to control the vegetation in the areas so that uh the first responders can be successful in beating off the fires if you look at the difference between what happened in the tubs fire in the kin cage fire uh it's like night and day uh yes we all were evacuated i was my wife and i were evacuated in the kin cage fire but no damage was done to any home in our neighborhood and that's that's fabulous and i think the evacuation process helped the first responders um fight the fire instead of worrying about the people who were stuck in their homes yeah as council member tidbits alluded to you have 25 years of service on the board of public utilities you are a chief player in the geyser project as well as have been very involved in sonoma clean power some of the more innovative things that have happened in sonoma county what are you the most proud of for uh as an issue or as a project advancing it in santa rosa well in my 25 years on the board of public utilities if one thing i've trained myself to do and also encourage fellow members and colleagues on the board of public utilities and sonoma clean power is to listen be courteous and try to make collaborative decisions i always smile when i talk about the geysers because the city council and the bpu had joint meetings so that we didn't expend two meetings uh were consultants and staff had to present it was one for both um mayor sharon right asked me because i was more technically uh uh involved than she was to to chair the meetings the most surprising thing that happened is when unical the then operator of the geyser steamfield came to us the night that that alternative was being debated and said we want your water well any police any of the other solutions we had nobody wanted the water not in our backyard and the end result is when unical stood up the spokesperson said um we want your water and we want it so badly we'll put 50 million dollars of our money into the infrastructure necessary on the hill to receive your water and the city council and the bpu all went oh my goodness we better really pay attention to this and the end result was we built the bpu sort of recommended to the council the council approved that it's a 225 million dollar project that's been successful and providing stabilizing the steamfield producing more and also uh provided jobs and stimulus to the economy so i've always referred to it with a smile as somewhat accidental genius dick uh your your role in the bpu has given you i think a unique perspective on the impacts of the recent fires that we've had um and the power shutoffs as well what uh key issues do we need to keep in mind moving forward as we potentially face additional emergencies like that well i i think i alluded to it a little earlier and that is defensible space and defensible project i my wife and i uh have friends that lost uh their homes it's a tragedy you don't you lose your home you can rebuild the home what you can't do is rebuild the memories your photos your artwork other things it's all gone and never will be replaced um so the first thing is to develop neighborhoods that have defensible space uh so that the first responders can get there and protect those possessions and anything else in relationship to infrastructure well the infrastructure that we have and if you look at specifically coffee park and and the found grove area it's true also in the lark field of states and marco it's the states which outside the city limits but uh there there's they're susceptible to high temperatures and we certainly had the high temperatures i think we'll find and i that a lot of our infrastructure is going to be needed to be replaced as we dig into it and i don't mean with a but just do the studies and if you take the benzene issue that occurred up there in found grove we thought it was the utility water department thought it was a 40 million dollar problem well fortunately it wasn't because it was the laterals not the mains other than a few isolated cul-de-sacs up there but it was still a nine million dollar hit and now the construction that's going on there that i mean i can't remember the number of tons that were hauled off there of concrete and what have you but the truck traffic has been i mean a year of that is like normal 10 years kind of impact so there's a lot of that that we're going to have to deal with and and find means uh as to how to do that what do you see as some uh future environmental issues facing our region and how would we address those as the council well um we we have water we have sewer we have to take care of those provide that water to our residents and businesses we have to take care of the wastewater and make sure that it's dealt with appropriately um and then then part of the environment also in my opinion includes and some of you have this in your background is the police departments and the fire departments and how they deal with people that live in our uh community uh but we have to do it together and um i i go back to the defensible space uh and not and it's already it's all right in my opinion to have apartment buildings closely packed housing opportunities but you don't plant a forest around it so that has to come forward in the planning thank you thank you thank you thank you i've mirrored my my count and colleagues appreciation for your decades of service to this community is there anything you'd like to and to speak to that as far as your experience on the bpu and how that would kind of have how that experience would enhance or complement your decision making on the center of the city council well fortunately uh the bpu operates uh enterprise funds and it makes it a lot easier to gather funds by our rate increases that we have and the city council has always approved the recommendations of the bpu in my experience in 25 years uh not that we've been willy nilly about it but we've given the facts and this is what we need to do to maintain a an effective and a safe system um it's a lot different when you're starting to look at the streets and sidewalks and that kind of infrastructure because that's that's hard earn money or we have to get money from the fema or the office of emergency service at the state level for uh disaster uh repair and that's not an easy task and i know many of you have been working on it i had had several meetings with uh city manager mcglenn when i was chairman of the rebuild sonoma county working group uh we were trying to work with the city in the santa rosa the group was volunteers i was a chairman uh we we tried to find ways that the city could uh streamline their process to get people back going on the rebuilding and same with the county and both agencies in my opinion did a remarkable job uh where they didn't get tied up in crossing the t's and dotting the i's they got to the solutions and if people could rebuild the same home even to a new code the city streamlined it and the county streamlined it so that they could break ground on it and it's those kind of things that i think we can find good ways to do things rather than be a detriment and a blockade for people moving forward thank you um in the in the in the room of housing and affordable housing um one of our tools of course is infill development and it is it's necessary it's it's it's part of what we're dealing with with the stationary plan uh we also give existence from neighborhoods that are concerned or from neighbors that are concerned about the impact on their neighborhoods both around the city and and especially in our historic districts how would you find yourself balancing the needs of the housing with the concerns of the of our um residents in how that housing um would affect their neighborhoods well i wish i could respond that there's probably ways that we could make everybody happy but i doubt that that will be the case but i also think i i've lived in the santa rosa area uh inside the city i think about 44 years and the city has changed when i was a young man i grew up in sabastopol santa rosa was 25 000 people now it's 175 000 people close to it anyway that's it's a different community and i think that the type of building that we do will be different and should be different because uh i think we need to look forward to doing more compact dense housing downtown that's more conducive to people using bus transportation and smart trains and things like that much as you see in the bigger communities in the bay area and so we do that but then we taper as we go out to the outer city limits uh to thank you for coming in today and thank you um for your service uh most of the questions directed at you have been technical because of your wealth of knowledge and i'd like to pivot a little bit uh to ask you about what your vision for diversity on the council is and how you believe your voice is um if you believe it's important if you think that your voice would be able to contribute to that well thank you vice mayor bleming um the one of the reasons that i'm a civil engineer and contractor is my dad thought that was the only thing that was worthwhile doing and it was the dinner time table discussions and i'd say i want to be an attorney or i want to be a teacher i want to be no no no and only the night when i said i'm thinking i want to become a civil engineer he says now you're on the right track well my brain works that way as well i i get into uh how do you how do you stack the pieces together so that they work and uh you i've had very very difficult jobs in my career and i always think about wow that one was really tough and makes it moderately difficult ones easy to deal with and i think uh the six of you have some pretty fabulous skill sets uh in my own opinion i think i might be able to help you with some of the technical natures not that you don't have city staff with with great expertise as well but i think somebody at the dais might be helpful so i'm talking about demographic diversity i do appreciate that you have a very strong engineering background um and would be a useful and stellar voice in that right so i'll pose the question to you a little differently um you know the council seat vacated was vacated by someone who the voters were very clear about wanting a progressive voice do you believe that you could well represent the voters who um who have lost that voice in miss combs and if so how would you approach that well in addition to my experience directly as a civil engineer and as a home builder and contractor i also served on the board of the habitat for humanity for about six years i also worked uh as a board member for the center for climate protection and things things like that uh as i said earlier in my comments i'm gonna stop you there and just focus up real quick which is since we only have a minute and i want to give you a chance to i think you you can answer this question what you know you're you live in district four it's a beautiful amazing district probably you know the best one in santa rosa i think we can all agree right but the thing here is what we are so well represented on commissions and boards and in the council on the council in the past before we went to districts why do we need another person from northeast santa rosa on the council well i would answer it this way uh i think and i have been a fan of the district elections that are now in place and it's a phased in kind of situation you and i are both in district four and uh but your term goes for another three years i would come on to this city council if you were to appoint me i would really be a one-year term there is no place for me to move forward with that because you have that uh position so my question just to be clear is not coming from a concern about a contested election i'm just curious to know your philosophy and you have 10 more seconds sorry but i i don't think at this stage that you should be tied up on trying to fill districts i think you should be thinking neat thank you um so to give an interesting perspective given years on the bpu so i'm interested in you're a teacher you're issuing a report card what type of grades would you give the city of santa rosa in regards to its response to initially the tubs fire in 2017 and its recovery efforts there there were some things that were lacking as an example uh the pumping systems to get the water up to the tanks uh they were diesel generators were backups well we couldn't get the diesel trucks to the tank to fill it up so that the generators could work so that that backup was a failure we also because of the cost of excuse me of pumping water up to the tanks it's it's less expensive to pump at night than it is in the daytime because the cost of energy well that also while it worked fine during standard procedures it failed at the time that the fire hit us so those things have been we're working through them and we're improving them uh we're also changing some of the types of products that we put in the ground so a lesson learned is what i would say to you mayor and everything wasn't perfect everything is not perfect today but i think good progress is being made i think the city of santa rosa's water department has received accolades from a lot of different sources about what a great well-run uh and agency that it is you know what kind of grade would you give it um i i'm generous but i would say probably in the a minus b plus we've got work we could do okay and i'm sure this is more of a progress support but a response to the concave fire as we talked earlier and the impact it has on the geysers project would be your assessment of our response to that tragedy well the board of public utilities me in particular immediately started asking what are we having this thing shut down and it was shut down for failure of power poles is what they burned up is what happened so there wasn't power to the pumping stations and as a consequence when we we take in depending on how much rainfall we're getting on a heavy heavy storm we could get 100 million gallons in one day down to the laguna treatment plant we catch it behind msc south there on stony point road and those ponds by place to play as a buffer but then we have to funnel it through the system the treating system over time those those power systems while calpine got on it immediately pgne was trying to do what they could we lost about two or three weeks of being able to pump water up there we're now faced with a situation that we're getting close to where we might need to discharge some tertiary treated water into the into the laguna and i'm going to stop you just because we have 42 more seconds i'm sorry i did want to get this one question for you you're probably well aware the city council elected to go to an all-electric retort nance and coming from your prior industry what are your thoughts as to that decision that the council made both pro and con well uh gas in itself is a is a dangerous product that being said i'm i'm a gas that us trying to put in generators and people's homes and they don't know what they're doing it to me it's a very dangerous step so i think we have to move cautiously with going to all electric homes okay and with that we're to your closing one minute comments okay it will be a closing comment which is to say i was surprised that there were 19 applicants for this position that is now open i at the same time i want to say i am proud to be in a community where there are 19 people willing to to devote their time to help this community become a better community for its residents and businesses that makes me proud and i'm glad to be a part of this community thank you so much the process that you've already been given information about but we'll be providing you an opportunity for three minutes to give an opening comment then we'll go to the council each council member i have four minutes to ask you questions just give you the heads up you may be interrupted because we're very limited and so some council members want to get specific questions we're here which you have to say and then you'll have an opportunity of one minute closing statement you'll also hear this very attractive buzzer sound please hear that is please stop talking because we need the next person to ask those questions so with that please start your opening comments hi my name is mark andrews i'm a local businessman and court officer i've been working here 12 years as a process server i work for over 400 lawyers 12 investigators and i've worked for three judges i would also probably a rare thing for the council to look at i'm a success from the homeless standpoint when the fire happened i was made homeless and i've overcome that and got back on my feet and everything with it which is where i thought i could start off being i don't have a whole lot of experience to be on a council other than i was a with the board of supervisors for the friends outside with the jailhouse i went down and got into the homeless community walked the redado trail tried to set up some cleanup but there wasn't much time with the people that were available i believe you know stephanie over at morgan street mr mayor i spoke with her she was trying to help me set some stuff up but we weren't able to get that done yet and i spoke to the chief yesterday and he told me how i can get up there because i bought a bunch of supplies to go and help clean up the area also went and talked to a bunch of the neighborhood people to see what they were dealing with on the other side of the fence from the homeless encampment on the redado trail and that's where they were asking about um possibly getting more police patrols just one gentleman said he goes he read my truck off once you know didn't really get anything but it's been three times now and he goes i had to report it and so i said well we'll see you know what we can do if i get the position available on the city council so that's my opening statement okay thank you mr rogers you're starting thank you sir thank you for being here a couple of the different priorities of the council have been housing and homelessness obviously but also climate change and typically it's easy to be a part of addressing climate change when you have money when you can put solar panels on your home or drive an electric vehicle what can we do within the constraints of what our community is working with to both address our housing and homelessness issues while also giving people tools to address climate change um something simple like uh reusable water bottles you know with people who are homeless that something is they carry a bunch of things with them where they go to have a steady thing that you don't have to keep thrown away fill up the landfill is one idea i could come up with off the top of my head uh being in the legal field you know i learned to think on my feet because i'm always dealing with somebody's problem every day whether it be from the lawyer standpoint or the client standpoint yeah so but uh with your question there so i would start off with you know reusable bottles and i would you know embellish from there okay and then with your uh perspective and experience having been greatly impacted by the fire we're now in year three for recovery what would you like to see the city focus on in the third year um the problem i had was i had a me in a roommate he was an armored car guard you know me a court officer we tried to rent anywhere if there was a family with a little child you know we paid for our background check i did it 12 times we never got the place you know there just wasn't enough housing and i mean like they're doing marvelous work you know i've served some uh people over in the uh this name of the one that uh the neighborhood burn down coffee park that's it coffee park i've had to serve a couple things over there but they're doing wonderful work over there and getting the houses going up on found grove so finding people affordable things that you know for more single people might help as well great thank you so much sir you're welcome uh in your application uh the question related to why you wanted to be appointed you talk about how some people complain and talk about people often do and but uh is there a complaint you should be doing something to make a difference uh could you share with us uh your history of getting involved to make change and the kinds of changes that you've helped them um i haven't done a whole lot those more where that statement came from my brother's a military veteran like my dad and i wasn't so my brother's always don't complain about the system unless you're going to get in the water swim and do something about it and when i saw this in the paper that it came up went right down got the paperwork i think i had my signatures in two days so it's a point to get in i'm not the most experienced candidate you'll have but i am definitely hit the ground running and i have a lot of references in town that i get results when i put my nose to the grindstone i get stuff done thank you in a time that you've made the decision to apply for this vacancy what have you done to repair for the for the position oh like i said i went down i talked to robert with the city sweep um he told me about the new homeless uh people who are running things i got with stefanie over on morgan street i stopped over at the gospel mission talked to them um i picked up a couple rounds of garbage bags like 75 of them set up put my truck back on the road to come down and say let's you know do a little cleanup try and get some positive press because i think they had an explosion out there with a gas can the crime's been a problem and so my thing was to try and see if i can do it some good press down there and whether i get the position or not um i did make a uh commitment to a bunch of people out there that i was going to come and do it and i still plan on doing that thank you you're welcome sir good evening Mr. henrys and thank you for your work in the community thank you sir what would you say would be the most important ability that a council member would possess ability to adapt to adapt and what does governance mean to you um i would say it is the the group as a whole their ability to govern in their neighborhood their district their state or you know wherever they're leading thank you you're welcome sir hey thank you for coming down this evening i'm curious to know how you would approach uh disagreements because we we do have them on the council and i'm the interested to know if you really disagree with something that one of us said did or how we voted what your approach to to that might be when you're part of a group sometimes there are disagreements but you need to go with the group as a whole so that's my thinking on that i mean you voice your opinion if there's some you know laws or whatever that have to be dealt with bring those out uh working for 12 investigators i'm getting at getting to the bottom of things but if i'm going to join the council you know there's six would be seven uh you always move as a team okay thank you you're welcome ma'am thank you mr. henrys um so key tells the most important thing about you for us to know in considering your your app um your appropriateness for this board um yeah like i said the only board experience i have was with friends outside i did that for two years to help out there um i just i i own my own business so i can you know free up my time i work when i want i don't work when i don't have to so as far as making the commitments of every tuesday uh making the planning session and then it said anything about subcommittees because i'm sure with my background on homelessness i'd be able to help with that and after some diligent reading i'd probably help with some other you know important issues in the community but i just hit the ground running where i knew what i was doing which was the homeless area and talking with people in the neighborhood to see what they were going through so that is one of our key tier one priorities for this council but we also have four others um so what would you think would be your biggest challenge for serving on this council the amount of reading i would have to do to catch up off the bat that would be my probably my biggest challenge okay all right thank you well those are all the questions that i had you now have um no it goes to you one more sorry mr timmett thank you mr andrews how you doing sir yeah good thanks and i just want to say to you i appreciate that you know you're somebody that clearly is um a doer and results oriented just by virtue of the fact that you went out there to help the situation on the gerudo to trail and not only that you went out and you helped the people experiencing homelessness but you also it sounds like help the neighbors who are seem to be always in that point of conflict between compassion but also wanting a better solution um so when we talk about solutions and uh it's okay if you don't have answers but i'm curious if you can if you can share with us some ideas you have around what what i would argue are the biggest issues of the city homelessness is obviously front and center right now affordable housing has been kind of a constant uh conversation and we've been doing lots of things from revising our planning process to subsidizing the construction of affordable housing i mean just between those two issues what what kind of solutions do you think you could bring to the table or ideas for the homelessness i heard that they were looking at putting them over in the horse stables at the fairgrounds um i would want to research and find are there any other areas that are you know more conducive to obviously they're camping until they can find a place so you know seeing if there are other alternatives you know see if there's any way to open up more beds with the shelters but i know there's the roads and the gospel mission i don't know if they have any other new ones now from you know i might have been was 18 years ago and i was very lucky to have some business leaders in town baker investigations andre and gallinson took me under their wing and gave me a place to learn and grow in business well that's great um so one i guess one question that i also have is have and i asked this question because i want to see how you can bring a differing voice to the council um and i've been asking applicants what would you do differently than what the council's been doing has there been a decision that we've made that you may have heard about or had about and thought you know i think that one missed the mark i would have done it this way and this is why no the research i've done you know pretty much where the council's been it seems to be pretty much straight on to get results and stuff with the pension i believe you guys are trying to make up some of the shortfall there um the budget you know i don't think it's that far gone that it can't be you know fixed with some you know tight you know tightening here and there um homeless this is going to be a problem it's i've been here in santa rosa 18 years you know and there's still people out there that were there when i was homeless 18 years ago so um opening up services uh mental health is something that could help a lot of people out out there i also noticed as i went further east on the trail i had people need a little more help the further down now went okay well thank you you know all the questions i had have been asked and answered is there anything that you would like to add what we still have about a minute if you'd like to take that time before your closing remarks um i came here to you know get the position and i look forward to working with the council i'm hoping that i'm your choice and i'll work hard every day at it you know i'm um came here to serve the people awesome thanks man you're welcome sir okay those all the questions from council would you like to make a closing statement you have a minute that was actually about it was uh you know thank you for the opportunity again you know i grabbed a day planner on the way over here get ready to hit the ground running on the 14th i hope that i am your choice you know i think you'll be happy with the results i can turn out for the group okay thank you for your participation thank you sir thank you sir hello welcome mr church congratulations on being number 19 of our interview process so thank you i know we provide you with material that outlines this but i just want to clarify for you so the interview will consist of a three-minute opening statement by you then we'll come back to the council each of us will have four minutes to ask you questions and then it'll come back to you for a one-minute closing statement if you hear this buzzer sound that means please stop or we need to move on but also during the council questions council members may choose to interrupt you to ask a further clarifying question but just be somewhat flexible with that okay it's great yeah you've got three minutes for an opening statement all right thank you thank you for taking the time with to meet with us all tonight regarding the scheduling i just want to say at first that i am available for all Tuesday meetings except for one just April 14th i'm unavailable as for March 12th and 13th i'm available for the goal setting meetings and do not foresee any conflicts with the subcommittee assignments a little bit about me my name is Maxwell church born and raised here in Santa Rosa spent the majority of my life here and being a fifth generation resident my roots really run deep here and i care a lot about this place i love Santa Rosa so apart from my professional career in the social services i also am connected to the creative culture and community here leading and managing my band black sheep brass band and so most of my time in and social services in the nonprofit sector all the seven years have been in homeless shelters so with this experience i've been working over five years at the opportunity house shelter in south park and then most recently in novato at the new beginnings transitional shelter as a housing case manager so at opportunity house i've worked from the bottom up from the ground up everything from residential counselor promoted to lead counselor house manager program manager so understand what it takes to transition homeless individuals to housing and i also understand how to implement this on a larger scale that affects a greater number of the unsheltered community and so with this i feel like these strengths can help with the council's goals set to attain net zero homelessness and also just correlating with the the goal to foster a strong downtown and over economic development i feel that as we support these individuals and as they get more shelter it's it's more inviting to be downtown even local business owners who i've talked to have have stated this and they've also stated that they do really well with events happening downtown such as the winds in our market and so that's where this connection to the creative community and the people and the players and artists and the musicians could benefit just being a liaison between this community and the city of santa rosa as well so with that i feel that as much as it's important to focus on this supporting of the unhoused a big part of it too is just supporting the prevention of homelessness and recognizing that a lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck so the more we can support local businesses remaining in santa rosa the more we also support those individuals with those jobs so thank you and i invite you to ask any other further questions thank you mr alvarez you're starting this round thank you mayor sounds like you're uniquely qualified to speak about some homeless issues that have been involved with with your your work so far uh share with us more about ideas that you may have for the short term and also long term in dealing with our homeless issues within the region yeah so i'm excited to hear that um in la they recently um basically legalized tiny homes as ad use so accessory dwelling units and this is possibly one thing you know the council could consider adopting something that has been adopted in in los angeles um um so moving away from the idea that tiny homes have to be specifically um rv but um are registered in that way but having its own legal ramifications and legal ease about the way um they're described and and so that's one possibility but really in my experience it's such an individual case by case um thing supporting these people understanding what they need to basically what are they looking for asking them being curious about what they want what inspires them to move on and help themselves out because some people you know don't want to leave the trail right now for another encampment but maybe they're inspired to move to other transitional housing or permanent supportive housing if it was if it was um available so if i had a magic wand to make anything possible i really would uh create a lot of things like opportunity house a lot of smaller transitional or permanent housing that creates a safe home style environment to support these people and feeling safe and stable so that they can heal from homelessness and move forward in their lives thank you uh share with us more your perceptions of the downtown and any ideas that you may have to make it more vibrant for our community yeah so um speaking with jurard um who has jurard jurard's paella and the business down there um just understanding from his perspective and that that they do well with events happening downtown and so for me i understand that he is his business is leaving tex wasabi's left so i have the awareness that some businesses are leaving and i being involved with my band i was a part of the fridays on fourth which was a which is a noble effort to help bring interest in people downtown we were just playing as a part of the community um just simply busking and you know just creating something more than just a regular friday to try to attract people and it was i would say moderately successful and the things about events and and creating events events is that as much as we need to put forth the ideas it's also the consistency of continually hosting these events and how they build over time so what more i would put forth is like what more can we do in terms of events regular events downtown and utilizing that that beautiful courthouse space um the wednesday market has been going on for many many years and originally was a thursday night market and it's an excellent example of just something that's tried and true and consistent and so i would love to do um more music events down there um cultural events but also in other communities in santa rosa and in rosalind in south park utilizing the public spaces that we have utilizing the parks um maybe even like festivals and festivals or what not thank you mr church yeah thank you good evening mr church and thanks for being here this evening thank you i want to touch on housing and the downtown as well housing a little bit a little more into the future one of one of our tools in creating housing is infill development but that can have good pressure on our historic neighborhoods and our neighborhoods in general as people see them change and as they grow and they look a little differently than perhaps the people are used to and that can create some fear and anxiety how do you balance how would you balance the need for housing and also the need to protect some of our sensitive neighborhoods and just our neighborhoods in general that's a great question um i would take a cue from how other communities have done it and say in um in seattle but also i think in in sabastopol there's even a co-housing the co-housing collective model of um trying to create more housing but also do it in a beautiful way um in a way that's designed to really support community um and support um in integrating elements such as permaculture and maybe uh fruit trees or other edibles as this community might desire so the more we can put the potential residents in control of the destiny of this housing in this neighborhood i feel the more um willing and open the community will be to seeing that change so it's really about involving involving the community more and trying to involve those who may be the potential homeowners or part of that community as the only constant really is change like i look at south park where i live and i see the difference between the house i live in which was built in the 60s and then a couple houses away um one of the original like how old farmhouses in the neighborhood and and to me i appreciate it i appreciate the old walnut um trees in my front yard just recognizing that this is old orchard land and slowly it's been divided and um i think a big thing for me is just the the need for space and and having space to be able to grow food or have trees and it's just it's challenging for me to see the um the balance between um um needing to build up right and utilize the open space and and make sacrifices but i understand those are sacrifices that need to be made and and in the changing times to make housing more affordable here so thank you yeah and what would you say is the most important um ability that that a council membership possess the most important ability important ability would be um the ability to listen to all sides and to gain the necessary factual information before moving forward and making any decisions and so and with listening it's it's cooperation with the other council members thank you thank you hi thank you for making the time to come in this evening i'm curious to know what philosophy you would bring to to our goal setting process how how your life experiences your political philosophy your opinions of the council would inform the choices that you would make as we go forward in this next year great question um goal setting well looking at the goals that you've made i i agree with um i agree with all of them um climate action plan homelessness comprehensive housing strategy recovery and resilience financial stability replenishing reserves um in terms of my own process for setting goals and accomplishing goals it's pretty simple uh it's i've accomplished a lot of goals in my life like becoming massage therapists or iroveric practitioner or paying off my student loan debt and so it's just setting something up and then also breaking it down to the timeline of how are we actually going to accomplish this how am i going to accomplish this and what are the necessary steps that i need to take to make this possible looking at the funding picture as well of how am i supporting myself to do these things and um and so basically that's what i'm bringing just the the ability to see the the bigger picture as well as the more minute details of how we need to actually progress and and um work on the uh the little things that add up to the bigger steps great thank you so much thank you so earlier in i believe it was in uh in response to one of the questions you talked about the prevention of homelessness how might the city of santa rosa go about preventing homelessness yeah um it's a great question so for me it's really about working and starting with the youth the more we can support support the the children and the youth with such effective communication skills as nonviolent communication i statements um ability to work together and collaborate with their peers and and collaboration with their peers these little things that actually don't cost much money that help support individuals as they grow up in experienced life as we all have the stressors that come with it the tragedy the trauma the triumph and some of these things i haven't learned until my adult life until my 20s and if i learned them when i was um maybe in elementary school or middle school or high school how i feel like okay this could be a benefit so that's one way uh and one thing in terms of like climate solution climate awareness and and caring for this earth is uh leading children on on on naturalist docent hikes so volunteering as a naturalist docent with fairfield osborn osborn preserve that that is a direct way that helps me know that i'm helping these children connect with basically what feeds us all and so programs such as this more um more involvement with the youth and and how they can collaborate together communicate communicate together and envision a positive proactive community that you know they are a part of okay and question about a project that this council has um worked on coming from south park area the ben valley senior center what are your thoughts on that project in the ultimate direction that that's going um well i'm most recent with uh familiar with the um the ben valley senior center as it was um proposed to be a homeless shelter and i know it's changed since then and i i honestly was hoping that it'd be a homeless shelter you know but i am coming from living in south park also working in south park at opportunity house and um i know that other residents didn't necessarily want another homeless shelter there um but i totally understand and i empathize with the residents as much as uncheltered people so um i believe that you know i'm in i'm in support of the city choosing whatever whatever is um whatever is right and and really what the community wants to in order to utilize the space that otherwise you know it just isn't being used right now so during some of those public conversations about what to do at the site the senior system criticism about neighborhood outreach and letting the neighbors know what's going on the position that we're looking to fill is an at-large position so you come from the south park area what are your thoughts about engaging other neighborhoods other than the one that you live in in being participants in efforts of the city um yeah i'm all for it like i said i'd love to um engage other aspects of the community not only um you know i'm willing to do door to door boots on the ground but also um in larger events and in public spaces in the parks and such and i mean my main obviously my main experience is um other than music arts and culture is so thank you yeah thank you hi mr church thanks for being here and for a point one thing that i have been asking everybody is is there been a decision that the city council has made in the past year or handful of years that you know you kind of picked up on the newspaper or on facebook or something and thought you know i think they kind of missed the mark on that one i would have done it differently and here's how and i asked this question because i i don't want to make you feel like i'm trying to put you in a contrarian position to the council but you know if you do a good job on this council you're going to be in contrarian positions all the time and i'm trying to get an assessment of you know what voice you would bring as somebody who might have thought differently than we did yeah um nothing is particularly sticking out right now i mean the main thing obviously is just like oh let's make a living wage right now but i know how unrealistic that is so i think for me um it's um i'm such a natural diplomat that i understand that uh i'll have my my own ideas my own opinions but really it's only one person in the larger community and you know to be considered in front of you all as council is just that's that's great i'm grateful but um yeah uh like i said it's it's i understand my own struggles living paycheck to paycheck paying off my student debt and um and lifting myself out of um so-called poverty and actually being able to save for the first time as i've you know excelled in in my professional career and as much as i'd love everyone to be paid 15 20 an hour minimum wage i also understand the implications that has on local businesses on the um local economics of actually what then normal day-to-day goods actually cost and so as much as i'd like to say let's just you know have a better living wage origin into right now and we have to phase in these types of things so yeah i guess that's it okay well i appreciate that everybody else has asked the questions that i would have probably asked you is there anything that you wish i had asked you that you might want to talk about um yeah i mean i guess um i'm just once again i'm just grateful to be here and living in south park location location location just i was able to walk here it's like 15 minutes and so really just trying to you know consume less fossil fuels get my car off the road blah blah blah and recognize these little steps though that help help us um not only individually but greater as a community so yeah how can we um how can we continue to just support our community and walking more and biking more and utilizing more public transportation and yeah awesome thanks mr church thank you evening mr church how you doing all right good thank you so uh there's no such thing as an unfunded priority and so our ability to really address the biggest issues in the city stem from the city's fiscal health what's your understanding of the city's current budget as well as where we stand economically from a city perspective i understand that with the budget and since 2008 there have been um many cuts in positions in the city to help close a gap a funding gap and that there's a slight um still a slight budget deficit that the city is running under and um that part of the goals of the city is to replenish reserves and to build that back up in case such things as a natural disaster again happens and yeah that's that's why i i believe you know all we can do to help support local businesses staying obviously not only for um for the city for the local businesses but also for those workers and those jobs it's going to be a benefit all around to our our future um as a community and and looking at that funding picture i don't know if that completely answered all your questions let me jump topics on you a little bit as well yeah the city currently has a couple of emergencies declared uh whether it's from the fire from homelessness we'll be discussing a climate emergency what does success to you look like for those emergencies at what point is the city no longer in those emergencies um success in those emergencies well for one homelessness you know knowing that um will we ever have everyone housed i mean that's that's an ideal that i wish we could you know but there's always going to be the cycle and and there's tragedy and there's uh stuff happens and and so success really is the ability to make continual progress because that that's what i would say success is the ability to make continual progress where you know people are actually getting sheltered um more homes are getting built we're recovering from the fires um so it doesn't sound like so much that you think it's uh a hundred percent outcome base but more of a progress in a momentum base exactly so what do you think that there's a virtue in having those emergency declarations in place and if so what do you think that is i do believe there's a virtue is just bringing awareness to it and um if it frees up adequate uh funding um emergency funding for those things those are the main main things i see like needing emergency funding to rebuild from the fire the infrastructure that was damaged or lost the funding to needed to help start to move more people from being homeless to being housed yeah great thank you so much thank you all right those are all the questions from council sena you have one minute opportunity to give us some final comments okay um so thank you all i believe i'm an excellent candidate for this position and i'm hungry to step into a career in public service uh from having a bottom up understanding of managing shelters to serving the underserved and organizing events and being a liaison to the creative community my experience i believe can contribute to uh multiple issues that santa rosa is facing resulting in fostering um cultural social and economic uh strengthening so and i really crave to be in a position where i can be an active participant and problem solver in this way i have the drive and the time to be engaged and get these boots on the ground meet with the council meet with the people and make the progress where it needs to be made i understand there's no silver bullet to any of these issues and i also know that every little bit helps and so i can't explain how much i want to do this position so thank you thank you very much yeah thank you for this opportunity have a great night all right okay we're now moving on to item 5.0 public comment thank you so we will allow three minutes for public comment first up would be mr kevin conway followed by michael hilder good evening mayor and council members kevin conway with friends of the climate action plan thank you very much for the long day you put in the long hours i did read an article the article in the press democrat that dealt with the profiles of the 19 people who were interested in this vacancy and only one of them mentioned that the climate crisis was one of their main issues and this concerned me because after all we are replacing uh miss combs who was very climate forward and she was a member of the climate action subcommittee so i would have hoped that that issue would have been much more on the front burner than it was throughout this process 2019 was the hottest year on record this problem isn't going away and it's it's getting worse and the and all the fires that we've been dealing with are related to that problem so please select someone who struck you as being knowledgeable about the problem and serious about addressing it make sure that on day one they're given a hard copy of our climate action plan make sure that they're familiar and with the list of community generated actions and ideas for actions that you'll be discussing next week and make sure that they understand something about micro grids because with these public safety power shutoffs we have to move as quickly as we can to a decentralized grid system and finally make sure that they're comfortable with basing the decisions that they will make by looking through the the lens of how that decision is going to impact our climate so again thank you for your work tonight thank you michael hillbair thank you michael hillbair southwest san rosa area i live near sam jones homeless shelter i'm going to speak to mike martini's nomination an object to his potential appointment during his 10 years mayor the the southwest san rosa area was disadvantaged by his actions he behaved like a sonoma county alliance opportunists trying to favor the sonoma county alliance type interest to the disadvantage of the rest of us he would not be a good choice one of the main issues we're looking at right now is this um encampment on the bike trail though it is on county property it is within the city limits so it's something we all need to um you know come together and deal with and you know the way i see it uh mr martini doesn't have any real understanding of what really is going on there and you know it appears to be the sort the same sort that would say you know the answer is to raise taxes and waste money and we already have too many of those type of people in office and we really uh don't need another one thank you thank you eric frazier thank you so much and i appreciate your time today i know it's been quite a long day for you i was also very impressed with the quality of the applicants and learned a lot and i look forward to going back and watching the videotape i did want to rise today and deliver some information from me and my my pals uh and really pray that your selection today centers around picking a candidate that has good um skills when it comes to analyzing information auditing information uh knows how to adhere to standards and accounting because after all and and you know this this is no secret some of the the things that we've uncovered over the past 1824 36 months have to do with how information is presented by reports i was surprised to find that there isn't really any standards and you're not really administering any standards and in fact the publishing of misinformation distorted facts and and other things is astounding to me well 2020 we're going to get to the bottom of it i imagine or certainly there's going to be continued outcry for transparency and accountability and i'd really hope though that you would select somebody that brings those skills to the table personally as you know and just to remind you the interface and the troubling interface with the tourism economy the srt bia i mean it's important when you guys put out facts that say over 60 000 people go to the visitor center when it's a mere fraction of that don't even realize that those facts end up on people's small business uh loan requests and determine whether or not going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to open a restaurant or a business in those areas uh the tot iron man parking economic development housing ad use jd is it seems like everywhere i would turn i would find deficient fact sets that clearly are substandard the truly that's intolerable and i hope that you would double down on the call to install people co-patriots i recognize that everybody is here because they love our city they love being here everybody wants to serve it's clear everybody's you know everything's cool that way when it comes to the policy and ideology i'm sure we can find middle ground to agree on but if we're not starting with facts if we're not using information that we can all agree on that's verifiable that's auditable that's correct then we're not prepared ourselves for long term progress thank you for hearing me today and i appreciate your service thank you any additional cards great okay before we go to item six um i first of all want to applaud the 19 folks that uh agreed to participate in this process again the quality top to bottom was very impressive you don't make this a very easy job for the six of us that are up here additionally i want to give my thanks to the ad hoc subcommittee that helped create this process and the rest of the council i think it was an efficiently run process and many things to do to the staff that allowed this to happen and specifically to our city clerk and her staff it's been very smooth process i really appreciate it very challenging decision but i think everyone had a great opportunity to share their what their specifics interests in this position were and they gave all the council the information needed to make this decision so with that we'll move to item number six madam city attorney could you explain the voting process yes in accordance with the county existing city council policy the selection will be made through a process of elimination as the council has already agreed there will be four rounds of voting the clerk is handing out ballots for each round as well as an alphabetical list of all of the applicants the first round of voting you will vote for four applicants on your ballot you'll pass the ballots back to the city clerk the city clerk will read out the votes of each council member put that into the record um we will vote the clerk and i will run a tally of the votes at the once the counting is completed we will review and uh those applicants who have received either one or fewer votes will be eliminated from the process and we'll move then to round two round two you will vote for three candidates again on the ballot that the clerk has provided you again the ballots will be passed to the clerk she will read the votes of each council member will again tally and do the same elimination process of those candidates uh with those applicants with one or fewer votes will again be eliminated and then on to the third round where you'll vote for two same process and then the final round you will vote for one applicant and the applicant that receives four votes will be then available for your appointment to the vacancy great thank you for that clarification council any questions over what we just heard mr tibetz thank you mayor so just looking at this process if it comes down to maybe two people at the last vote will there be an opportunity to kind of do a review over maybe who received votes at one point and then we could go back to um making i guess would be a nomination at that point no once a candidate is once an applicant is eliminated they are eliminated from the process okay any additional questions is everyone ready to vote all right please for round one council member rogers voted for okanya waisaki having a pen issue uh dowed and kennedy round one council member tibetz voted for dowed waisaki okanya and carlstrom council member soyer voted for weeks martini dowed and kennedy council member oliveris voted for carlstrom dowed martini and weeks vice mayor fleming voted for okanya carlstrom waisaki and pet grift mayor schwedhelm voted for weeks martini dowed and carlstrom one moment while we compare tally sheets city attorney gallagher and myself conferred and to confirm moving on to the next round of voting will be carlstrom dowed kennedy martini okanya weeks and waisaki please strike through your on your applicant list please strike through the following names to clarify the round two voting strike through andrews beach church dewitt ebright florins herman minor pet grift petker saunders wandel please begin your round two voting for round two voting council member rogers voted for okanya dowed and waisaki council member tibetz voted for okanya waisaki and dowed council member soyer voted for dowed martini and weeks council member oliveris voted for carlstrom martini and weeks vice mayor fleming voted for okanya waisaki and carlstrom mayor schwedhelm voted for weeks martini and dowed one moment while we tally on your applicant list please strike through applicant kennedy moving forward for round three voting remaining applicants will be carlstrom dowed martini okanya weeks and waisaki for round three council member rogers voted for okanya and waisaki council member tibetz voted for okanya and dowed council member soyer voted for weeks and martini council member oliveris voted for martini and weeks vice mayor fleming voted for okanya and carlstrom round three for mayor schwedhelm was weeks and martini one moment while we tally thank you council on your list of applicants please strike through carlstrom dowed and waisaki and the fourth and final round please vote for one candidate for the fourth and final round of voting council member rogers voted for okanya council member tibetz voted for okanya council member soyer voted for weeks council member oliveris voted for weeks vice mayor fleming voted for okanya mayor schwedhelm voted for weeks madam city attorney can you share with us what options we have at this point because it was clear that we needed four votes for any specific decision that is correct you may you have two options you may have a final fourth round an additional fourth round you are free to to have a discussion before that vote if you would like or alternatively under the council policy you may consider an alternative process for selection or you may decide to call for a special election those would be your options all right thank you so i'd like to open it up to my colleagues either what direction you want or more discussion about the final two candidates that we have before us mr tibetz thank you mayor um i'm way disappointed that we had a three three vote tonight but i'm also encouraged because i think it does just go it strikes the heart about the qualities and capabilities of these candidates but the one thing that i'm going to say is i i was curious that if we came to this point who what would i be looking for and who's going to join us up here and to me it was going to be the person who seemed to secure the most votes and when i go back to round one dick dow was that person there seemed to be a lot of consensus around him and so if we had the opportunity to introduce an alternate i think that might be a way that we can break any potential stalemate but i'm happy to do whatever you wish mr mayor any other comments mr rogers thank you mr mayor i think part of the problem or part of the challenge for the council is that we did have quite a few applicants that were very well qualified and very well meaning in their their applications and in their comments for me getting down to the final with with okanya what i saw was a dynamic applicant who has a lot of knowledge whether it be as a small business owner or as a person who is advocated for less fortunate in our community and disadvantaged folks in our community she brings a bilingual bi-cultural perspective that i think is very valuable for this council to have in our discussions whether they're in the in public or in closed session and i think that we have talked a lot about recruitment of folks whether it's on our boards or on our council or as candidates to run for council that better reflect the community and to me she had everything that that i was looking for whether from a representative perspective from a policy perspective and so that's why i ultimately cast my final vote for okanya any other comments mr sir thank you mayor well i agree with much of what my colleague just said about miss okanya the difference what i believe separates um his weeks from his okanya is her practical knowledge her depth of knowledge uh her ability to truly hit the ground or running and i think if miss okanya was running for for a four-year seat i think that would give her an opportunity to get them get to know the responsibilities better and more depth but given this is a very very short appointment um i would i'm the person that i'm looking for to to take the seat is the person that i believe has the most experience under on many levels and that is why i was am supporting miss weeks because of her um well from other reasons i just mentioned mr ronald there's yes i wanted to echo some of the councilman or soldiers comments i think the learning curve is is high for this council and all of us know that this is a limited appointment uh two wonderful candidates but uh clearly miss weeks has a long history and knowledge depth of knowledge of issues facing san rosa today in the past and tomorrow there is not going to be a lot of other learning curve there i think she's ready to step into it to help uh to fill that position through this term until we're able to fill uh what until until the next election advisory thank you mr mayor it is true the learning curve for this job is rather steep but all six of us sitting up here have taken votes while we were still on that mogul like learning curve and i believe that um that miss okanya would do the same as we all have done which is figure it out um that also being said you know santa rosa wants to be a leader in the north bay and i think that as such we need to put our money where our mouth is and walk our talk and we have an opportunity here to put what i see is one we have a few very qualified people here but when all things being equal we need to take the opportunity to if we care about diversity if we care about a representative democracy we need to follow that through and one of the arguments that i see constantly for keeping people of color and women away from positions is the argument that they don't have experience well how are we going to get experience if we don't get a chance so to that end i hope that we consider that all of us had a chance and we all made a go of it and here we are thank you this is kind of like the good news bad news and having been a hiring official during my time as a city employee it's kind of good news bad news where you have more than one choice versus just having one crystal clear choice that stands so far above the rest so if there's two very qualified candidates and the things that i was looking for that i had heard was in interest of the council as a whole as somebody hits the ball hits the ground running gets along with everyone and if you start looking at you know my vote supporting miss weeks if you're asked yourself what else could someone do to prepare themselves for a position on the center was a city council and it's not a two month or three month commitment but it's been multi-decade commitment to this community and putting herself in a position was interesting i don't think she ever thought this opportunity would be before her but now it's here and i think she's got the foundation that i think could serve us well so with that what i would like to do is let's call for one more vote round of city attorney is that fine yes you may do that so let's go one more round do we have enough cards we can take a brief recess so i can prepare vote ballots or we can do a roll call vote roll call all right let's just do a roll call vote councilmember oliveris weeks councilmember soyer weeks vice mayor phleming okanya mayor schwedhelm how weeks councilmember tidbits okanya councilmember rogers okanya again it's a split vote i'm open uh suggestions from the council on our next steps here mr. soyer i will move that the council proceed with the special election second we have a motion and a second any additional comments from council and if i may i just do want to mention in terms of calling a special election as we've discussed in prior meetings the next available date for a special election is november of this year november 2020 the result of calling a special election will be that the vacancy will not be filled thank you for that i'd like to offer a substitute motion to revisit dowd as a candidate second so we have a new motion and a new second any additional comments on that new motion we have a motion in a second your votes please one moment let me prepare the vote and if i can just get clarity on that also i don't know if it'd be for mr rogers his motion would that be considered mr. dowd as a solo candidate or add him back to the final two yeah to to consider him as the as the last candidate prior to his vote on a special election and if i may um your substitute motion would be that the council would be adopting other procedures to fill the position as an alternative to the procedures that are laid out in policy 00023 correct and do you second that new motion a clarifying question would this mean that we are choosing to consider him or that we are choosing him or not choosing him yeah choosing to discuss him and consider him thank you for the clarification any other questions or clarifications are we ready to go motion and a second and your votes correct on on the it shows the motion it's called special election which was not the motion so we're just incorporating what the vote was with the motion made by mr rogers and that passes with four eyes two nays uh count our vice mayor phleming and councilmember aloe vera is voting no mr rogers would you like to start the discussion i think councilmember chivitt's already mentioned it that uh if the council is going to be deadlocked three to three looking at who did we all choose or many of us choose as an acceptable option in the round i think it should be worth discussing prior to calling a special election that ultimately has us ride with six candidates mr divots thank you mayor that's exactly the reason again in round one i look at down and we talk about consensus up here all the time five out of six of us voted for him so that's why i kicked that idea onto the table but i would be interested in hearing the logic behind a special election any other comments mr sorry it's been mentioned that mr dowd had a um appeared to have a lot of votes what i'm curious about is if there were any other candidates that had an equal number of yeses before no did you get your question answered i i yes i did thank you any other questions or comments well it's just comments about the procedure and then i'll entertain a motion mr rogers yeah just to help answer councilmember soyer's vote in the first round dowd had five votes uh wisaki had three votes carlstrom had three votes martini had three votes weeks had three votes um and then other candidates were eliminated any other questions clarifications i would entertain a motion if someone would like to make one i move that we consider uh dick dowd for the sixth excuse me the seventh council seat we have a motion is there a second mr rogers second that any further comment and may i get clarification as to the motion is this would be a single vote yay or nay for mr dowd as to fill the vacancy and not not that he's added back to the mix is that should intent well actually i don't i don't want to force the vote for mr dowd so if the council wishes to include okanya and and weeks and make it uh i mean i i i don't want to necessarily exclude so i'm listening to the council on this but go ahead miss vice mayor i'd like to offer a substitute motion um i'd like to nominate uh jackie okanya for the position of the seventh councilmember all right so that trumps the last one uh any additional comments on that any and that is to fill the position miss vice mayor is that what clarifying indeed all right we have a motion in a second to have miss okanya fill the current vacancy we have a motion in a second your votes please and that motion fails uh we had two eyes by vice mayor phleming and mr rogers the rest of the council voted no so we go back to i believe it was your motion mr tibbetz can you clarify what your emotion yes since we're we're putting candidates forward with as just singular votes i'm going to stick with mr dowd as the singular vote to fill the seventh seat and did you still have that second sand any additional comments okay we have a motion in a second as mr dowd as the candidate to fill the vacancies your votes please and that passes with vote of five eyes and one no with vice mayor phleming voting no the motion passes sorry to interrupt might we take a consensus vote share with me uh procedure i will ask for reconsideration on that vote miss gallagher you may do so all right we have a motion in a second for mr dowd your votes please and that passes unanimously thank you council so um madame city attorney and congratulations mr dowd and thank all the others who participated in this process madame city attorney could you explain now item eight the appointment of the person what would be the next steps the next step will be a vote on the resolution to appoint mr dowd to fill the vacancy um to adopt the resolution um as a final action for tonight swearing in would take place next week as long as we need that motion tonight yes okay would someone like to make that emotion move a resolution of the council for the swearing in of richard dowd on january 14th this will be um to formally appoint him as um to fill the vacancy with a swearing and to occur next week on the 14th uh as stated is that okay thank you second long night we have a motion second by mr all there's any additional comments your votes please um mr all there's a there we go and that passes unanimously thank you any other procedural steps madame city attorney that is it for this evening honestly honest all right thank you for all your participation media adjourn