 Good afternoon. I'd like to ask the interpreter currently on the Spanish channel to commence translation of the meeting For those just joining the meeting live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the zoom toolbar It looks like a globe once you join the Spanish channel. We recommend you shut off the main audio So you only hear the Spanish translation Pablo. Will you please restate this in Spanish? Bienvenidos y para los que recién se unen a la reunión Interpretation en vivo al español está disponible y cualquier miembro del público personal que quieren o deseen escuchar en español podrán unirse al canal para unirse Welcome everyone to como un globo terráqueo una vez un al canal de español también se recomienda que Apague el audio primario para solo escuchar la interpretación al español muchas gracias Welcome everyone to our January 30th 2024 Santa Rosa City Council meeting. It is now 1232 and we will Begin our meeting seeing a corn madam city clerk. May you please call the roll. Thank you councilmember Rogers Councilmember o Krepke councilmember mcdonald here councilmember Fleming Councilmember alvarez Present vice mayor step here mayor rogers president let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of Councilmember Fleming and councilmember Chris Rogers. Thank you We will now proceed to item 3.1 conference with legal council anticipated litigation 3.2 conference with legal council anticipated litigation and 3.3 conference with labor negotiators madam city clerk Can you please facilitate public comment on these three items? Thank you mayor We are now taking public comments on the closed session items 3.1 3.2 and 3.3 If you are in council chamber would like to comment but have not provided public or a speaker card Please make your way to the podium. You will have three minutes mayor I see no one in chamber wishing to provide public comment Thank you. We will now recess to closed session Welcome back everyone to our January 30th 2024 Santa Rosa City Council meeting seeing a corn madam city clerk. May you please call the roll Thank you mayor councilmember rogers here Councilmember o Krepke here councilmember mcdonald here councilmember Fleming Councilmember alvarez Councilmember vice mayor step here and mayor rogers present let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of councilmembers Alvarez and councilmember Fleming We will now proceed to items 4.1 and 4.2 which are our study sessions for the day madam city manager Good afternoon mayor members of council item 4.1 is a study session draft development related cost of service fee study Good afternoon mayor rogers vice mayor step and members of the council. I'm Gabe Osborne Director of planning and economic development as mentioned in the introduction the item before the council at this point in time is a cost of Services study associated with development fees and this study will ultimately inform future updates to our development fees Studies of this nature fairly large this fee study touches on all the fees within the department And due to the significant lift we acquired consultant services to assist with preparation of study and then the delivery of the information So joining me today is Cindy sconce from MGT consulting and she will be assisting with the presentation So before we dive into the particular the study I just wanted to give a brief description on the two different fee types that really affect development proposals the first is a Service fee that's the focus of the conversation today. It's also referred to as a user fee often or miscellaneous fees Those really go into the staff costs that are associated with delivering specific services out of the department In economic planning and economic development the core building functions and planning functions are included in this So we have planning review. We have permit processing. We have building an engineering plan review and inspection The vast majority of those hours for those services do come out of planning and economic development I believe it's also important to note that development services is handled city-wide There are quite a few departments and individuals in transportation and public works water fire and Parking that actually assist with development related services Those hours are incorporated in this study as well The other fee type that we see on the development side are what are referred to as impact fees Impact fees are getting a lot of conversation at the state level right now Impact fees are very different That is a one-time fee that a development pays for its proportionate fair share impact on public infrastructure So that fee is collected and it goes into programming parks streets other public infrastructure components To provide service to that development long-term a lot of conversations about waivers and deferrals at the state level Assembly bill number 602 addresses the nexus fee studies associated with impact fees and how those are prepared Very important to note these fees are not part of that So this is not covered under assembly bill number 602 We do a fee study to show the relationship between the fee and the service provided, but it's not part of that Just quickly the background on our service fees Service fees and you'll hear a lot of the conversation during the presentation today about cost recovery levels So typically what we start with is understanding how many staff hours that it takes to provide a service and the cost associated with that and that number determines a hundred percent cost recovery for that service Where the fees are set maybe at a hundred percent or they may be less and we'll talk a bit about what subsidies look like In 2004 the city council approved financial strategies that focus development related fees on a hundred percent cost recovery And the study you'll see today. We'll start with a hundred percent cost recovery across the board It's been some time since we did a massive overhaul of our fees. The most recent study was completed in 2013 with an adoption in 2014 we also did some minor adjustments in 2017 which addressed a handful of fees Also important to note at this point the current analysis is based on fiscal year 2022 and 2023 budgeted numbers and fees charged at the beginning of the study It typically takes six months to a year to prepare these studies and a lot of the information You'll see today is based on when that that exercise started Before we dive into the specifics of the study I think it's really important to discuss the relationship between revenue expenditures and permits in planning and economic development as I mentioned there are quite a few departments that support it the vast majority of the Hours and development services come out of planning and economic development the chart you see before you now Really shows our permit totals. Those are the vertical bars and it breaks it down between building engineering and planning Building is the vast majority of our permitting totals It shows the expenditures in red and the expenditures only focus on development services So they exclude any cost for economic development and code enforcement and then shows the relationship with our revenue and Typically anytime you look at development services over a 10-year period You'll see a general increase you'll see a plateau and then you'll see some form of a decrease and that's just how development cycles work We've seen some interesting anomalies in Santa Rosa during this time frame in 2015 and 16 We're still coming back from the recession of 2009 Developments moving forward at a slower pace. It really starts growing in future years and the staffing levels start to recovery So our expenditures start to increase 2017 we have the tubs fire these do not include tubs fire totals So these are just simple business outside of the fire recovery But that's still affected development in the area it slowed certain things and then it Increased when it brought more construction resources into the area and then of course in 1819 and 1920 we see the dip from COVID We see some growth from a big push to build affordable housing in 2021 and then as we get into 2022 and 2023 we're seeing a slight decline on the number of permits So what you see and this is really the reason we perform the study is we see a growth in expenditures and the peaks and the growth Can be from getting additional staff The reductions are usually a result of expenditures on the professional services side being less than the previous year But you see a general trend of growing upward that will flatten as permits slow But the revenue doesn't track with that as well And one of the challenges with that is that the length it takes to do a fee study and the fee is not keeping up with the Costs so that is the main reason as to why we're tackling this problem today When we look at this at a division by division We see some interesting trends on the building side We saw some of the highest permit totals that we've seen in the city's history in this time frame And we see a situation where we're seeing revenues jump above expenditures And that is always a bit of anomaly It is usually due to the fact that we have an extremely high volume of applications and then it settles over time So as we get into 2021 2023 we start to see the lines cross so once again the expenditures jump above the revenue But the gap is minor and I think it's important to note that anything in the department when it comes to development services That is not covered by fee becomes our general fund expenditure So that expands or contracts based on how those lines and the orientation of those lines to each other Looking at the engineering side. We see some different trends Engineering was fairly flat through 15 all the way into 20. We saw significant spikes in 2021 that's almost single-handedly the result of PG&E putting in more activity on Maintenance of their infrastructure and pulling permits associated with that So we saw some jumps that has come down a little bit it but it's still holding fairly high One of the challenges we see on the engineering side is when you look at the revenue There's defined spikes and pretty significant peaks up and down That's usually over the result of a few applications triggering a fairly high fee So generally the smaller high volume applications are not softening that out a bit So that's usually a challenge with not getting full-cost recovery on some of those application types that are high volume But once again on the engineering side as we get into 2023 We're seeing the expenditures hold high and we're seeing the revenue dip with some of the permit volumes Planning which is really our indicator permit. That's where applicants start as they're moving forward with the development process We see significant spikes in 1718 and that was cannabis related So we had the revenue jump above the expenditures. We see the COVID dip was fairly significant on the planning side And then we're seeing the drop in in 22 23 very similar to what we saw on the engineering side one of the interesting Pieces on the planning side is if you look at 18 19 We actually held to a similar permit total that we did in 17 and 18 yet the revenue dropped That is due to subsidies on certain permit types and having a high volume of those permit types Where the large volume is not keeping up with the actual staff hours So this is a really important foundational element because as we see in most of these charts The gap is increasing between the revenue and the expenditures So the fee study is really intended to write the ship get us closer to a hundred percent cost recovery and to put us Into a better model of cost recovery as revenue will just naturally decrease with permit volume decreasing because we're in the back end of that development cycle So with that I will hand the presentation over to Cindy and she'll talk about how the study was prepared Thank you game. I One of our objectives as we went into this fee study is really to make the fee structure easier for the consumer to follow We had a considerable number of fees When we went out to the stakeholders and we asked the questions about what was their biggest concern A lot of them said I can't figure out what my fee was So we did undertake some restructuring to make it simpler to navigate those fees to read those fees and understand those fees Then we defined what it cost the city to provide the various services. So that's where we look at the relationship between salaries benefits fully burdened hourly rates and What does it take to provide that service? Then we determined were there any areas where there should be a fee collected over the years You have different services that pop up such as EV charging stations that back when you did the study last Weren't in consideration. So we added in any of those fees that needed to be added in We then identified the service areas where the city might adjust the fees based off the full cost of services and other Economic policy considerations. That's where we look at is it a private benefit Should they be recovering a hundred percent of this cost or is it a safety issue and perhaps we need to set that at a lower rate So our methodology is very transparent very straightforward We really look at that relationship as I mentioned between salary and benefits We do include overhead in that and how long does it take? Typically take to provide that service and that becomes your cost if there are other elements such as material costs that need to be Included in that we do add that in as well The product of that again, it's very simple. You have your time that it takes times the fully burdened hourly rate This makes the clear nexus between the full cost of that service and what that fee would look like None of our recommendations would exceed or go outside of what proposition 26 guidelines state Which is you cannot make a profit on your fees This is the overall snapshot and I will use the the word snapshot For what we saw in the development fee area, so keep in mind what Gabe said about The different peaks and valleys with permits etc Often in development services you have projects that will cross over fiscal years So we do take an average of the volume And smooth out those revenues because we know certain projects may start in one area Maybe in planning and then next year you're going to see that cost hit building etc So we did take an average. You see it from 2021 through 2223 This does include some of those peaks So for instance in column a if we are looking at permit services The full cost to provide the permit services Cost the city a hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars To just provide those services based off the average volume over those years In comparison that same volume at your current fee only Captured forty four thousand so there was a difference You were only recovering 35 of what it's actually costing you to provide that service So the subsidy there of eighty three thousand dollars was being brought by the general fund So that is the way to look at this now with building We had a slight overage, but that is not due to fees being out of an alignment That's more so about the volume as Gabe mentioned prior. We had some peaks In the volume and surplus in some large projects This actually was a nationwide trend that we saw when doing fee studies that a lot of the building departments Uh had such high volumes that they were almost carrying a surplus And then we have seen since then the downturn As your slide suggested that we're starting to see a dip in that so In our analysis for building we've right sized any fees that may have needed to come down But there were also fees that needed to go up In planning The difference in planning is there is a tremendous amount of cross support that comes into those fees Cross support coming in from the building department from fire Transportation etc because they all look at those plans So we wanted to see exactly what it is costing the city to provide those services Same with engineer as Gabe mentioned prior Often you have large projects that come in and take Several years to complete so you often see that that transition in the engineering revenues as well Uh again, we right sized fire In technology, we did look at your current technology fees And uh based off of how they were currently structured you were capturing cost of $55,000 The difference there is really just paying your permit Costs for your permitting system on there. You guys went to Bluebeam to where you are having plans come in Electronically so there was a big shift in technology costs as well And then the advanced planning fee as well There are a lot of new elements that have to be analyzed By the city due to new state mandates So we right sized And are suggesting an increase in that advanced planning surcharge as well overall the analysis States that there's about a 23 percent discrepancy between what it's costing the city to provide services And what your current revenues were bringing in Thank you, Cindy And as part of this process we did quite a bit of stakeholder engagement We launched a survey with 16 questions that were associated with structuring Problems with the existing fees How we would want to apply the fees as far as the timing goes That was launched in august of 2022 and then again in october of 2022 It was the presented in both english and spanish and we received 301 responses We also held held stakeholder meetings at the north coast builders exchange That was done in may of 2023 in november of 2023 We held meetings with the north coast builders exchange board members and then we had a general meeting in january of 2024 This study today obviously as i mentioned there's there's quite a few fees that are being adjusted So we'll do our best to provide a summary of those changes And what we see typically across the board when we do a fee study after 10 years Especially a previous fee study that had subsidies built into it And we'll talk a little more about that in future slides is we see an overall general increase in the fees Now our fees based on our current methodology do go through incremental increases annually A certain number of those fees based on consumer price index, but we've seen increases above and beyond that number As Cindy mentioned when we look at the true cost of providing development services And we factor in all the staff time and all the departments associated with that We're seeing more cross support hours come in which increases those costs Since we did the fee study in 2013 There have been quite a few additional requirements at the state and federal level For what we have to look at as part of the review process and that's an important point That by nature just increases the scope of our review and increases the staff time associated with that technology requirements There were big changes through coven we we shifted to virtual permitting There's a heavy reliance on technology for just about everything we do which increases costs associated with that And then also when we look at advanced planning our advanced planning team is a general funded team But the support services specifically the consultant services that go into general plan updates Specific plans in some situations overhauls of our zoning code are funded by consultants And the advanced planning fee has attempted to recover some of that cost So when we look at all the effort there and all the additional work that team's doing it increases the advanced planning fee I think it's also important to note that certain fees here are reducing And the reduction is really a result of some consolidation that we've done on the engineering side that created efficiencies and reduced staff hours We have reduced review authority and some of our planning applications We're a planning application that went to the planning commission may go to the zoning administrator that reduces the fee The technology improvements although they have added additional costs on the technology side They have it created efficiencies on the staffing side So we've seen some reductions where the staffing hours did decrease based on on the assistance of technology And then the department has really had a commitment on the streamlining improving of processes And although our hours have increased we look at efficient ways to do that And I think that is reflected in some of the reductions you'll see And I think an important point and this is one of the points that came through in our interactions with the north coast builders exchange Was that when you look at an average hour that goes into an application You want to make sure the application is being processed in an efficient manner We don't want to do a fee study on a bad process So really what this is it's an average based on everything we need to do to do a correct job based on our state and federal requirements But also do it in an efficient manner. So we did incorporate that as part of this review So the next few slides will step through project examples So we'll show what it looks like under our current fee schedule And then if we do move to 100 cost recovery the first example is a large residential subdivision These are typically the um individual lot subdivisions very large project 100 lots are greater So you typically have a hundred or more building permits So what we see in there is the current fee on the building side. You saw a slight increase of 20 on the building fees That's really due to the introduction of additional cost removing some subsidies and incorporating more cross support hours A very small reduction on the planning side, but you can see in this particular case That is offset by the efficiencies on the engineering side So under our proposed fee schedule if we move to 100 cost recovery this type of project will Witten will experience a reduction in overall fee package Looking at large multifamily projects. This is your typical infill project of 100 units or greater We we've seen a significant increase on the building side And this is just an area where we regionally have been extremely low with the fee And we'll have a separate slide that talks about where we fall now with 100 cost recovery But that's a significant jump just to catch up to really an average price of what agencies are charging for that development type On the planning side, this is one where we've allowed the cross support hours to come in and capture everything from the other departments Once again, the subsidies are going away and then on the engineering side you see it offset slightly But that project will have an increased fee under 100 cost recovery Standalone accessory dwelling units very popular on the building side We see a slight reduction on the engineering side And this is when I discuss the engineering slide some of the higher volume encroachment permits are areas where we're not Recovering cost we see an increase there. I think it's important to note that Most accessory dwelling units don't have an engineering component. So this really references or reflects more of a worst-case scenario And then looking at a commercial tenant improvement of 5 000 square feet We see a reduction on the building side on the planning side We see an increase on the engineering side. We see an increase but once again That type of tenant improvement may not trigger those other planning and engineering requirements. So this would represent a worst-case scenario on that fee So I will hand it back to Cindy and we did a more regional comparison survey with other jurisdictions and she will describe that process Great. As you mentioned, we did do a peer comparison survey A few things to keep in mind whenever doing a peer comparison survey is that often fee structures are very different from Jurisdiction to jurisdiction We don't know what their cost recovery policy may have been to set those fees They may have been set low as well based off of their council's directives It is also important to note that most of these jurisdictions if not all of them are either Have completed their own fee study updates since the time of our comparison survey They're either in the middle of it or they are just starting it So most of these if not all of them we anticipate a change in their fee schedules as well Here's a comparison that we did on that advanced planning fee. So, uh, there are a variety of ways that you can charge for this service Currently the city of santa rosa charges eight separate flat fees. That's very uncommon Across the board. That's not typically what we see out there Uh, we did the comparison most of these agencies as you can see charge some kind of percentage Whether that's on building permits or based off of building valuations That's a more common methodology What we are starting to see is uh, that fee be applied to both building and planning fees Not just building fees Uh, I do need to make a correction. This 16 percent For the new structure is actually if you were just to apply it to the building permit and building plan reviews It does not include the planning fees If we were to do that that percentage would drop it would spread it to a larger base So, how do you compare it to your neighbors? So we have two samples on here. We have a single family Home 2000 square feet Your current fee For that would be 4,845 dollars with the new analysis that fee actually drops to 4,684 dollars You can see, uh, again, these were all done Prior to some of the new fee schedules coming out I know a city of san raffle has updated their fee schedule as well as sonoma county since the time of this this study But the average cost if you were going purely off of an average would be 6,300 dollars, but the medium is 5,215 dollars. So even with uh, right sizing and dropping that fee You are still below the median or average for single family custom homes On the flip side, we have multi-family homes, which you guys have notoriously undercharged for So in tracking time, we were able to do a very good solid analysis It's actually costing you 54,166 dollars compared to your current fee of 29,086 dollars If you look across the board the median for this project would be 56,823 dollars So that puts us right in alignment with the full cost And if you were just purely going off of an average that would jump up to about 65,000 Now again, keep in mind whenever doing a comparison study, uh, it's never apples to apples We try to accommodate whatever we think is included in their fee And so we we always say we never know what their seller and benefits for their staffing is like What their cost recovery policy was but these are the published results from that study The next few slides are going to focus on cost recovery strategy And this will bring us to the end of the presentation and really the focus for today As I mentioned, we have a study that's presenting 100% cost recovery And what our intention is is to really better understand where the council wants the fees to fall So as far as next steps, we'll take the information that we received today And we'll modify the fees and that fee will come back as an adoption We're targeting march We may extend that out based on the comments received in the level of work needed to incorporate those comments But that's really the next step in this process So to give you a background on subsidies when we look at 2013 in that study, it was a bit of a different time Development was still trying to recover from 2009 There was a desire to really encourage and spur development And based on that there was a desire to do across the board subsidies on the fees So what we ended up with with our current fee schedule is most building fees were set at 75% of that full cost recovery And then there were annual increases that were designed to achieve up to 90% over three years So there was an overall 10% reduction after you got through the three years The most planning fees there were there was more of a heavy heavy subsidy there They were set at 50% with the annual increases designed to achieve 75 and then that was worked in over five years Certain public benefit fees such as those related to landmark alterations Which that permit actually protects some of the historic characteristics of private structures in san aroza Residential fences where you may have a high permit avoidance if the fee gets too high And then appeal processes and I think it's important to note what the appeal process is their community appeals So those would be a neighbor appealing a project Those have historically always been subsidized and and those public benefit fees I've seen subsidies from 30 to 50 in some of those fees So as we move forward and hopefully this slide helps to guide the conversation There are a few areas where subsidies really do make sense from a public benefit standpoint When we look at a general permit avoidance, which can happen when a fee gets too high We try to avoid that and we specifically try to avoid that on health life safety permits So trade permits associated with the replacement of a hot water heater Electrical those core services that are needed to safely occupy a home Those historically have been subsidized And we can work in a package that continues that for the safety of the residents in this structure increasing public participation appeal fees They they have been heavily subsidized as I mentioned oftentimes to the tune of 30 for those community appeals Maintaining historical characteristics. That's really tackling the landmark alteration process There are not many of those applications and a subsidy there likely would increase participation in that program And then we have pedestrian safety. So this is really just the replacement of public sidewalk That actually has a very distinct benefit to the public Traveling through that area And then we have requests for reasonable accommodations. So these are ADA accommodations for fair housing What this would typically look at is an if an individual needed to install a ramp to access their building And that ramp was violating some code section. There's a variance process for that So those are very low volume But provide a very significant benefit to that individual occupying that home So those are the main items that those bullet points that we really Would recommend at this point the council look at they have historically been there and then there is that that public side of it The more challenging which can create pretty significant impacts to the program moving forward Are any sort of development activities that are incentivized by fee subsidy? And that's typically what we've seen before and some of the challenges We have with the fee schedule now and the significant jumps that we're seeing are due to those subsidies So we would recommend The first five bullet points. I'm happy to discuss the impacts of the last one if the council wants to go that direction We can incorporate that into the program I think it's also important to note that typically with fees We would likely be looking at regular increases based on cpi that helps offset some of those ongoing costs Fee schedule of this nature as I mentioned is a bit of a heavy heavy lift And generally in that five to seven to ten year range is when jurisdictions do those So this helps keep up a little bit So with that being the case, I would like to mention there are Quite a few representatives in the audience from planning and academic development in the various departments of sport development services And we're happy to answer any questions the council has All right, thank you for that presentation and thank everyone that is here to support you in answering the questions Looking at council to see if there are any questions and we'll start off with councilmember rogers Thank you so much mayor. Thank you for the presentation One of the questions that I have is really what the philosophy from the city is as it pertains to the fees Do we see this as core city services? Or do we see this as an investment in future potential revenue opportunity? That's an excellent question. And I think it's both I think depending on the fee type when we look at core essential services And we look at some of the functions engineering does That's ensuring that infrastructure is built correctly that the city can maintain In a reasonable fashion moving forward So as we increase the staff time associated with that if the cost recovery is not there Sometimes what happens is the staffing reduces to track with the cost recovery So by putting it 100 it allows us to get the right resources in the right place Also by putting it at 100 it allows us to provide the level of transparency and predictability that the development community wants to see in the process Much of the feedback that we received it isn't necessarily about the fee. It's about the timeline So it's consistency and process And I think the more that we can provide that and prop the the department up So it it's less of an ebb and a flow based on what we know is going to happen with just the nature of permitting And we know what's going to happen with the nature of revenue If we can hold a stronger line with those services It puts us in a better position to provide that predictability And then you're getting the benefits of economic development through the commercial side You're getting the benefits of increasing housing stock So I think it's it's very holistic. It covers both of those elements Yeah, no, I appreciate that and in particular You knew exactly where I was going with this is oftentimes we have these projects where the upfront fees to get them Across the finish line can be a barrier But we know that we're going to have increased revenue whether it's from housing projects or from economic development And how do we factor that into our cost recovery models? and what's being proposed here in this This presentation Yeah, and I think that's an excellent point and it really gets into as far as building housing units And what impact long term does that housing unit have to the city, especially when it becomes an infill conversation Um, I think that that's that's a bit of a challenging discussion. It's not part of this study I think it's an important point to incorporate into the longer range plan This really looks at the development of those services and how it provides that But what is really the return on the investment of setting that fee at 100% on the back end when we're producing those housing units? um In some of these situations a prime example is infill has less of an impact on infrastructure It's not building it. There's less that the city encouraged cost wise from that But it still impacts infrastructure in a different way and that's what makes that calculation So challenging to figure out is how do you track those impacts to better understand? Have you fully offset those costs from a cost recovery standpoint long term? But it's I think it's an excellent point I think understanding where we want to sit with the fees helps us have that conversation long term And I think shifting to more of 100 cost recovery model Which a lot of jurisdictions are doing right now, especially with sort of the downturn of the permitting It's not steep, but it is occurring across the board Helps at least solidify that element and you can start working calculations based on that Yeah, and I appreciate that. I'm just also very mindful that While we do see a downturn and we anticipate a downturn What we also are hearing from developers is that the access to capital is really expensive It's so increasing fees at the same time that we see that increase We're likely to get very little right. We've got a lot that's under construction right now But we know that that'll dry up So I want to make sure that we're mindful of that layering impact of what the economy is doing right now Versus the policies that the city is pushing Can you go to slide 21st second because I just had a question about it Is that a typo in runner park single family? Number, I mean, it's more than double anybody near it And if not, do you have any insight into what the policy discussion was around that to Have single family homes that much more expensive on their fees while multifamily that much less expensive So that's not a typo. That's actually what they were significantly higher than most Interestingly enough is ronald park is going out for a free study as we speak So they are looking to go in and reevaluate their fees But currently that is what they are charging for the single family home of a 2000 square feet Okay, and I also appreciate Deliliating between single family multifamily and commercial development Do we have any categories that we're continuing to look at that might fall within it? I'll give you a great example affordable child care Falls I think within our commercial development side and how we assess this but I think if you polled council members Most of us would be really willing to eat the costs for lower fees to get more affordable child care in our community Obviously, we can't get so hyper focused on a number of things that we lose or create more complexity for developers But things that have been a habitual priority for the council Is there room in this discussion for us to talk about? Adjusting our fees to meet those needs Grocery stores affordable child care and things of that nature Absolutely, and I think when we get into more development specific subsidies We can incorporate that into the review process that is fairly easy to identify through the submittal process And then it becomes the level of reduction that we would want to see from a hundred percent to support that So is it 75 50 25? But that's that's exactly the conversation We would love to have today and that helps us really guide what that fee schedule and those subsidies look like moving forward Great, and then my last question for you really is around Is there also room in the conversation to talk about deferral of fees until occupancy? because I have heard from a number of folks that They're sold during that load for so long that the fees themselves get easier to pay back once they have Revenue being generated from the development. Obviously, that's a risk to the city that the development actually gets built and gets occupied But that could be a way for us to straddle this fence as well to continue projects moving forward Once again an excellent point. I think sometimes in that conversation about deferrals the two fee types bleed together We do have a deferral program for impact fees. Most of those are allowed to go to occupancy One of the challenges with a deferral on the service fees is that you can go over multiple years with the payments So the services are rendered in one fiscal year If we don't collect that fee which could be collected two or three fiscal years later based on the development or longer In some situations of the the economy slows It makes it a little bit of a challenge from budgetary process to match that revenue up with the expenditures So what i'm seeing from most jurisdictions is the deferrals are happening heavily on the impact fees But not on the service fees And I think it's important to note that the service fees in many situations because time is so critical And I think most of the developers understand that We have third party options where they're actually doubling the fee under our current fee schedule just to get expedited permit processing Because hitting the specific market is more important than the fee But that is something that we can look at as part of the process if that's the council's desire And if for many of these I know we've used outside assistance when we see A deluge of projects that come in But with the opposite we're still staffing Our department even if projects aren't coming in right so even if it is looking at it as a Three four five year model that we can take that median cost and spread it over the course of five years instead Maybe we would hit those peaks of those valleys in a way that makes it so that deferral of those fees Until occupancy makes sense Thank you councilmember mcdonald Thank you mayor. I appreciate that I just had a couple questions around the impact fees and how that actually and maybe maybe councilmember rogers already hit Hit this one is around affordable housing So the concern with with affordable housing is are we are we our fee so high that we're making it impossible for folks to Actually build affordable housing in the city of santa rosa and how would this fee structure impact that? Excellent question. So once again the difference between the service and the impact fees are just a difference with the overall fee But they're really two separate programs But same general concept and I think much of the discussion with affordable housing It really just gets to be the total dollars to make it happen So when we get into a subsidy discussion about that specific type on the affordable housing side Very similar to any development type. We can entertain what a subsidy would look like Uh, affordable can be a little challenging to develop a subsidy program for because it takes different shapes and sizes A project can move forward Uh, through the planning arena with affordable units and then pull those off and not build them as part of the the Um, building permit side. So how do we account for that as part of the process? Um, but we can definitely look at that where we are prepared to analyze the affordable housing piece and to better understand What a subsidy program would look like on this fee? I think it's important to note that anything we don't collect and we will bring this forward As we go through adoption as we develop these subsidy programs We'll have that impact on our general fund expenditure and we need to clearly identify it We can't legally use one fee to cover the others. So the subsidies will have to come from the general fund But we can look at an affordable housing program as part of that It getting guidance on what we think that would look like If we would want to apply that to all application types if we know a certain percentage we would want to look at Would be very helpful as part of that analysis So I appreciate not going in the hole on our services That's important to know where we're at as far as where we're out on our budget and what we're taking out of general fund So I appreciate those slides that were included in this So I just also want to be mindful of if we raise fees how's that going to impact what we're doing with our Overall goal of increasing housing in the city of santa rosa so While um, I think councilmember rogers made an excellent point in the end Those are going to create more money for us So I just want to be mindful of that that we're not increasing our fees so high Even though we're coming out of general budget Our general funds that it ends up actually costing us in housing because people are just not going to want to develop here In the city, so I think you pretty much answered my questions And and I appreciate the ones from councilmember rogers as well. So thank you councilmember olcrapki Yeah, thank you so much. Um A lot of information a lot of good information is one of those things be careful what you wish for Um, you know, what are our fees really really look like and then you get an answer and it's like, oh Well, maybe that's not what we wanted to see in the first place But it is it is important to see what kind of burden it is putting on our our city staff and what that's costing us I agree with councilmember rogers comment about the development specific Opportunities that exist especially around child care. That is a dire need in this community. But my question is Is there some way that we could I mean if fees do if Sorry service fees go up. Is there a way that we could try to offset that in other ways? And since you open the door the ab 602 could there be and I know there's a discussion Coming later at a later point But could there be something along the lines of just doing the um proportional Impact fees on a year-to-year basis to help try to reduce those and offset any Any cost that increased due to the service fees Yeah, great point And I think when you look at the overall fee burden that a project incurs it's really everything So it's the factor of looking at efficiencies as I mentioned the transparency the time aspect of it Which has a value to it so if we increase fees to gain time that has a benefit to the development community But the relationship between impact fees as the developer sees it that really is a total fee burden So if there's flexibility given in other areas to offset where you're looking for full cost recovery That's a possibility And I think as we're teeing up the discussion about impact fees Hopefully this can help inform that if we're looking at leaning towards that to look at what maybe other options are To go through that Anything under sp602 does require a full nexus study to evaluate that And that would look at the impacts purely at you what the development has on the projects But then there's creative ways to look at how that fee is actually put into the works to to figure out How that works with the service fees and affects the overall package. So there is the opportunity for that Okay, and not to get too far into the weeds but Would would going to the proportional Per square foot instead of per door Have to be involved in that nexus study or could we do that as a standalone item to help the overall cost be reduced for these projects Um, well typically what you can do with the impact fees It still is a nexus study as you're really determining the impacts. You're just doing a lesser version of that Um in most situations in the city's history It's been a more comprehensive look at impact fees and you typically look at our impact fees. We have capital facilities We have parks. Um, it looks at that more holistically But without knowing that we don't have the technical experts here for the impact fee study But typically I have seen smaller versions of studies done to tackle a particular issue It's just how cost-effective it is to do that. Um, if if the bigger need is to do the overall study at under sp602 Thank you so much Vice mayor stop your questions were answered Okay, perfect Madam city clerk, can you please facilitate public comment? Thank you, mayor We are now taking public comment on item 4.1 if you are in the chamber I would like to comment but have not yet provided a speaker card or your name Please make your way to the podium You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period The first public speaker will be callum Good afternoon, mayor roger's council members and staff callum makes policy director of generation housing I have to say I am loving the direction of this conversation and several of the comments that were shared today So we're looking forward to expanding on that, but I might surprise you And and actually offer our our support for the cost recovery measures and what's being recommended here today by staff We are in entire support. I mean at the end of the day Human capital is the greatest asset of any organization And making sure the departments that execute our pro housing policies are fully resources of utmost importance So, uh, yeah, uh, we would like to offer our strongest support and really thank you guys for bringing this forward and look forward to expanding on that conversation and uh, I think Late march so with that. Thank you so much Mayor i'm seeing no one else approach the podium for public comment Thank you. And again, thank you for being here for the presentation and thank everyone else for being here To help answer our questions Madam city manager Just want to ask staff if we have enough direction to move forward Yes, just one quick question if there's any discussion. So, um, Jessica jones our deputy director of planning just reminded me that we do actually subsidize daycare As part of the planning side. So I think we can look at based on what i'm hearing extending that out to other application types And please feel free to correct me if the direction that i'm providing now is not not the council's desire We will also look at affordable housing incentives and what that would look like As we move forward with adoption since it's not at study session. We will be bringing foreign forward a formal fee study So we'll look at a reasonable that does not impact services And an easy to implement program around affordable housing. We can bring that forward as part of this process And to councilmember crepe peace peace will work as we have a further discussion about impact fees. We can work that in Um, I you know, the actual percentages are very difficult to pick So what we will do is we will like as I mentioned settle those percentages on where it works operationally But i'll also recognize that council's desire to see some sort of subsidy To encourage that development and look at the return investment on that So please correct me if any of that was not highlighted correctly No, I I appreciate that I I did want to also Echo councilmember crepe peace comments around the per square foot instead of per unit Which I think is a really important conversation for us to have I'd be Without getting two in the weeds today in this discussion I'd be interested in Our goal setting having sort of that conversation about as we set priorities for the city How does that realign? What our cost recovery looks like That way even if it means coming up with a policy this year that year over year might change what is Able to access that reduction because the council's priorities might shift that we have some discussion around what that could look like So yes daycares right now is considered but perhaps in the future the council is really interested in Making this up carbon reduction projects that perhaps we look at the staff time for it as as a net benefit, right? But we can discuss that in our goal setting in our priority setting Thank you. Is there Councilmember fluey Thank you mayor Most of my comments and questions have already been answered I'll just make sure for the sake of you getting direction that I'll iterate reiterate some things that are not necessarily for today, but can be for future Which is um The per square foot is good. Look forward hearing ab 602 uh specifically in Along with child care I think that grocery where there's food deserts is a high priority for for many constituents I know in the downtown we we are very committed to our downtown, but yet we don't have a grocery here So really anything we can do to get one is a big step in the right direction And then piggybacking on that with downtown I'd like to continue to see an emphasis on Multifamily and affordable housing in the downtown as we look at proposals for fee reductions or realignments I'd like them to be in line with whatever goal setting Returns we get in the next cover next week next Tuesday So it's not for today, but it's a wait and see and then modify based on I expect that to a certain degree We'll keep many of our goals as they are in place But I'd like the fee structures to be reflective of the values and goals that we sent forward as a council Thank you Councilmember O'Cropkey Yeah, and just real quick. I know there's that last bullet point Just to make sure that you have the enough direction. I'm I'm good with the cpi increase increase on an annual basis Well, the cpi increase will that Take into account like how we're in negotiations So how much we're paying our employees Will change It typically doesn't the cpi More traditionally over the last few years has set at 3% So as we look at this fee update, it will determine a hard cost for the service And then it literally is just a cpi increase of 3% or whatever it is annual on that total dollar amount How do how do you account for salaries and benefits It's typically part of the fee study. Uh, so when we look at the total hours We look at that fully burden rate of the staffing costs associated with that And then that is really just multiplied to determine the total fee So as we do fee studies and it's one of the reasons why it's important to do them a bit more frequent Is that it captures any of those changes in staffing costs? Thank you. I was just wondering how we were going to capture Some of the changes that we anticipate All right, are there any additional Comments Seeing none again. Thank you very much All right, mayor. We'll move to item 4.2 violence prevention partnership implementation plan Good afternoon, madam mayor Members of the council and daniel gardenio program manager for the san eros of violence prevention partnership And i'm here today to talk to you about our annual implementation plan So as most of you are aware The partnership went through a strategic planning process last year From january to june And as part of the strategic planning process included research into other communities with similar programming Reviewing of other community engagement plans that the city has previously gone through Holding one-on-one interviews of former program managers and staff And also talking to our partners throughout the state through the california cities violence prevention network As well as a very extensive Workshop series of workshops with our policy and our operational teams We also held one large community meeting on june 27th of last year to gather feedback from the community And there was also an opportunity for the community to provide feedback on the draft plan Through the city's digital engagement platform The policy team approved our strategic plan on july 19th of last year and we presented to all of you On october 10th of last year And just as a quick review We did update our mission vision and guiding principles Which i won't review in full detail because we already went through this But not a whole lot changed here for the partnership We will continue to work together collaboratively as a community to align our resources and mobilize together To prevent and reduce violence among our youth in supporting our families Through the strategic planning process we identified five five strategic focus areas which includes intervention Prevention communications outreach and education investment and collaboration and many of these help Move along violence prevention using a public health approach And i'll get into more specific detail as to what Our plans are and what we're currently building and currently working on with each of these strategic focus areas in the following slides So this year The bulk of our work is really focusing around building out our intervention strategies This includes our street outreach and crisis response work Which we have not had for at least five years here in santa rosa So the first Program that we are working on developing and launching is a safe campus intervention program Now this program comes Out of a program from san jose Which some of you heard about at our violence prevention awareness seminar last year When we had their staff come and Explain it in detail to our partners And what this is is a crisis response and communication protocol that's aimed at preventing and deescalating Incidents of violence on and around school campuses It also includes Our street outreach workers to go out as it mentions around school campuses out into our hot spot areas such as belby ranch park The transit mall san rosa plaza to engage youth where they are currently at And Engage them around our services and what we have to offer Um, the program includes trained intervention workers many of them with their own lived experience with the gang lifestyle Who are mobilized by schools at the first sign of conflict to engage mentor in case manage at risk and getting involved youth Um, these positions will also provide much needed after school support to our youth with one-on-one case management and wraparound services Um, and we are also putting together what are called boys council and girls circle groups as well As well as opportunities to engage in pro social activities outside of school This also includes support for these youth their their family members as well and in wrapping those services around the family So that they can better support their youth at home We will work closely with each district school administrators counselors restorative specialists at 14 middle schools and high schools throughout san rosa for this program And just as a side note, we are visiting san osean a few weeks to see this program and action and learn from their staff how How to best make this work for us The challenges that they have and how they've overcome them Oh, and in addition to forgot to mention We're also working on building out a female intervention team as part of this work too so that We can help target the unique needs of girls and young women who are at risk or gang involved themselves The second component of this intervention strategy is to develop and launch a crisis response in hospital based intervention program Again modeled after what san ose has currently implemented as well as other communities including oakland And the city of bakersfield The goal of this program is to reach victims of violence within 48 hours of admission to the hospital to provide critical services That break the cycle of violence including the likelihood of retaliation and ongoing community violence This program also uses intervention specialists Such as the safe school camp a safe campus intervention program Who also have lived experience Which work closely with victims of violence and their families linking them to services and resources including relocation assistance mental health services legal assistance and so on The partnership will also provide support to neighborhoods impacted by violence by bringing resources directly to them via our community wellness pop ups Another program that we are working on currently Is relaunching our clean slate tattoo removal program? And i'm very excited to announce that we will have this up and running within the next few months Our team has worked very Deligently researching several different options to make this happen including The cost of purchasing and maintaining our own machine And running the program ourselves with the team of volunteer physicians Or working directly with several local clinics who already offer this Service we've identified two clinics here in santa rosa that are willing to work with us at a reduced cost And so now we're just in the negotiation phases with them and again should have this up and running sometime this spring And finally We are working on re-establishing relationships With several agencies that are focused on workforce development programming This includes circuit riders conservation north core of the north bay the lime foundations next gen trade academy and we were in conversations with social advocates for youth before they made some announcements as to the possibility of closing their doors so We're hoping that they can continue those services And we will incorporate the workforce development component into our next cycle of choice funding For prevention We are revising the choice grant program to align with our new strategic plan This includes ensuring that we are filling in the gaps for services that our team cannot provide Our cycle 12 requests for qualifications should be released sometime in april of this year And the other piece under prevention that we are currently working on is the development of a teen council model Or youth advisory board focused on community safety Um currently our staff has uh researched Other previous teen council models that the city has adopted and implemented and other programs across the state We've also interviewed several youth groups and former teen council members to receive feedback On which model works best for them We've developed an outline of two potential program models for the city to consider But at this particular time We just don't have the staff to to run or implement the a team full teen council model at the scale that it should be implemented So in lieu of that we're hoping to recruit at least one to two youth representatives for our policy team for the partnership at this time And then when we have more staff we can turn and look at bringing back that teen council model Um Communications outreach and education So we have several activities under here for your this first year and on into the next Including bringing back our annual violence prevention awareness seminar, which we held in november of last year And are currently planning for the next one, which is scheduled to be held on october 10th of this year We're also working on Increasing our presence out in the community through social media and other communication channels So we've developed a social media schedule Which includes staff highlights partner spotlights and upcoming and completed community meetings and events And we're working with zero to highlight upcoming meetings events and program spotlights through our city connections and other city communications channels One of the the biggest pieces of our Communications outreach and education strategy are our community wellness pop-ups So we have developed An ongoing wellness pop-up series to connect with our community members and our neighborhoods impacted by violence We hosted three last year in the belview ranch Corby and apple valley neighborhoods and we have one coming up tomorrow This one will be held at san rosa high school at 6 30 p.m It will not only include the wellness fair component with about two dozen of our community partners providing information And resources to participants, but we will also have a panel of presenters to talk about warning signs a gang involvement for youth Kind of the climate around gang involvement right now here in san rosa as well as parents write some responsibilities in the unique Issues that girls who are involved with gangs face including human trafficking. So again, that is 6 30 tomorrow evening at san rosa high school Excuse me finally We want to make sure that we're identifying our partners needs as well and ensuring that they have the training and resources that they need To be able to provide the services continue providing services for our youth and their families And so we're working with both our policy and operational teams to create A training schedule for For our partners and so far we've had requests for de-escalation training mandated reporter training and gang 101 training We've also been very successful under our collaboration strategic area this year We've had quite a few accomplishments here and that includes merging our multidisciplinary assessment and referral team or m dart Which was a separate meeting from our operational team Back in with our operational team And so that particular team was having monthly meetings Where they would discuss specific cases in our referral program with a very small number of our community partners It was really our choice funded agencies in some of our schools Merging it back into the operational team allows for a broader discussion among all of our partners so that we can better able serve our Youth and their families who are Who we're working with through our referral program We've also restructured our policy team meeting agendas to allow for community climate updates Partner presentations and monitoring our strategic planning efforts that began in september of last year and it's going quite well Currently and working on re-establishing the policy team steering committee with our chair Working with her to identify Committee members to get that going again We're also wanting to put together a community advisory team of the policy team We haven't started this yet, but that is on our plate for this year and this will include youth and youth members and parents as well and We're looking at exploring and developing additional partnerships with those currently not at the table and this includes The county health department the county health human services department our local hospitals and other sonoma county cities And finally under our investment arm. We're going to continue to look for outside funding opportunities for our programming We did apply for two grants last year as some of you may know and we did not get those those Grants, so we're going to continue to look for other funding opportunities Including state and federal grants One federal grant is coming up the stop school Violence program through the bureau of justice assistance, which is what we are looking at for this year And then the state has several grant opportunities including cal vip and cal oes funding coming out next year And finally Each year we will conduct an evaluation and report out of our community to the community of the result of the choice current choice cycle We just finished the year one evaluation in the fall of last year and presented it to the policy team our public safety subcommittee and also to our measure Well, it's not measure o sub our citizen oversight committee anymore, but that that citizen oversight committee as well And that report is available on the partnerships website So now challenges to implementation Staffing is our number one challenge to implementing these strategies in particular our intervention strategies Our current staffing includes one limited term wraparound coordinator One limited term street outreach specialists with oversight from myself as the program manager Our ideal staffing for both the school program the crisis response hospital based intervention program and the tattoo removal programs Would be two additional full-time community outreach specialists This would allow our specialists to carry a caseload of 10 to 15 youth at a time As well as provide after school support and pro-social opportunities And a wraparound coordinator would continue to refer youth and families to outside services And I will say best practices from other successful violence prevention programs that we've spoken to Puts the maximum caseload at about eight to ten per youth youth per intervention worker Right now we're nearing 60 youth and their family is being referred to us through our referral program Which puts our current two intervention specialist specialist caseloads at Excuse me 30 youth each Other challenges that we are facing right now including limited funds for operational costs And large wait lists across Sonoma county for services Anyone with that I thank you and turn over to you for questions Thank you for that presentation And thank you for your staff that are here to support us with this Are there any questions council member olcrapki? Thank you very much Great presentation The implementation for year one is great. I'm more interested after that Because if I recall correctly This year is the last year of this current cycle for choice grants. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct So my question to you is Not specifically pointed in an easy answer, but Going into years three two three and four of this plan with Goal setting and our budget cycle coming since we go on a july to july basis. We have to go past just year one Um Do you what as subject matter experts and I address this to you and anybody on your team all the way up down the board What do you think is the best use of our funds now that we have 20 years of the formerly measure oh h public safety tax And uh That we have access to From what I have seen from the research that we've done from other communities implementing these types of programs Having a street outreach team that's focused on Both our school campuses and off-school campuses Which is what our safe campus intervention program will focus on hospital-based intervention and tattoo removal I think those three areas right there and with the inclusion of workforce development programming Whether that be through internal services Um Or through another um through an agency the contracted agency as well as diversion programs and reentry programs for youth who are um Either have had contact with the criminal justice system or who have been incarcerated And are currently coming out of juvenile hall back into the community Those are the areas that um have been most successful for other communities Um, and I'll I'll just point out San San Jose again um They've been implementing these programs for at least 20 plus years Um over the last five years they've averaged about two gang related homicides per year Last year they had zero We had five here in santa rosa So what they're doing is definitely working. Um, and like I said, they've been running it for multiple years Um, so I think having those Five areas we'll we'll definitely see some success Um, if I recall correctly, we saw a presentation on that at the violence prevention awareness seminar last fall. Is that correct? That's correct. All right, so Um, I'll be more direct then um Would it be better to put our Funds after year one but for the implementation of the strategic plan more towards staffing and the things that you pointed out Then back into the choice grant program I would love to say yes I believe the ordinance though does state that we have to put some of those funds back out through the choice grant program Some or all Some okay. Thank you. I think it says up to 35 percent That's number flimmy. Thank you This is a very specific question. So please don't take it as a criticism of the whole thing It's just um, something really particular And I noticed which is the the city of santa rosa when we passed our most recent charter Affirmed that we want to treat gender equality And you call out a boys council which sounds very leadership oriented in a girls circle Which sounds very kumbaya and supportive as particular interventions I'm just wondering if you can clarify Is there an evidence-based reason For for treating these two groups separately that we could really stand stand behind with our charter They're both part of an evidence evidence-based program under What's called the one circle foundation their evidence-based they're They're basically both the same ones for boys ones for girls I don't know why they call it boys council and girls circle. Can we call them both councils? Sure. Great. Thank you Council member mcdottle Thank you for your presentation I just want to say thank you so much to staff not only for the five year strategic plan But actually breaking it down for our partners to see what we want to Actually achieving your one and then moving forward I think that that's going to be really helpful As we look at budget and we actually prioritize what we want to do For the youth in our community for their protection So, um, I know council member ocrepe. He kind of danced around where should we appropriate funds I'd actually like you to tell us how much would it be to fund The two programs that you mentioned in here that would be modeled after san jose As we go into you know goal setting and those types of things for the city of san rosa I think it's important for us to actually have the numbers behind that So around the safe campus intervention program and then the crisis response team For those two specific ones if we left services the way that they are and just wanted to add these What would that cost us? So, um, when I mentioned when I say intervention specialists, that's actually a community outreach specialist That's the job classification that we have here at the city That position with benefits is around a hundred hundred and thirty thousand dollars per year So if we're looking at serving right now We have 60 youth in our referral system that we could potentially work with and mentor Through these different programs, right? And I mentioned we only have the two I would say We would probably need two to three more to to really make those programs effective. So we're looking at about Just under four hundred thousand dollars more per year Just so I'm I'm waiting to this for this to catch up. So it's about four hundred thousand dollars Would that be for both both programs Daniel or just one? I think we could do both programs And then how much do our choice grant? How much is that part of the budget as far as that goes? How much do we actually give out in the grant program? Currently the cycle is seven hundred and fifty thousand per year about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars Okay, and I think that's really all of my questions other than I just appreciate the Presentation and focusing on the couple things that we've actually found a research base to support youth and and really modeling it after a city From san jose that we know that we're doing things at work. And so I thank you so much and thanks to your team They're small but mighty and and we recognize that. Thank you councilman braveras Thank you, mayor First and foremost, thank you for really Getting down to the nitty-gritty of really providing or Producing a system Which can be respected by those who are looking to lead that life one of the my experiences Was seeing people come to the school And we look at this individual who was given this This motivational speech About how they avoided gang life how they avoided street life But the one thing we told or could see is that they were scared of the dark They were scared of the streets So it's almost so much that they avoided it. They simply couldn't hack it And I look in in the crowd and I see an individual that I recognize from my youth Who could hack it who did do it and I'm wondering if it's not too unorthodox Where I could ask him a few questions if that's okay with staff if that's fine with me How's everybody doing? My brother welcome. How you doing doing well by yourself. Thank you for having I'm doing good You know what one of the stories that I can I remember about you and I Growing up in santa rosa is our process with always crossing and we're always somewhere in our life So today we're sitting in a completely different atmosphere only And doing great things for the community, which I do really do appreciate And I have two simple questions for you. Okay What's working now that you've become part of the city of santa rosa work with Danielle and her leadership What what's working for you? What do you see is is making a difference? First of all our team is really budding like We all have personal experiences that we went through That made us face and look at our community and be like, okay, what can we do to help? One thing that I'm really passionate about is my role that educating parents Um, I've done a couple getting education uh, elac meetings uh parent council uh parent club meetings and then tomorrow we have our Game training that we're going to do for uh district wide for the city santa rosa at santa rosa high school so, um Just having to live that lifestyle and then come out of it. I lost my brother to gang violence Um, I don't want any family that ever have to go through that So that's my passion is to make sure that people can learn from my mistakes And and I bring that to the kids. I just came from santa rosa middle and Working with some kids that are having some issues over there and and and you know, I'm in the trenches and we need more boots on the ground I'll also add to that. We've since we've relaunched These programs or or this effort to to build out these programs We've had quite a few community members come forward who identify as former gang members wanting to help Wanting to give back to the communities that they've hurt and we've met with some of them Um, and they're ready to go. They're ready to go talk to kids about their experiences. They're ready to go Talk to parents about what to look out for We met one one person last week who is now working for cal fire Um, so he's turned his life around. He's got this incredible opportunity You know through this new job that that he has And he just wants to be able to tell his story and hopes to To turn some of those kids in the other direction and I think that's also working too I think one of the loudest messages that's lost is The pride that we have for our city of san rosa Sometimes we just don't know how to show it in a constructive manner And i'm glad that we as city san rosa are able to produce a venue where we could be constructive instead of destructive And I guess my last question to you brother is what are you most proud of? Well, I'm most most proud of being able to be a mentor to these kids. Um, Showing them that you can come out of that system that was made, you know, a lot of people say, oh, we're You know these kids are brainwashing to thinking that they can you know that that the system is their enemy or that the law enforcement is their enemy Um, I have some really good friends in law enforcement now where that i've given me a chance to to To prove myself back to the community and they've embraced me and And this really changed my whole outlook on law enforcement and what you guys do up here. Um, I think I think We're uneducated when we come from that lifestyle and and being able to Get some People to mentor us and embrace us and and bring us in Allows us to be you know to get back and do the same for for the youth that are going to come after us Thank you brother. How are you? Thank you. Rogelio Roman. Thank you Any additional questions from council members? All right seeing none. I do have a a couple Just to get a little bit of clarity for myself uh, so When you say you're working in the schools, are you working with uh, so i'm thinking about ones that are in my district Right school district Bellevue or is your time primarily spent only in santa rosa, and then we also have charter Charter schools Our time is primarily being spent in middle schools and high schools at this particular time given our limited staffing resources Mostly in middle schools is are the calls that are coming in then that we're responding to We've been at santa rosa middle slater We've also been at santa rosa high school lc allen And rosen accelerated middle school as well primarily this year however You know if we had a full team We might be able to start responding We have had some requests coming in from some of our elementary schools for the fifth and sixth grade level Because they are seeing gang activity at that level as well so I'm not an expert on school districts by any means but most of the schools that you have Stated are except with the exception of one Our santa rosa city schools So santa rosa city schools in the rosen school district Are the two that we're currently working with Okay, because they're the ones here in santa rosa that have the middle schools and the high schools and How much time percentage wise Would you say is going to the our safe campus intervention? Well, uh, rohellio uh to up until monday was my only staff person So he was spending quite a bit of his time probably i would say about 40 to 50 percent of his time responding To requests from schools to come out help mediate and deescalate tensions on campus We now have a new staff member who joined us on monday wan floris Who's also up there with rohellio? um Unfortunately, i've been out I was out when he first started so we'll put together a plan for him But in addition to the schools, we're going to be looking at also the hot spots The transit mall has seen an extensive amount of violence Santa rosa plaza as well We've also been out to belvey ranch park several times Just to engage with youth that were that We're there during school hours. Just talk to them why they weren't in school As well as other hot spot areas that will work with our community to identify it be at all appropriate and or beneficial to maybe Help some of the schools by training their staff To do some of the work that You do or I'm I mean, you can come back if you want. I'm not sure exactly what you do, but that's a great question. We do offer This is probably not answering your direct question. We'll get to that in a minute We do offer professional development for our partners and that includes the schools and their staff through our violence prevention awareness seminar as well as Other opportunities if they come up. So training them like on gang 101 information, right? Letting them know like what are the current gang trends we're seeing What are some of the warning signs that they need to look out for our school staff? And what resources are available in the community to help our young people and divert That sort of behavior Specifically for this particular program I am not aware in our research that we did and looking at san jose's program Of their training staff to directly do this type of work. I can ask them when we go visit them next month But it's maybe something we could look into is like a train the trainer sort of thing Yeah, well just a question. Yeah, it might be Good though if we can train not maybe to do everything that you do I know your job is invaluable and very great. So right we can't but just so that if smaller things come up or Smaller issues come up that they would have the training to deal Yeah to deal with those the one benefit of having someone like rahelio or juan is they have that lived experience, right? And so they can actually they they know what these kids are going through They can get down to that level and really have that heart to heart with them and build that trusting relationship their credible messengers whereas A teacher might be a trusted individual that a student can go to but if they don't have that lived experience Someone going through this might not take them as seriously as they would with rahelio or juan Makes sense. Yeah, um, and then uh, not a question, but I I really would like the youth advisory Because I think that it would be great Um to get the perspective of our youth. I think that they know what's going on now I think that they know where they want to go in the future as far as we're concerned as a community So, um, I think it's important to put it Uh in the forefront to make sure that this happens um Because we want to get them involved not just when something negative is going on but to keep them involved um Positive planning and moving forward so Any additional questions seeing none madam city clerk may please facilitate public comment Thank you, mayor We are now taking public comment on item 4.2 if you are in the council chamber I would like to comment, but I have not yet provided a speaker card or your name Please make your way to the podium. You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period The first public comment will be from dwayne Wayne de wid on such an important item. You'd think there'd be more than two minutes Looking back 50 years ago. We had gangs here in our area And they had deadly gang fights I don't know if you've heard of the hell's angels and the misfits And the troubles we've had here in santa rosa for a long time Back at that time the school districts They actually employed people at the high school level at least and they did outreach and tried to Keep young people away from that type of activity It may be more attractive now because of the whole social media situation And you can live stream what activity you're doing And basically there's a lot of things going on that are different But I definitely believe the community advisory committee should have not just youth But also folks who aren't your um If you'll excuse the expression, but it's a street term Go along to get along folks Folks that are just going to be yes people for the leaders of your situation You actually need to get some folks on there that um have dealt with The difficulties of trying to raise 12 to 15 and 16 year olds who are headstrong and are willing to submit to peer pressure That's what actually drives a lot of this and i'm sure these young men here will be able to tell you that So it's a good thing you're doing this But you need to broaden the perspective because the hell's angels Have a clubhouse right down the street here off of santa rosa avenue. All right with a big sign Okay, so they're so mainstream now That they can do that even though their leader is in state prison for murder Their local leader here. So keep some of this stuff in mind There's a lot more to this than just the way the The school situation is going It's really important that you involve more people and for community engagement actually give more time and have more involvement. Thank you Mayor emcee no one else approached the podiums for public comment Okay, thank you very much for that presentation Being as though it is 402 we will continue With our regular Meeting we'll go on to item six, which is report on study and closed session Really closed session because we just had the study session So madame city attorney Thank you madame mayor council members. Uh, yes, we had two closed session I'm sorry three closed session items earlier listed on the agenda As items 3.1 3.2 and 3.3 two items of anticipated litigation And one item conference with labor negotiators. There is no reportable action from any of the closed session items And then we did have two study sessions that just occurred Item 4.1 and 4.2. That is the end of my report Thank you madame city clerk. Can you please facilitate public comment on that item? We are now taking public comment on item 6 If you would like to make a comment but have not provided a speaker card or your name Please make your way to the podium You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period Mayor emcee no one approached the podium for public comment All right madame city manager. Do you have a report for us today? I do So with the upcoming predicted rain and gusty winds, we're going to partner with catholic charities to open up a temporary drop-in center The drop-in center is going to be open from wednesday From 7 p.m. To 7 a.m. Until friday february the second It's going to be located at the homeless services center at catholic charities keratal center Which is in downtown santa rosa at 301 6th street? Again, that's going to be open from wednesday 7 p.m. To 7 a.m. Until friday february the second Also sonoma city bus petaluma transit santa rosa Excuse me sonoma county transit are going to partner with the NAACP uh to encourage public encourage the public for a free Fair ride on february the fourth And this is an observance of the transit equity day And this commemorates the life and the legacy of rosa parks and other transit trail blazers who pursued equity and transportation uh Registration for recreation and parks summer spring activity guide are underway So sign-ups began this morning um And registration will open on thursday so registration began this morning for camp wantong and Registration will open tomorrow february the fourth february the first at 7 a.m. For our other programs So if you need additional information For the neighborhood service, excuse me the neighborhood services summer black party Guide is now available on s r city dot org slash neighborhood services And this is one of our free neighborhood services after school programs And it provides sports and other recreation program activities for some underserved youth and families So that was actually a lot so i'll make certain that i send that to you in writing so you can send out to your constituents Thank you city manager smith madam city attorney any additional reports I have no report this evening. Thank you the madam city clerk. Can you please facilitate public comment? Thank you We are now taking public comment on item nine If you are in the council chamber would like to Provide a comment but have not put in a speaker card or your name. Please make your way to the podium You'll have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period Okay, i'm seeing no one approach the podium for public comment on item nine Thank you. We'll on item 10 statements of abstention by city council members Any statements of abstention? Great. We'll on item 11 mayors and council member reports Any reports this evening? Start with council member o'crupkey Thank you very much vice mayor on uh The 10th i met with reps from the acou to hear their concerns about the new use of surveillance technology And the possibility of putting together an internal policy on the use of that technology going forward On the 15th up for mlk mlk day of service marlith king day of service I spent a few hours with uh volunteers in city water staff out at piner creek clearing out garbage Next time i know i should probably bring some waiters Because just going down the side is not enough On the 23rd we had the public safety subcommittee. We discussed the sedama county fire district ambulance contract as well as the Soon-to-be temporary rosin substation and the future permanent rosin substation We also had a presentation on the gang crimes team So if there's anybody out there that's worried about gang crimes in our area like the hell's angels They could contact sergeant travis mank. He'd be happy to talk to you about it um On January 25th, uh, it's headed the economic development, excuse me economic development board economic perspective um And then this weekend had a couple of uh, a couple of cool things. I did a ride along With srpd on friday for about eight hours got to see some new techniques and technology in use and then did a 12 hour ride along with station 10 For the fire department I was taught a new dice game that I don't think is real I think they were making up rules as they went just to embarrass me because it makes absolutely no sense um, and then on the 8th I was happy to go to see the ribbon cutting for the new uh, mirf or materials recovery facility by recology Along with some of my colleagues That's it Thank you councilmember mcdonald Thank you vice mayor So I have a couple different reports here one of them is on zero waste And I just want to say thank you again to renae gundy for Representing me at the meeting and then also giving me excellent notes to report out um The consent calendar was approved and there was an agreement to implement waste management tracking software with grain halo systems Um, the software will be used by the building department that will help the city to better track and report construction debris Reuse and recycle efforts that require that are as required by cow green and sp 1383 Requirements, um, they had a draft of the fiscal year for 24 25 that was approved And there will be a budget vote in in february or march and then in addition to that there was a really good presentation by zero waste staff About working with the conservation corpse north bay to help us with our food recovery efforts and then since august 2023 They've rescued almost 150 the 150 thousand pounds of excess edible food And then they hire from disadvantaged populations to provide them with the necessary training to recover edible food in the community And then some of these individuals have gotten to do better jobs and even work with hhw So I thought that was interesting and needed to report that out We heard from our violence prevention program earlier and We met on january 17th and just wanted to reiterate that we will be reinstituting the Tattoo removal program and that we found somebody locally that we're going to be working with And that we also want to say thank you to the city of san osa The team is going to be going down to meet with them about their two programs that we mentioned in the earlier presentation And so we want to thank them for their time and their generosity of sharing how that program works We also had a presentation from juvenile probation to hear about the services and the intervention programs that they provide specifically To youths that are in the system as well as to their family for reentry The long-term finance committee met Last week as well and we reviewed the 2024 quarterly budget and we reviewed the second quarter And I attended my first official meeting for the governance Transparency and labor relations policy committee for the league of cities and we reviewed several policies during that call Along with my colleagues. I attended the mlk park cleanup day and just want to say thank you to The church that we worked with they had over 200 volunteers at that event And we had about 10 staff members that dedicated their day to cleaning up that park So I was happy to go and participate and really just see what was happening at mlk park I too attended the ribbon cutting for recology and and the last thing I want to just talk about is I participated in the point in time count That was last week And I just want to say thank you to all the volunteers who came For that thank you to the host team that took me around with them and kept track of the data that was on the phone And to veterans the veterans affair team that I was able to partner with that morning So thank you for the opportunity to see what's going on in our city firsthand With our unhoused community That's it Thank you councilmember donald any reports from this end of the day us councilmember rogers Yeah, my colleagues have covered a lot of it and so I really appreciate it But I did want to give a special shout out to our team for mlk at mlk park We not only got to watch the vice mayor with a wheelbarrow full of Of wood chips going up a hill over and over and over again But I also got to see by calling to my right. Mr. Alvarez get out the power tools and go to work on The the park's sign which is now looking beautiful So I want to thank james castro and everybody on the team for organizing that for all the community members who came out Many hands made light work Agreed councilmember alvarez anything ditto Thank you. Um, all right. I'll chime in before turning it back over to the mayor On the 17th. Well, actually councilmember donald just went through this. We had the violence prevention partnership Um, I don't know if we still have the team in here, but I didn't want to thank the team for the report And add my thanks to the rest of the councils. It's it's a pleasure to be serving with daniel and that whole group Um, just such a high priority for the city right now On the 18th, there was a board meeting for sent for the santa rosa plain ground water sustainability agency Where we had the the kind of fund assignment of creating a new or approving a new budget Or reviewing a new budget for the 5.3 million dollars in grant funds. We've brought in from the state To assist to assist with a variety of ground water projects for the region And then in addition we approved contracts for some other grant funded projects that include ground water monitoring aquifer storage and recovery and then water use efficiency On the 29th, this was mentioned already But several of us had the had the chance to attend the opening for the recology the brand new recology recycling center Among the the fun facts pertaining to that that recovery center is that it takes in 400 tons of material a day Of which 85 percent is recycled So it's just it's it's top of class for that kind of recycling center. It's it's open and running in santa rosa right now And then finally it's a little bit early But there are some lunar new year celebrations starting and so I wanted to thank the redwood empire chinese association Sonoma county museums and a few other local groups who have been hosting celebrations on the weekends that several of us have had the chance to attend They've been great community gathering points and the celebrations are going to go on at least for another month until the official official date of the lunar new year So again, thanks to the to reka and the and the museums and the other groups who participated And that's it for me mayor Council member flaming. Yes. Thank you. I got inspired listening to all these great detailed accounts of your past couple of weeks I have remembered that I wanted to communicate to the council and to the listening public that last wednesday the metropolitan transportation commission met and uniformly authorized are supported senator weiner's Plan to work on enabling legislation with the state legislature in order to get the Authority that would then allow us to put a bond on the ballot in 2026 for transit for All our port subset of the nine barrier county region. So it's very new There's not a lot of of detail to fill it out yet or I would be sharing that with you But I will continue to be bringing you updates about that as well as the housing bond As more information is forthcoming Thank you any additional No, no one else inspired all right so 14th and 15th, I was able to participate in two mlk day celebrations One was at montgomery high school Which was really cool. Uh, they sang they danced and Myself and vice mayor were able to Read a proclamation On behalf of the city And then it was also nice to see councilmember mcdonnell actually do work On mlk day of service. So the wheelbarrow that Take a picture because that was probably the last time you're going to see that But Oh, she did the sign too So that was great. She did two jobs Following that I went over to dc to the us conference of mayors, which was very fruitful. Um, I received A lot of great information Idea some of which we've already started implementing Here in the city because I could not wait to get back I was making phone calls while I was there back here like we need to do this and and so it's just really great to Hear what other cities are doing to see how we can Implement some of those and then also share what what we are doing Here because we're doing a lot of great things here and we have an awesome team So it was nice to be able to brag a little bit About what we're doing when it comes to our police department and in response and some of the things that we're doing fire So and all the other teams um The sonoma county homeless coalition did meet uh, and so there are a couple of updates That meeting was on the 24th the 2024 homeless point-in-time count was um on friday, I believe And the results will be available this summer And then also the There were two people that were named Jenny Lynn homes And uniglass Jenny Lynn homes will be the new chair and uniglass will be the vice chair For for that coalition and then lastly yester Sunday I was able to go to a mural unveiling which was at dutch floor park And that mural was painted by a s r j c student And a longtime community member here his name is vj If you get a chance to go see that mural it is wonderful. It encompasses everything That santa rosa stands for as far as unity and togetherness and everyone having a sense of Belonging and it's just great has some landmarks on there. So dutch floor park if you're able to go visit that And that will be all for me madam city clerk may please facilitate public comment Thank you mayor We are now taking public comment on item 11.1 if you are in the chamber would like to provide comment But have not yet submitted a speaker card or your name. Please make your way to the podium You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period Mr. DeWitt, please go ahead. Yes. Thank you. My name is dewayne deWitt. I'm from roseland I noticed that you just said that for comments on these items It's just two minutes But the agenda that we pick up here at the top in print says you will have three minutes For these types of topics So i'm curious why there's been a change up One of the things I wanted to do was thank the mayor that she's been able to go to so many things as well as all of you Council members going to so many of these activities It's a good thing to see One of the people in the community that I know who Pays attention but can't come down here He mentioned to me said, you know, they gave themselves a raise without going to the public to do that They just said, okay. We're going to give ourselves more pay And then they hold less meetings And he was quite concerned and I said no, I know that these people are actually doing more things behind the scenes And what this elderly gentleman told me a member of the greatest generation as they used to call it He said, well, they need to do more out where we can all see it Less behind the scenes and more so that we know they're there doing what they do I know you do it. I've interacted with you at various times, especially on earth day last year Mr. Alvarez and may rogers natalie rogers Came over to roseland and spent two hours with us That was the first time in 22 years that any elected official had come over there and spent time with us on something like that So I appreciate all your reports and I think you need to keep the three-minute time limit. Thank you Thank you. May I see no one else approaching the podium for public comment on this item? Thank you moving on to item 11.2 Where I will make an appointment So I would like to make Or we're changing things around but I would like to make an appointment of a council member Fleming to the zero waste Sonoma and also have her alternate be Renee Gundy, but I believe I need approval from the council You need a motion. Is that what you said? Yes So moved Second I have a motion made by council member rogers and a second from council member mcdonnell madam city clerk If I may interrupt madam mayor, we do need to take public comment before you go ahead and take a vote Oh, is there anyone that would like to make public comment on this item Seeing no public comment madam city clerk. May we please take a vote? Thank you mayor council member rogers I council member o'crepe Hi council member mcdonald. Hi council member fleming. Hi council member alvarez. Hi vice mayor step Hi mayor rogers. I let the record show that passes with seven affirmative votes All right, moving on to item 12, which is approval of minutes We have one set of minutes january 9th 2024 council. Are there any corrections to the minutes? Seeing no corrections to the minutes madam city clerk. Can you please facilitate public comment on item 12? We are now taking public comments on item 12 the minutes from the january 9th meeting If you are in the chamber would like to provide comment But I have not yet submitted at your speaker card or your name. Please make your way to the podium You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period Mayor mc no one approached the podium And the minutes will be adopted as presented. Thank you Moving on to item 13, which is our consent items madam city clerk. Can you please read the consent items? Thank you, mayor item 13.1 resolution approval of a lease agreement between skecos properties llc and the city of santa rosa for a temporary police substation Item 13.2 Resolution approval and issuance of a purchase order for one West mark 3 axle potable water tank truck utilizing the pricing from the sourceable cooperative agreement number 060920 dash cer with a certified stainless steel incorporated dba westmark Item 13.3 resolution approval of a professional services agreement with berk williams and sorenson llp for legal representation and amendment to the fiscal year 2023 dash 24 adopted budget within general fund and 13.4 Ordnance adoption second reading ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa to increase the mayor's monthly salary from $2200 to $2200 retroactive to december 14th 2022 to comply with the city charter and correct a clerical error in ordinance o rd dash 2022 dash 018 Thank you bringing it back to council. Are there any questions for the consent items? Seeing no questions Madam city clerk, can you please facilitate public comment? Certainly we are now taking public comments on the consent calendar If you are in the chamber would like to provide comment but have not yet provided your speaker card or your name Please make your way to the podium You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period We will start with dwayne Hello, my name is dwayne. Do you with i'm from roseland? Item 13.1 is a very good piece of news for roseland folks It's very important to have a high profile Substation right where it can be seen on sabastopol road I'm also hoping that they'll leave it there. This is an excellent spot geographically It's in the basic middle of north roseland It's better than the spot down on dutton avenue the idea though is It's important to speak with the community About how this police station can be a community asset also It's been said by some folks that the youth in our community are hesitant to interact with the police And that many see the police as difficult Some santa rosa unified school district Board of trustees members actually seem to think that the police are Problematic for youth and I beg to differ I actually believe that the police can be helpful in our community and that the police Having a presence on sabastopol road is going to make things better in the long run One of the things that could be really good We've had a couple of sessions where the police chief has come out to roseland university prep Their high school in south roseland and had a couple of forums But they've been carefully orchestrated a concerted type of situation We need to have a more open town hall type of situation Where the police chief comes and he talks with the community members perhaps at roseland school And lets people come in and bring their concerns in And have a discussion with the police about what the community is desiring to see Occur and come forward It doesn't have to be a situation that's seen adversarial I actually welcome the police in my neighborhood and I want them to put more Police on the beat especially on herne avenue, which has become a raceway a speedway We'd like to get that speed limit sign off a humboldt street over on our street. It's not working on humboldt anymore There's a truck parked in front of it for months. Thank you, mr. Jewett that concludes your time Mayor I see no one else approaching the podium for public comment on consent Thank you Any additional comments from council members seeing none vice mayor. Can you please make a motion? Thank you, mayor. I'd like to make a motion that we approve consent items 13.1 Through 13.4 and wait for the reading of the text second Motion made by vice mayor step and seconded by council member alvarez Madam city clerk. Can you please call the vote? Thank you, mayor councilmember rogers. Hi councilmember okrepke. Hi councilmember mcdonnell. Hi councilmember flippin Hi councilmember alvarez. Hi vice mayor step. Hi mayor rogers Hi, let the record show that passes the seven affirmative votes Thank you And due to the time we will not do our first public comment on non-agenda matters until after five o'clock So we will go on to item 15 point one Madam city manager Madam mayor if I may real quick I've just been informed that due to the fact that this item mentions Um Tax implications for fire survivors as well as regulations revolving around businesses that may be impacted by tax fire policy that i'm going to need to Recuse myself from this item Thank you item 15.1 a report 2024 federal legislative platform Good afternoon mayor vice mayor and city council. I'm lawn peterson director communications in enigma relations Um, i'm joined by scott alonso government relations officer with the city as well as john o'Donnell and karyakas Pagonas um with mmo partners and we'll be out lighting the city's 2024 federal Legislative platform also sharing progress that we made in 2023 Thanks scott So in coordination with mmo scott and i met with multiple depart all the departments Excuse me as well as some council members to hear your priorities and policies I'm on funding And so just wanted to highlight this federal platform guide staff and our council on our legislative and advocacy advocacy effort excuse me to advance the city's interest It also allows us to respond quickly On the city's priorities and so with that i'm going to turn this over to john o'Donnell with mmo partners to highlight Some stats for 2023 Excuse me. Thank you lawn. You're welcome Mayor roger's vice mayor staff and members of the council I think you've had experience with us with mmo partners now for Six years almost six years. I think it will be in april So i'm going to not go through the details of the firm's background But we have a significant experience working with local governments in the southwest and in the west over 40 years And i want to commend The mayor and vice mayor council the city manager and the city staff for the excellent support work that they provide To our efforts here in washington dc And mayor roger's mentioned a few moments ago in her report About her visit with the u.s. At the u.s. Conference of mayors in washington two weeks ago Where she did have an opportunity to speak with uh secretary buddha judge about The grant that you have Well, she couldn't talk directly about it She talked effectively about what the city's trying to do with its bike bed project And so i i just want to recognize the fine work that youth folks have done and and a great contribution that your staff Has made to back up the work that we do in washington And so i will turn to The highlights that lawn mentioned a few minutes ago in terms of the federal program in f y well in calendar year f y 23 And if you look at the chart you'll see that In competitive discretionary funding About 77 of the federal dollars that have come to the city in 23 are discretionary dollars The federal funding that the city receives is divided between formula grants and discretionary and so about 23 of your funding that you've gotten from the federal government in 2023 is through formula And you can see on the chart there the programs that Have provided a significant amount of the funding to to the city If you move to the next slide You continue to see What has been excuse me john Can i can i stop you sorry? Yes, okay uh councilmember mcdonnell I apologize for the interruption But just do an abundance of caution because i have an open claim due to fire damage on my house I will have to recuse myself from this portion of the presentation as well So i'm gonna have to leave the dais. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Sorry about that john When she moves i'll let you know Okay She took the long way john Just a moment. Sorry Now she's walking really slow Hey, thank you john Okay, so on this next slide you'll see uh, we continue To highlight The discretionary funding in the water and energy resilience area and in relation to that second item that's listed there the two million dollars over two million dollars That's a reimbursement. I believe from a fema that the city is seeking But you were extremely successful Your fire department in a competitive grant where you got receives over seven million dollars Then homeless outreach Over a hundred thousand dollars Then pence grants pending um As you well know from reports that um, you've received from us the f y 23 Or i'm sorry f y 24 appropriations process is not finished here in washington But you do have With the help of congressman thompson An eight hundred and ninety eight thousand dollar earmark for violence prevention An hmgp Grant that is under environmental review with fema At the regional office and they're working with the city And then a 4.4 million dollar um grant That is with would be with the core of engineers And what uh, carriacus has been doing and i've watched him labor Intensively on this one working with the san francisco division of the core to make sure that it is included in their f y by 24 work program and then of course the bike ped over crossing For 19 million dollars, which I mentioned earlier the mayor Talked with secretary buddha judge about and i know that Mr. Bagonis Is arranging for Another conversation for the city to have with The assistant secretary of transportation about what the city is trying to do in terms of Mobility And reducing greenhouse gases and this project relates to that But as I said before that's not something you you cannot really lobby the assistant secretary on this, but you can talk in in Grand scale about things the city is trying to do and the and the message gets delivered they know what grant is pending over there um, and then finally there's a technical technical assistance project that Is under the thriving communities program And I understand that the department is asked for additional information Related to that request so that seems like it's moving in a positive direction For the city's benefit um I do not have any more to report on that if there are questions. I'm sure mr. Pagonis Would like to entertain those and I thank you for the time to make this presentation But I want to say again how much we appreciate the city's engagement I've done this work in washington for 40 years And I must say that the level of activity that Santa rosa has here and spends Time there working on their federal program is significant. You're effective and we appreciate it Thanks, john. Um, next slide, please Maybe the next slide there we go So as john mentioned, uh, you know the the highlights from 2023 or I think we've talked about this many times It's certainly a team effort as john described the work that you know the first of all the city council giving us The policy directions and the work that you all have done To come back to dc. I think over we've had over 50 meetings last year both virtual and in person city staff under City manager smith's direction has certainly provided a lot of valuable insight and information that helps us deliver messages to to the hill and with federal agencies and then Obviously your your delegation has been instrumental in moving the ball forward and advocating on your behalf so Really excited that we're we're moving forward and looking at 2024 Uh priorities. I think this is uh, I think our fourth iteration of the federal platform, which was started Post fire recovery and uh every year. I think under Lawn's leadership and and you know scott's work this this program just becomes I think a little bit more Uh crystallized and and really fine tuned so very excited to present this to you tonight under the first section We have wildfire prevention hazard mitigation resiliency and recovery A few of these items are are new, but I think most of these are carryovers From last year. We're still in the you know 118th congress and so many of these are our items We're still working on But there are some some new items in here as well under wildfire mitigation We continue to support federal legislation and funding that provides resources to mitigate against disasters and certainly Support recovery and rebuilding efforts There are are several programs that do that, but the BRIC program and the hMGP program Both under FEMA are certainly Areas that the city has advocated for funding And certainly pursuing opportunities when when possible Supporting legislation like the cdbg Disaster recovery program is certainly a program that the city has benefited from you know securing over 40 million or so dollars from cdbg dr to build new housing It's a program that congress is trying to authorize and codify and it's it's something that the city has weighed in On and and it continues to be a priority as reflected in this presentation And then last on the slide is iPaws integrated public alert warning system certainly an integral part of your communications with the community and You know being able to communicate when when needed A next slide please surface transportation Obviously a major focus You know from this administrative the biden administration and congress over the past two years With funding that was included in the infrastructure investment jobs act and also in the inflation reduction act Certainly a lot of activity around infrastructure. I know the city has been laser focused on securing as much funding As possible under under infrastructure and surface transportation as john mentioned the bike pet over crossing project is Continues to be a priority As indicated on this slide, you know support for bike and pedestrian infrastructure vision zero programs and also Obviously transit is certainly on the top of the list as john pointed out The city santa rosa bus was able to secure 10 million In competitive funding last year for its transition to zero emission fleet Or electric electrification of its fleet of your fleet system So that was a significant You know victory in in terms of funding It continues to be a priority and we certainly expect additional opportunities this year and next year under the ii ga for additional transit funding also looking at Active transportation and complete street implementation and safe route to schools Next slide please water and energy resiliency The the city continues to support Funding and regulatory efforts that invest in water and wastewater infrastructure storm water infrastructure The inflation reduction act and ii ga significantly increased the amount of funding made available For the state revolving loan fund, which is a fund out of epa that provides funding to the states to improve wastewater and water infrastructure The water resources development act is a core of engineers Authorization program the city did secure with the help of the delegation and specifically congressman thompson's efforts 19.4 million for water and wastewater infrastructure and as john alluded to Is something that we're currently pursuing funding for the lano trunk line project in addition enacting mitigation measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as i mentioned the inflation reduction act certainly increases funding made available for those types of activities and it's something the city is actively pursuing We're certainly engaged and monitoring discussions on the hill and with epa on pfos regulations, which you know could have a significant impact on infrastructure needs and costs at the city And then also advocating and supporting what where possible efforts on the potter valley project Next slide please Climate change and sustainability, uh, there's a little bit of crossover here, but uh, certainly looking to continue following and and supporting the energy efficiency and conservation block grant program, which provides funding directly to to cities santa rosa received 210,000 from the formula program, which is funded through The ii ga that that that application is in progress at the moment and Due to the department of energy by the end of april In addition, um, you know funding to convert the city's entire vehicle fleet to zero emissions Uh, the inflation reduction act, uh, and ii ga both increased funding And we're watching and waiting for guidance to come out That would provide opportunities to secure federal funding to do that Uh Next slide please Housing homelessness and economic development Uh, again, as john mentioned earlier, the city did receive and does receive funding for cdbg program home We recently notified the city that the santa rosa Continuum of care was awarded four point six million dollars For homeless assistance funding. That's about a three hundred thousand dollar increase over last year's amount Um again also extending supporting and extending housing tax credits For affordable housing investments, uh, the city weighed in last year With the delegation in support of the housing affordable housing credit improvement act that That piece of legislation at least in the extension of the low-income housing tax credit was included in the house tax package that was just marked up A couple weeks ago The mayor met with congressman thompson right before his his markup hearing to talk about The tax credits that are included in the house bill and Extending the city's support for the bill Which did pass The committee bipartisan basis on a vote of 40 to 3 were expecting the house to to move on that bill Sometime this week it could be pushed into next week Also support for parks Um, increasing funding for the outdoor recreation and leg legacy partnership program It's a national park service program. That's competitively administered For specifically for improvements to urban parks Next slide, please On public safety Continue to advocate for funding That supports funding for assistance firefighters grants program and safer Which is the the firefighter hiring program as john mentioned earlier the city secured over seven million dollars for Safer and hiring new firefighters The cops program is on here for continued support Advocating for violence and gun violence prevention programs We we anticipate that the bureau of justice assistance After the f y 24 process is complete will release their grant notices and funding programs and uh city is is looking at Taking advantage of of some of those opportunities to bolster community Violence prevention programs and we're certainly uh, going to be meeting with the bureau Next month or in march, I should say To advocate on on those programs Next slide, please public health and education and continue to to monitor the American rescue plan act The city's allocation has has already been set There is a deadline coming up at the end of the year Where you know program funds have to be encumbered And then spent by the end of of december 2026 so those those deadlines are coming But we're certainly looking at opportunities to to weigh in if there is additional flexibility to be had and then Last on this slide is support for early childhood education child care workforce development programs For youth and funding for teachers and educators I think And i'll turn it back over to lawn and to scott Absolutely. Thank you. Carrie. I just appreciate that So with that the communications and intergovernmental relations office recommends that the council by resolution adopt the city's 2024 federal legislative platform And that concludes our presentation and scott mmo and myself are available for questions Thank you for that presentation So I am going to go to council to see if there are any questions, but before I do that I just want to say Uh between our team who works really hard here And john and kiriakis you guys in dc I think we have a wonderful team And you guys have pushed Push the mark for us So I want to continue to do that and i'm very happy that we get to work with you I know you work with other cities But when i'm working with you I feel like we are the only city that you work with So thank you very much for everything that you do for the city of santa rosa and with that councilmember rogers Thank you, mayor And I wanted to echo those sentiments and say congratulations to your team. I know All of the good work that you've delivered for santa rosa was noticed and now we're excited to have you as a partner on the cinema county transportation authority side In regional climate protection authority as well. So obviously they'll serve great purposes for our whole region Really my question is around What level of preparation do you need from our city when you go after funding? So specifically for things like the regional community safety training center Do you need a feasibility study or are those the kinds of things that we can say to you? Hey, there might be these opportunities out there Can you bring us resources so that we can try to get those dollars to do that planning process? Or typically do you see that you have to have your your shovels ready to go before you'll get any attention? Well, I'll take it. Yeah, I'll take a crack at answering it. Thank you councilman rogers for the questions and and mayor rogers We certainly appreciate your comments and your your partnership and doing this work and very much appreciated the council support for our contract and Certainly looking forward to working with the city And and regional partners as well I think it really depends on on the project councilman I think, you know the city has done an excellent job in terms of identifying projects early on And then working with us and the delegation trying to trying to match those opportunities with with federal programs sometimes You know, it does require You know going through the authorization process like the the word a bill Where there isn't necessarily a specific program that's, you know, lined up with the project needs And then we have to go and try to either tweak a federal Program through authorizing legislation which was done, you know during recovery and also as I said during word a But, you know, typically, you know, I there are planning dollars now available because of the ii j a and i r a So there is significant planning money. So if you don't have a project that's ready to build There there are there are ample opportunities to secure planning dollars. And in fact, I think in our recent discussions with dot When mayor rogers was in town, I think one of the messages we heard was if there are Planning needs, please please Come and apply because I think they're undersubscribed In that in that category, but but yeah, no, I think if you you have a project that's that is ready to build that certainly puts you In a in a competitive space when it comes to, you know These opportunities like with the bike pet over crossing project That is certainly, you know positioned as a as a build And that's because of the great work that the city's done over the years to to get that project ready to go I appreciate that and I I know the the team will push further on this As they work with you, but I think some of those feasibility studies Really hard to get grants for them, but it's nice to have a source of funding to be able to move projects forward Again, just thank you both for all of the work that you're doing on behalf of santa rosa Thank you ice me I'll just echo my thanks as well Both to mmo and also to the the local team just great work all around. Thank you Any additional Questions from council members saying none madame city clerk. Can you please facilitate public comment? Thank you. We are now taking public comment on item 15.1 If you are in the chamber and would like to comment but have not provided a speaker card or your name Please make your way to the podium You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period The first speaker will be dwayne Dwayne de wid. I'm from roseland. I thank you for the report Thriving communities is something that you could be using funding for in roseland our disadvantaged underserved area Having this organization in washington dc Interact with the united states environmental protection agency could also help us to get brownfields funds Which we've been trying to get the city to go after for decades That program started in 1995 So one of the things that came about through the american rescue plan act is extra money came forward We thought that perhaps it would help the people on the west side of san rosa get Basic curbs gutters and sidewalks on so many streets that are still Basically second world type streets instead of here in an urban area. We didn't get that yet So I really believe that one of the things that could happen with this Funding for an organization in washington dc to help us get funding for here in our community That you help to address the backlog of deferred payment rehabilitation on the west side of town Basically south avenue bar ham west bar ham Many of these streets have been in terrible shape for decades We come here and we talk with you We basically feel that because we've put this forward that you'll try to make it a priority But every year it seems that no it's not even a concern And most of your priorities go to the southeast you're getting technical assistance for the southeast greenway The roseland creek concept plan was done 20 years ago And nothing's gone forward on that This is where you could be getting some funding to help us on our side of town I believe these people these professional lobbyists They understand equity and they understand if they would look at the way our town is operating It helps the east side more than the west side west side stuff. We need to get more Helping the police department get extra Extra staffing if you're going to get extra fire also over for the west side So no offense intended, but it's really important that you reach out to the community to see what the community's interests are Before you go Out to the other agencies and say well, this is senator rosa's interest. Thank you Thank you, mayor. I see no one else approaching the podium for public comment on item 15.1 Thank you. Are there any comments from council before we get a motion? Seeing none council member rogers Thank you, mayor. I'll make a motion to approve this year's federal legislative platform Second I have a motion made by council member rogers and a second by council member flaming Madam city clerk, can you please call the vote? Thank you council member rogers. Hi Council member o'crepkey is recusing council member mcdonald is recusing council member flaming. Yes council member alvarez Vice mayor step. Hi mayor rogers. I let the record show this passes with five affirmative votes and council members mcdonald and o'crepkey recusing Thank you Thank you very much for being here and I would like to note that it is before eight o'clock DC time So thank you very much. Thank you We have one minute before I can do public comment on non-agenda Yes, madam city attorney. Um, I I suggest we wait the one minute and then Go ahead unless you want to start the next item and come back We can wait the one minute But I also would like to invite the two council members that left that I to to come back. I don't know All right, it looks like it is five o'clock. So we will now go back up to item 14 which is our public comment on non-agenda matters madam city clerk Thank you mayor. We are now taking public comment on item 14 non-agenda matters If you are in the chamber and would like to provide a comment Please make your way to the podium if you have not already submitted a speaker card or your name We will take 12 speakers under item 14 and if we have more than 12 public comments The remainder will be heard under item 19 The first public speaker will be dwayne next speaker speak. Oh, here we go. There you go ready Please go ahead. Hello. My name is dwayne dewood. I'm from roseland. This is a photo from the newspaper on friday talked about the conference at san sonoma state university On economics for the state of california pointing out we're in good shape and we're going forward One of the things that's very important is that the home building sector is poised for growth It's really important that we understand What is low income and what is moderate income? the State of Economic affairs in sonoma county now is a low-income person by themselves Earning up to 70 thousand dollars one person That's stunning to a lot of people. That's more than i've ever earned in a year or many other people One of the dilemmas though is that when people come forward to seek the funding for the housing they Do this discussion where they say? affordable and moderate and they don't basically Cut the two as they should It should be that affordable is anything That is below 50 of the median income for this county It should be so that people who are truly in need Of housing and who are low income can get it not just building Any market rate type housing which is what moderate comes in at Recently i've been at some discussions through housing groups And there's some people actually advocating that we not have development impact fees on new housing That's the wrong way to go you need those fees That's the way you're going to be able to cover the costs of the infrastructure And be able to handle the city services that are necessary for us in our community And once again, I will point out that because your agenda said three minutes You should allow other speakers to have up to three minutes to speak and not just be cutting them off early at two minutes I really don't think you should have made that decision Unilaterally that you'll just go to two minutes Thank you. The next public comment will be from elie followed by jordan Thank you for your time today. My name is elie winds of egg On the current board president for a congregation show mitura We are the largest synagogue in california north of the golden gate bridge to the organ border I would like to express my sincere appreciation for the thoughtful decision to prioritize local issues In the recent city council meeting and not delve into the discussion of a ceasefire in israel In a world filled with numerous complex and sensitive global issues It's heartening to see our local representatives recognizing the importance of concentrating on matters directly impacting our community While international affairs are undeniably significant The decision to keep the agenda focused on local priorities underscores the council's commitment to addressing the needs and concerns of santa rosa residents As a lifelong member of this community I believe that our city council's dedication to addressing issues such as public safety Infrastructure and community well-being is crucial to maintaining and enhancing the quality of life for all santa rosa residents By avoiding the discussion of a ceasefire in israel during today's meeting the council has demonstrated a commendable understanding of the immediate challenges and opportunities Faced by our local community I acknowledge that global issues hold importance But the choice to prioritize local matters during this meeting reflects a commitment to effective governance and a responsible representation It's my hope that future council meetings continue to focus on the unique needs and concerns of santa rosa Ensuring that our community remains a vibrant and thriving place for all Once again, thank you for your dedication to addressing the issues that matter most to us here in santa rosa Your continued efforts are instrumental in shaping the future of our beloved city. Thank you Thank you. The next public comment will be jordan followed by johanna. Can you hear me? Okay, i'm trying to catch my breath. I literally just ran over here from work. I'm on my break. So hashtag dedication um I agree with that last point. Wouldn't it be beautiful for our three billion dollars over three billion dollars that we send annually to israel could Could go to our communities here I mean look at us trying to to fix the you know nationwide opioid and homelessness problem that we have in santa rosa Trying to squish Cookie crumbs together to make something that is a systemic issue in our nation Fixed when we really could use that those billions of dollars to fix that that problem on a nationwide Scale but anyways, I kind of want to bring it to the point that I've ascertained from talking to the various council members, which is that I understand that At this point, none of you really want to take the lead on putting this Cease fire resolution on the agenda, which I understand because it feels like putting your neck on the line But my response to that is you're an action is inherently taking a side And really at the heart of it promoting the small faction of people who are advocating essentially for an action Inaction and and the silencing of critiques of israel's actions and the us complicity Which directly paves the way for the continuation of this genocide and the bombing of children Apparently it seems that you may fear this small but very vocal community Which actually really has not been very vocal here at the city council, but I I find it sad that This community seems to Overpower the majority of us that value peace and justice not vengeful retribution and murderous punishment inflicted on children And I just want to let you know that No ceasefire no votes Period we've been working with you guys for months on this Um, respectfully councilmember alvarez mayor rogers Councilmember mcdonald who has not gotten back to our group at all Um, you're not making yourself very amenable to this process. No ceasefire Thank you. The next speaker will be johanna followed by brie Please go ahead members of the santa rosa city council. I'm johanna james a santa rosa resident for 45 years now I'm here today to add my voice to those already calling on you Our elected representatives to adopt a resolution on behalf of the people of santa rosa calling for a ceasefire in gaza I assume you are all no doubt already well aware of the horror of the situation in gaza And the ever widening conflict now spreading from that You can find an excellent overview and a piece by senator bernie sanders in the guardian on january 27th Just a few of the details as of that date 25 000 dead 62 000 wounded 70 percent of the housing damaged or destroyed 1.7 million refugees 80 percent of the population are now with almost no food or even water Imagine that in an area the size of winzer to petaluma No wider than santa rosa But densely developed and populated with about two million people Half of them children One might ask why bother with the resolution it won't make any difference. We're not in control But silence is implied consent We have a moral and ethical imperative to speak To oppose israel's actions and our u.s. Government's support of that to demand a ceasefire And to insist that this death and utter devastation is not in our name I urge you to join the growing number of cities in california Among them san francisco oakland and even our neighbor qatadi And others across the nation in doing this Blessed are the peacemakers Thank you. The next public comment will be from Excuse me brie followed by james While brie is making her comment if james can make his way to the other podium that would be great Hello, are you able to hear me? Okay Some yes. Um, hello. My name is brie. I'm a sonoma county resident And i'm here in solidarity with the people of gaza their families and their friends I don't have to repeat the devastating statistics to you. You're all informed individuals I'm merely here to continue to urge you all to move on an immediate ceasefire resolution For every moment we spend in deliberate in deliberate Deliberation more lives are needlessly lost in the name of colonial interests As a community we must take a stand for human rights not later now May sonoma county never suffer the same horrors occurring in palestine. Thank you Thank you. The next public comment will be from james followed by jacklyn than iran james duncan I've lived a short walk from the jennings avenue rail crossing for 45 years In 2016 the cpuc approved the city's application for a bed and bike rail crossing at jennings The approved crossing has not yet been built and there is now a real risk That all the efforts of the city council city staff The public and many civic and environmental organizations to keep the crossing open may be lost The original approval has been extended twice over the objections of spart and the cpuc's own staff The cd applied for a third extension last august Although the application is unopposed the cpuc's administrative law judges focused on the long Delay and ruled on november 15th 2023 That if an agreement isn't reached the cpuc will set in order to show cause Why are the city's application for an extension should be granted in other words The city has been given serious notice that the jennings crossing approval Is only one step away from being terminated I urge the council to direct staff to report on the status of an agreement at the next scheduled council meeting Ideally in open session so that the council and the public can know what's going on especially given The possibility that years of effort will be lost Possibly for all time yet to come. Thank you so much Thank you. The next public comment will be from jacklyn followed by iran and cloy Please go ahead. Thank you very much Thank you Honorable mayor and council members all of our public servants that are here this evening all of our Citizens that are here this evening. I also will not spend time going over the numbers and reviewing the facts because I know That you've all seen this happening What's happening in gaza is not right. I'm going to spend my time trying to appeal to your humanity I imagine that there's a reason that each and every one of you entered public service and Decided to become public servants I imagine that's because you wanted to do the public good Another citizen this evening imply that this is not a local matter I have had the immense honor of getting to know two local palestinian brothers that moved here in september of 2023 and On a reunification visa their father is a successful business owner here They moved five siblings and his their mother here and one of those siblings is facing bullying in their school They are witnessing a genocide happening to their people And they're watching their Representatives do nothing about it many of us feel very powerless in the larger role of our A duocracy government and you all have a unique opportunity to amplify our voices And it is so imperative that you do so I believe that you are uniquely situated to do that and calling for a ceasefire is a moral obligation Yes to our global community But also to people here at home. I've had to explain to my seven-year-old Who's gotten a great education and is a great reader because she goes to Santa Rosa district schools. What genocide is What world is this? We want a better world. We want peace and justice Please look in your hearts and do the right thing Ceasefire, thank you Thank you. The next public comment will be from iran followed by clowy then summer Hello, my name is iran hoads, and I am the associate director of development at the jewish community relations council Bay area I would like to thank all of you santa rosa city council for listening to the concerns of the local jewish community During this time of rising anti-semitism and yes, it's happening here at home in sonoma county I'm asking you to lead with empathy and not bring forward a ceasefire resolution And in so doing to ensure that all local residents feel supported and welcomed Last week the sonoma county board of supervisors chose to issue a statement of peace Rather than moving forward with a ceasefire resolution that would be quote More divisive and counterproductive than it's worth And I would urge you to take their lead Nonbinding resolutions will not solve an international conflict or bring us any closer to peace In neighboring cities in the bay area. It has opened a microphone for floodgates of divisive speech We must bring our communities together and not pull them apart I want to thank you for listening to our concerns and please know That we have enormous empathy for what is happening In the international arena. What is happening in gaza and what is happening in israel But focusing on the local issues the safety of all of our Citizens here at home and the anti-semitism that is indeed happening here in santa rosa and in sonoma county Should be paramount. Thank you so much for your time Thank you the next speaker will be cloe followed by summer. My name is cloe minervini Thank you so much for having me today. This is actually the first time I felt moved to speak at a city council Meeting but I am a santa rosa community member and a santa rosa family nurse practitioner in the area um I'm here today to ask us to actually follow in katadi's admirable example and support a ceasefire resolution in gaza Um, I'm from katadi. I now live in santa rosa. It's extremely important to me that our community remains aligned and together This has absolutely affected our community locally as you can see um And it's a monumental humanitarian crisis of our lifetime As a health care worker it has been Devastating to witness the collapse of an entire system of care compounded with the withholding of aid in gaza This is of the utmost importance to support our community Including our palestinian friends and neighbors here in santa rosa It is imperative to push forward a ceasefire resolution in order to uphold egalitarian health and safety for all I really thank you for your time your energy and your consideration to continue discussing this as an agenda item I look forward to working together. Thank you. I yield my time Thank you the next public comment will be from summer. Hi. Thank you so much. Um, my name is summer Abdul Khaliq. I live in santa rosa in district five and i'm here to also speak in support of a ceasefire resolution um I There's a lot I could say and I think a lot of people have said already regarding statistics and regarding the severity of what's happening in gaza um I Honestly, I don't want to be here right now. I don't want to be here at a city council meeting giving a public comment about what is happening on the other side of the world, but I know that my tax dollars Are being sent over there To murder people that i'm actually related to my dad um Peace be upon him was palestinian. He was born 1949 in a refugee camp he worked tirelessly to Work in a peaceful and diplomatic way for a solution over there he immigrated here and he was non-stop fundraising to send ambulances to the west bank I don't want to follow in his footsteps, but here I am I Am advocating for peaceful diplomatic solutions over there And amongst many many people right now calling for a ceasefire Our federal elected officials are not listening to us The percentage is like 66 percent of americans or something are in support of a ceasefire So I come here to you as my most immediate Local elected officials and i'm asking you to put something on the agenda And to adopt a ceasefire resolution Thank you Thank you. May I see no one else approaching the podium for public comment on non-agenda matters? Oh, we have a couple more people Okay, please if you have anyone else is wishing to provide public comment on non-agenda matters We have two more slots under item 14 the remainder of the public comments on non-agenda matters will be heard later on in the agenda under 19 So we'll start with the west lectern Please go ahead and identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so Can you hear me? Yes. All right. Hi. My name is zoe kesler. Um, I'm a longtime Sonoma county resident I'm Jewish I grew up many I grew up among many israelis my family very involved in the synagogue I was given a Jewish education. My Hebrew name is haya, which means life, which is sacred in Judaism No matter who you are who you were born as I'm sorry. I will probably get emotional here. I am writing to you. I'm speaking to you representing myself not only as a Jew But just as someone with a working brain and a working heart That can see so plainly the crimes against humanity that israel has committed is not in the name of Jewish safety The motivation behind this genocide is a siege and a barbaric conquering to take land This is a holocaust on the palestinian people We are witnessing a replay of what the nazis did to jews and other marginalized groups in all over europe As the world sees images of men fathers sons doctors educators artists and normal Good human beings just like us being rounded up stripped down and taken to their death on trucks I am reminded of the images and history I was shown of jews in concentration camps being sent to the death to the gas chambers Except they don't need gas chambers because they are carpet bombing with american made bombs that we are paying for Our president and congressmen have failed us council members some of the illogical excuses That we have heard is this is not a local issue The city council passed a divestment declaration against apartheid in south africa And has made declarations of anti-hatred in the past We have many palestinians and arabs in this city and county and many of them are afraid of their lives daily For just being who they are. How is that not a local issue to you? Thank you the next public comment will be thomas And this is the last public comment under non-agenda matters under item 14 the remainder of non-agenda Matters public comments will be heard under item 18 later on in the agenda Hello, thank you. Can you hear me? Good. Good. Thank you. Um So I guess I would ask Respectfully If not here meaning Sending a letter of support For having a ceasefire in gaza where if not now when Because As I've said before we have this here And it's growing a separation among our people And we've talked about it historically, but it is it's not dissipating And so I would just point to this issue that we have with the southwest which For santa rosa It is exacerbated by its annexation Now you must address it When it was under ken blackman he could say oh, no It's not part of santa rosa I don't have to address it even though state law under the under the planning code and the General plan of the county Required it because the city's general plan had to conform with the counties and the counties had to Deal with the with lafko and lafko had required Annexation which they did not do So that's why they could say well, we don't have to respond to that We don't have to actually deal with that and in talking about that recently Really realized that it was the raiders Facility training facility that sat on the east side of the freeway And they didn't want to have people from the west side coming over So they encouraged some restrictions That's little subtleties And there we have it. Thank you Thank you, mayor that is 12 public comments on non-agenda matters under item 14 All right, so because it is Almost 5 30 I will make that announcement that 15 Point two will be continued to our next Meeting um, and we will go to our first public hearing Of the evening so madam City manager Thank you item 16.1 is a public hearing teffra public hearing and issuance of bonds By the california municipal finance authority and an amount not to exceed 20 million for orchard commons 811 void street Good evening mayor and members of the council I'm nicole del furantino with the housing and community services department And I will be presenting the item this evening for this teffra public hearing The teffra acronym is the tax equity and fiscal responsibility act of 1983 So this is a public hearing tonight to provide an opportunity for the public to comment on the proposed issuance of bonds And the nature of this project We are requesting council approval for the issuance of tax exempt multifamily housing revenue bonds for the project A public hearing is required by the teffra act and all financial obligations of the bond issuance Will fall to the borrower and not to the city So a little bit about this project the project is called orchard commons. It's at 811 void street It was formerly called void street apartments The developer is the dango group and this developer also has two other projects in sanarosa There's a completed project at 80 college avenue called sage commons that has 53 units of permanent supportive housing There's also a development a pre development project down at 250 rosin avenue called ponderosa Village that is in that pre development stage. It's not yet completed The developer also has multiple other projects throughout california and the west coast This specific project orchard commons is a 46 unit affordable housing project that already completed construction in january of 23 The affordability mix on the project has 10 units at 30 of area median income five units at 50 percent and 30 units at 60 percent at area median income those 10 units at the most restrictive level are permanent supportive housing units also The housing authority has a 200 thousand dollar loan with a regulatory agreement on the property Which restricts all of those units at those affordability levels discussed The project was completed in january. So it is fully occupied Moving over to the benefits. So this item will help finance those 46 affordable units Since the project is already completed this item is needed for the construction financing to be converted to permanent financing There's no cost to the city or liability from the bonds And a no vote would be detrimental to the financing structure for this already completed development So this item came to council and was previously approved on january 14th of 2020 But because of covet related delays, they didn't close financing on the bonds within the one year period required by tefra So we are returning to the council for approval of this item in a new public hearing to meet the requirements of the tefra bond financing Permanent financing is scheduled to close on the project tomorrow So with that it is recommended by the housing and community services department that the council one conduct a public hearing under the requirements of the tax equity and fiscal responsibility act of 1983 and the internal revenue code of 1986 as amended And two by resolution approve the issuance of tax exempt multifamily housing revenue bonds by the california municipal finance authority In an amount not to exceed 20 million dollars to finance orchard comments at 811 boyd street And with that i'm happy to answer any other questions that the council has Thank you. Are there any questions from council for staff? Seeing none we will now open the public hearing Madam city clerk may please facilitate Thank you. We are now taking public comments on item 16.1 If you are in the chamber and would like to provide comment but have not yet submitted a speaker card or your name Please make your way to the podium. You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period We will start with dwayne Thank you There you go. Hello. My name is dwayne d. Witt. I'm from rosalyn nearby this project I have no financial interest in it in any way shape or form I ask you to approve the sale of the bonds I'm also glad to hear from the city staff that this organization is doing another project in rosalyn Apparently on rosalyn avenue I go by there frequently and haven't seen anything in the works yet so The main thing is sonoma county housing advocacy group is also supportive of danco and their efforts to get housing for people of low income I don't think you need to worry about moderate income anymore. That gets built for What needs to happen is more building for low income people making less than 70 000 a year And I do believe The sale of these bonds will help all those folks who've already moved in there You see them outside smoking on uh boyd street. So that means it's a no smoking facility quite interesting in itself All the best to you Thank you. Anyone else wishing to provide public comment on item 16.1. Please make your way to the podium Mayor i'm seeing no additional public comments Thank you. We'll now close the public hearing Are there any comments from council? Seeing none council member alvarez Thank you, madam mayor I move forward a resolution of the council the city of san rosa Approving the issuance of qualified residential rental project bonds in an amount not to exceed 20 million dollars by the california municipal finance Authority in accordance with the section 147 f of the internal revenue code and the joint exercise of powers agreement relating to said authority And we have further reading of the text Second, we have a motion made by councilmember alvarez and a second by vice mayor step Madam city clerk may you please call the vote councilmember rogers Councilmember okrepke. Hi Councilmember mcdonald. Hi councilmember fleming Councilmember alvarez. Hi vice mayor step. Hi mayor rogers. I let the record show this passes with six affirmative votes and councilmember rogers absent Thank you very much for that All right, we'll go back up to item 15.3 madam city manager Item 15.3 annual report of the community wildfire protection plan A wildfire annex to the local hazard mitigation plan Good evening mayor rogers vice mayor members of the council My name is paul loenthal division chief fire marshal with the fire department here to present the annual community wildfire protection plan annual report So real quickly the cwpp is a community wildfire fire protection plan It is essentially designed to protect our assets and values here within our community Those being the people that live here the homes the commercial structures the infrastructure Those that had been both threatened and directly impacted significantly since 2017 So quickly the little history the cwpp was first funded through the hazard mitigation grant program ironically That was one of the first grants that we actually were successful in receiving both before and after this 2017 fires It was initiated in 2019. It was approved a month prior to the glass fire Um, as those of you that remember the cwpp actually identified the greatest threat to the city was the unburned area between the tubs and the nuns fire Which is what was involved in the glass fire Council allocated five and a quarter million dollars in 2021 that was to establish a five-year Program with the last quarter of a million dollars to fund the renewal of the community wildfire protection plan in 2025 since it's a five-year plan The first report was at the end of 2021 and then we shifted it to an annual report typically around january to get us through calendar years So the cwpp itself Truly serves as a roadmap to protect our community It identifies nine objectives and 46 actionable items that fall underneath nine categories that include Gis related coordination tracking improving evacuation routes educating the public Improving overall wildfire preparedness increasing structural hardening treating vegetation to reduce our risk improving on defensible space within our wild end of an interface increasing staffing to address the wildfire vegetation management program workload And then lastly consideration to expand the wooey within our city So diving right into the highlights for this last calendar year We have initially Developed a gis database to track the vegetation management activities that we're performing in our community So essentially mapping where work is occurring and then keeping that database up to date We continue to coordinate with property owners both HOAs and open space management associations as well as mapping their activities and then ongoing support and coordination with our various Homeowner associations again, whether it's the oakmont village association the open space maintenance association or altivist HOA and several others throughout the community This is an example of that gis database where you can see in the purple Treatment that was done earlier last year along fountain Grove parkway And then the treatment that was just done within the last several months At the interchange of shenate and fountain grove parkway And our ability to map that to see when it was done What was done so that we can project future projects as the regrowth? Regrowth occurs, excuse me. All right. So second item section is improving evacuation routes So you've seen brought forward to the council as well as the climate action subcommittee Uh, the request to modify uh bring to forward a integrative pest management policy Our support and purpose behind it is dealing with the seasonal grasses As well as the invasive growth That was identified under the community wildfire protection plan also The vegetation management ordinance that we brought forward to you last month That is targeting invasive growth of scotch broom french broom And a lot of the dead and down fuels along our evacuation routes And we also are wrapping up Phase one of two hazard mitigation grant programs One of them for a little over two million dollars is specific to fuel treatment along About 10 different Identified evacuation routes both in and around our wildland urban interface. Our goal is to implement the actual work This calendar year This is some examples of why we're doing that targeted work with just the the fuel load that we're seeing along Areas both again in and out around the wildland urban interface Educating the public. Uh, we put on our third annual wildfire Ready event at the family community center. It was very popular. Uh, the go bags Were a big hit. They were funded by our Half million dollar hcd grant We actually ended up purchasing more through that grant And had additional A lot of people that ended up cycling through our fire administration picking up additional go bags that were at The event because we actually ran out Uh, continuing to increase our education on home hardening evacuation overall preparedness fire safe landscaping and all that in between and again a lot of that content both Through city connections the the handouts that we're producing Is being funded by a combination of our vegetation management program funds as well as the half million dollars from hcd We're also maintaining the two primary websites that we move to those are both the wildfire ready and the sr city dot org web pages that serve as the main landing pages for public and for public education related to being prepared for Wildfires as well as general emergency preparedness. This is an example of the landing page for wildfire ready One of the changes we're making right now is creating a new Icon at the bottom of the page that will be focused on the ordinance The goal of of that is to consolidate Whether it's the pile burning in the weed abatement Or the vegetation management ordinance into one user friendly page that lets people know exactly what they need to do to comply and by when And this is the ready Santa Rosa page that again is designed for overall emergency preparedness That also includes wildfire preparedness Some examples of the ongoing education outreach that is occurring around the community Improving wildfire preparedness. We're continuing to work with our cope organizations as well as the map your neighborhood organizations that are pretty Popular out in the oakmont area And continuing to explore additional opportunities to engage with different parts of the community Regardless of where they are in the city not necessarily being in the wooey But always open to engage with them on general preparedness Again continuing to foster and maintain relationships With the co-ads through community outreach and just a lot of the work that we're doing to target Different parts of our community We're also ongoing work to address vulnerable populations Including a lot of the work that we're doing both in oakmont as well as facilities like spring lake villages The structural hardening component initially started in 2019 when we implemented our first Ignition free zone that ranged anywhere from three to five feet. We built on that in 2023 the chief building official Jesse Oswald and our staff expanded upon that clarified the five feet That now includes the fencing materials too. So it really is truly Creating that ignition free zone for homes built after 2019 here in santa rosa The inspector is continuing to work on home hardening as well as defensible space assessments And then that second hazard mitigation grant Project is funding gutter guards vent screens and defensible space For those that opted into the program and again Both those hazard mitigation grant programs are Approaching their closeout phase Both are on target for completion And then we hope that both fema and callus will approve our phase two to actually do that work starting calendar year 2024 Treating vegetation This is what we you'll see as we kind of close this out This is what we want to be doing more of as we built the foundation to the program It's now actually physically doing work We use a combination of both any leftover funds through our annual we debatement budget as well as vegetation management Program funds to do treatment on city-owned open space We're we had our prescribed fire. The first one was on old rabbit highway and we've continued to burn annually we burned Last year in the open space On the undeveloped portion of the youth community park And we plan to burn on the thomas lake harris open space this year Also continuing to work on our both our agreements as well as Utilizing those that we have in place with the conservation corps of the north bay as well as sac sac is the Sonoma county probation crews not Uh cal fires in may crews so we contract with both the north bay conservation corps as well as sac to do fuel treatments within our city And continuing to work on the agreement with the junior college These are some examples of some of the fuel treatments that we've conducted The before and after on fountain growth parkway And then enforcing defensible space so with the new vegetation management ordinance that was adopted and passed that went into effect this month We plan to implement obviously those inspections in summer of this year We are in the process of developing and finalizing plans for a fire safe landscape project at fire station seven And then again with the adoption of the vegetation management ordinance The inspection program will be developed and implemented this calendar year Uh The staffing that is in place uh to Offset the needs associated with the project was funded primarily through the vegetation management program. So those are limited term positions So the plan right now is to figure out How to maintain that level of staffing uh to keep the vegetation management program moving right now We've been fortunate with the dollar amount That kickstarted the program as well as grant funding to offset some of those costs But putting together kind of a strategic plan To carry that into the future is going to be a priority for us And then consider expanding the wooey initially the cwpp itself identified coffee park We identified that not as a need to expand the wooey But then that action item and those objectives were essentially complete They've been reopened now because of the mapping that's occurring through cal fire Cal fire has what they refer to as very high-fired severity zones within our city They have not released the changes to what's in the city, but they did release the changes to what's around the city Based on those changes We're projecting that we're likely going to lose some of the very high fire hazard severity zones within fountain grove But we anticipate because where they're showing moderate risk now around the fairgrounds We will likely uh have to come back and modify our wooey to expand to areas To the east of petal of him or petal of hill road Towards uh benna valley road Uh But that's that has been in uh progress for a couple years now and and doesn't seem to be moving very quickly But we're continuing to monitor it This is the current wooey as it stands today This is the state's Current mapped very high fire hazard severity zones within the city So this is the wooey. This is what the state identifies as the highest severity zone within our city And it's based on this map Um, this is the old map and this is the new map So you can kind of see as I toggle back and forth The red is the highest level the yellow is the lowest level Where you see the red start to expand Kind of in the benna valley area We already have that area in the wooey what we have not accounted for is to the south Kind of where above where it sells to the northeast of where it says belvi on the map With that being identified now as a moderate that's what will likely Kick us to push part of the city into the wooey in that south part of san rosa Our priorities for the next calendar year based on the coordination that was done between multiple departments to develop the ordinance Will be obviously to implement it. We'll continue to investigate the ability to spray To mitigate The risks along our evacuation routes and just the explosive growth of that scotch from a french broom Again looking at long-term plans for staffing Conduct visible projects and yes, that does include grazing Just get that out there As well as ongoing efforts to do burning shaded fuel breaks As well as explore new hazard mitigation grant programs And lastly Support again the ongoing relationship and agreement we have with fire safe sonoma And then in addition to the relationship. We've been developing with the san rosa junior college happy to now also report The new relationship that we're building with the uc extension cooperative grazing program That we're looking at bringing some of those efforts onto city properties as well And unless there are any questions What is the ask is just to for council to uh, accept the annul report council member okrepke Thank you so much for that in-depth Presentation just a real quick question. Um, and treading lightly because of the subject matter, but um, would it be possible to uh support the additional staffing for the hmgp and the hcg grant with proposed ballot measures So the proposed ballot membership does include two Fire inspectors that are to be assigned for vegetation management We have to look and see it what the inspection program will look like and what the overall workload will look like but initially We will be in communication and let the chief kind of make that evaluation Okay, but since they're on grants now that wouldn't be precluded from it is what i'm asking so the The current two fire inspectors and one community outreach specialist are funded primarily through the dollar the dollars that were set aside Through the vegetation management program Some of those dollars are essentially being saved as we're able to charge staff time to the vegetation man management grants That also includes the community outreach specialist that's We're primarily able to fund right now through that hcd grant and that was intentional Vice mayor step Thank you as always fire marshal lowenthal As as you correctly intuited it always comes back to grazing But i have a somewhat tangential question That just occurred to me So i was looking at the map so the city has taken possession or we'll we'll soon take possession of the greenway So we got 48 acres of essentially grassland running running right through a populated area connecting to to anadel What kind of in short term what kind of increased fire risk does that create for those neighborhoods? So the director from parks has formed a working group that does include fire that's been looking at how to mitigate the work or at least some of the risks that could Be taken on by the city associated with the seasonal grasses that are primarily growing in that area Right now caltrans Is not Required to comply with our city weight of pavement ordinance because they're essentially exempt from it But they do maintain the area primarily from montgomery high school Down to summerfield road and they do mow that typically at least once sometimes twice a year So the fire department was asked by parks to look at what Grazing opportunities there are within that area. We've already been in communication with The uc Extension cooperative grazing program and had them look at it And they have indicated that that is an area that they would be able to potentially graze And we also had sack evaluate that area as well sack provided us with a couple different costs associated with both Doing mechanical work as well as handwork, so we will continue to explore both options and and provide that information to parks That's a perfect answer. You read my mind. Thank you for highlighting grazing once again Are there any additional questions from council members? No, I I did have a question not to get in the weeds, but expanding the wooey Expanding Expanding the wooey. What what are the implications that has on our residents here in san rosa? Uh, so if they do go into the wooey, they would be required to comply for new construction with building and fire code requirements Um, they would be included in the weed abatement program If they're an existing residents vacant lots in that area regardless of whether in the wooey or not are already required to comply with the weed abatement ordinance But homes that could already be built would be required to comply with it and then uh The majority the elements associated with the new ordinance Would not apply to the areas that would be in question But they would then be required to comply with the defensible space standards And with that we recognize that this is the there is the potential for the wooey to expand and the way that we wrote The ordinance with the city attorney's office gave us some flexibility to not just drop the hammer But also to focus on education and so that will really Help an area like that The final piece That again regardless of whether it's our wooey or the state's uh mapped areas There could be some potential of insurance concerns. That is one thing that we've seen a lot Based on where cal fire maps. They're moderate to very high fire severity zones And whether they follow fall in or out of a city's locally adopted Wildland urban interface fire area could prompt insurance concerns as well and From the the way that you're speaking i'm assuming this isn't a collaborative effort. This is just cal fire will Well cal fire is going through a community-based approach soliciting feedback to their current mapping We anticipated it was going to go a lot faster than it did But it has it seems to be crawling right now We have local contacts that we've kept in communication with but we have no projection as to when they will finalize the state's Areas which surround the city And have had no indication that when they're actually going to release the draft maps of what their recommendations are for inside the city borders Thank you councilmember mcdonough Thank you mayor I'm glad you brought up some of the things around the insurance because that's something certainly in district 3 that we've contended with That as we put um, you know different areas and we've expanded the wooey that many of our homeowners are having a hard time And I know it's part of the california legislative platform that we're going to be adopting at another meeting That we've added that to work with the insurance commissioner But I just want to talk about that a little bit when we go for building and and specifically around Evacuation zones because as we expand building in some of these wooey's I know that's something a concern that continues to come up that we're building homes and fire You know kind of in these fire areas And what is part of this plan that mitigates the evacuation zones or are there additional requirements on builders? To making sure that there's proper evacuation zones because you know, I know in the past we've talked about a plan that was from 2018 but since all of these fires are coming forward. I just wanted to know if this plan actually addresses that So the the plan doesn't necessarily address new development But it gives recommendations to what do what to do in specific parts of the city With where development is heading and the need for housing within our community That's something that we can definitely look at when we do the the update to the plan Which is not going to be that far away We'll probably have to actually start working on the development of it in late 2024 or early 2025 at the latest And that's something we can look at right now. There is a process to under sequa and part of the environmental review Is to look at evacuations Um and do that analysis as part of the development process And it's not uncommon right now for the city's traffic engineer myself to have some of those discussions as we're evaluating projects Thank you So we are going to go to public comment, but before we go to public comment I do want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all the work that you do to keep our our residents and our visitors Safe, it is definitely appreciated. I think when we're not in the thick of things Sometimes we we may not really want to deal with it or we have the trauma behind it But you're continually doing the work and getting us where we need to be so thank you in your team Madam city clerk may you please facilitate public comment? Thank you mayor. We are now taking public comments on item 15.3 If you are in the chamber and would like to comment, but have not provided a speaker card or your name Please make your way to the podium You will have two minutes and a countdown timer well alert at the end of that period We will start with dwayne followed by thomas Hello, my name is dwayne dewitt. I'm from roseland. Thank you very much for having looked into the possibility of grazing as a way to help Undertake better care of some of the areas that you call the wooey the wild land urban interface Over in roseland. We have trees Nice little grove right next to houses that could easily catch on fire And we've been talking for years about bringing in livestock either sheep or goats to help with this Clearing of the understory as it's called It's even more important now because the transients that camp in that area have now begun to cut down trees And then they start pit fires And one of those fires could get out of hand and go over to the residences right nearby Which then they might perhaps say well the city Is perhaps libel. There's a sense of vicarious liability Because this problem is not getting solved The fire department has talked with some members of the community And the park superintendent I believe his name is james castrow. He's been very helpful in this idea of Getting the understory under control In the roseland neighborhood as we call it the only way this will happen We believe is if you find somehow to get extra funding because it's always coming down to do you have enough money to do it We believe there are people there are people who will Volunteer to have their sheep or goats come and graze there for free So that's a possibility. We'd like to see you undertake in the future. Thank you for your time Thank you. Thomas, please go ahead Well, uh, do forgive me and thank you Grazing very interesting So there is I would point to you point you out to an institute called the savory institute named after alan savory and He's the grandfather if you will of regenerative grazing And that increases the resilience By increasing the watershed function And by that I mean the sponge function When you have the grazing and he can show you you can look at videos on that He's from he was from africa and he's done tremendous Saving now I want to follow on dwayne's point about roseland and My experience before I moved to santa rosa in 1994. I came here many many times before that but But um, we had several catastrophic fires in san anna and orange county and Where the buildings? Were the fires fuel? So the buildings are the fires fuel? And so I would ask If there is this type of effort and study being done in regard to roseland Because the buildings Are the fuel As if you want to talk to susan gore and you can find out Yeah, some of those trees were but her house burned down and I mean many of those houses just completely eviscerated Due to the fire and and it was really very fortunate that the wind turned around And stopped the fire in The in the northwest quarter there and didn't continue because it would have trapped all those people And if it was to come around it would trap all the people in roseland and that Thank you Is there anyone else wishing to speak on item 15.3? Please make your way to the podium May I see no additional commenters on this item? Thank you before we get a motion. Are there any comments from council members? Seeing none council member o'crepky I'll make a motion to accept the third annual report from the for the community wildfire protection plan a wildfire annex to the local hazard mitigation plan in compliance with the healthy forest restoration act second I have a motion made by council member o'crepky and a second from council member flaming madam city clerk may please call the vote Thank you council member rogers Council member o'crepky. Hi council member mcdonald. Hi council member flaming. Yes council member alvarez Vice mayor stapp. Hi mayor rogers. Hi with a record show this motion passes with seven affirmative votes and council member rogers absent Thank you Moving down to item 17 if I still have my numbers, right? uh, is our written communications For for the evening madam city clerk. Can you please facilitate public comment on this item? We are now taking public comment on item 17 Point one if you are in chamber and would like to comment but have not provided a speaker card or your name Please make your way to the podium. You will have two minutes and a countdown timer. Well alert at the end of that period May I am seeing no one approach the podiums for this item Thank you. Moving on to item 18, which is our second public comment on non-agenda matters Madam city clerk may you please facilitate public comment? Thank you. This is the second opportunity for those who are not able to speak under item 14 non-agenda matters Uh, you will now be afforded the opportunity to speak on non-agenda matters under 18 We will start with anabelle followed by briga followed by jimmy Yes, uh, born and raised here in santa rosa And i'm just following suit with everybody who's asking for ceasefire But i'm asking for ceasefire of the children of santa rosa Specifically those children of color or children who are poor because those are the ones who are usually affected Um, I ask that you hold the srpd in santa rosa city schools Accountable for the violation violating our children's civil rights and the incarceration of our children Many of our children were integral interrogated without consent and many were misled by police officers here Many of these police officers have had teenagers and Asking them to throw up gang signs and to hold band and bandanas up so that they can take photos of them So that they can and discriminate themselves Many of these police officers have picked up some children teenagers from one said neighborhood and have dropped them off in other neighborhoods Why Why do you think, um, obviously so that there could be some kind of conflict there? Um Many have spoken of genocide tonight. Well, we too have suffered genocide Um, which no one seems to speak about and we are on indigenous lands and many of the native americans here have suffered a genocide Uh, we continue to struggle at the hands of police Um legal slavery may have been abolished, but then the prison system was created Um, so our sons and our men have been removed moved from their homes Please think about that when um, we're talking about putting police back into the schools as well Thank you. The next public comment will be briga followed by john or pardon me jimmy than linda Madison doctor I was born and raised here in santa rosa and i'm working here to Take care of the citizens of santa rosa. I'm here to speak in support of a ceasefire resolution Many of my patients are minorities and they already felt marginalized Even before the events of october 7th that have then resulted in a genocide in gaza Now my patients feel actively unsafe here in our community I am devastated by the violence against palestinian people that has been ongoing for the past several months As described by other speakers earlier today Gaza was essentially a concentration camp even before israel started to bomb it and now the palestinian people trapped there Are experiencing unimaginable horror every day As a health care worker who has dedicated my life to keeping my patients safe and healthy The lack of even basic needs like food water or medical supplies in gaza is intolerable As a doctor here in santa rosa, I take care of all people children adults grandparents And the fear and devastation my patients have been experiencing is at an all-time high since the start of this violence My patients the citizens of santa rosa feel unsafe here And I am speaking in support of a ceasefire resolution because I think that santa rosa can demonstrate solidarity with palestinian citizens abroad and with our palestinian citizens here in santa rosa and all minorities here in santa rosa I believe that this ceasefire would show that we are taking a stand against the violence that israel is enacting out there And that this would show that santa rosa does not support genocide and help strengthen our community members here. Thank you Thank you. The next public comment will be from jimmy followed by lynda than joseph jimmy are you in the room? Okay, we'll circle back to jimmy Okay, we'll okay. I'll I'll call him later And we'll move on to lynda Okay, i'm my name is lynda el-yad I'm an israeli-american citizen And i'm wondering How many of you have been to israel? really When I listened to people's comments They just Seem so unrealistic And People are not understanding Why the united states is supporting israel It's a long story. It started before you and I were born And it's important That we differentiate Between the federal government and the local government here in santa rosa Really Foreign policy is not Not What you're here for and I thank you so very much For not putting a ceasefire resolution On your agenda That really is the wise thing to do It's taking up too much of your time even now I understand that another local government that had a ceasefire resolution on their agenda San Bruno it cost the city 35 000 For the meetings and the security et cetera You don't need to do that. This is not your issue It's my issue as an israeli citizen and i'll tell you October 7th With the hamas infiltration of israel hurt Us emotionally even here in santa rosa But we didn't go to our local government and try to fight the war here No We I feel for people who have relatives in palestine and Gaza But it's not here Thank you. The next speaker will be joseph followed by josh joseph are you in the room? Josh all right. Hey um I'm josh and i'm here today to support um a movement towards a ceasefire resolution in santa rosa I encourage us all to keep pushing keep talking Meeting one another. I really believe this can be a point Into political participation for our community or can turn people away from local politics and create a lot of Hatred even for the institutions. I'm josh. I feel quite invested in the conflict going on I consider everyone there israelis and palestinians alike his family. So it's close for me, you know Um, I understand it doesn't seem local to a lot of folks But the more and more people I meet around here the more I notice that it really is a local issue It's in the hearts and minds of people around me. It's important to people in my community And so for that reason, I think there is a way to address this wound that is both global And local and to do it in a local way. I say this is someone who sees the complexity of the issue I understand there's a strong constituency that is looking You know rightfully so out for antisemitism. I'm one of them honestly I worry about the future for jews And I worry about the trajectory the way that global politics are going on the actions of israeli actions of everyone has Not being safe I find it frightening when the term ceasefires become such a loaded term I don't pretend to understand all the intricacies of political signifiers But I will say that a lot of people are really tired of seeing violence. They're scared and they're concerned They're well informed and they're talking. I think there's a way to talk about this publicly Come up with a call for peace and a cease to the violence I'm really happy to see so many folks out here To talk about it using tools of democracy and I hope that this can be an entrance into deeper participation in our local politics Thank you Thank you. Are there any additional public comments on non-agenda matters? Please go ahead. Hi. My name is tess and I was born in san rosa. I've lived here my whole life And this is most definitely a local issue in addition to a global issue There are countless people in our community who are feeling deeply personally affected by the genocide that is happening at this moment We have people in our community who may have just traveled back home from palestine or israel We have people in our community who have families still in palestine and israel We have people in our community who are scared day in and day out because of how they'll be treated here Because of their relationship to palestine and israel I think that the san rosa city council voting on a ceasefire resolution Makes a very strong statement about who we are as san rosen's and what we stand for The comment earlier about the genocide that existed here Is very relevant as we still fail to acknowledge all of the ways that it lasts until today And how different communities are marginalized based off of practices that legislatures like yourself will put in place So, please i'd ask you to take a leap out maybe get a little bit uncomfortable And and take a stand and pass a ceasefire resolution for our city our constituents need it We're hurting out here and we need to know that the people who we put into these seats Hear us and stand with us so that we can be safe Thank you Thank you Any additional comments on non-agenda matters? Did jimmy join the room? Okay, mayor. There's no one else approaching the podiums for public comment at this time All right and seeing no additional public comment In nothing else on the agenda. We will now adjourn the meeting. Thank you