 for those of you joining the meeting via telephone. The meeting will start shortly. Thank you. Hello, Stephanie, are you ready to go once we get a quorum? Yes, I am. Great, thank you. We'll wait a few more minutes. Okay, Stephanie, if you're ready, I'll go ahead and call this November 17th, Santa Rosa City Council meeting to order. Could we have a roll call please? Council member Dowd. Here. Council member Chibbitts. Here. Council member Sawyer. Council member Sawyer. Council member Rogers. Here. Council member Oliveras. Here. Vice Mayor Fleming. Vice Mayor Fleming. Mayor Schwedhelm. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of Vice Mayor Fleming and Council member Sawyer. I'm sorry about that. Thank you. And let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member Sawyer. Great, thank you. So I have some housekeeping reminders that we're all getting used to. Council members, keep your audio on mute unless you're speaking. Staff will remain muted until needing to speak. As members of the public join the meeting, you will be participating as an attendee. Your microphone and camera will be muted. Only today's panelists will be viewed during the meeting. If you're calling in from a telephone and choose to speak during the public comments portion of today's agenda, for privacy concerns, the host will be renaming your viewable phone number to resident in the last four digits of your phone number. The City of Santa Rosa is committed to creating a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption. Will not tolerate any hateful speech or actions that are well staffed to monitor that everyone is participating respectfully or they'll be removed if necessary, will also immediately end the meeting. Madam City Clerk, could you please explain how public comments will be heard at today's meeting? Thank you, Mayor. After each agenda item is presented, the mayor will ask for council comments and then open it up for public comment. The host and Zoom will be lowering all hands until public comment is open for that agenda item. Once the mayor has called for public comment, the mayor will announce for the public to raise their hand if they wish to speak on the specific agenda item. If you are calling in to listen to the meeting audibly, you can dial star nine to raise your hand. The host will then call on the public who have raised their hands. Public comment will be limited to three minutes and a timer will appear on the screen for the council and the public to see. Once all live public comments have been heard, the meeting host will play voicemail public comments. If you provide a live public comment on an agenda item but also submitted an email e-comment or recorded a voice message public comment, your email, e-comment or voice message public comment will not be duplicated, read or played during the meeting. Additionally, there are two public comment periods on today's agenda to speak on non-agenda matters, items 13 and 17. This is a time when any person may address the council on matters not listed on this agenda but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council. Thank you, Madam City Clerk. And I see that council member Sawyer has just joined us. Mr. City Manager, item 3.1. Yeah, 3.1 report on public input for use of PG&E settlement funds, Allen Alton Interim Chief Financial Officer presenting. Good afternoon, Mayor Schwedhelm and members of the council. This item is indeed a report out of all the public comment that we have or input that we've received over the past couple of months, leading up as or after we received the settlement money. So next slide, please. The agenda for today, I've broken up the presentation into three sections. So I'll go over a little bit of a process overview, kind of where we started from and where we are now. We'll then go through the virtual community input meetings that we had and then the digital survey results. And then after that, I'll finish up with some next steps as I see going forward. Next slide, please. So in terms of the process overview, we received a $95 million settlement from PG&E and we received that money in July of 2020. Oversight of how the money would be spent was assigned to the long-term financial policy and audit subcommittee in July at the council goal setting that we had there. So that committee, which is a council subcommittee that has three council members on it, received a few presentations, one in August, one in September, and then one just last week, where we've talked about the potential projects for this and then last week's meeting, we went over the input that we had received. We did hold three virtual community meetings. Those were on September 24th and then we paused them for about a month due to the glass fire and rejoined them on October 21st and then the 22nd. We also did a community-wide digital survey that was going from middle of September to the end of October. So the whole point of this was the council wanted to receive as much information as possible from the community. And so that's why we had those meetings to be able to reach out to not only fire survivors, but the community as a whole. Now, moving away from this meeting and going forward, the Public Safety Council subcommittee will receive a report on the 23rd by the fire department, which is the Wildland Resiliency and Response Strategic Plan there will be a study session on December 8th, where we'll talk about, well actually planning and economic development, we'll talk about housing investment opportunities potentially for the use of PG&E settlement funds. And then we'll be back to the council and study session on the 15th to do a preparedness mitigation and resiliency project study session. And in that, we'll kind of hone down on some of the broader projects into more defined projects with descriptions and better cost estimates. Some of those things that we've looked at that are not only in the city's control, but also that we'll need to go out and work with our partners, be it at the state level or even company partners to look at things like traffic signal, signalization and evacuation routes, street and highway widening, radio infrastructure, and the need for fire stations and all that. And those are things that are really directed around the mitigation and for future fire disasters. Next slide please. So on the August and September meetings of the finance committee, we went over a kind of a list of potential uses of the settlement funds. And the reason for that is that we, didn't wanna just throw $95 million on the table and say, have fun. So what we tried to do is to look at fire-related uses for those monies, especially those that are unfunded, ones that we've been denied through FEMA, ones that are outside of FEMA scope and those types of things. So we were trying to generate something that would work for both the fire surviving areas and the community as a whole and to kind of start the conversation going forward of how these funds could be divided up. So again, we were using it as not as decision points but more of a conversation point. And then so moving on to the next slide please. So in addition to the fire resiliency projects, we had also just received the long range financial forecast update that showed how low our reserves had run over the years a lot due to these emergencies and other needs. So we wanted to have that out there as a potential and then other community needs that have come up including seed money for the renewable enterprise this is actually matching funds from what the county has put forward to jumpstart affordable housing in the downtown and discussions of the Roseland library which just arranged costs there. Next slide please. So then we started our community outreach part and so next slide. So again, the intent was to receive as much input as possible from both fire survivors and from the community as a whole. So we received emails and letters and we met with employee labor groups in addition to moving forward with the digital survey that we'll talk about and the community meetings. So the three community meetings we had, the first one was with the fire survivors in the copy park area and the fire impact in mobile home communities. We then on October 21st, we met with the fire survivors in Found Grove, Hidden Valley, Montecito and Oakmont neighborhood areas and then on the 22nd, we had one that was for all community members within San Rosa. Next slide please. So and then in addition, we had press releases, multiple bilingual posts on our social media platforms. We put announcements in city connection, bilingual ads in LaBose, we had a website page dedicated to getting input and again, we had this direct outreach to fire survivor block out. Next slide. So in all that, we began our virtual community meetings and all three of these really took on the same format. We had a panel of city staff that were subject matter experts. We were there to kind of run through an overview of the funds, but also to be able to answer questions from the people attending the meeting. So we would go through a brief presentation and then we would open it up for comments. We took down those comments, recorded them. All the meetings were recorded and then we answered whatever questions that may have come up. So next slide. So like I said, the first meeting was with the Coffee Park fire survivors in the impacted mobile home communities. We received five comments there. They were mostly around fixing the fire damages and the unmet needs in the Coffee Park area to building fire resiliency, to coming up with things like a sidewalk reimbursement program and to make that community stronger and safer going forward. Then the second meeting that we had on October 21st. Next slide, please. We had about 14 attendees for that one and had six comments, a lot the same as the ones in the Coffee Park areas. Really focused on preventing future fires using technology when possible, including drones and sensors. There was a call for rebuilding fire station five, but really at least the message that came across to me was that the number one priority must be to fix the fire damages before anything else. I think that was a universal sentiment that went through that particular meeting. So next slide, please. So then our third meeting was the citywide meeting on October 22nd. There were 42 attendees for that, and we recorded 21 comments that were rather wide-ranging. There were several that were in support of fire prevention and rebuilding the fire damage areas, but then this is where we heard more of the community projects, such as investing in Fiverr, going through to the premises, Rosalind Library, funding for the Southeast Greenway Land acquisition, a match in the community, or the county's red contribution to downtown housing, putting money toward affordable housing, rental assistance, and programs that would protect the vulnerable, including undocumented individuals. So next slide. And then I think we can just go to the next one after this. So again, we did the digital survey from September 15th to October 25th. We had over 3,000 respondents, which was great. I was looking at our notes and our initial measure to see if we did well was that if we got 1,000 respondents. So the fact that we got 3,000 was great. We also ran a Spanish survey along with it, and we had 32 respondents there. So the survey consisted of background questions, such as were Santa Rosa resident during 2017, and did you do the fire damage to residents? Do you live there now, or do you live in Santa Rosa now? Then they also had a number of ranked choice questions. And a lot of those were built off of things that we had heard through numbers, council meetings and the other input that came through, both from a fire resiliency standpoint, but also a community-wide project. The questions were rather broad-based. You don't really talk about specific projects, or maybe they do have somewhat of specificity along with it, but even at that, we're not really defining anything. The idea was to try to get general project ideas that we can move into and then develop projects there. So the way that I have this moving forward is, we'll do the English responses, and then the next slide with that will be the Spanish responses. These are in the order that the survey was developed. So ranked choice question number one was question number one on the survey, and therefore. And then at the end of it, I provided some summaries of both the English and the Spanish results of all the ranked choice questions. So again, we start off with the respondents lived in Santa Rosa city limits during the fires, and 85% of those respondents did. Next slide, please. And 94% of the Spanish speaking respondents resided in Santa Rosa city limits during those wildfires. Next slide. So then we kind of, we asked where they are currently living and of the English speaking respondents, Northeast Santa Rosa was the largest area that they responded. This is just general information that we had just for backup and contacts as we developed these. So next slide, please. The Spanish survey responses, again, you're kind of seeing a mix of Southwest and Northwest Santa Rosa as being the most predominant areas where the survey respondents are currently living. Next slide. So asking if the home Santa Rosa home or business was destroyed or what impacts they had specifically from the fires, 80% of them did not have that direct impact of the English and of the Spanish, it would attract right about the same with 75% not having that impact. Then asking on the next slide if the individuals currently reside in the city and 84% do, and in the Spanish speaking responses, 87% did it. Then finally asking whether they lived in the high-risk fire areas, the wild land or urban interface, only 35% do and within the Spanish survey responses, 19% do. So the majority of them do not. So then moving on to the ranked choice questions and again, the way that I'll go ahead and put these out is that we have those that strongly agree and agree and those that disagree and strongly disagree. I add both of those together to kind of give you the piece of how folks are responding to these questions of whether agreeing or disagreeing. I kind of leave the neither agree nor disagree alone on this. So just asking if the PG&E settlement funds should be the first used or used first for the rebuild projects that have not yet recovered or are still unfunded. And of that 76% of the English respondents agreed with that with 10% disagreeing. And for the survey and Spanish survey responses, it was 78% agreed with that with that those money should be used first for those projects and 9% disagreed with that. So then moving on to vegetation management and fuel reduction in Santa Rosa and the Louis, 89% of the English responders agreed that funds should go to those types of projects, whereas 4% disagreed with that. And for the Spanish survey responders, it was 97% of those did with nobody disagreeing with that and about three people not agreeing or disagreeing. Having evacuation route construction improvements in the Louis, for that the English responders, 69% of them agreed, whereas 10% disagree. And in the Spanish survey, it was 91% of those responded that they agreed with that, whereas 3% disagree. So in terms of home-heartening incentive or assistance programs, which would make structures more dispensable to fire, the English responses were 54% of them agreed with that, whereas 19% disagreed. And with the survey, Spanish survey responders, it was 88% of those agreed with no one disagreeing with that. Then moving on to the wildfire readiness and emergency preparedness community education. For the English responses, there was 61% of those agreed to put money toward those types of programs, whereas 15% disagreed with that. And for the Spanish responses, it was 94% agree with it, with 3% disagree. Then moving toward a more community-focused project that jumped starting affordable housing through incentive funding, this 38% of the English-speaking respondents agreed with moving money toward that, whereas 43% did not. And for the Spanish survey responses, however, there were 53% agreed with 38% disagree. Then looking toward strengthening the resiliency of the city's infrastructure, such as the installation of backup generators or micro grids, all designed to continue our functionality of our critical facilities, 79% of the English responding surveyors agreed with funding those types of projects, whereas 7% disagreed. And in the Spanish survey, it was 84% agree with that, with no one disagree. And finally, support, or not finally, but support for businesses and workforce recovery loans and grant programs. We went from 51% agreeing on the English survey to 22% on the disagreeing with that. And 47% agreeing in the Spanish survey, with 41% disagreeing with that. New community assets, such as libraries, community centers, pools, those types of things, only 26% of the English survey responded, they were related out with 50% disagreeing with the use of funds toward those types of projects. However, in the Spanish survey, it's 47% agreed with that type of funding or those types of projects to 44% disagree. In terms of putting money toward homeless services, 34% of the responders in the English survey agreed with using money toward homeless services, whereas 50% disagreed with that. And in the Spanish survey, 42% agreed with that, with 45% disagree. Repairing roads not associated with fire recovery, 33% thought that money should be used to that against 45% that disagreed with that. And that would be roads, repairs outside of the fire area. In the Spanish survey, however, 72%, I did agree with using money for that, with 6% disagreeing. We asked about broadband or internet for all through the addition of fiber optic or wireless solutions. And again, we kind of kept this wide ranging, 44% of the English surveyors did agree with using money toward that, with 33% disagreeing. In the Spanish survey, however, it was 41% agreed to funding those services with 44% disagreeing. Then, and this is kind of similar to one earlier, but in doing park improvements such as construction and new parks or all weather sports fields or other amenities like that, we had 28% of the English responders agreeing that that would be a good use of funds versus 48% disagreeing. And we had, from the Spanish survey, it was 50% agreed with that and 41% disagreeing with funds going into that area. So moving into the next one, we had all those slides to kind of show you a graphic representation of what we have right here, which is basically every question I put a comment for a column for those that agreed. And again, these are strongly agreeing and agreeing and in the disagree column, they are the strongly disagreeing and disagreeing. So totaling those up and rounding them for you. We have all of the questions and on a nice summary form. And then on the next slide, we have those same responses or the same chart for the Spanish responses. So the next slide. We also asked some open-ended questions and for those, we had about 1400 over that responses that the test on a number of the themes that we had in the digital survey, obviously, they were able to expand more on what they wanted for that. So given the volume of that, I don't include it in here, but it is attached in the long with the staff report item of the, I think it was like a 200 plus page report of the digital survey, all of those responses are included in there. So next page, we'll get to the next steps. And I mentioned earlier that we have a public safety subcommittee coming up on the 23rd. We have a council study session on December 8th and another one on December 15th. And all of those, they'll talk about projects that could be used with these settlement funds. So it'll be a little bit more in focus, especially the one on the 15th, where we'll go through a number of projects that I've mentioned already before, where we'll have more details and costs along with that. So with that, that's the end of my presentation and I'll take any questions that you may have. All right, thank you for that presentation, Alan. Bring it back to council. Any questions on that presentation? Mr. Dow. Just curious, is there any state or federal funds potentially possible to help with the wild urban interface vegetation management and a depiction to what might be put there from the PG&E settlement funds? So this is a council member, Dow. This is Sean McGlynn, city manager. I think there are funds, we'll get into some more detail, but those funds tend to be competitive funds. And with the spate of other communities applying for those funds, there is some restrictions on how much a particular community can receive. And we're in protracted conversations with FEMA, for example, on Fire Station 5. We filed a second appeal supported by the state on that project about the relocation of that project. So there are funds as we go through and that deeper dive on the project specifically will be illustrating some of that. But there is also possibility of not getting funded for some of those projects. And then you have to wait for extended periods of time. And you may have to go through federal requirements as it relates to those dollars as well, which can delay those projects even further. Thank you. Council, any additional questions? Not seeing any virtual or real hands up. Okay, we're not taking public comment on item 3.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Madam host, would you facilitate public comment on item 3.1, please? Thank you, mayor, we'll do. Account down timer is now on the screen for the convenience of council and members of the public participating via Zoom. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak when the countdown begins. Please make sure to unmute yourself when you're invited to do so. Your microphone will be muted at the end of your comment or at the end of the countdown. The first public comment will be from William followed by Dia. William, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? Yes, thank you very much. Thank you, please identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. Thank you. My name is Willie Brums. I really appreciate the city council and the city putting together the survey. I think it's great that you are encouraging public participation and engagement. I would caution that the survey is seemingly more anecdotal than directional and just wanted to really emphasize that we really need during these times to be standing up sustainable programs. Certainly infrastructure is important but given the times that we're in with COVID and wildfires, really the city as we know is in need and certainly we can't look at fixing potholes as an infrastructure project. We really need to make sure that these substantial funds are not just used and done but used towards programs that are gonna be sustainable for the city and really are going to encourage the type of group that we need for us moving forward. On a related matter, I also wanna applaud the city indicating that you will be pursuing a civil suit against PG&E regarding the concage fire. That of course will also likely produce additional dollars for the city but I would just encourage the city council to consider how that suit can be leveraged to put pressure on PG&E to make sure that they're driving towards safety outcomes. If this just ends up being another payment it will be a lost opportunity to turn PG&E around. Certainly the cow fire report indicates that there is multiple areas where PG&E was negligent and is recommending criminal charges. The only way that we're gonna really be able to move PG&E in a direction where they're gonna be providing additional safety and security for residents is to really make sure that these things are pursued through the CPUC, through Judge Alsop to make sure that these lead to a safer PG&E prior to the campfire. In Butte County there was a honey fire, it was a small fire and the county at that time settled with PG&E for 1.5 million and did not push for those types of changes. And that was right before the campfire. And of course there were much more things that needed to be done by PG&E to make sure that the campfire didn't happen. But we should not miss this opportunity with the Kincaid Fire to make sure that we're pushing PG&E to make the changes that they need to and to hold them accountable and not just look for the dollars moving forward. Thank you very much. And again, thank you for your time. I'm here, followed by Steve. Yeah, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? Yes, I can. Thank you. Please identify yourself public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. Sure. My name is Thea Hensel. I'm with the Southeast Greenway Campaign. Before I begin, I'd like to ask Mr. Alton to change the reference you have to funding the Southeast Greenway. That was on slide for the meeting number three, the city-wide feedback. What we are asking for is money to buy the property that is zoned for development. The Greenway portion of that 57 acres is going to be funded by the money that Sonoma Land Trust and the Greenway campaign have raised and will continue to raise. So I just wanna have that clarified before we move forward because that would be a gross misunderstanding of what we're really asking for. As you know, I'm a Greenway advocate, but I also see the great need for housing stock to increase across the spectrum. That's everything from alleviating homelessness to affordable housing. The housing crunch in the county has been greatly exacerbated by the fires that have had a trickle down effect that includes rental availability as well. We are advocating for affordable housing to be built in Bennett Valley that can encompass all the amenities that the Greenway has to offer. We understand that building such housing can be attractive to affordable development developers if the land is deeply discounted. That brings me to the request to allocate money from the settlement to purchase 10 of the 57 acres, the portion that is zoned for mid-density and mixed use housing as part of the Caltrans package. All 57 acres, according to Caltrans are going to be sold in a single transaction, both the park lands as well as the zoned land. Your action can not only move the Greenway project ahead, but can add to the city housing stock at the same time. So we hope you'll consider this request. Thank you very much. Thank you, Thea. The next public comment will be from Steve, followed by Robert. Steve, I've been able to your speaking commissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? I do, thank you. And you please identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so when your time begins now. My name is Steve Verbinovich. Good afternoon, Mayor Schwet-Hellman City Council members. I'm a Santa Rosa resident and I serve as the chair of the Waterways Advisory Committee. Please consider this request for funds from the PG&E settlement for use on the Princemont Memorial Greenway. I'm requesting $2 million from the PG&E settlement. Today, the Greenway serves many communities such as open space, fish and wildlife habitat. It's a major connector to our bike path and walking path system and it's a critical link of the community to downtown and Railroad Square from neighborhoods across the city. The Waterways Advisory Committee took a tour of the Greenway in October of last year and was very concerned about conditions along the Greenway. Built over 15 years ago at a cost of approximately $27 million. The Greenway has fallen in disrepair and the result has been a deterioration of its infrastructure, including vandalism, damaged rock walls, paths, garbage cans, public art, benches, signage and lighting as well as deferred maintenance and deterioration of landscaping which is due to an inadequate water supply system on the Greenway. City staff and community volunteers have done their best in dealing with these issues but it's essential to correct many problems that have developed over the years. Homelessness has also impacted the Greenway. In addition, isolation of the Greenway from surrounding land uses is an issue that needs to be addressed. These problems has resulted in the Greenway being isolated and undesirable for many community members. While some people do use it to walk and ride bikes, its role has been diminished over time and many people avoid it and consider it unsafe to use. If we want to attract new housing development downtown, we need to make this a dynamic part of our community. If we don't act, we risk jeopardizing much of that $27 million. The funds will be used to recommend needed improvements, provide cost estimates as well as to fund the necessary work to make the Greenway the centerpiece of our downtown. I'd also like to lend my support today to the request from the Southeast Greenway Campaign for funds from the settlement. This project would fund the purchase of land for over 240 dwelling units, a critical need in our community. Coupled with a land for open space, it's a true once in a lifetime opportunity. Thank you very much. Thank you, Steve. The next public comment will be from Robert followed by Eric. Robert, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? I can. Thank you. Please identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so when your time begins now. Good afternoon to the mayor and council. I am Bob Geiser. I'm co-chair of the Southeast Greenway Campaign Committee. We are requesting the council consider funding the acquisition from Keltrans of the 10 acres of the 57 acre Greenway property that are zoned for 244 housing units in medium and medium high densities. City staff has obtained a preliminary estimate of 12 to $14 million for the sales price of the development land, but the price tag may be less after the formal appraisals and negotiations are all done. After acquisition, the sale or transfer of this land from the city to private housing developers will give the city the ability to lower the per unit land cost. This would allow many new affordable housing units to be built directly implementing the city's housing goals. Since Keltrans wants the city to acquire the entire Greenway property at the same time, including the 47 acres plan for city and county parks, funding the purchase of the developable parcels will also allow the acquisition of all this park land to proceed. This brings us one giant step closer to creating an asset for the entire community, a large accessible green open space, the kind of place needed more than ever in these stressful days. Finally, I have to note the reported survey results include public support of city funding to jumpstart affordable housing and to create new parks. Acquiring the Southeast Greenway property serves both of these objectives quite well. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you, Robert. The next public comment will be from Eric. Eric, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? Yes, I can. Thank you. Please identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. Good afternoon, mayor and city council. This is Eric Frazier. So I wanted to comment on a couple of things that I saw in the presentation. One is where things were not combined appropriately for statistical relevance and the other is where things were combined and probably should be separated. Let me explain. You reported back that you did the survey in Spanish and that was great. Of course, we want outreach across the city and we don't want any barriers for people to participate. But statistically, you should have combined percentages bandied about when you're talking about a group of 30 people versus a group of 3,000 people. We're one city, everybody in the city was asked to provide input and so those responses should have just been combined. There's really no logical reason for you to have additional significance applied to the Spanish speaking responses versus the English speaking responses. Another place where perhaps there's some sort of issue or problem is where you combine sidewalk repairs with street repairs. So with the sidewalk issue, as you know, this is an issue that I've studied every which way and I'm still looking for a solution that actually creates a permanent repair to damage sidewalks throughout the city. Certainly in the burn zone, there's impacts there that we're not experienced in other parts of the city. I certainly understand that. I don't necessarily understand all the inputs that went into recovery of individual private owners, private landowners in the sidewalk repairs. But I do know that sidewalks are separate from streets and certainly we have a city code that spells out the owner's responsibility for sidewalk repairs. I'll request again as I've requested along that we actually have a more comprehensive approach to those sidewalk repair issues that occur that are obvious throughout the city. And so I would ask that you just look at the sidewalk separately and create a more robust approach so that property owners throughout the city can participate in permanent repairs. And that participation will include, of course, their costs coming forward because after all, the city code specifies that property owners are responsible for sidewalk repairs. At any rate, I'm sure all this can be straightened out. I appreciate your time this afternoon but please pay attention to those survey results and don't skew the results without meaning. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. The next public comment will be from Eddie. Eddie, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? I do see the timer on my screen. Thank you. Please identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. Thank you for the opportunity. Eddie Alvarez, Southwest Center, Rosa. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council, for taking this time to really hear from the community. I appreciate that my fellow San Rosens are advocating for issues and projects that continue to beautify their neighborhood. What I am here to petition for is an opportunity to bring our neighborhood that has zero libraries, zero cultural centers, infrastructure that definitely needs improving. So what I'm asking for is an opportunity to bring us up to par, to dedicate funds to a community that has hung without for decades, if not ever. And so when we talk about these funds, I would hope that we are looking at investments that would give us the greatest amount of return. So again, I do respect my fellow San Rosens for advocating on their behalf, but what we are asking for is something. We have children who do not have a cultural center and now with COVID, we do not even have a headquarters to organize ourselves, to be able to disseminate information to the rest of our community. And I think that's proven by the 30 responses that you did receive compared to the thousands in the English language. So I believe that the separation of both Spanish and English is actually very important to demonstrate this and to show the lack of not so much involvement, but the difficulties of disseminating the information. So I do appreciate that you maintained the numbers separate to show where we're lacking. And why it is so important that we do fund the services being requested by Southwest Center Rosa, and specifically the library in Rosa. And I do appreciate your time. And that is all. Thank you very much. Bye. Thank you, Eddie. And we are taking public comment on item 3.1 to report on public input for use of PG&E settlement funds to raise your hand via telephone dial star nine. Next public comment will be from Jim. Jim, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? Hi, Jim W. I have enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone? There you go. Thank you. Please identify yourself a public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. Jim Wall and the director of development for pep housing here in Santa Rosa. Thank you, mayor and the city council for taking the time to go over this today. I just want to introduce you to the property that is very unique to the seniors here in Santa Rosa that we have purchased the Scottish Right Building, which we are proposing to repurpose for 26 units for low income seniors. That will be a federally disaster property that will deal with fires from all three fires and COVID and any other type of disasters that come from here on out. The property is shovel ready. It's fully entitled. It will cost half of what new construction will cost and can be completed in seven months. I said seven months. So starting from today, we have done quite a bit of work. We've done a lot line adjustment. There are other large things that we have done and pep, as you know, is a senior specialist, but the $1.5 million request is for gap, is the gap funding that we need to get over the hump to get this unique project going. And I truly appreciate the opportunity and I hope that you'll look at pep for supporting the low income seniors that were impacted by the fires. Thank you for the time. Thank you, Jim. And we're taking public comment on item 3.1. And I'm not seeing any additional hands be raised. Are you okay if I move along to the voice message public comment? Absolutely, thank you. Study session 3.1 comment, Dwayne Dewitt from Roseland. This is an opportune time to involve all of the city in the discussions for how this funding will be spent. It's been said that there was some sort of a survey done, but talking to people in the new districts 1 and 7 on the west side of the city, most folks haven't heard about this. Today, this request is that you not move forward until the new council members for district 1 and district 7 are fully impaneled and public hearings are held in front of those elected officials, with the public being able to participate in person, not in these zoomed out virtual exclusion situations where you must comment before items without having heard what the discussions really are. This whole system smacks of an anti-democratic approach. Please do not make any decisions anytime soon on this funding. Once the new council members are impaneled, please make sure that the funding is spread equally across all seven districts so that each district gets a portion of these funds, even though districts 1 and 7 didn't burn in the Tubbs Fire, they absorbed a lot of the impacts by having people come to those areas, especially those who've lost homes, especially the homeless, impacting district 1 and Roseland especially hard. It's really important that the city begin to show that there is some sense of equity and that there is some environmental justice in how this spending will take place. Once again, the request is wait until after district 1 and district 7 elected officials are fully impaneled and then able to have a public hearing to hear all of the things that could be possible with the funding. In Roseland, roads have been not repaired for decades. Lots of things haven't been taken care of, always with the excuse, oh, well, we'll get to it, then the fires came. Then after the fires, oh, there's more fires. That's gonna be in our future. We need to plan ahead and help district 1 and 7 with parity to the other parts of the city, especially downtown, which gets all the gravy. Thank you. That concludes public comment on item 3.1. Hey, thank you very much. Bring it back to council. Looks like we have a couple of questions. Mr. Tibbets. Thank you, Mayor. My question is for, I think generally the staff but Alan and Sue, I asked a few meetings back what options we would have for investing based on a conversation I had with your predecessor, Sue. She, one time I thought, I think she had said that settlement funds were the only funds that could be invested outside of a leaf. Was there ever any conclusion to that question? Sorry, I'm having some technical difficulties there. So, no, I don't have an answer for you this evening, but certainly we'll look into it and get back to you. And Alan, I don't know if you have an answer this evening. I don't. Okay, yeah, for me, I'd really like to be able to answer that question. I think for me that that question is foundational to the conversation we're having here. What's interesting about watching this presentation is that there's clearly a lot of needs out there in the community. There's a lot of people who have a lot of different ideas about how it should be spent. And even though we have $95 million, it seems like a lot. It's not a lot in comparison to that community's request. And I just really don't want to see, and this is for all my colleagues where I'm coming from, I really don't want to see this money be flashed in the pant money. This is a gift that, well, I shouldn't use the term gift. This is a remedy that is gonna come in a sum of money that we are never gonna see over again. And I think wisely investing it or issuing it through loans to the best of our ability is gonna set up this city for success well beyond all of our tenure on this council. And I hope we can try to view it from that perspective. But yeah, Sue Allen, if you could figure that out, that would be wonderful. And I apologize that I did not. I should have looked into it as well. Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to reiterate and Allen, thank you for the presentation. I did have a chance to see at the long-term finance meeting. I think that next week will be the most instructive when we actually are able to have a substantive conversation about what wildfire protection looks like, what the costs to implement the community wildfire protection plan or what a fuel load reduction program will actually cost and how it will be constructed. I know that we aren't ready to have that discussion tonight. But I think when we talk about the desires from the community and you see it in the survey results, a desire to feel safe in our community, discussing how and how much it's going to cost is going to really determine what else we can invest in. And I say it that way because for me, that is the priority coming out of this is you've got your fire recovery projects that the money was intended for. You have resiliency in creating an atmosphere where people, whether it's our businesses or our residents, feel safe to operate in our city and that's going to be a substantial cost. And then we have everything else. And I know that there are a lot of priorities that are out there. I know that there are a lot of investments that people want to make, but I'm looking forward to that discussion because I think that price tag, how much that's going to cost for us to be able to save the community that we are investing in the way that we need to for them to feel safe is going to be important. And so I just wanted to put those comments back out there is that we can have a more full conversation next week when we see those numbers. Vice Mayor Fleming. Thank you. And probably to the point of both Mr. Tibbets and Mr. Rogers, I was wondering if any of the initiatives that were looked at by the finance department were analyzed for return on investment? So I know that it's not easy to do this type of thing but we do know that certain things like library sidewalks, you know, communal public spaces and so forth do have an outsize housing development childcare. We know that those things do. So were any of these analyzed for that? So stepping in on Mr. Alton's behalf this simply was a report out on the community survey. We're going to be coming back with those conversations Vice Mayor. And so that will be one of our points of reference is what's the return on investment? That's exactly sort of the conversation earlier with the fire station, right? Do you delay taking an action now to bank on return from the federal government? There have been plenty of communities that have said this federal process is too long and the risk factor is too high. And those are the kinds of conversations we'll be having with the council as we bring back these additional study session items but it's a point well taken and we'll do that. This was a report on the community's input session and we will definitely bring back that investment and the rate of return on those investments. Okay. And I was curious to know why the Spanish language responses, one were outnumbered by a hundred to one or more than that rather and also why they were separated out? I can't tell you why only 32 responded. We did, I think I thought we did a good job of trying to get the message out and as much as possible. I guess we could have done more, but I'm not, I think we did a good job there. So I don't know why that many or that few of people responded. There was no rhyme or reason for separating them out. I thought we went and had a Spanish survey. I show it, I wasn't looking for anything of statistical value. I understand Mr. Frazier's point and I accept that, but there wasn't my intent to look at this as a true statistical analysis of a survey. This was to provide you as much information as possible. And I do appreciate that and I wanna be very clear. I was not responding to Mr. Frazier's point in any way. His point was that we overvalued the input from the Spanish language community and that's not where I'm coming from. I was just curious as to what the methodology or the reasoning why behind it. And I think that perhaps going forward if it were possible, it's probably impossible actually would be a more of a geographic distribution of responses than by language or something like that. But thank you for all of your hard work and collecting well over 3,000 responses. Okay, council, any additional questions or comments? Vice Mayor, do you need to just go up again? Mr. Hall of Heirs. Thank you Mayor, my question is, do we have some hard stops as far as timelines in this process? And will there or could there be another effort to reach out to more of our Spanish speaking community? So we will be taking these notes under advisement council member and we will always do additional work. And so I think there is work to be done. This is our first foray into this type of survey tool for this type of product and we're learning as we go and we will make adjustments and we will continue to do outreach throughout the city to every community of interest to get feedback. Thank you very much. Okay, Mr. Alton, before I make any comments, do you have any, were you seeking any specific or additional information from council other than just presenting the information that you have done so? So just presenting the information. Okay, so I would just like to thank you for hearing this information again the second time like Mr. Rogers and Mr. Sorry, we're here at the first time with long-term finance planning and audit subcommittee but it is just information. And I would just offer to anyone who is listening as everyone on council has seen, you can send direct emails to city council to share with us what your priorities are. The city has been trying to get as much information as possible out there. There's plenty of opportunities and it's not over yet. So if there is additional needs or interests that you think would be of value, please send that to any member of the Santa Rosa city council and I know staff has also received that information. So thank you so much for this presentation. I look forward to some of the presentations we'll be having in the coming weeks. So with that, we will recess and re-adjourn at four o'clock. Re-adjourn at four o'clock, thank you. All right, Madam City Clerk, are you ready to resume? Yes, I am. Okay, we'll reconvene the November 17th version of the Santa Rosa city council meeting. Madam City Clerk, could you please do a roll call? Yes, thank you, mayor. Council member Dowd, council member Tibbetts, council member Sawyer, council member Rogers, council member Olivares, council member Dowd, vice mayor Fleming, Mayor Schwedhelm, council member Tibbetts, have you joined us? Okay, let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member Tibbetts. All right, thank you. Mr. McGlynn, anything else to report on the study session we just experienced? Nothing additional to report. Thank you, Madam City Attorney, would you like to report on the closed session or would you like me to? I was not present in the closed session, so yes, I would ask that you give the report out. Thank you. Thank you. So we did have a closed session regarding the city manager evaluation and city council members provided feedback to the city manager, no action was taken. We have no proclamations. Staff briefings, Mr. City Manager, do we have any staff briefings for the CDB? Yes, we do. We do not have anything on 7.1 and 7.2, but we do, I believe I'm introducing Kimplin Robbins, assistant fire marshal for a glass fire update on 7.3. Good afternoon, mayor, vice mayor, council members. My name is Kimplin Robbins and the assistant fire marshal with the Santa Rosa Fire Department. I along with assistant fire marshal Paul Lowenthal are leading the city's degree task force. Starting with the situational updates, seven of our phase one properties were not able to be completed due to safety hazards outlined by the state's household hazardous waste removal contractor. So the task force is stepping in and we will be utilizing the city's hazardous waste contractor to complete the sweeps for our residents. This will complete the HHW removal in the city and allow our residents to move forward with selecting either the state's debris removal program or utilizing the private debris removal process. Yesterday, the county in coordination with the city's debris task force hosted an informational and Q&A zoom session with local contractors for the private fire debris removal program. The meeting was well received and we had approximately 60 contractors in attendance. Cal recicle was the guest speaker. The panel included the county's environmental health director and the city's chief building official, Jesse Oswald, who are both on answer any questions. The city and county are also planning another community town hall meeting on December 2nd to update our fire survivors on debris removal and recovery activities. In response to council member Tibbetts question regarding the public facing map, the debris task force is transmitting information and data to the county and we should have the map up by next week. A link to the map will be found at srcity.org forward slash glass fire recovery. To date, the county has received 38 right of entry forms, six of which are in the city. The county has also received 19 private debris removal applications with one of those being in the city. Of the 1,152 affected parcels, we have approved 41 requests to dispose of their debris without going through the phase two process. And this debris includes burn trampolines, fences and the like. And with that, that concludes my report. If there are any questions, thanks. Thank you so much for that report and keeping us surprised to the progress. Council, any questions on that report? Not seen any. We're now gonna take public comment on item 7.3, the glass fire update. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Madam host, would you facilitate any public comment on item 7.3? Mayor, as you can see, a timer is before you for the convenience of the council and members of the public participating today. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute yourself when invited to do so. Your microphone will be muted at the conclusion of your comment or at the end of the countdown timer. Mayor, I'm not seeing any hands being raised via Zoom for public comment. Are you okay if I move along to the voice message public comment received? Absolutely. The empowerment, Dwayne DeWitt from Roseland. The COVID information may be given out by newspapers and televisions, but it doesn't appear that there's a lot of people in district one, at least, who've been paying attention to the public gatherings. Unfortunately, at Southwest Community Park and at the Roseland Village shopping area, large groups of people are getting together, no social distancing, no masks, perhaps spreading COVID and then down the road, we'll be asking for help to perhaps be cured of COVID. There needs to be a better approach. I think that might be able to occur if you actually have a true community empowerment and community engagement approach in which you were involving the various people right at the grassroots, instead of the talking heads, various bureaucrats and various departments saying they have a plan, an example of working with perhaps the Southwest Health Action Committee, which now is all of Santa Rosa supposedly, and yet it's zoomed out. It's virtually excluding lots of people because only those folks who are able to get into the city's online approach are able to participate. This isn't helping a lot of folks out of the areas who are being impacted negatively by the possibility of these COVID spreadings. Community empowerment could be begun now if you folks would work together collaboratively with the new District 1, District 7 elected officials and have them begin to hold meetings in their communities. With social distancing, people can listen to folks six feet away, wearing masks and hear what's going on. Please work on this. Thank you. I'm very back in close public comment for item seven staff readings. Okay, thank you so much for that. Again, council, any other questions for our fire representatives? Seeing none, thank you so much, Ken Flynn for that presentation. Okay, item eight, city manager report. Do you have one for us this evening, Mr. Maglain? No report this evening. Madam city attorney, do you have a report for us today? Yes, I do have a report this evening. I do want to report out today on two litigation matters that have recently been resolved. The first is Iran versus the city of Santa Rosa. In this case, a rose out of the protest that took place late last May and early June. Mr. Iran did attend the protests and late in the evening on May 30th, the peaceful protests turned violent and destructive. The police endeavored to disperse the crowd using verbal commands, tear gas, foam-tipped bullets and other techniques. Unfortunately, Mr. Iran was struck by a police projectile and he suffered serious injury. He did file a claim and the parties negotiated a settlement of that claim through their respective legal counsel. The settlement includes a payment to Mr. Iran of $200,000 to compensate him for his injuries and his medical expenses. The city council, you approved the general terms of this settlement back in closed session, back in July. The settlement was finalized and executed at the end of October. So that matter is now fully resolved. The other matter I wanna mention to you and report out is Ryan versus city of Santa Rosa and that relates to crossing the Jordan. Last May, as you may recall, crossing the Jordan continued to operate several of its thrift stores in the city of Santa Rosa, despite state and county public health orders that required those stores to remain closed. After repeated warnings, the Santa Rosa police issued criminal citations to crossing the Jordan as an organization and to its principals Dana and Michael Bryan. The Bryan's responded by filing a federal lawsuit against the city, also named the county, the state and a number of individuals. The lawsuit alleged that the city's enforcement of the public health officer's order violated the Bryan's rights under the First Amendment for peaceable assembly, the Fourth Amendment for unreasonable seizure, the Fifth Amendment for a taking, the Eighth Amendment for excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment, the Fourteen and the Fourteenth Amendment for due process, equal protection, infringement of privilege or immunity, and then also the complaint set forth claims under various state laws. Well, the city and the county both filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit and in early September, excuse me, the federal district court judge did grant both of those motions and dismissed the complaint in its entirety, but as is common practice in the federal courts, the judge granted the Bryan's leave to file an amended complaint. And yes, at the end of September, the Bryan's did file an amended complaint. After a series of negotiations, however, the Bryan's agreed in mid-October to voluntarily dismiss the case against the city. They have now dismissed that case in its entirety against the city and there has been no cost to the city at all. And that matter is now also fully resolved. So those are two recent resolutions. In a couple of weeks, we will be providing you with our quarterly report on pending litigation. These two matters will be included in that report, but under the Brown Act, I did wanna report those out as soon as I was able. So we will hear more on the complete portfolio of litigation in a couple of weeks. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation, without information. Council, any questions for our city attorney? Seeing none. So we're now gonna take public comment on item eight, our city attorney report. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Madam host, would you facilitate any public comment on item eight? You can see a timer is before you for the convenience of the council and the participants. If your speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak but invited to do so, please be sure to unmute your microphone. Your microphone will then be muted at the end of your comment or at the end of the, a lot of time. The first public comment will be from Eric. Eric, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? Yes, thank you. Thank you. Please identify yourself for a public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. Good afternoon, again, city council members. Concerning the crossing the Jordan matter, I didn't hear it said whether or not the citations against the crossing the Jordan organization or the Brantz personally were dismissed as part of that. I would assume that's the case, but I just didn't know. And it seemed also to be the case as I recall that they were sort of singled out for this type of enforcement. And so I think that's what gave rise to those actions. I don't know for sure, but it seems like that was the story there. But it just seems to me that if you're going to report on the settlement, then I think you need to be fully transparent as to what transpired there legally for that organization. I might also take the opportunity while we're talking about the subject of these people to recognize that their participation in our neighborhood and our community was incredibly positive. They performed numerous hours of public service for us in creating a cleaner neighborhood for taking care of our elderly neighbors for performing some essential services in our neighborhood. And in fact, throughout the community, as I understand their organization, I wasn't too involved in overall in their organization, but I think there was also an incredible public service that they were performing for the people that they were serving within their organization. I recall Michael telling me that they didn't accept any government money for their programs. And I thought that was also really interesting. And so the social commentary aside, I think there's probably a little bit more to the story from the legal aspect of it. And I'm just sort of curious why that wasn't included in the city attorney's report. Thank you very much. I'll be tuning in later on for more public comment. Thank you very much. Thank you, Eric. That's for item eight, city attorney report out. I am not seeing any additional hands raised for this item. Okay, thank you. Right back to council, Mr. Rogers. Do you have a question or comment? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Sue, I just wanted to give you a chance to respond to some of the comments in public comment. How I had heard your report out was that the lawsuit filed against the city was found to be baseless and was dismissed and that the fines that were levied still remain. And in particular, I wanted to give you a chance to respond back on the accusation that there was selective enforcement or that this one individual group was singled out. Thank you. And I do appreciate that opportunity and you are correct. The federal district court judge did dismiss the original complaint for having no basis to being without merit. In fact, the language of his order was quite strong. And as I mentioned, the Bryant's did take the opportunity to file an amended complaint, but after negotiations, they voluntarily dismissed that complaint as well. There was no request and nor did we dismiss the criminal citations in connection with that settlement. That's not a settlement. I'm sorry, just a voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit. The original citations were issued in accordance with standard practice that was followed by Santa Rosa police throughout that time. Education was number one. Requests for voluntary compliance with the public health officers were really emphasized. And again, it was repeated warnings before citations were issued. And indeed the crossing the Jordan thrift stores were really, I think the only business that I'm aware of that did not comply after efforts of the Santa Rosa police and of the public health officer at education and obtaining reaching voluntary compliance. So this was not, they were not singled out. They were a part of the process that was followed for all businesses across the city. And certainly neither those citations nor our treatment of the litigation related in any way to the organization other than its failure to comply with the public health officer order. So we certainly make no comments on the other benefits that that organization may have provided and continue to provide to our community. This is really about their failure and refusal to comply with the public health officer order back last May. And so just to again be clear, like every other business in Santa Rosa, if I remember correctly, staff tried to work with the business owner to come into compliance and find ways to operate given the health order and that this was a business who chose not to do so. You are exactly right. Thank you. Any additional questions on the city attorney's report? Seeing none, thank you for that, Madam city attorney. We'll move on to item nine, statements of abstentia by council members. Are there any on tonight's agenda? Not seen any, okay. On the item 10, mayors and council members reports. Is there anyone who would like to give a report to the community this evening? Seeing several heads in the negative. I did want to report out on a couple items that I attended since our last meeting. I do want to thank supervisor Shirley Zane and Marine veteran Ross Linscomb who put together a safe social distancing Veterans Day event at the Vets building. It was attended by about a hundred folks there. Very appreciative of their willingness to put something together in a safe way to recognize the efforts of our veterans. And then on the 12th of November, I participated in a Hope City event which occurred out in district six where Hope City built a house for a Tubbs fire victim with the support and cooperation and community action partnership United Way of the Wine Country, Roxana County, Catholic Charities, Redwood Credit Union and a variety of other community stakeholders. But it was a great positive thing to actually watch the hands getting, or the keys being delivered into the hands of the new homeowner on San Miguel road. They've been through a lot three years later moving back into their house. So it was a great community event. And then last Saturday, we had a couple of events one out in South Park arranged by the community engagement, the South Park Community Building Initiative which is a works with community action partnership. It was a listening session myself, council member Olivera's community engagement staff and chief Navarro participated and heard a lot of feedback from people representing the South Park Community Building Initiative. It's not, it was just the first we won't be the last time engaging with that group of the community. And then our city hall parking lot was transformed into graduation ceremony where again, hosted by the San Rosa's violence prevention partnership along with community engagement team. And we had five individuals who while in custody at juvenile hall got enough credits, worked through and actually graduated high school with the support of the Boys and Girls Club along with violence prevention partnership. So again, I've never seen our parking lot in such a fashion, but it was great. Safe, socially distancing, recognizing that great achievement of those five individuals who I'm confident will be paying it forward in the community. So Mr. City Manager, I appreciate the community engagement staff and violence prevention partnership staff working together with juvenile hall Boys and Girls Club to put that great event on. So it's a very positive outcome on Saturday. So thank you. And with that, we'll go to item 11 approval minutes we had been consent calendar. Mr. McLean. Yes. I'm sorry. Item 12.1, resolution adoption of memorandum of understanding extension agreements units three, four, six, seven, eight, 13, 14, 17, 18 effective July 1, 2020 through June 30th, 2021. Item 12.2 resolution meeting the city of Santa Rosa souring compensation plan to authorize straight time over time for all exempt city employees during activation of the emergency operations center. Item 12.3 resolution amendment to a cooperative agreement between the state of California and the city of Santa Rosa for the Herne Avenue interchange at highway 101 project. Item 12.4 resolution, standardization of battery backup systems for city of Santa Rosa traffic signal systems. Item 12.5 resolution authorization to amend general services agreement F002071 HVAC maintenance and repair services. Okay, before if I go to any question that Mr. Dad, you're frozen on my screen but did you have a comment on the last item? Yes, I did, mayor. And the WAC committee, WAC-TAC meeting, we discussed the Potter Valley GAM project and you may regret it. Excuse me, that kind of from there Monday who represents Lake County has been having discussions with FERC about the impacts of demolishing that dam and values of property that are on the Lake front, Lake Pillsbury frontage right now. And my reason for bringing this up is that this is going to be quite a serious issue for the basins of the Russian River and the Eel River and now Lake County, that the council will need to be at least as it moves forward. It's going to be a long process, I'm quite certain. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Mr. Dowd. You were somewhat garbled, but I heard it was the WAC meeting about the Potter Valley project long process and council will be engaged in this moving into the future. So back on the consent calendar, were there any questions related to the consent calendar? Not seeing any. Madam host, could we facilitate or could you facilitate any public comment on the consent calendar item 12? You may or will do. Now at the time on the agenda we will take public comment on item 12. The consent calendar. To make a public public comment, please raise your hand via Zoom. If you're participating by phone, please dial star nine. As you can see, there is a timer before council and the members of the public for your convenience. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. At the end of your public comment, your microphone will be muted. And this is for public comment on the consent calendar. Mayor, I'm not seeing any hands raised for public comment on item 12 consent. Are you okay if I move along to voice message public comments? Yes, please. Resolution 12.2. Going to it from Rosalind. This idea. I've already highly paid exempt city employees who are at the top of the page. Scales being given extra pay. Should they be called upon to do a bit of work? That's outside of the 40 hour work week. It strains credibility. This whole pay structure of the city of Santa Rosa. At the top levels. Is overinflated and top heavy. It's a bureaucratic burden that costs a lot of money. Overinflated and top heavy. It's a bureaucratic burden that cost the taxpayers far more than we're receiving. We need to be realistic. The inflation rate is low. It's not even 1%. People can't even get 1% on their savings accounts. And yet every year we're giving these top employees two and a half, 3% raises. And then now coming up with this. That they should get this overtime, which something hadn't happened in the past. Please do not do this. I support 12.3. The resolution for the Herne Avenue. That's a good situation. Please see if you could get that implemented as soon as possible and get built. As soon as possible. Folks in Rosalind have been talking about the Herne Avenue for over 20 years. Project area committee for Southwest Santa Rosa redevelopment in the year 2000. Have that on its agenda right at the beginning. Please get something done to help the west side of Santa Rosa as soon as possible. Thank you. That's the only voice message public comment received for items 12. Thank you. We will bring it back to council and vice mayor Fleming. You have this item. Second. We have a motion by the vice mayor seconded by council member Rogers. Madam city clerk, could you do a real call vote please? Yes. Councilmember Dowd. Councilmember Tivitz. Aye. Councilmember Rogers. Aye. Councilmember Olivares. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Thank you. Not being five o'clock yet. We will come back to item 13. Item 13. The first item is to approve the purchase of a first battery electric buses and selected components from Pro Terra Incorporated using state cooperative purchasing contract. Shant Sosa, administrative analyst presenting. Thank you. Good evening mayor Schwedhelm and council members. Today we're bringing to council the request to approve the purchase of our first battery electric buses. Next slide please. This is federal funding that we received. It's to replace our oldest 40-foot 2002 diesel buses. Now transit staff did utilize a recent study performed by the Cadmus Group. And in addition, we also performed our own surveys and conducted further research in the manufacturers as well. And we additionally incorporated any input from past council and subcommittee meetings. Next slide. So this project began with the successful awards of two FTA competitive grants from fiscal year 17 and 18. And along with the required local match, we have a total project amount of $3,513,708 that's already been appropriated to the Transit Capital Fund by previous council actions. Now note, we are pursuing the VW Mitigation Trust Fund that if we are awarded it, it will act as a reimbursement to our local TDA funding. And it will still be eligible to act as a valid local match to these federal funds. Next slide. So the purchase rolling stock to Transit Division has been able to utilize cooperative purchasing agreements in the past. And fortunately for us, the California Department of General Services opened their co-op contract for electric buses last December. We can use our federal funds with it. And we can save time by not having to do our own RFP process. And we'll save money, too, by benefiting from the economy of scale using this co-op. Through this contract, there were two qualifying manufacturers on the state contract. And there was Protera and UFlyer. Next slide. A few factors went into our bus selection. One is the distance or the block that a bus travels in one day. It's mostly between 150 and 170 miles. So the key is we didn't want to have to start out by limiting what routes got to benefit by having an electric bus running on that route. So we also didn't want to have to bring the bus in partway through the day and replace it with a diesel bus just to finish off the day's activity. Another factor is what level the state of charge or the remaining battery level by the end of the day. We didn't want to be running the buses with people on them having 3% power remaining. But we also had to consider that as batteries do degrade, we would be losing some remaining state of charge over time. So now I do we have to consider how much remaining charge we want at the end of the day when we first buy the bus. But how much charge do we want it to have left over in years four, five, and six? And Senator Rosa, though, as was mentioned, was part of a joint study with other transit providers in Sonoma County that Sonoma Queen Power spearheaded. And the Cadmus groups through that study estimated that our level of efficiency would be higher or not as good as manufacturer estimates when they provide their range estimates. So ultimately we wanted a bus that had enough juice to run all day, work on any of our blocks and have enough state of charge at the end of shift to be able to do this over the course of many years of that bus's life. Next slide. So the bus that looks to meet our requirements is the Protera Max with a 660 kilowatt battery pack on board. Our proposal is to purchase four of these buses and use Protera's battery lease program for the power source, for the battery itself. Next slide. So this is our estimated cost to either purchase the bus and battery outright or to buy the bus and then to lease the battery. There were a lot of factors that contributed into the lower overall lease costs, but primarily there was the initial reduction of the capital cost because we weren't buying the battery up front and we also weren't taxed on it. Also we don't have to worry about buying an upfront extended warranty purchase because the coverage for the warranty is going to be included in the lease. And then the other factor was that at year six in the lease program, we get a free battery replacement. So there was some credit considered in that too. Especially though, since these are our first battery electric buses, we decided to be prudent to lease for this initial bus purchase so that we weren't taking the risk of buying the battery and not sure what would happen during the life of the bus. Next slide. So there are some other benefits to lease. Again, that battery replacement at year six is pretty big. What's interesting about their contract is even if the battery is performing better than what their warranty states, we will still get the replacement at year six. So even if it's at 90% state of charge and their warranty says it's gonna be replaced at 80%, come year six, they'll replace it no matter what. And since it's replaced at year six after bus delivery, if we get this in 2022, that means in 2026, 27, it'll be replaced. It's possible that the battery we'll get in replacement could be composed of newer technology, which might mean it could be a lighter battery. It could make it more efficient or even be greater power. And since it's a lower upfront capital cost to us, we can purchase four buses now instead of three and replace those diesel buses. This ensures we meet our range needs too, because for the life of the bus, the lease will be able to cover to make sure we have enough state of charge. Next slide. So if council approves our recommendations today, we're going to start the process to place the order with Protera. When we're all done selecting the bus and the options, we're gonna be coming back to council to finalize the approval for the battery lease agreement. And just as a side note too, and currently we're working with our CIP team to also come to council soon requesting approval for our MSC Yard electrification infrastructure project. Next slide. So our recommendation to council is shown here. It's consisting of four points. One, to approve our request to purchase four buses using the California DGS contract. Two, to authorize the purchasing agent to issue a PO to Protera and no more than the available funding for the project. Three, authorize the director of TPW to complete all forms if the city attorney's office has approved as the form. And four, authorize the CFO to pay for this purchase using the already appropriated transit capital funds. So if there's any questions. Thank you, Sean, for that presentation. Very excited and very appreciative of the direction that this is going. Council, any questions? Vice Mayor Fleming. Really appreciate all the work that you put into this. I can see some of the benefits around the lease versus the purchase option. I'm wondering, you know, over the life expectancy of the vehicle or the vehicles, if there is a measurable cost savings or not, I mean, I get that with the lease that we have reduced liability if something goes wrong. But what do we give up something in terms of paying a significant amount more overall rather than just the upfront costs? Overall, it will cost a little bit more to lease but some of the factors like with that free replacement of the battery, if we were to buy a bus straight out and the battery were to perform great for 12 years then we wouldn't have to buy a new battery during the purchase. So in that case, the lease would cost that much more but that's an unknown. And it's such a big battery that if we were to have to buy a replacement battery at year six, things like that, but ultimately we will have an annual operational cost that's gonna be over the life of the bus more expensive than purchasing the bus and batteries straight out unless certain factors like the extended warranty or the battery replacement were factored into it which are unknowns. And what is that cost differential on a per random basis? The increase, the annual battery lease cost is gonna be $52,000 per vehicle. I didn't do the calculations because part of it is minus the battery cost with the taxes and the options which we don't know yet so I don't know the exact number of the difference but we are saving $300 to begin with upfront plus tax but I'd have to get back to you on the answer to that. Okay, and the emphasis for the questions is just that when we do elect to spend more money on something I like it to be very clear how much we're spending and why we're spending it. I'm not suggesting that there's anything wrong with the suggestion but just that it would be nice to know exactly how much more we are spending for the insurance of it and if there would be a way to ensure the battery differently that might not be quite as costly. The second question I had was, and this is sort of a curiosity but also speaks to our council goal of climate change as a priority which is what these are really big batteries and at year six, does this thing just get tossed into a landfill or what happens when they take it back? We have not asked Pratera that question so that is something that I can ask them if they intend to recycle the batteries, reuse them or dispose of them. Okay, thank you for your presentation, I appreciate it. Council, any additional questions? Seeing none. So we're now moving to public comment on 14.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom please raise your hand. If you dial in via telephone, please dial star nine. Madam host, would you facilitate public comment on item 14.1? Thank you, Mayor. The timer is before you for the convenience of council as well as the participants via Zoom. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute your microphone when you are asked to do so. The first public comment will be from Pastor Lee. Pastor Lee, I've unmuted your or enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? Yes, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Thank you very much. Please identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. I'm Pastor Turner at Community Baptist Church. Just one, my concern is also about the batteries. I'm all for climate control and as much as we can get away from fossil fuels or some of the type of fuels. The initial battery cost, I'm not sure what the initial battery cost is, but even I think it was $54,000 a year to lease. I don't know how much the difference is between the lease and the cost and I don't know if that was asked. But the other thing is that even after if you get five years out of a battery, would it be more cost effective to just purchase another battery instead of leasing one outright? And that's my question. Thank you, Pastor Turner. And this is for public comment on item 14.1. There I see no additional hands being raised for item 14.1 and we did not receive any voice message public comments. All right, thank you very much. Bring it back to council. Any additional questions on this item? Mr. Tibbets. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to give staff a chance to respond to Pastor Turner's question about analyzing the batteries and did we do that analysis? And if so, was it, it was determined that the lease was in fact the more cost efficient way forward? Am I back unmuted? Yes, you're unmuted, Sean. Thank you very much. Yeah, so we did an analysis. During the comment, I tried looking at my spreadsheet here. I've got quite a few columns trying to figure out if I can answer that right away. We did look at it if part of the part of the problem was buying a bus straight out would include a purchase of the battery, which is about $295,000. So safe to assume that a replacement battery would cost 295,000 six years later if Paterra were the charges for replacement battery. We would elect to have chosen the extended warranty, which would then add to the cost of the purchase upfront as well and then the upfront taxes as well. So there were a few other items on the calculator that basically kept adding to the purchase price upfront. So now on the extended warranty, the purchase price of the battery, the taxes, the surcharges that were added to everything that's purchased upfront. So altogether, we still determined that the lease gave us a security of the 12 year contract with the replacement, even if we didn't need it and the replacement if it didn't meet stated charge for the life of the bus. So versus the extended warranty of buying the battery and then buying a second battery during the life of the bus if we were to purchase it straight out. I've got a lot of numbers here, but when we did the math, it didn't pan out to buy it again. I also, if I could just chime in, excuse me, sorry, Rachel E, Deputy Director of Transit. I just wanted to chime in. Sean had sort of laid out a little bit of a high level analysis on slide seven, which he just recapped. But the other factor at play here for us was the reduced upfront capital cost allows us to buy four buses instead of three right now. And given our interest in accelerating this transition and getting some of these really old diesel buses off the road, that also factored into it from the standpoint of climate action and meeting that goal to really move the program forward a little bit farther with this initial purchase. And it also provides a little bit of additional funding left behind to potentially assist with the electrification project at MFCS, which is barely funded at this point in time, and we really need to get that moving forward. So I just wanted to add that other component to the response as well. Thanks to you guys. Yeah, and thank you for Rachel and Sean. If I could reframe, it sounds like staff's recommendation says the better value is going to lease option versus the purchase. Would that be accurate? Yes. All right, thank you. Any additional questions? Mr. Soria. Thank you, Mayor. Just a quick question about maintenance. Is there any decided difference between the maintenance of the diesel buses and the electric? It depends on who you ask. If anytime you buy a new bus, you're probably guaranteed that the maintenance costs are going to be less than the existing buses you have. And of course, the older the bus, just like any vehicle you have, usually the maintenance is going to get more and more expensive. Now the manufacturer, Protera in this case, or even New Flyer, one of their competitor in the contract did say that it would be decidedly less, almost nothing, but we know that that's probably not going to be the case. So I basically, in my calculations, did an assumption of a percentage of our most recent fleet addition, the Eldorados from 2018, and just assumed, you know, if the electrics were on the same part of maintenance and part replacements that those bus are, for at least the first few years, that would give us a good idea. So I didn't consider them to be as expensive as diesel because there are less moving parts, but I didn't knock off all the prices as the manufacturer said, because I knew that that would probably bite us in the end. I'm going to chime in one more time. And Sean is nice and conservative and that's what we want in a budget analyst, but I do want to note that in the industry, there has been the experience that maintenance costs overall tend to be lower on these buses because you don't have the same kind of moving parts and wear and tear and major components that tend to fail over time. So I think there would be an expectation, although I appreciate Sean being very conservative that we would have a lower maintenance cost with this new vehicle technology. Thank you. And I appreciate that as we move forward with electric buses that could be an important factor once you have a good size fleet. Thank you. Any additional questions? Seeing none, Mr. Rogers, you have this item. All right, sorry, Mr. Mayor, let me find where my resolution went. All right, I will move a resolution of the city of Santa Rosa approving and authorizing the issuance of a purchase order for four 40-foot battery electric buses and selected components from Protera, Inc. through the California Department of General Services, State Cooperative Purchasing Contracts solicitation, 1-19-23-17C in an amount not to exceed 3,513,708 and wave further reading of the text. Second. I heard the motion by Mr. Rogers, seconded by Vice Mayor Fleming. Any additional comments? And City Clerk, could you do a roll call vote please? Yes, thank you, Mayor. Council Member Dowd? Aye. Council Member Tibbetts? Aye. Council Member Sawyer? Aye. Council Member Rogers? Aye. Council Member Oliveris? Aye. Vice Mayor Fleming? Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm? Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. All right, thank you very much. Thank you. And I'm assuming we'll have someone else to introduce 14.2 other than the city manager. I'm sorry, Mayor, one moment while I promote Assistant City Manager McClendon, or Nutt. Thank you. There he is. Welcome, Mr. Nutt. Would you like to introduce item 14.2? Yes, thank you very much, Mayor. Item 14.2, report, approval of amendment number four to city manager's employment agreement and introduction of ordinance to increase the compensation of the city manager by providing effective July 7th, 2019, one, a 2.5% cost of living salary adjustment, and two, an increase in contribution by the city for the 2019-2020 fiscal year in an amount equal to 0.25% of base wage to the city manager's retiree health savings plan for a total contribution to the city of 0.75% of base wage. Amy Reeve, human resource director, will be reporting. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. I'm Amy Reeve, the director of human resources for the city of Santa Rosa. The item again before you is the approval of amendment number four to the city manager's employment agreement. If we could go to the next slide, please. The city manager's salary and compensation are set by ordinance adopted by the city council and the city's employment agreement with the city manager is also approved by council by resolution. As established by ordinance and provided in the city manager's employment agreement as previously amended, the city manager's current salary is $19,946 per month. The employment agreement provides that the city manager's compensation shall change by the percentage of the cost of living salary adjustment, if any, and benefits adjustment, if any, paid to the city's executive management in the current fiscal year unless the council fixes some different amount for the city manager in advance of the July 1st date. The employment agreement further provides that the city shall provide the city manager with a retiree health savings plan under the same terms which are provided to other executive management employees. Next slide, please. The city manager should receive a 2.5% COLA increase effective July 7th, 2019 to be consistent and comparable with executive management bargaining units. The COLA was delayed while the city council went through the performance evaluation process for city manager McGlynn. Additionally, 0.25% of base salary retiree health savings plan contributions should be provided effective July 7th, 2019. The total cost of these agreements would be approximately $7,485.06. And the salary and benefit cost increase will be paid for with existing fiscal year 2020-2021 appropriations. Next slide, please. It is recommended by the Human Resources Department that the council by resolution approve amendment number four to the employment agreement of the city manager and introduce an ordinance to increase the compensation of the city manager by providing effective July 7th, 2019, a 2.5% cost of living salary adjustment as well as an increase in contribution for the fiscal year 2019-2020 in an amount equal to 0.25% of base wage to the city manager's retiree health savings plan for a total contribution of 0.75% to that plan. With that, if there are any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Thank you. Thank you for that presentation, Amy. Council, any questions? Vice Mayor? Ms. Riva, I just wanted to confirm that this is a part of our contractual agreement with Mr. McGlynn and not a discretionary item at this point in time. If we were not to approve, we would be in breach of contract. That is correct, yes. Thank you. Council, any additional questions? Okay, we're now moving to public comment on item 14.2. If you'd like to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Madam host, would you please facilitate public comment for item 14.2? Thank you, Mayor. As you can see, a countdown timer is before you for the convenience of council and the members of the public. First speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please be sure to unmute your microphone when invited to do so. Your microphone will be muted at the conclusion of your comment or at the end of the three-minute timer. Again, this is for public comments on item 14.2, amendment to the city manager's employment agreement, dial star nine to participate or make a comment via Zoom from your telephone or raise your hand via Zoom. Mayor, I'm not seeing any hands raised for live public comment. Are you okay if I move on to voice message public comment? Please do, thank you. 14.2, Dwayne Dewitt from Roseland. This item is about a raise for the city manager, making him one of the most highly paid people that one could imagine local corporations don't pay people this much unless they're doing really good business. That's not happening as well during this pandemic. I think there should be a wage freeze during this pandemic. I do not believe that giving this person at this position such a high cost of living allowance is reasonable. Most folks on limited income from social security don't get a cost of living increase of more than 1% of even that. There's been years recently when that didn't occur. And yet every year, year in and year out, the city manager's been getting two and a half to 3% increases, fat money. There's big bank going on here coming out of the taxpayers' wages, if you will. Hard-earned taxpayers' money pays for this person's wages. So the hope is that it'll be reasonable, ask for a wage freeze till after the pandemic has passed, well after it has passed. Your taxpayers are getting hammered. Your businesses are failing. Lots of problems are increasing. And yet you folks are acting like, oh, it's no big deal. You can just laugh all the way to the bank and it's all gonna be good. That's not the case for a lot of folks in the future economy of our city. So please, wage freeze do not pass this current raise that's being proposed. Thank you. Mayor, that concludes the voice message public comments on item 14.2. Okay. Thank you. Council, any additional questions? Seeing none, Mr. Sawyer, you have this item. Thank you, Mayor. It's my pleasure to introduce a resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa approving amendment number four to the city employment agreement with city manager to provide effective July 7, 2019. One, at 2.5 cost of living salary adjustment and two, an increase in contribution by the city for the 2019-2020 fiscal year equal to 0.25% of base wage to the city manager's retiree health savings plan for a total contribution of 0.75% of base wage and waive further reading. Second. And we have a motion by Mr. Sawyer. Seconded by Mr. Alvarez. Any additional comments? Okay, Madam City Clerk, can we do a roll call vote please? Yes. Council member Dowd. Council member Dowd. Aye. Council member Tibbetts. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Aye. Council member Rogers. Council member Alvarez. Aye. Vice Mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with six ayes and council member Rogers was absent. All right, thank you. Thank you for the presentation, Amy. Okay, we'll go back now that it's five o'clock. We'll go back to item 13 of the agenda, public comment on non-agenda matters. So we're now taking public comment on item 13 non-agenda matters. This is the time when any person may address the council on matters not listed on this agenda, both are within the sub-matter expertise of the council, sub-matter jurisdiction of the council. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Madam host, would you facilitate public comment on item 13? Thank you, Mayor. As you can see, there is a timer for the convenience of the council, as well as numbers of the public participating tonight. The first speaker will be invited, will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please be sure to unmute your microphone when invited to do so. At the end of your comment or at the end of the countdown or the allotted time, your mic will be muted. The first public comment will be from Eric, followed by Pastor Turner. Eric, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your mic and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? Yes, I can. Please identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. Thank you very much. Good afternoon again, city council members, Eric Frazier, Santa Rosa. So I'd like to take a moment overall to talk about the California Public Records Act, Open Government, SB 272, and some of the reports and surveying and the like that the public is subjected to, including earlier today. Although my comments aren't specific about the survey that was an earlier agenda item, overall, one has to recognize that using surveys that are not scientifically based really can change how a decision is made over that subject matter. The California Public Records Act, which as you know is really a seminal act that was passed to protect the public and was passed during the Reagan administration, guarantees that the public has access to public records so that we can understand the decisions that are being made, how they're being made, and so forth. Furthermore, the Sunshine Act added to the California Public Records Act to require a certain conduct of public officials when they're congregating. So again, the public has access to information that's discussed in public forums. Furthermore, SB 272 allows the public to know what type of information systems are being used in a government agency. It doesn't appear that the city of Santa Rosa actually is compliant with SB 272. So you might wanna look into that. When it comes to the surveys, one must recognize that when you have a small survey pool and you look to compare it to a larger pool, the results are going to be skewed. They're not going to be consistent. Even though inadvertently, I believe a council member used the opportunity to misrepresent my comments that I was making at the time. I have no way, any disregard for Spanish-speaking people, people that come from different districts, none of that. In fact, if you'd know me, you know that I work in programs that are multilingual and multicultural. During the Olympic Games in 96, over 50 languages were represented in a program that I managed. So I ask that the reports be verifiable and factual, that the author is responsible for the content, that there's recourse when they're not acting responsibly. And that if information is submitted, that's not factual, it comes with the footnotes. So why that? Do you wanna still think about that? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next public comment will be from Pastor Turner, followed by Eddie. Pastor Turner, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your mic and confirm you can see the time on your screen? Yes, I can. Thank you. Please identify yourself a public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. Pastor Turner, Pastor of Community Baptist Church. I'm just here to ask for support in a couple of ways. Number one, we're doing a Martin Luther King during the year rejuvenating the park. And we're looking, we're putting, we'd like to put a African diaspora center as our vision through Proposition 68. We have the support of a lot of the local officials. We have the support of Congressman Mike Thompson, Senator Mark McGuire and others. I've talked with Mayor Shredhelm about it and people are excited about this whole statewide Prop 68 program. And so I do have slides that I could send to you and you could get an idea of what we're proposing here. It's over in South Park and the name of the building would be named after the Reverend Dr. James E. Coffey, which a lot of you are familiar with. He was here over 50 years and helped really with the pulse of this particular city. And there's no other African diaspora center north of the Golden Gate Bridge, south of the California border and probably as far as east is Nevada. So it's something that people are excited about it. They wanna see it happen. And I'm just looking for support from the city council and we can come back later. And first day, a letter of support would be nice. And then later some monetary support would also be really, we'll be asking for that and possibly through some of the ways that you have maybe the PG&E money or something like that. So I just wanted to make you aware of it. And this is something that we're actively pursuing. Hopefully we'll know by March, exactly how much we'll get the maximum amount you can get is 8.5 million. And to rejuvenate the whole thing with the communities excited about it. A lot of people are excited about it. I'm also one thing to build it is another thing to facilitate it. So we'll be working on further grants and other things also to make it happen. So I just wanted to make you aware of that and what we're doing and how we're helping in this city. So thank you for your time and thank you for your work that you do here in our city. Thank you, Pastor Turner. The next public comment will be from Eddie. Eddie, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone? You can see the timer on your screen. I do. Thank you. Please identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. Eddie Alvarez here in Southwest Santa Rosa. Just general comments in reality. For the COVID test in Roseland, I've been looking at a lot of numbers that are coming out of our testing facilities. And the question is if the positive tests are coming out, if they're from local residents or if they're from at-large residents, are we asking for their addresses whenever they do take a test? I know this was probably more for a county health department question, but I do want to pretty much a heads up that these numbers might be somewhat skewed if we are incorporating the at-large residents taking the test here in the Roseland area. In regards to Reverend Turner's project there in South Park, it's a great project. I've had the opportunity to take a look at it. And I love seeing the community really represent themselves and trying to do something as beautiful as that for themselves. So I applaud his efforts as well as the other members of the group. And last but not least, Southwest Community Park. In the past few months, I've had an opportunity to speak with a lot of the residents here. And it seems that Southwest Community Park seems to be a large source for the COVID transmission. Sadly, there's not a lot of knowledge of education or practice with protocols of social distancing as well as face mask wearing. And I do appreciate Ernesto Olivares for giving me a heads up and just pointing out what issues I'll be facing in the future. With that said, I appreciate your time and I hope to work with all of you here soon and really start tackling the COVID issue. So please, if there's any recommendation, any ideas that the public may have for me, please reach out and I do appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you, Eddie. And this is for public comment on item 13, non-agenda matter. Raise your hand now via Zoom or dial star nine if participating via telephone. We are not seeing any additional hands raised for item 13. Are you okay if I move along to the voice message public comment? Yes, please do. Thank you. In public comment, non-agenda item, Dwayne DeWitt from Roseland. Today, congratulations are in order for Eddie Alvarez, the first elected representative from Roseland to serve on the Santa Rosa City Council for district one. Mr. Alvarez's motto was better together. And it would be wonderful if the city of Santa Rosa embraced this new representative after waiting for an extra two years for Roseland to have some representation in public policy. Embrace this person, bring him in to all the discussions as soon as possible and let Roseland actually have a voice in the future. The extra folks to the west of Roseland district seven have also been impacted and now they've got a new elected official. So hopefully you'll involve both of the elected officials from district one and district seven as soon as possible in the public policy decision making process that has essentially been exclusive and hasn't allowed many of the community members to be involved. It's especially important now as the city grows up to close to 190,000 people after the census comes in next year, it may be higher and there may be redistricting rezoning type approaches. Essentially, the folks from the west side of Santa Rosa have been discriminated against by the downtown policymaking machine that has controlled our local elected government for so long. So please open your arms and welcome Eddie Alvarez, the new city council member from Roseland. What a wonderful thing to have had occur. Thank you. That concludes the voice message recordings or public comments for item 13 non-agent matters. All right, thank you so much for that. Mr. Rogers, I know you dropped off for item 14.2. Did you want to make any comments? Yeah, I was just going to request, Mr. Mayor, that one of my colleagues ask for reconsideration so that I can add on my vote. I did just lose internet connection temporarily. I'd be more than happy to entertain that. Madam city attorney, do we need a motion and a second to facilitate that request to Mr. Rogers? Yes, you will. So moved by council member Alvarez. Second. All right, we have a motion by Mr. Alvarez, seconded by Mr. Sawyer to reconsider item 14.2. Madam city clerk, could you do a real call vote on that please? Yes, I'm sorry, who was it? Second, Mr. Alvarez made the motion and- Mr. Sawyer. Sawyer made the second, okay. All right, council member Dowd, council member Tibbets. All right. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member Alvarez. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. All right, Mr. Sawyer, let's go back to you. You have this item for item 14.2. Thank you, mayor. I'll hold on just one second. Introduce the resolution of the council, the city of Santa Rosa, approving amendment number four of the city's employment agreement with city manager to provide effective July 7, 2019. One, a 2.5% cost of living salary adjustment and two, an increase in contribution by the city for the 2019-2020 fiscal year equal to 0.25% of face wage to the city manager retiree health savings plan for a total contribution of 0.75 of base wage and way further reading. Do we have a second to that motion? Second. Second. And Mr. Sawyer made the motion second by Mr. Alvarez. Madam city clerk, can we have a roll call vote for item 14.2. Yes, council member Dowd. Aye. Council member Tibbets. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Thank you, everyone. Aye. Council member Alvarez. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. All right, thank you so much. Okay, it's a 520. We're gonna take a 10 minute break, reconvene at 530 and hear our public hearings. Thank you. Madam city clerk, are you ready to proceed? Yes, I am. All right, thank you. Could you please take a roll call? Yes. Council member Dowd. Here. Council member Tibbets. Here. Council member Sawyer. Council member Sawyer. Here. Council member Rogers. Here. Council member Alvarez. Here. Vice mayor Fleming. Here. Mayor Schwedhelm. Here. The record show that all council members are present. Thank you very much. Welcome back, Mr. McGlynn. Could you please introduce item 15.1? Yes, item 15.1, public hearing, extension and modifications of city code, chapter two zero dash one six, resilience city code development measures. Shari Meads, city planner presenting. If it's all right through the mayor. I should have announced this earlier, so I'm going to recuse that in abundance of caution. Section 20 dash 16.030 mentions temporary housing and it could relate to my work at St. Vincent. So I'm sorry for the interruption. Thank you for that, Mr. Tibbets. Are we okay to proceed now? Mayor Schwedhelm? Yes, please continue. Okay. Good evening, Mayor Schwedhelm and members of the council. I'm Shari Meads. We are here tonight to discuss the resilience city development measures. Next slide, please. Tonight we're asking council to introduce an ordinance to extend and modify the resilience city development measures found in chapter 20 dash 16 of the city code. It has been three years since the 2017 fires and while rebuilding is well underway, it is not complete. The amendments being presented tonight address the need for continued rebuilding and economic recovery, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and recent fires. Next slide, please. Following the 2017 wildfires, council adopted multiple urgency and long-term ordinances to assist recovery, including city code chapter 20 dash 16, the resilience city development measures, which we are discussing tonight. Now the council recently approved an amendment to another recovery ordinance, the RC combining district, which addresses areas of the city that have been most directly affected by wildfire. The resilience city development measures ordinance before you compliments the RC combining district but expands economic recovery and housing measures citywide. Next slide, please. The resilience city development measures have been amended several times to include new measures and to clarify procedures. Next, I will highlight some of the proposed changes. Next slide, please. The zoning code currently prohibits time extensions for temporary use permits, fires, public safety, public shutouts and shutoffs and the COVID-19 pandemic have made it difficult for some entitlement holders to initiate and approve temporary use and for others to fully benefit from a completed project. Staff is proposing allowing additional time for businesses to complete and enjoy the benefit of certain types of entitled temporary projects. The amendment would allow the director to approve one 12 month time extension for temporary use permits. Next slide, please. Based on community outreach, the planning commission and staff also recommend an increase in the number of events allowed under the temporary activities, events and temporary auto sales subcategories. This includes farmers markets, flea markets, arts and craft exhibits, among other activities. The proposed amendment would increase by threefold the number of events allowed within a 12 month approval period and would allow for additional flexibility in how dates are configured. Next slide, please. In line with your prioritization of childcare as a tier one priority, staff is recommending further reductions in review authority for childcare facilities. The proposed amendments would permit large family daycare homes by right in all zoning districts citywide and would allow child daycare centers which take care of 15 or more children by right in commercial, light industrial and mixed use zoning districts where they now require a minor use permit approval. The proposal also includes reducing permit requirements for child daycare centers in residential zones from a conditional use permit to a minor use permit. It's also important to note that for those projects requiring a minor use permit, planning application fees taken in will be refunded upon request following a demonstration by the applicant that the use has been initiated and that it complies with project approval. Next slide, please. This map shows where the great coverage that we'll have for child daycare center potential locations. The areas in salmon are where child daycare centers which are the large ones, the 15 or more children would be permitted by right and everywhere else in the tan areas which are the residential areas would require a minor use permit. Next slide, please. Mobile food vending is currently restricted to a limited number of parcels along Sebastopol road within the Roseland community and staff is proposing to expand mobile food opportunities to all commercial mixed use and industrial zone citywide. A minor use permit which is required now or mobile food vending operations would still be required. Next slide, please. Here's a map that shows you where currently mobile food vending is allowed and it's the dark red blurb in the Southwest area on Sebastopol road. And the salmon or pinkish colored areas indicate where mobile food vending will be expanded. So it covers a lot more of the city and will provide much more opportunity for individuals who are trying to enter the restaurant business or micro entrepreneurialism will be expanded. And so we think it's a great opportunity for places where people don't have food opportunities easy. They can get out and take a walk and head to a good place and have some delicious food. Next slide, please. The ordinance includes additional amendments to streamline processes where appropriate and I'll be happy to go into more detail if you have questions. Next slide, please. We did a fair amount of outreach to ensure that we were capturing the needs of the community. On the slide, you can see the dates and the entities where we held official meetings and we had informal conversations as well. The proposed feedback during all outreach events was positive, especially towards the expansion of childcare and mobile food vending opportunities. Next slide, please. In addition to the scheduled outreach, we received written comment related to the ability to hold flea markets for more occasions through a temporary use permit. As mentioned previously, it is within the ordinance to expand the number of available days for events like flea markets. Specifically, the planning commission and staff recommend an increase from seven consecutive days or six two-day weekends to 21 consecutive days or 36 weekend days for events, including flea markets. Next slide, please. The recommended ordinance has been found to be exempt from CEQA. Next slide, please. All public noticing was provided per local and state requirements. Next slide, please. And the planning commission and the planning and economic development department recommend that the city council introduce an ordinance amending city code chapter 20-16 to modify and extend the resiliency development measures. Next slide, please. And I am here and able to answer any question that ends my presentation tonight. Thank you, Sheriff, for your presentation. Council, do we have any questions on that presentation? Seeing none, I did have one regarding the mobile food vending trucks are city parks. Are they allowed in city parks? Is that the zoning? I know we have the different codes by which should other zone. Yeah, that's a difficult one. Unfortunately, this ordinance only deals with private property. Public property is a whole different realm, like you mentioned. There are different requirements from the state and from Sonoma County environmental health. We will be re-looking at the street vendor, which is the category it falls under to see how we can modify things and make things a bit more streamlined and available for areas like that. But this is only private property. And so what would the option be for the city of Santa Rosa if the city were to entertain or have an interest in expanding mobile food vending at a city-owned property? That again would be in the street vending category, which is on our to-do list. If you guys elevate that, then it'll become higher on our to-do list. We'll be happy to look at it. Okay, great, thank you. Any additional questions from Council? Seeing none, then we'll take public comment on item 15.1. We'll actually open the public hearing. For item 15.1, if you'd like to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you dial in via telephone, please dial star nine. Madam host, would you facilitate public comment on item 15.1? Thank you, Mayor. As you can see, a countdown timer is on the screen for the convenience of City Council and the public participating via Zoom. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute your microphone when invited to do so. Your microphone will be muted at the conclusion of your comment or at the end of the allotted time. Again, this is for item 15.1, Resilience City Development Measures, Zoning Code Amendment Public Hearing. Raise your hand now via Zoom, dial star nine and participating by telephone. Right there, I'm not seeing any hands raised for item 15.1. Are you okay if I move along to the voice message public comment? Absolutely, thank you. Public hearing item 15.1, Wayne Dewitt from Roseland. This Resilience City ordinance that's been in effect for years now is essentially an end run around public participation in the planning process. People in Roseland have had to bear the brunt of some unfair decision making that comes through this new department of planning and economic development approach with Resilience City. So with that in mind, one would hope that there'd at least be a guaranteed end date on this. As it reads saying the pandemic, we don't know how long the pandemic is going to last. It may have a second and third wave that are far more deadly than the current situation has been. So one would hope that you would allow this process of city policymaking and planning to be more inclusive, not this virtual exclusion with these zoomed out meetings that keep people from being able to deal with developments in their neighborhoods. This is definitely an unfair process that's carried over. It rose on especially hard during the early part of this year when city staff members did honestly presented information to the public before you went into the zoomed out virtual exclusion lockdown modes. And when it was pointed out to the Planning Commission, they just accepted the dishonesty and rolled forward. It's not a good way to run the city and this Resilience City ordinance is making it like you folks are emperors. There's nothing democratic about what's occurring at all now. It's just your way or the highway. That's not fair to a lot of folks who'd like to see a different way. Thank you. I may or that concludes the voice message public comments received on 15.1. Great, thank you for that. I will then close the public hearing. Bring it back to council. Any additional questions of staff? Seeing none, Mr. Olivares, you have this item. Thank you, mayor. I will introduce an ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa, a man named title 20 of the Santa Rosa City Code to extend and modify chapter 20-16 Resilience City Development Measures, file number REZ 20-007 and wait for the reading of the text. Second. And we have a motion by Mr. Olivares. I'm by Mr. Sawyer. Any additional comments? Seeing none, Madam City Clerk, could you take your roll call vote, please? Yes, thank you, mayor. Council member Dowd. Aye. Council member Tibbetts. Oh, he's recusing, I'm sorry. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member Olivares. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with six ayes and council member Tibbetts has recused himself. Thank you for that presentation, Sherry. And we'll go on to item 15.2, Mr. City Manager. Item 15.2, Public Hearing, Rezone 4620 Sonoma Highway Reuse with Drive View, Drive Through, excuse me, Connor McKay, City Planner Presenting. Hello, thank you, mayor and members of the city council. Can everybody hear me? Yes, thank you. Sweet. Yeah, so the item tonight that I will be presenting is the Starbucks Reuse with Drive Through Project located at 4620 Highway 12. The city council action tonight is a zoning text amendment or rezoning to amend the plan development 403. Next slide, please. So the applicant is proposing a zoning text amendment to add coffee shop counterordering to the list of conditionally approved uses at the project site in the plan development 403 policy statement. On October 22nd, the planning commission approved an amendment to the existing conditional use permit to allow the operation of a coffee shop with counterordering and accessory drive-through facility at a site where a bank with drive-through ATM previously operated subject to city council's adoption of this zoning text amendment. The coffee shop would occupy no more than 2,200 square feet of the existing 3,800 square foot building and operate from 430 a.m. until no later than 11 p.m. daily. Next slide, please. The project is located in the northeast quadrant of the city of Santa Rosa. Next slide, please. More specifically, the project is located in the eastern intersection of Mission Boulevard and Highway 12. Project site is accessed via Pasta Alley, which is a private road constructed to minor street standards. Next slide, please. The project site is currently developed for former use as a U.S. bank with drive-through ATM and as such has been constructed in compliance with parking and drive-through city standards. Next slide, please. We have a photo of the drive-through entrance as is. Next slide, please. Here's from Highway 12 looking south. So there are some minor exterior modifications proposed as part of the project to bring the drive-through facility up to the Starbucks takeout window standards, moving from an ATM to a retail drive-through. Those modifications would be subject to director level design review. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. So in July of 1999, the policy statement for this plan development was adopted, which established land use and development standards for the five parcels within this plan development. And like I mentioned, on October 22nd, the planning commission approved their amendment to the existing CUP, subject to council's adoption of the zoning text amendment. Next slide, please. The general plan land use designation of the project site is office. Next slide, please. The project, the proposed project is consistent with the general plan in that land use and livability policy J3 allows for limited support retail and business services, such as cafes in office general plan land use designations. Next slide, please. As I mentioned, the zoning for the project site is plan development PD 403. Next slide, please. Here's a description of what a plan development district is. Essentially a plan development district is adopted to outline land use and development standards that are different from the general zoning code. Next slide, please. So the action before the city council tonight is a proposed zoning text amendment, which would add a coffee shop counterordering to the list of conditionally permitted uses at the project site, which is identified as parcel B in the policy statement for PD 403, which is included as attachment nine in your meeting packet. Next slide, please. Here we have a site plan. As you can see on the right side of the building, approximately 1600 square feet of the space would remain unoccupied and enclosed in a code compliant condition. Next slide, please. This slide shows the onsite traffic flow, including the drive-through operation. This diagram shows 11 cars in the drive-through, which is at the capacity. However, drive-through queuing analysis indicates that 95% of the time only 10 or fewer cars would be present in the drive-through at one time. Next slide, please. The plan development policy statement outlines a parking standard of one parking space per 250 square feet of gross leisible area. A rough calculation results in approximately 115 parking spaces being required, where there are totally existing parking spaces is 109. So staff is approving the minor adjustment of 5% or six parking spaces for this project based on a review of historical imagery that indicates adequate parking capacity at the project site and within the plan development district. I'll now ask that the host slide through the next few slides for a few seconds each so we can see the historical imagery. Thank you. And the project qualifies for a Class 32 sequel exemption for infill development in that a traffic study was prepared, which indicates that less than significant impacts to the local circulation system would occur. The project would also be required to comply with the city's noise ordinance and has demonstrated compliance for the city's climate action plan. Next slide, please. So a virtual neighborhood meeting was held on August 17th and had no attendees. We received one email prior to the planning commission hearing from a neighbor indicating opposition to the project, expressing concerns of climate change, air pollution, global warming and traffic. This individual also sent us an email this morning prior to today's meeting, adding that she was concerned about trash generation and littering. So the staff's response to this is that the project has demonstrated compliance with the city's climate action plan. Starbucks has incorporated sustainable business practices into their business model, such as the establishment of a mobile ordering app, which allows customers to place orders for their products prior to arriving at the store, which can reduce drive-through queuing times. Starbucks has also incorporated recyclable coffee cups and other packaging and participates in transit initiatives for their employees. A traffic study was prepared, like I mentioned, which indicates less than significant impacts to the local circulation system. We also received a voicemail from a neighbor prior to the planning commission hearing who was interested in learning how the noise impacts of the project were being addressed in project review. And we responded that the project is required to comply with the city's noise ordinance and noise impact analysis indicates that the drive-through speaker would not significantly contribute to the existing ambient noise in the project area. Next slide, please. And with that, the planning commission and the Planning and Economic Development Department recommends that the council introduce an ordinance to include coffee shop counterordering to the list of conditionally approved uses at parcel B as identified in the policy statement for plan development 403 to support the operation of a coffee shop with accessory drive-through and extended hours of operation. Next slide, please. And staff is available for any responses to questions. All right, thank you, Connor. City Council, any questions on the presentation? Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Connor, just a quick question. Looking at the access point from Pasta Alley, that's on the Mission Boulevard side, not on the Highway 12 side, correct? Or is there a punch through on Pasta Alley that I guess there is on the Highway 12 isn't there? Yes, it goes all the way through. So was there an analysis that was done about the impact of traffic on Highway 12 from cars, increased car traffic, having to slow down on Highway 12 to take that turn down Pasta Alley? You might have to defer that question to the traffic consultant or the applicant if they're available to respond to that. And if I had the traffic consultant. That would be, the applicant would be Jeff Halbert or the traffic consultant would be Dailene W. Dailene, I've been able to your speaking permissions if you care to address this question. Yes, this is Dailene Whitlock with Whitlock and Weinberger Transportation, or WTRAN 490 Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa. We did do a traffic analysis for this because the project would generate fewer than 50 net new trips, an analysis was not performed. So the amount of traffic that would be generated by the Starbucks was not substantially different than what would have been generated by the bank that existed previously. So there was not an analysis specifically done of this issue. Just to make sure I understand. So you're saying that the putting a Starbucks in that location as opposed to a bank would create less than 50 additional car trips per day? No, just during the peak hours. Oh, just during the peak hours. Right, it can be up to 50 trips per hour. And that's net new. A lot of the traffic that is generated by a Starbucks will be passed by traffic. In other words, people that are already driving down Highway 12 and pull in to get their coffee and then pull back out again. So the city's policy allows you to discount all those trips because what they're really looking for is the net new trips on the network as opposed to just at the driveway. So the trip generation will be higher in terms of the driveway trips, but not offsite. So that's why the traffic study wasn't required. They're full operational analysis wasn't required. Okay, thank you. Vice Mayor Fleming. Yeah, I'm just curious to know how it was determined that the ability of people to order online would significantly or adequately mitigate the increase in car traffic idling. Is there, do we have enough information on how those two things work together to change that dynamic? Yeah, I'll take a crack at this and then Jeff, if you'd like to follow up. So my understanding is that the mobile ordering app allows a customer to initiate the ordering process prior to arriving. So there would be less time in between the ordering and the receiving of the product if you were to use the mobile app. Okay, yeah, I understand that. What I'm trying to drive at here is do we have any data or information about how much it reduces? Because when I look at our climate priorities, what I'm trying to determine here is is this something that's going to generate more greenhouse gases or I mean, people have to go get their coffee, I get that. But are we encouraging more drive through action and I fully understand that the potential of an order head app has to reduce that but I don't have any data letting me know how much that mitigates it. I know that if I order my coffee ahead, it's a completely different reason than I would go through a drive through. Right, I just want to clarify, I don't believe that the mobile app ordering app is restricted to drive through operation. I believe that you can order it on the app and also walk inside. That's kind of my point. So I was wondering if there was a relationship or and I'm guessing that the answer is no, is that we don't have data about that, about how a mobile ordering app may or may not decrease idling time when there's a drive through option. That would be correct. Jeff, do you want to chime in? Yeah, sure, this is Jeff Halbert, the applicant helping Starbucks with the relocation. According to a study that was done in October last year, about 26% of the people ordering at the store were using the mobile ordering platform or the application on their phone to order ahead in order to stop, go in, pick up their products and leave or go through the drive through window. That number is increasing and it has increased, even though we don't have additional studies beyond that one, especially during the health crisis, as everybody knows, the stores were closed, a lot of the stores were closed. And so therefore the bulk of the business was going through the drive through window. Those people were continuing to use their mobile order apps to order ahead, which therefore decreases the amount of time that the car is waiting because there's no ordering at the order window. You're basically driving up to the window, I, my name's Jeff and they hand you your product and you go, you've already paid for it, you've already ordered it. Basically it cuts down your time almost in half, I would imagine, especially in the morning time when most people are waiting in line. So there hasn't been an empirical analysis, but 26% from the last study were using that application and that lends itself to an increased number over this last number of months that we've been in the health crisis. Okay, yeah, I would believe that it probably has increased significantly. But if that data does come forward in any way, I think it would be helpful for the council to know what impact as people get more comfortable with that that has on mobile ordering, not just for this applicant, but for applicants going forward because when I hear a decrease at 26%, the converse of that is that it increases, what wasn't already there, 74%. So that's the reverse of this and if it's down 50%, COVID it's still increased at 50%. So I'm not sure how we decided that that was negligible under CEQA, but I do appreciate that Starbucks is taking some efforts to mitigate against climate change and hopefully they'll be getting rid of those green straws soon too. Thank you very much. Yeah, and I have to agree that a lot of the restaurant companies are going to these type of applications, as you might imagine, Chipotle and the other companies are allowing you to order ahead and pick up without having to spend a lot of time in the store. It's just, it's easier for the customer and of course it's healthier for everybody. Mr. Alvarez. Thank you, Mayor. I assume these online ordering platform are common now with Starbucks and others as well. What comparison has been made related to traffic with this site and the site over at Farmers and Highway 12 down towards the south end? I frequent that parking lot and there are times, probably peak times when the traffic car queue is all the way back up to Farmers Lane. It's coming out, it's right up to the edge. How is this going to be any different? I mean, I think that both high traffic here is probably more so on Highway 12. I can't imagine that an average queue in peak hours is going to be down at a minimum of about 11 cars or so whatever was mentioned based on what I see at the other end of Farmers Lane. Well, I could make a quick comment about that. This location is actually a step down, if you will, from a convenience point of view from Starbucks. They typically will restrict their store openings to be on the going to work side of the street, which is in the morning. That's where their primary customer is coming from, a home in the morning to a place of business or to go shopping or some place. And so their morning commute line is basically on the other side of this street on Highway 12. It's on the north side of Highway 12 where we're relocating now to the south side is basically on the going home side. It's heading out to the east, so to speak, away from the downtown area. So they understand this site is gonna be kind of a lower volume site, if you will. That's why the store size, if you may have noticed that Connor put forth in the presentation, is we're only limiting the size of the store to 2,200 square feet. They don't really need a big store here. They don't expect a large volume here. It's really a relocation of their small store they have across the street to this location and then adding the drive-through as a functional feature to help them stay in business and serve this part of the community. So it's not really a high volume location like the one you see on Farmer's Lane. I will probably question that assumption. I know that the one across the street is hard to see. I know it had that kind of an issue for visibility. This is gonna be a high visibility location where it was gonna sit now. And I don't believe that the customer base is gonna be any different than what's gonna be over at the Farmer's Lane now at the south end. So it's just a concern of mine. Okay, council, any additional questions? Seeing none, we're not gonna open the public hearing and take public comment for item 15.2. If you'd like to participate via Zoom, please raise your hand. And if you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Madam host, would you facilitate public comment for item 15.2? The mayor will do. Our down timer is before you for the convenience of city council and the public participants. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute your microphone and invited to do so. Your microphone will be muted at the conclusion of your comment or at the end of the allotted time. And this is for public comment on item 15.2. There I'm not seeing any hands raised for public comment and we did not receive any voice message public comment. Great, thank you so much. Bring it back to council. I believe Mr. Tibbets, you have this item and I believe you're muted, Mr. Tibbets. Sorry about that. I move in ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa amending plan development, PD 403 policy statement to include coffee shop, counterordering, the list of conditionally permitted uses at the parcel located at 4620 Highway 12 in order to support the operation of a coffee shop with accessory drive-through service and extended hours of operation, APN 032-190-029, file number PRJ 20-006 and wait for the reading of the text. Second. We have a motion by Mr. Tibbets. Second by Mr. Sawyer. Any additional comments by council? Vice Mayor Fleming. Thank you. I just wanted to generally comment that, you know, I understand the change and I understand the reasons for doing so, but I hope that we do start to move away from drive-through services. They do serve a purpose and I know when I had a baby, it was, you know, absolutely essential to not have to get out of the car, but I do want us to, and I hope that we do start doing that. Additionally, one of the upsides of this and is that it brings to the fore how difficult and what a pain plan developments are. And I'm certainly hopeful that that gets a good hard look when we update our general plan. That's all. Thank you. Mr. Sawyer, did you have a comment you'd like to make? Nope, you're muted. Thank you, Mayor. My apologies. I'm hesitant to support this project. I still have concerns about the interaction with the level of traffic coming through there. I have experienced in this parking lot for both the prior bank and Walgreens that is there. And sometimes it's a challenging dance to get in and out of those two places. I know that a lot of elderly folks frequent the Walgreens there as well. And for me, I still compare it to, I don't see that there's between this and what happens on a daily basis further south at Farmers and Highway 12. So I'm not going to be supporting this. Any additional comments? All right, we have a motion and a second. Madam City Clerk, would you do a real call vote, please? Yes. Council Member Dowd? Aye. Council Member Tibbetts? Aye. Council Member Sawyer? Aye. Council Member Rogers? No. Council Member Oliveris? No. Vice Mayor Fleming? No. Mayor Schwedhelm? Aye. That motion passes with four ayes and Vice Mayor Fleming, Council Member Oliveris and Council Member Rogers voting no. Thank you, Connor, for that presentation. Mr. City Manager, Item 15.3. Item 15.3, Public Hearing Downtown Station Area Specific Plan Implementation Package, Amy Nicholson, City Planner Presenting. Good evening, Mayor Schwedhelm and Vice Mayor Fleming and members of the council. The item before you is the Downtown Station Area Specific Plan Implementation Package and it includes limited general plan and specific plan amendments to reflect the council's direction to remove floor area ratio from 12 properties within the St. Rose Preservation District in addition to zoning code text and map amendments and design guideline amendments. Next slide, please. The Downtown Station Area Specific Plan was adopted by the council on October 13th and following that action, the Design Review Board Planning Commission and Cultural Heritage Board reviewed elements of the zoning code amendments before you this evening in addition to the design guideline amendments. Next slide, please. The Downtown Station Area Specific Plan is comprised of six chapters and the land use and urban design chapters are those that are implemented through the zoning code amendments and also the design guideline amendments. Next slide. The purpose of the city's zoning code is to implement the general plan and any specific plans and it does this by providing specific detail and regulations as it relates to permitted land uses by zoning districts and also establishing process and development standards. Next slide, please. This slide here shows a summary of the changes which are a part of the zoning code text amendments. Some of them are entirely new sections to the zoning code. Others include just minor modifications. Next slide, please. The Downtown Station Area Specific Plan established four new land uses and those are reflected on the map on this slide here in shades of brown and red and pink. There will be four new zoning districts established to implement these new land use designations and the names of those zoning districts are consistent with those in the plan and are reflected here on the slide. Generally speaking, the four new zoning districts are a bit more permissive in terms of allowing multifamily residential units by rights in addition to a wider range of commercial type uses, including retail and restaurants and business uses. The core and station mixed use districts which are focused primarily in the center part of the downtown and also along Roberts Avenue are a bit more permissive as it relates to visitor type serving uses. The maker mixed use district allows for light industrial uses that would be compatible with adjacent residential uses and the neighborhood mixed use zoning district allows for neighborhood supporting commercial uses. The ordinance before you which reflects zoning map amendments would rezone 888 properties within the boundary of the plan area. Next slide, please. There are a number of changes to the existing base and combining districts contained within the zoning code for consistency with this newly adopted plan. That includes the removal of the downtown commercial zoning district and the limited light industrial combining district. The transit village mixed zoning district and station area combining districts have been modified to reflect the removal of the downtown station area plan. And then the historic combining district has been modified to reflect additional character defining elements and I will speak more about that later on in the presentation. Next slide, please. Floor area ratio was introduced by way of the downtown plan. And so the language regarding floor area calculations is included in the zoning code because floor area ratio controls building mass and form it but does not directly set height and density standards. There is the need to actually establish height and density standards for those 12 properties within the St. Rose preservation districts. And Amy Lyle will be speaking more about that later on in this presentation. Next slide, please. The zoning code text amendments also include a number of design standards. These relate to site design and also building design and address each of the topics listed here on the slide. Next slide, please. The zoning code text amendments also include an added combining district which would be called the downtown station area combining district. This district would be added to the properties noted on the map here which either have a triangle or the orange overlay and those reflect the transition areas and also the active ground floor overlay. Next slide, please. The downtown transition would be applied to various segments along 4th and 5th street and it requires that buildings above five stories would step back a minimum of six feet unless approved by review authority. Next slide, please. The neighborhood transition standard is applied throughout the plan area the intent here is to reduce the visual impact of any new development on most of the preservation districts that are developed with low density residential development. The standards are street specific and there is a table in the zoning code which shows which standards apply to what streets but some of the standards include more restrictive front setbacks as shown on the graphic on the slide and then also front building stepbacks over three stories and a daylight plane over six stories. And this is consistent language from the plan itself. This transition would also require that surface parking areas be prohibited between the sidewalk and the building frontage and then in cases where existing development is to the rear of new development the rear stepbacks would be applied on those properties. Next slide, please. The creek activation transition is applied to various segments along the Santa Rosa Creek and the intent of this transition is to promote the use and visibility of these creek areas. New buildings would be required to be creek oriented and provide pedestrian pathways that connects the development to the creek trail network. And in addition, at least one activating use or two activating design features would be required for these projects. Next slide, please. The active ground floor overlay is applied throughout the plan area as well. And the intent here is to ensure that new development optimizes the pedestrian experience. These standards do not regulate the use of ground floor areas but rather create that pedestrian experience through specific design features. The zoning code text amendments include a menu of options that an applicant team can choose from to activate that space, but those include elements such as public art, street furniture in addition to publicly accessible open space. Access to any off street parking would be discouraged from streets within this ground floor overlay and like the neighborhood transition, surface parking would be prohibited between the sidewalk and building facade. Next slide, please. Throughout the plan update, a consistent comment that was received was the benefit of providing wayfinding signs within the downtown area. The zoning code currently has regulations as it relates to signs on private property. So this addition to the zoning code would allow for these wayfinding signs to be located in the public right of way. The intent here is to include information to direct people to specific locations or to transit or parking lots, but not to serve as any form of advertisement. And these signs could be approved along with the planning applications for new development. During the planning commission meeting on November 2nd, the commission had a recommendation to require that these wayfinding signs would be provided in both English and Spanish. And so that recommendation is included in the ordinance before the council this evening. Next slide, please. The historic combining district is applied to each of the properties within preservation districts and also to properties that are designated as landmarks outside of the city's preservation districts. This combining district includes quite a bit of information about each of these districts and it also includes a number of development standards, including the 35 foot height limit for all properties within preservation districts, not to be exceeded in less specific findings are made by the Cultural Heritage Board or the city council. There are no changes proposed to the existing language. This update just includes additional character defining elements for each of the districts. And that information is actually from a resolution which was adopted by the Cultural Heritage Board back in 2006. And we'll provide additional information for members of the public and also for project applicants when they are considering a design either within a preservation district or near one. Next slide, please. Many number of changes are proposed to the zoning code chapter on historic and cultural preservation. This includes an update to the Secretary of Interior standards that are referenced. They also include a few additional exemptions from the minor landmark alteration permit process. And those include the addition of skylights on properties in preservation districts which are not visible from the public right of way. Minor changes that are not visible from the street would also be allowed on non-contributing properties within preservation districts without the landmark alteration process. Additional changes to the Cultural Heritage Board and Design Review Board process are also outlined including a mandatory joint Design Review Board and Cultural Heritage Board concept review. This is essentially codifying a practice that city staff have been making for a number of years. And then in cases where a project requires approval by both the Design Review Board and the Cultural Heritage Board, the code has been amended to reflect that the Design Review Board would be the only review authority for design review approvals. And there would be no change to the approval process for landmark alteration permits. The intent here was really to focus the respective boards on their respective entitlements and to limit the number of joint meetings. The decision criteria for landmark alteration permits have also been modified to reflect new development and to more fully consider the zoning code and also the general plan and specific plan when reviewing projects. And then finally, the Cultural Heritage Board quorum section has been modified to be consistent with the city council and the city's other review authorities requiring only a majority of the quorum or an affirmative vote. Next slide, please. The design review process has also been amended. Any references to preliminary and final design review would be removed from the zoning code resulting in a kind of one-step process for the design review entitlement. This is similar to all other entitlements, such as a conditional use permit or a landmark alteration permit. And any concept design review that is either optional or mandatory would still take place in the same manner. This is really just condensing two actions into one action or design review. Next slide, please. And then there are a number of additional amendments throughout the zoning code. One is vehicle parking minimums have been removed based on direction from the council. Those bicycle parking minimums are retained. There's a clarification in the setback requirement section and then there are a number of modifications to our specifically in uses chapter to really implement the downtown plan to sections, including mixed use and live work in addition to sidewalk cafes and large grocery stores. In addition, there is a new land use that has been added to the commercial zoning district section and that includes electric vehicle sales. Electric vehicle sales would be permitted within each of the four downtown zoning districts upon approval of a minor use permit. And electric vehicle sales is defined as a electric vehicle sales place where the only vehicles on site are those that are display models or those that have been previously purchased by customers awaiting pickup. The land use would also allow for vehicle maintenance that is associated with the particular make of vehicle being sold on the site. And then there are a number of definitions that have been added to reflect language that from the downtown plan. Next slide, please. And I'm gonna turn it over to Amy Lyle to take over the next few slides. Thank you so much, Amy. Good evening, Mayor Spatham, members of the council. So this package does include some limited specific plan and general plan amendments. And this is really in followup to the adoption of the specific plan back on October 13th. And as you may remember, there was a last minute action related to properties along East Street and 10th Street. And these have been called the 12 contributing parcels because they are the contributing historic properties along this corridor within the St. Rose Historic District. And your council's action removed the floor area ratio from these properties. So in followup, as part of this action, we are proposing to establish a height restriction. State law does require that we do define the height and density for properties and the removal of the floor area ratio removed that, which was proposed for the plan. So this action tonight would define the height and the density for these properties, for these 12 contributing properties. So on the slide, you can see the amended floor area ratio map. And since that time, as Amy noted, we have discussed these changes with the planning commission, designer view board and the cultural heritage board. We did do additional noticing to these 12 properties specifically and additional outreach. So we have talked to the St. Rose neighborhood group and representatives of that neighborhood, as well as property owners of those 12 properties. And so it is our staff recommendation and planning recommendation tonight that the height limit be set at five stories, which is consistent with what happened. Through the mayor, am I alone in not being able to hear the presentation? Now, as she went on mute briefly, hoping she will be coming back. Okay, thank you. Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, I'm happy to continue the presentation if you'd like or until we get Amy back. Thank you, Mr. Rose. And Mr. Rosen, through the mayor, could make sure that we start where she left off because we lost quite a bit. But council member Sawyer, if you could just let me know where it was that you were the council stopped hearing the paper. I think it was right. Boy, what was she saying? It was at the beginning of her explanation about the height limit. Five stories. Yeah, exactly. So the staff recommendation is to essentially continue with what was previously codified, which is a five story height limit. It was CD five was the zoning, five stories was the height limit. And so what staff is proposing is to continue with that except remove the floor area requirement, which as Ms. Lyle mentioned, gave an unlimited height limit. So this will give back the five story height maximum, but it won't allow it to be unlimited. And as Ms. Lyle said, we certainly did have outreach with the neighbors and greatly appreciated their input and their collaboration in working on this topic. So next slide, please. I'm looking at this. I'm happy to jump in and just- Yep, I was just reading that. So thank you, Amy. I wanna turn it back to you. I think this is your slide. Okay. In terms of the necessary general plan and specific plan amendments, they are very minor, but they do reflect the five story or 55 foot height limit as Amy and Bill previously noted to the specific plan. And then the general plan amendment would include a footnote to the table that indicates that no maximum density would apply to specific core mixed use properties that are shown in the land use table. And the reason for that is because, again, floor area ratio previously would have impacted each of the properties in the core mixed use land designation and the general plan and specific plan reflected that because that floor area ratio has been removed, it is necessary to acknowledge density and building height in both of these planning documents. Next slide, please. I'm going to briefly go through the design guideline amendments. Next slide. As the council knows, the design guidelines are used for reviewing new development projects. They are intended as a living document. And the design guideline amendments before you compliment the standards that are included in the zoning code text amendments and they also compliment the existing standards that are currently in the code. Next slide, please. The slide shows a summary of the changes to the design guidelines. The only section being modified is section two, which addresses the downtown area. Much of the existing content has been preserved, but the design guidelines from the plan itself have been incorporated. And then there's just been some changes to organization to make it read more clearly and to make it more consistent with the additional sections of the design guidelines. Next slide, please. The introduction section has been updated to reflect the new downtown stationery specific plan boundary and that is for both maps and also language additional guidelines that were included in the introduction have been relocated to more appropriate sections. Next slide, please. The public street section has been renamed as public realm and streetscapes and includes a street furnishing pallet in addition to guidelines for trash receptacles, paving treatments and curb cuts. There are also a number of guidelines as it relates to underpasses that have been updated. Next slide, please. The building section has been renamed site and building design. The guidelines as it relates to articulation and setbacks have been removed because those are addressed by way of standards in the zoning code text amendments and then any duplicative guidelines have been consolidated. Next slide, please. The historic district section remains unchanged. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. The parks and open space section has been renamed to parks and public spaces. Many of the, well, all of the creek guidelines have been maintained and then there's a new table that is included and this is actually directly from the specific plan which identifies new public space types and recommended elements. Next slide, please. A new section has been added on wayfinding. Next slide, please. The new section has been added on parking so there are a number of guidelines that came from the plan and then there were also existing guidelines that have been consolidated into this one section. Next slide. And then finally, there is a new section titled environmental sustainability. So this includes previous design guidelines which were located in another section and also multiple guidelines that came out of the downtown plan itself as it relates to heating and cooling smart buildings and also sustainable materials. Next slide, please. The amendments before you both for the zoning code and the design guidelines have been found in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act in that they are within the scope of the previously certified final subsequent EIR for the downtown stationary specific plan. And with that the planning, I'm sorry, the planning commission and the planning and economic development department recommend that the city council by resolution approve limited general plan and downtown specific plan amendments and by ordinance approve the zoning code and zoning map amendments to implement the downtown stationary specific plan. And further the design review board, cultural heritage board and planning and economic development department recommend that the council by resolution approve amendments to section two of the city's design guidelines to implement the downtown stationary specific plan. And that concludes my presentation. City staff are available to answer any questions that you have. All right, thank you for that presentation, Amy. Council, any questions? Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And Amy, if we can go back and talk specifically about those 12 parcels, I know we did a little bit of sausage making that created a bit of a headache for staff. So I appreciate you all finding a path forward on that front. The intent from the council when we had this discussion was for those 12 properties to be consistent with the rest of the contributors to the historic district. And as I understand it in our own guidelines for the historic district, there's a 35 foot maximum height requirement that if they're gonna go above it that they need a variance and need to actually be approved through the cultural heritage board and through this entity for need. So I'm just asking why the 12 properties have a height limit of 55 as the suggestion. Why aren't we being consistent in having 35 as the suggested height limit? Again, as I understand it consistent with the rest of the historic district. Council Member Rogers, members of the council, I'm happy to address that. So I think the thing that is important to note is we talk about five stories, we talk about 55 feet. That's a maximum, it's not a given. The actual height limit in the historic district is 35 feet. And to go beyond that, an applicant would have to go through and attain a landmark alteration permit and make additional findings, design related findings to exceed that height limit up to a maximum of 55 feet. So based on the direction, and when we went back a number of times, we watched the video, listened to the tapes. We wanted to make sure we were consistent with the direction we got that night. And so the direction we heard was to remove the FAR. But as noted earlier, we had to put something back in there for a development standard. And so that was the approach we took was to go back to what it was. But I hope that's helpful, that distinction of knowing it's actually 35 feet up to 55 with additional findings. Yeah, and so I guess my question to Bill and it might just be semantics, but I know that it actually does matter to folks in the neighborhood. If going above 35 feet requires a variance anyway, why wouldn't we say that the limit is 35 and require a variance process to go up to that 55? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm happy to describe it. So what I just mentioned, the additional findings that have to be made through the landmark alteration permit, those are different than a variance. A variance actually is reviewed and acted on by the planning commission. It's a land use variance. It's a different set of findings and they're quite rigorous actually. We don't see those granted very often. You have to have certain characteristics apparent. And so it's a much more rigorous process to get a variance. And like I said, it goes to the planning commission. Staff, as I said, based on the direction we received felt that it was more appropriate to keep it as it was 55 feet and let the cultural heritage board through the landmark alteration permit be the review authority. It certainly could be a direction that the council goes and go with a variance. That would be a maximum height of 35 feet. To exceed that would be a variance. The planning commission would be the review authority and it's a very rigorous process. We don't grant many variances to be honest. All right, I appreciate that Bill. And I will be asked by colleagues to consider that just to provide that level of certainty around the historic district and understanding that there is an ability to override for specific considerations which this neighborhood has seen even within the last year with the Caritas Village project. So while it is more restrictive, I think it meets the intent of the historic district and the historic preservation that our community values while also still providing a path forward though more rigorous as used. Mr. Sawyer, you have a question. I do thank you, Mayor. Bill or Amy, I'm curious as to the cultural heritage boards endorsement of the moving forward with this plan. What made them comfortable about the 55 story maximum knowing that or explained to me how it's difficult to get through their hoops because if they were, I'm just curious as if they were comfortable with it, how were they comfortable with it? And how is it better than the variance path? So the cultural heritage board review this I had a very similar discussion. I explained the different options, the variance versus going through a landmark alteration permit and what that means and who the review authorities would be two different review authorities. Not all members were completely aligned with what we presented, but there wasn't a consensus. There wasn't a quorum and essentially to say specifically their recommendation was to go with a 35 foot maximum where a variance would be the remedy to go beyond that. So I think some other considerations though that we've talked about through this process is that as was mentioned earlier, there are other things that are being implemented with this plan to try to regulate some of the development. So you have the additional stepbacks. You have the setbacks, stepbacks above certain floor levels, you have additional setbacks. So you have things that we think will also help to mitigate some of the concerns we've heard, which are essentially the large buildings in what is mostly single family development. The other thing to keep in mind, whether it goes to the planning commission as a variance and has to go through these more rigorous set of findings or it goes to the cultural heritage board where the findings are related just to the landmark alteration permit. Both of those are discretionary. Both of those are public hearings and both of those are appealable to the council. So that would be the pathway for either one. We just felt that the variance was a quite a significant threshold to surpass for development. And so we thought it was appropriate, the staff perspective. One other thing I think to consider is the idea of, you know, based on the initial direction of the council, why are we doing this? Why are we having a plan amendment? And it's to catalyze development. It's to catalyze development focused in our downtown where we have resources, we have infrastructure. And we think that by putting a height limit, by not allowing FAR on these properties, we are not incentivizing those properties to develop quite in the same manner as those that don't. And so that is a concern that's come up. We've heard that directly from the neighbors. So we think that we've struck a balance in that. But as I've said, the council absolutely has the ability to go forward with a more restrictive approach. And that would be a 35 foot hard and fast height limit. The variance would be the gravity to go beyond that. Thank you. Hey, council, any additional questions? Okay, I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing for item 15.3. We're not taking public comment on this item. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're calling in via telephone, please dial star nine. Madam host, would you facilitate public comment on item 15.3, please? Thank you, mayor. A countdown timer is before you for the convenience of city council and public participating in the meeting tonight. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute your microphone when invited to do so. Your microphone will be muted at the conclusion of your public comment or at the end of the allotted time. The first public comment will be from Greg followed by Roy. Greg, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? I do. Thank you. Please identify yourself for public record if you so choose and your time begins now. Greg Parker, St. Rose Historic District. And what I'd like to do is read something from the downtown station or a specific plan update, title 20 zoning specifically 20-28-040 historic combining district. And what they say in there is section E in the event of any conflict between the following standards and those of the primary zoning district, those applicable to the H combining district shall apply. In other words, the historic district guidelines should apply. Section three A of that height limits within the combining district are more restrictive than height limits of the primary zoning district. No structure within the H combining district shall exceed a maximum 35 feet in two stories, except it's provided in subsection E3C, E3C1 says that the increased height to get above the 35 feet, the increased height does not be tracked from the character of the preservation district or any adjacent contributing properties. And the other one is not as more innocuous. What concerns us is I've been here for 27 years. The more project came in and they had these guidelines on them, they had these historic district guidelines. They came into four stories right up to the sidewalk on V street. And it took us a year of fighting to get that lower down to two stories. When it came over, when that was done, we had the character's village, you know, what that was like. We lost a whole block of the historic district. We've got two other projects coming in, one at 320 college, it's coming in at four stories. And Tom Carson's building at 528 B street is coming into five stories. None of them are at 35 feet. That's why we think we need the variance. It's easy to blow through this 35 foot limit which is supposed to be the dominating guideline in a historic district. And it's frustrating with us that we have to come back and fight these things over and over and over again. And it's nothing but frustrating. It's driving us crazy. We spend money on lawyers. We take time out of what we should be doing out of work, out of working on our properties. It drives us nuts. What else can I say? When the downtown station or a specific plan first came in in 2006 or seven, we weren't notified. We had no idea there was a CD5 put on those properties. When I got here it was H combining districts on top of it. And we thought it was that time. That was, that's what it was. That's our first shot at it. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. The next public comment will be from Roy, followed by Denise. Roy, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on the screen? Yes, I can. Thank you very much. Thank you city council for the opportunity to express my thoughts about this issue. My name is Roy Lucene and I live in the St. Rose historic preservation district. One is more of a footnote to this and Greg's already brought it up that I in discussion with other people in the neighborhood who have been in the past extremely involved in the question of development and the knowledge of the neighborhood, no one had known that the CD5 had been imposed. I think what we want to do simply is restore something it's been described as the original, but actually what we want to do is to restore an earlier original of 35 feet limit with variants. The concern about the findings is that it's such a vague category of what can be considered acceptable to reach the five story limit. Our concern is that under the pressure to develop that in the future it will be much easier for that five story limit to be achieved. Also, really this all comes down to one sentence. Does the historic preservation district have a meaning? Does the stated goal of the DSASP to enhance the historic character of the downtown have a meaning? And we feel that in fact those things will be respected and have meaning for the future of the downtown if a 35 foot limit is placed on these 12 contributing properties. I don't foresee what I would call creeping preservationism spreading out across the entire downtown. This is within the already established limits of the St. Rose Historic Preservation District on properties that have already been established as historically and architecturally valuable. So I just ask that those same, the same height limit that I have on my property in the historic district be applied to these 12 contributors. And thank you very much. Thank you, Roy. The next public comment will be from Denise. Denise, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? I can see the timer. Thank you. Please identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. Hi, I'm Denise Hill and I'm with the St. Rose Preservation District. Also, I'm gonna piggyback on what Greg and Roy have said because it's very valid and our household has lived here for almost 30 years and have had the same frustrations about developers coming in and building and being allowed to go past that 35 limit on a regular basis, if not every time. So it is very concerning to us that it would be left to the CD5. And I think what happened was, as you'll recall back on your meeting on October 13th when the amendment to take away the FAR on these 12 properties was brought up, there was never a discussion that it would revert to CD5. That wasn't brought up at that meeting. So there was never the ability to have an opinion on whether CD5 was where the council wanted to go. Clearly the intent was preservation if you play back the council video on that date. And so in the view of preservation, a CD5 is not that. And a CD5 puts a target on the homes which most of them are one and two-story. There's a few three-story structures but those are apartment buildings and they fit into the district the way they were built back in the day. So what happens is you put a CD5 on these and they do become a target. I can easily envision developer buying two of the properties, the single family properties and having two parcels to spread their development across and taking out those two family homes. So we are very much in support of doing a 35-foot height limit with the variance. Since the variance does add extra teeth to it, I do know that when we listened, we were part of the planning commission hearing on this and part of the cultural heritage board meeting on it. That the way it was presented to them was well, the council took away the far so that leaves the CD5. So in their mind, I think some of them thought well, the council was okay with the CD5 but in reality, the council never had a discussion about the CD5. So I think there was some confusion there and people didn't wanna go against the council vote and so they supported it. But in reality, it is a weaker system at this point to ask for just a landmark alteration. It's an easier system for a developer to get through. So in an effort to preserve these homes and our preservation district as a whole, I think the 35-foot with the variance is definitely the way the neighbors that are concerned about this would like to go. So thank you very much. Thank you, Denise. And this is for public comment on item 15.3. Mayor, I'm not seeing any additional hands raised. Are you okay if I move along to the voice message public comment received? Absolutely, thank you. Hearing item 15.3, downtown stationary specific plan. Duane Dewitt from Roseland. A portion of the downtown specific plan encompassed many acres of Roseland from Dutton Avenue along Sebastopol Road to Highway 101 and Highway 12 on the north. Unfortunately, the plan was done in such an exclusive manner. Many people from Roseland affected by this plan were not able to participate. Although you folks think having 50 people on a plan for a city of 187,000 people is a big deal. Essentially, the residents of Olive Street, then coming down Sebastopol Road to Boyd Street, further down to Timothy Avenue, then to Goodman and Avalon, all just to the south of Sebastopol Road. Didn't have that opportunity to participate. Your employees may say, oh, we reached out. Your consultants, the highly paid specialists may say, oh, we'll use the modern technique. Well, they left out a lot of folks who were taxpayers along Sebastopol Road, and there are people who are from disadvantaged underserved communities. Now, this looks like a deliberate discriminatory violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act that is in effect, especially because the money that was used are a good portion of it, I should say, for this downtown-specific plan. Came from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission out of the Bay Area, and the idea was that there would be a far better approach to getting those people in those underserved areas involved. That did not occur. It's really important that you folks wait on this and have some more meetings with the people in Roseland now that you're going to have, finally, an elected official representing Roseland that can work with the community far better than you folks ever have before. And your consultants, they're just taking a lot of money and blowing smoke up people's tailpipes. That's what's so sad about the situation. So, last but not least, the specific request is do not approve this plan at this time until there has been an opportunity for the disadvantaged underserved and overburdened residents along Sebastopol Road's side streets have an input to what's gonna happen there in the near. That concludes the public comment received for 15.3. All right. Thank you. I will then close the public hearing, bring it back to council. Mr. Sorry, do you have your hand up for a question or comment at this point? That was a no. Okay. Well, Mr. Sorry, you've got this item if you have no more questions. I do have this item, but I think I'm gonna need a straw vote to deal with the 12 contributors because the first item on my is a resolution that deals with those 12 properties. So the question is, do we move to, do we accept staff's recommendation or do we move to a variance for those 12? And I'm gonna need direction or some kind of indicator from the council in case we need to change some language. Thank you, Mr. Sorry, Mr. Rogers, do you have some thoughts on this item? Yeah, I don't need to belabor the point that I've said quite a bit on it. For me, it's a pretty easy one that these are contributors to the historic district. It's something that the council and the community has supported and that the zoning for historic districts is to have the 35 feet there. For me, if a developer wants to come in and make their case to us, then they should be able to exceed that 35 feet. They have a process for doing so, but that should be the default is that it stays at 35 and that they have to come and prove their case, not the other way around. And if anyone else would like to contribute, Mr. Sorry, from my perspective, I'm supportive of Mr. Rogers thoughts on this. You know, I met with staff as well and it's interesting to see the various positions that one can take on it. And I'm coming from a place of, I want it to be more difficult, and but there is a downside to it. And that is there are not every neighbor wants it to be difficult to develop their lots differently. And we are going to be for these 12, we are going to make it pretty difficult. But I think that's the goal that we have for this, for these particular lots to give some reprieve to the neighbors. And I appreciate staff's position and all the work that they went through to try to satisfy the needs of the preservation district and the needs of the various property owners and the council and it's been a lot of work for all for the planning department. And I appreciate all their hard work, but I am also going to be after a great deal of thought supporting the need for a variance. I'm just gonna need the language from our city attorney perhaps, unless it's something that I wrote down briefly here that might work. So I will attempt a resolution. If you could hold on one sec, Vice Mayor Fleming, did you have some comments you wanted to make before you're on mute? Well, I was responding to council member Sawyer's request. I think I'm in agreement. What I was gonna say is that, you know, while it doesn't burden those particular property owners, it does not with additional requirements that they do want to sell to potential developers something like that. It's not beyond the pale or it's not impossible and we saw that that can happen in our historic neighborhoods. So there would be remedy for those folks. So, Mr. Sawyer, did you have a question about Mr. Tiffin? Did you have another comment? Yeah, thanks, Mayor. I'm gonna go along with supporting this, I think, because I can see the direction the council's going. But the only thing that I think is a shame about this is that I see two outcomes from this action. The first is that we're probably not gonna see a lot of change or development interest in that area. That's number one. And I say that it, that's hard for me as a young person because I want to be on this council to see change, to see more housing in particular and more dense housing downtown. And this is, I mean, I think this is what the downtown is where we've said we want to see development. The second issue I see coming from this is a high demand on staff time every time a developer does express some interest in going down there to make some sort of a change. They're probably gonna have to seek a variance from a cost perspective point of view because we've seen time and again, people coming forward through the appeals process or one way or the other on this council seeking all kinds of waivers, adding affordability components to get higher densities allowed and getting rid of height restrictions. So I think we're gonna see a lot of staff time get dedicated towards any types of variances and things. And I suppose that's what they're here for. I just hope that this doesn't become kind of a culture of the council. Thanks, Mayor. All right, Mr. Sawyer, who did you want to receive direction from for you to assist you with the resolution? Well, I would ask for direction from the city attorney in being able to incorporate the desire of the council and with appreciation to Mr. Tibbetts. This is moving in the opposite direction to other than what we normally have been doing of late in the downtown. And the only piece that gives me some kind of relief is or resolution is that it is on a limited number of lots on a neighborhood that has had a great deal of pressure placed on it. But I appreciate your concern about moving in a different direction than this council has before. And I hope that it does not become the culture of the council moving in that opposite direction. So, Madam City Attorney, how would you recommend that we incorporate this piece of language into this resolution? Thank you, Council Member. I'm in communications with staff and what we would ask, we do have some ideas of how to change the language, but we would ask for, let's say a 10 minute break so that we can craft the language and bring it back to you in a, hopefully an easier process than we had last time around. I appreciate that and perhaps it could be, if it's not fairly simple because I'm not a stenographer, in case you, perhaps you could email me the changes. We'll do, yes. Should email me the resolution and how it should read. Yes, we'll do that. I appreciate it, thank you. Okay, so we'll go ahead and take a recess until 720 and Madam City Attorney, if you happen to complete the task prior, if you could let me know, that would be great, but we'll recess until 720. Great, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Is anybody talking? I can't hear anything. No, the meeting has not reconvened yet. Vice Mayor Blinning. Dick was about to start singing show tunes though, so glad your volume's working. Yeah, you guys still can talk, just be really careful, that you don't start. Oh, let's see. Who's watching what? Do we have a quorum? I'm not sure they're ready yet, so I'm checking on that. Yeah, I just said, so it's actually gonna let me know when they're ready. All right, council, it looks like we're ready to reconvene. Let's see if, there we go. Madam City Clerk, could you do a roll call please? Yes. Council Member Doud. Here. Council Member Tibbetts. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Rogers. Here. Council Member Olivares. Here. Vice Mayor Fleming. Here. Mayor Schwedhelm. Here. At the record show that all council members are present. Okay, we're reconvening still on item 15.3. We already held the public hearing closed it and the ball was in your court, Mr. Sawyer. Did you want to start or would our city attorney be starting the conversation? I believe we'll let the city attorney start as we, the first resolution refers to amendments as read by Ms. Nicholson. And as far as I know, they have not been read as yet. Correct. If I may, we'll have, we have, you have four items before you, two resolutions, two ordinances, one of the resolutions will be revised with amendments as read by Ms. Nicholson. One of the ordinances will also have amendment, but since this is introduction, we'll be able to, you'll be able to direct us to make those amendments when we come back for the final read. But so we'll start with the resolution for the general plan amendment and downtown specific area, downtown station area specific plan amendments. And I would ask any Nicholson to read the recommended revisions to address your, your preferences. Thank you. Thank you. So there would be an added finding. This would be a fourth finding added to page three of the general plan and specific plan amendment resolution, which would read as follows. The reduction of height for the 12 historic contributing properties along B street and 10th street may result in a decrease in development potential from the current CD zoning allowance of five stories. In accordance with the Housing Crisis Act of 2019, SB 330 and section 65863 C1, there will be no net loss of residential density due to the concurrent adoption of the downtown station area specific plan zoning implementation package, which re-zones properties within the downtown station area to accommodate an additional 5,275 housing units beyond the 2007 downtown station area specific plan and existing housing element. And then the new policy LU 2.7, which has parentheses page two dash seven found on the last page of the resolution. This is a specific plan policy would read as follows. Require new development within the core mixed use station, mixed use, maker mixed use and neighborhood mixed use designations to achieve the midpoint or higher of the maximum FAR in all cases where FAR is established. Exceptions are allowed where parcel configuration, historic preservation or utility constraints make the midpoint impossible to achieve. On properties where no FAR is established, the building height shall be limited to a maximum of 35 feet. And that concludes the changes to the resolution. So I believe we're ready to go. And with great appreciation and respect for both our legal team and our planning team, I will introduce the following resolution. Resolution of the council, the city of Santa Rosa approving limited general plan and downtown station area specific plan amendments, consisting of text changes to define the development standards for 12 historic contributor properties within the St. Rose Preservation District. File number ST18-002 with amendments as read by Ms. Nicholson and way further reading. Second. Okay. If I could just check with city attorney, are we going in the path that you folks were working on during the break? Yes, that's exactly right. Thank you. Great. Okay. We have a motion and a second. Are there any additional comments? Fortunately seeing none. Madam city clerk, can we do a roll call vote please? Yes. Council member Dowd. All right. Council member Tivitz. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member Oliveris. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Secondly, I will introduce the resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa adopting amendments to city of Santa Rosa design guidelines section two core area consistent with the downtown station area specific plan file number ST20-002 and way further reading. Second. We have a motion by Mr. Sawyer. Seconded by Mr. Rogers. Roll call vote please. Council member Dowd. Aye. Council member Tivitz. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member Oliveris. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Hold on one second. Next, I will introduce an ordinance. The council of the city of Santa Rosa amending title 20 of the Santa Rosa city code to implement the downtown station area specific plan file number REZ20-008 with amendments to reduce the height limit on 12 contributing parcels to 35 feet subject to historic preservation requirements for a variance for any increase for developer over 35 feet and way further reading. Second. Motion by Mr. Sawyer. Second by Mr. Rogers. Roll call vote please. Council member Dowd. Aye. Council member Tivitz. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member Oliveris. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. And finally, I will introduce an ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa amending title 20 of the Santa Rosa city code reclassification of 888 properties located within the boundaries of the downtown station area specific plan file number REZ20-008 and way further reading. Second. Motion by Mr. Sawyer. Second by Mr. Rogers. Roll call vote please. Council member Dowd. Aye. Council member Tivitz. Council member Tivitz. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member Oliveris. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. And is that it, Mr. Sawyer? Okay. Again, I wanna thank everyone who helped us get through this point. Sue, Bill, Amy and Amy and the team working behind the scenes. So thank you for helping us go through this. So well done. Thank you. Okay. Next on the item agenda is written communications. We all received the quarterly board commission and committee's attendance report provided for information. Item 17. We're now taking public comment on item 17, non-agenda matters. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you'd like to make a comment dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Madam host, would you facilitate public comment on item 17? Thank you, mayor. We'll do. Additionally, if you previously provided comment under item 13, non-agenda matters, you will not be permitted again to speak at item 17. As you can see, a countdown timer is on your screen for the convenience of council and members of the public. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute your microphone when it's invited to do so. Your microphone will be muted at the conclusion of your comment at the end of the year, a lot of time. Mayor, I'm not seeing any hands raised for public comment on item 17, non-agenda matters. All right, thank you very much. Okay, having no further items to discuss on tonight's agenda, this meeting is hereby adjourned. Thank you for your participation and contributions.