 If council member Fleming a little bit of time, unless we know that she's not joining us this morning is clearly do you know if if Victoria is going to be joining us or not. She did confirm that she would be available this morning. Okay, great. Thank you. Let's give it a give it a minute or so. There we are. Good morning Victoria. Morning guys. Are we ready to start Ms. Clary. Good morning. So Carl. We are. I will bring the January 11 economic development subcommittee to order. And pursuant to government code section five four nine five three E and the recommendation of the health officer of the county of Sonoma. Economic development subcommittee will be participating in this meeting via zoom webinar members of the public may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and as noted on the agenda. Ms. Clary, could you review how the public may comment. Certainly. Good morning members of the public wishing to speak during item three public comment or during any of the scheduled items will be able to do so by utilizing the raised hand feature, or if calling in by pressing star nine on their phone. They will then be given the ability to address the committee. Thank you. Thank you very much and could you please call the role Ms. Clary. Member Alvarez. Member Fleming. Chair Sawyer here. Thank you. Thank you very much. So if you wish to make a comment on via zoom please select the raise hand button if you are dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand. Each speaker has three minutes a countdown timer will appear to the community for the convenience of the speaker and viewers. Please make sure to unmute yourself when you are invited to do so, your microphone will be muted at the end of that countdown. And at this point I would like to ask if there are any public comments on items not on our agenda this morning is Clary. We have. Yes, we do we are gentlemen Thomas hold on just one moment while I fill up the screen. You should be able to unmute if you would please confirm your ability to see the timer on the screen. Good morning. Yes, I think so. Thank you. Okay. Great. Well, good morning all. And happy new year. I wanted to come in and and do forgive me. I think it is important for the economic development of Santa Rosa to mention this. And in the one hand it's kind of, you know, wonderful that we have a new general manager of smart. On the other hand we still have this impediment, which is Jennings crossing and we have a new city manager. It's really great. It's a great opportunity to get on the right foot. And there's so there have been some discussions and I would like to discuss with the city what those discussions were haven't had that opportunity yet. But what I wanted to point out is, we're not going to be able to pass the smart tax extension. If we do not get the Jennings crossing. So I'm smart. So I know the city wants it. I know there's a lawsuit. We know that. But we need to get an agreement. We need to have a settlement of this. It can't just continue out in phenomenon this lawsuit and they're waiting stalling doing everything. And so my point is that the sentiment is such that it will not be better than the last time we have the vote. And any time we go forward it's worse and going to be worse and worse we need to have people in support. And so we have to get this crossing where there will be deleterious effects and one just one major deleterious effect is that there's about $700 million invested in smart so far of the tax money and the federal money. And that would end in 2028. So you could just picture six years of the loss of $100 million a year to this community. Just imagine it would be all of a sudden it would be at the end, but it would be like $100 million a year loss from now till then if we were to lose smart. We have to come together and we have to get the Jennings crossing to do it because the people won't vote. They won't vote for it. And we know that we've already seen that. So I just want to mention that, and not to put a pile on things but to actually turn things around to think we have the opportunity. We have this great opportunity. I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak. Any other public comments on items not on the agenda Miss Cleary. We have no additional hands raised at this time. Okay, thank you very much well then we'll move on with our agenda. Miss Dilarosa. Could you introduce the economic development strat plan. I just wanted to give you a quick update. As we make our way through the inner design phase of this plan. And as that phase implies, we're making changes to the plan before we finalize it. So next slide please. Yeah, next slide. And so just this one I just want to let you know we've not changed anything. Just a reminder this is our draft vision vision mission and theory of change. Nothing has changed on that we feel comfortable and proud of where that stands now and have had. As we've been socializing the plan with a few people to get feedback nothing on this has changed. So next slide. But what has changed is we had originally in the first drafts had four goals. And when we were discussing these realize that two of the four goals. We consolidated to address things in a different way and then really when we started looking at our resources and what some of the goals sort of laid out to be that they were not going to be really accomplishable in a meaningful way that we could advance the objectives of this of the strategic plan so so we it is in the last two goals which I'll explain to you that we kind of looked at the other thing that when as we were talking about the plan. One of the other things is that, you know, the build out of the goals, kind of presented as a better opportunity in updating goal three in that goal one is really about innovation, or, you know, what's a mentality or mo within the division. So goal two addresses historic oversight. So it's who how and why are we addressing some of the issues that we're addressing, and then goal three, the previous ones. Goal three used to be specific to young people and education so it was equipped young people with knowledge skills resources opportunities and build their power to participate in and contribute to the center as a community workforce economy. So really we were looking at future workforce and goal for was support policies that drive the development of inclusive mixed use multifamily housing and priority development areas. So again, continue to focus on our, our housing needs. So what we realized is really those two are issues of the day so we're going to build one and go to really what we need is a consolidated goal three that better represents the broad issues of the day so this is now goal three is drive policies and leverage partnerships to address urgent economic challenges and improve livability across Santa Rosa. So again, within this we've got youth and also childcare and the housing policies that we're looking to focus on. So as we, as we come a little bit closer to finalizing the plan. So that's the periodic updates on where we stand in order to actually have the achievable plan that links effectively with council goals, the general plan update and our state collaborative and any of the other sort of large strategies that that are being implemented in the city. So that's it. That's personally anytime we can consolidate without diluting the intention of the goals, as I'm all for that and creating clarity. Any comments Victoria Eddie on the on the change. Yeah, I like it I like that. It's a little bit more elegant and I like that you expressed that it's going to be more achievable. And I didn't feel that it dilutes the, the either the other goals and that you specifically call out the areas and the other, the previous two goals three and four in this school so it has my enthusiastic support. Thank you, Eddie. Oh, for me is right so you know that anything that you do. I absolutely appreciate so continue forward sister continue forward. Thank you. Thank you both. Madam clear it. Miss clear do we have any public comment at this point. We do not nor do we have any voicemails or emails for this meeting. Excellent. Thank you very much. And so, Mr. Rosa, the next item. Yeah, so we're going to actually elevate Alan Alton, Brandon and travel and Jeff Burke for this item. And so, you know, as we've been going through our strategic plan and planning process we've been identifying things and trying to move in an expedited manner on certain items or tools that we think might be helpful to us in in achieving some of our goals. And I had to say in advance of this, this may or may not be one of them we're interested in your, your input on this, but this was brought up to us outside of this community as an interest to sort of review the local preference of procurement process, specific to, you know, to economic development. And let's see I hope Alan and the island is going to actually take this item and introduce it but I have to say in advance because I'm not sure if he's going to say this. This is the ninth time this has been reviewed. And we keep coming to the same place with it, because it's not because it's been working. But are there opportunities and it would this be the right tool so with that I'm going to ask Alan to take it away. Thanks Ray so welcome Alan. Thank you, john and the committee right thanks very much. We can move on to the next slide please. So what we have here is is for the purpose of this item and an overview of where we are with our current local preference policy. I'm just ready to mention this has been brought up a few times. And we have reviewed this before in the long term financial policy and audit committee. We are not proposing a recommendation at this time. This is just a set context but we do. And I'll get to this toward the end there. We, we do anticipate coming back to the committee with the recommendation in another meeting or so. So, the definition of local preference is it occurs when a local firm is is favored in a procurement over non local firms. For reasons unrelated to the procurement itself, typically to support the local economy, and we apply this to goods and or services. So there, there are a number of types of preferences so there's second chance bids, which is when a local firm is offered the chance to match the lowest bid. There are tie bids when the bid of a local bidder is the same as as a non local bid percentage bids when the local bid falls within a certain percentage of that lowest non local bid reciprocal bids absolute bids and bidding or value credit. So those are the different types of preferences could exist out there. We do have on the next slide, our current local preference code. So it is in the, the next slide. So it is in the city code chapter three dash oh eight dot 130.i, which is a 1% preference in determining low monetary bid up to $5,000 business entity entity must prove principle place of business within Santa Rosa. It only applies to formal written solicitous bids for goods and general services does not apply to public works because that's protruded by law, and we do not apply it to professional services contract. Our code does comply with prop 209, which prohibits consideration of race, sex or ethnicity. Federal mandates, however, regarding minority and women owned procurement goals do exist in transit and tip. Next slide. So, definition. So we talk about good and services so good are tangible or physical products, general services or work performed or services rendered by an independent contractor. So the old services or building and equipment maintenance, equipment rental, etc. professional services, those are architect engineers, attorneys, other consultants or individuals possessing a high degree of technical skill. And there are several types of enterprises. So we have disadvantaged business enterprises which are small businesses were socially and economically disadvantaged individuals own at least 51% of the business and control management and daily operation. There are minority business enterprises for 51% of the business is owned by minority individuals and management and daily operations are controlled by those minority group members. And then there are women's business enterprises for 51% of the business is owned by manage and daily operations are controlled by women. So, next slide. So we went back and looked at where our registered vendors and our bid awards. So in 2019. We do have a number of registered vendors that fall within the disadvantaged business enterprises, there's 9% of those are registered. 4% are minority business enterprises and 4% are women. We do have about 23% of our registered vendors are local. And then we have about 57% are outside of the local area. And then in terms of bid awards, we do award locally. Quite often, 43%. So almost have. And we do, or have done bid awards to say disadvantaged business enterprises as well. So next slide please. So this is where we get to the discussion topic. So we, we have all the backup data kind of where we are, and where we want to go. Or at least what the thoughts are where we can go. So, you know, what, what objectives do we want to achieve through your changing or our local preference policy. You know, what, what, what tools do the, do the council and already have what prior curious should we look at those types of things. I know internally staff is looking at, at those lines. And that's why I mentioned that we would come back in March at a later date and we're targeting March to come back. And to explore a lot of these areas, lay out what is available to us right now, what the reality of the types of business services that would be affected by a change in our, in our preference policy. And then make a recommendation on where we can go from from there. The next step beyond that would be to then take it to the council and, and have something adopted at that point. So with that, if there's any questions or we want to pick up the discussion I know I'm here available for those. I believe our purchasing agents on the line, who could help out and rise, of course, to help out as well. And Brandon, could you introduce yourself please. You bet. Good morning my name is Brandon tremolo I am the purchasing agent of the city of Santa Rosa. Great. Thank you for being here this morning and I'm curious and good morning Jeff. The, the items for discussion. So you mentioned they would be bringing this back to hopefully if time permits in March and so we can come to kind of completion on this, this particular item. This, this challenge. During this time between now and March when it comes back to council, who will, I will staff be looking at whether or not we have gone as far as we can with our local preference ordinance. We've discussed this several times at our long term financial planning and audit subcommittee. So I'm, I'm curious if we are and I'm going to entertain questions from, from the, from Victoria and, and Eddie as well and anyone on the panel at this point. But I'm curious, the next couple of months will be looking at potential changes or we may be leaving it as it is and basically looking at within within the restrictions of state and federal law, whether or not we have gone as far as we can with our local, local preference committee. And that's kind of my question is, is that what you'll be doing in the next couple of months and then bringing a little package to the council and will it go to the long term financial policy and audit subcommittee first or is it going to go directly to council. Well, it would go to this subcommittee. First, so that's the intent is to come back here to this committee in March. And we may also go to the long term. Finance subcommittee, however, I mean, yeah, so we may do that there could be a cost component, depending on on what recommendation we make. So, if that's the case, I think it could make sense to go to the, to the other subcommittee or we could just go direct, you know, based on the direction from this subcommittee goes straight to the council and have the discussion there. We hope to be able to, you know, based off of the prior conversations that we've had, we know some of the interest and some of the, the thoughts on what we can do in changing the code. I don't know that we have, you know, this provides us an opportunity to lay it out again, and to, I'm hoping to show some examples of what would what could happen by making certain changes. And again, emphasizing those things that the council could do within legal requirements or, you know, existing law at their own their, their own actions could be very in our fully way of putting that but the council does have things that they can do. And, and I don't know that we've laid that out as well as we could have in the past. And that's my goal is to is to give, you know, the cost benefits, the various options that are there and try to put this to somehow land this particular plane that it's been floating around for quite some time. And if I can I just want to add to that. Just to be clear, it is the benefit of going through the various subcommittees is to understand the intent and the desires broadly. And staff to be able to explain the implications because sometimes it's not just to say finance or to brandolin specifically, or to other, but what are the implications and then also what are the legal parameters, because we can also identify potentially other vehicles to achieve your goals. But I think one of the things that that's been interesting about learning about this process is understanding the various objectives that that council may have and understanding where those might be applied. And so this is one thing might be laying this to rest like maybe we do change the percentage maybe we do add some things that are legally allowed, but what we can also identify your objectives and see if there are another other ways to achieve some of your goals that would not be legally viable through this vehicle. And I'll be curious that I'm very curious about those other avenues that we may be able to go down and that's part of what you'll be looking at and what the staff and and the various subcommittees will be will have an opportunity to weigh in on because there are the the this particular ordinance is not the is not the only way to achieve our goals and brandolin I know you you like to weigh in or give any some questions or comments. I feel like purchasing is at this meeting in order to really refresh the conversation around identifying the objectives. Absolutely to my counterparts points there are opportunity, either further develop or expand our local preference policies. Another biggest challenge right now in identifying objectives is how do we back through the current systems, especially the data driven systems that we have available to us and the data to understand where we could potentially do more work or provide you better clear results on our local preference as it stands now and how we can identify to counsel going forward, not just for formal solicitations. I want to remind this group that our current policy and those the data that you see from 2019 is not the complete picture. This is our graphs taken from our electronic website planet bids. And so we don't have a way for example to acquire the data now for all the micro and small purchases that occur maybe through a three quote process where we'd only use local or when you use your procurement card and you use a local vendor. So if if your objective is to really drill down in the data that's something that we could look forward to trying to achieve in March. The other place that really understanding what goals you want to achieve is coming back to even the multiple subcommittees in March and having these conversations about of those options on a previous slide. What would be a best fit for how we with a very small staff we only have five people in our procurement staff that that provide all of our vendor outreach and internal support to nearly 1200 employees. So how do we best apply it, which of those models would work the best for us. And then how do we capture that data to give you a clearer picture of what's really happening and then we would follow that up with a full educational platform to all city employees so that they understand that model and can apply it to things that they're purchasing under that $10,000 threshold which will happen outside of procurement and how do we make sure they're capturing that data so that we can really give you viable results. Well that makes a lot of sense and it's also going to be very important for for the vendors across the city and those that would be that could want to participate in this ordinance with this fully understood by them as well so that they could take advantage of it. In the future. Victoria Eddie questions or comments at this point before I go to public comment. Yeah. I like John share a great interest in hearing about the legally allowable avenues to achieve these goals, more broadly, but I don't know that this is today is the day that we're going to go over all of that. The other question I have is, and I'm not sure if this is for Brandon or right so which is what is the gold standard like what what jurisdiction is doing this and knocking it out of the park. I think we looked at other, I know you guys like to look at other jurisdictions and see who's doing this well and what they're doing differently. Well, I'll let Brandon and answer because she is just a phenomenal wealth of information. But you know, if we look at a gold standard. I'm also understanding that they come with them large departments, or other resources that that allow them to do this and so even if we look at a gold standard say Oakland has some good examples. You know what, if we look at what they're doing. Is there another way to do it to where we don't have to add people to do the. What's it like the deep dive in some of the compliance things. So Brandon, you had some great examples of ideas and you're on mute. Yes, I was a little surprised by this meeting we came up on this very quickly so I don't have any data currently available. I certainly can come back with some more results I I would think Council Member Fleming that you're interested also in looking at maybe what Sonoma County has and and the data that they collect I'm not certain. And at this point, Oakland does have a very robust program I would want to be able to look through those things and also look to the National Board of Certified Procurement Professionals and see if there are studies out there that would give us a good example of what a success looks like. I would say though, just in general, in my expertise of buying local we are doing a very strong job. If you look at that slide number six and I know that data is a little stale but I felt like the pandemic response to especially emergency procurement to rescue the results that we have currently with over 43% of and remember bid awards means that that is just the data that's coming off written bid procedures through purchasing that happen on our electronic platform that doesn't count all the things like when we hire plumbers we only do a solicitation to locals to ensure that we don't have to manage and because we don't want to minimize our response by forcing them onto the electronic platform. Those aren't part of the system yet, and we should be able to gather that information soon. I think that the most common question we get, and one of the things that, well that I've heard, I should say we get because I don't generally work in this field, but in hearing what Alan Brandlin has talked about and then some of the interest that brought this forward is the question of, you know, diversity or equity can you do it as a local, but for other considerations, and that's where again in that legal thing where it's like well we'd like to highlight woman or minorities. And that's where we're precluded by prop 209 from doing anything, but are there other places that have sort of found workarounds. But it's that our ability to walk that line, or to watch the way other people are walking that line is is where are we have some concerns. But I think that's where, where other, that I've heard other jurisdictions are most involved. And Jeff, Jeff may want to comment on this as well but I believe that where we see the inclusion of any federal SBIR disadvantage business enterprise in a preference policy is due to very long that they usually take around two years of disparity studies that can actually prove that in that jurisdiction over time there has been discrimination involved in their contracting practices. And I believe that that is where the lean in on 209 that allows for some of that practice to occur. If Jeff has anything else to say around that that would be great. So maybe I'll just jump in and give you just a quick overview so let me just start with prop 209. So, in 1996 the voters in California passed what changed the California Constitution and prohibited public sector employers and public sector contracting from giving preferences based on race or gender. And so what that left public agencies to do was to do things like outreach, both in employment and in contracting, and to do things that are kind of race and gender neutral that might help those kinds of businesses. Enable them to make its maybe package an RFP in a way that you unbundle them and make them smaller or figure out creative ways to encourage all businesses because it has to be on its face or race and gender neutral. And that's where some of the cities like Oakland and others have have a somewhat more robust preference policies. And what Brandon was mentioned about a disparity study. So there, there is the ability for a local agency and I'll tell you that San Francisco is the only one that I know of in the state that has conducted a disparity study and found that to remedy the effects of intentional discrimination in its jurisdiction that it now has some ability. And again like Brandon said I mean I just got into this at the end of last week. But to my knowledge San Francisco is the only one that's been able to kind of prove that up and to have a more robust ordinance and as Brandon mentioned, it took a couple of years of a study and I don't know what we may or may not find here in Santa Rosa. But that's kind of the big picture lay of the land and I'll also add that you may recall just a couple of years ago. It came back before the voters to see if they wanted to uphold prop 209 I think it was once a prop 16, and it lost like 55 to 45 so anyway that that's kind of the legal framework in a nutshell. Well, thank you all and I do think that if it came back now it might even have a better chance of being repealed given the political climate that we find ourselves in a couple of comments. One is that you know I know we're not the size of Oakland certainly nowhere near as well resources San Francisco and I hear that this came across your desk relatively recently. So, you know, a couple of things to that one is, I believe in our staff and in your ability to find creative solutions when given the right support and the right amount of time. And so I defer to you to take the time that you need to figure out what the workarounds are, but I also encourage you as we're moving further and further into our equity journey to come and tell us what you need. And let us say you know what we're not going to fund that or we are going to fund that because what I feel like we're running into more and more and what I observe more than I even feel is that we're finding out that creating systems that are equitable do costs some money, certainly cost resources and we can't rely on you to do it all on you know, stolen time here or there from your main job duties and so, you know, from my perspective, you won't be penalized from saying you know here's what Oakland does, we could do that but we would need to add three staff members, and this is what the cost would be, and here's what the benefit that Oakland sees, you know, and, and do you want to make that investment, and rather than coming to us and saying you know what, we just can't do it because we're too small. I hope that it's a combination of, you know, we could, here's the Cadillac plan or you could have, you know, a silver or gold plan that is some of these workarounds or we can do a mix of it. I just figured out how best to support you so please don't be shy I know that we're always in budgetary constraints but this is a huge priority for the council and, and your judgment on these matters is, is taken very seriously. So, if, if I could follow up on that or just follow to that that that's you actually took the word down my mouth that that's where we were going to go and that's why we're not prepared to offer any recommendations right now. We need the opportunity to look at those gold standards that are out there. See how they can work in Santa Rosa, whether, you know, some of them, I know in past conversations we've had there's been some suggestions of things that are occurring in other states. And we just simply can't do those here because of the of the law in California. So we need to look at that. So what what our legal restriction, and then also to look at what resources and to be able to lay out those, those, again, costs, benefits to be able to have something go forward. And which it does bring up a good point of why it probably needs to go to both subcommittees to one look at how we can achieve a goal and still provide all those costs. But then also to update the other subcommittee on on how this follows in with our, with our long term budget planning and, and things like that because they do have have long term implications. But often, those long term implications have a benefit that outweighs that. And so those are the things that we want to be able to present for. And so that's why we needed a little extra time to be able to do that. Again, we're targeting March. We'd rather not have it slip any further than that. But that we think that that'll give us enough time to be able to do that type of analysis and bring in a more well rounded. All right, that sounds great. I have a follow up on that as well because I'm trying to get to do as we go through this and one of them. And then also again, look for the vehicles. And so one of them is, you know, looking into doing a disparity report. And so we can look at the report that Oakland's doing with the cost is the breadth of it, because that aligns very specifically with the economic development strategy goal to which is collect compile synthesize and analyze data to understand characteristics of our own businesses. And so that's one thing. And I think as we look at that, we'll have to look broadly and not just finance not just specific to this but just what the implications are across the board. And this, I just want to hit on Alan's point of going to long term finance, as well as economic development because there are actually two points on this. One is it's the cost of the city, right? But the other and that's the immediate cost for this local preference ordinance. That's one thing. The other is the multiplier effect and the long term return on investment and the implication of our businesses and the ability of our businesses to do business with the city and the city supported those businesses in return. So those, you know, I think the interest is for those to go hand in hand. We have obligations to the taxpayers, we have opportunities with the businesses. And so I think the value should should be considered both ways. I would I would like to make one more point to that we will bring back in March for further discussion and some examples. We have a lot but normally for council awarded goods or general services is really around vehicle purchases. We've had several bids in years past that even with the preference applied have been very tight. And as I said, I want to remind the subcommittee and we will definitely remind the council as a whole at some point that council has authority already built into the code to provide for a waiver of competitive bid when it's in the best interest of our city and that we're not going to have to encourage verbatim. We have every opportunity to also kind of synthesize down future needs that we can kind of see coming particularly vehicle replacements pointed at the Ford models that we have standardized for police, that is a perfect example because we only have one vendor in the city which is Hansel Ford who has that vehicle available to us so we don't even have any other local competition other than Hansel. Purchasing could absolutely come to the council requesting a waiver of competitive bid and work directly with that vendor to provide for a long-term agreement for those Ford vehicles that would easily be able to show profit and keep those dollars within the city. I'd have to do some further research to see if there were any other good specific purchases that we might be able to do a bid waiver or limit the bid to a local businesses only that would be a benefit to our city from a preference standard and also allow us to keep our dollars as local as possible while still providing some level of competition and lowest responsive bid paradigm for our taxpayers. I appreciate that and it's that kind of analysis that I know the council will be looking for and that kind of creativity as well that are that our vendors potential vendors will be looking for as well so it sounds you know a local preference ordinance sounds on its surface fairly simple but clearly it's not and so we really appreciate it and I I agree with Victoria that you know if more time is needed so that we can in a sense you know come up with a nice comprehensive ordinance and then and then put it behind us so that not only that the council can move on but that the our vendors and those that are looking to do business with the city can have a clear understanding of their opportunities and responsibility so that's exactly why if more time is needed I think you please take it to be able to come back and come and come to a come to completion on this on this topic which I know everyone is looking forward to. Eddie do you have any questions or comments at this point? No sir everything's been very well said including Victoria's comment about us being there in support of staff as well as her statement in regarding should they need something come with that ask opposed to just saying we needed I did want to introduce myself to Brandon it's nice to meet you and and I look forward to looking at a report that does include the the the items that didn't meet the threshold such as the plumbers or or anything of that nature that would increase the graph that shows that we are definitely going for that 40 something percent of local businesses so I do appreciate that very much. Thank you sir. Thanks Eddie. Well if there are no other comments from those attending here I'd like to move it to public comment. Do we have any public comment at this point? We do. Just one moment while I share the screen. Thank you. And Thomas do you have the ability to speak at this point if you would please confirm your ability to see the screen. Yes. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Thanks for saying. Great. Well this is was timely that I came on just to speak about smart but that would also have many implications that I was trying to allude to before for the local economy. Specifically about city contracting the the economic principle of what's called the circular flow is the foundation of fractional reserve banking and it's a multiplier effect of 10 times. So it's a well-known principle within economics that investment or purchases produce 10 times their economic value locally and or or generally so so people who come in to take away those that produces those benefits to those areas that take that purchase away from the local community. One aspect of that can be seen in the 49ers who came and began mining and the prices escalated tremendously and that's because they didn't really have any other markets that could compete. And so what happens is you can see dynamically when your prices go off the chart that you're you're no longer competitive and and that's the thing you want to avoid. So you can see that in a supply and demand curve in the marginal cost of those purchases. You can see it relatively quickly that you're exceeding your local capacity which you're not and I want to point out that a specific thing that I think we're all pretty well aware of was the district mapping for the county and the change of the board the districts and they went outside of the community to hire that person and he had no idea what were communities of interest in this community and I think that as an anthropologist and an engineer and so on that things that I have capacity for that that was a travesty not to have someone with local knowledge here about how the communities exist. For instance, to me, it's travesty again that that the the the cemeteries the Santa Rosa Memorial Cemetery and the the rural cemetery were not included in Santa Rosa. So those are represented by James Gore and that is ridiculous. Number one, they don't affect any vote. Okay, there's no vote there just included but they couldn't do it. Thank you very much. Thank you. We have an official member of the public would like to speak Mr. Gregory Farron. Mr. Farron, you have the ability to speak if you would confirm your ability to see the timer please. Yes, I can. Thank you. Yeah, I got on this. Sorry, I apologize. I came in late to this meeting, but I wanted to just mention one other purchase process that I recognize having watched the city for a long time. And that's professional service agreements. Consultants always seem to come from somewhere outside the city somewhere far away and they basically tell us what we already know. And and really leave no expertise behind or any kind of personal reward of the city beyond the actual study. So I'd like to nominate that if you're looking for things that you might want to figure out whether or not you could have a local preference for it would be consultants and professional service agreements. That's my only contribution. Thank you very much. Thank you. We have no additional hands raised at this time. Thanks, Eileen. Appreciate it. Well, if there are no further questions or comments, I think we have reached the end of our agenda. Anything else that you want to bring up, Raisa? Yeah, there was just the department reporter staff reports. And I just wanted to give you an update on one thing. Thank you. So yes, item four on the agenda. Real quick, Raisa, are you going on to the next topic? I did have one quick little question about the last thing or not a question is just a heads up that when it does come back, if it's possible and not too onerous, one piece of data that I would like to have. I know that you break it down into women owned business and minority owned business. But I would love to have a breakdown of the percentage of dollar wise. It doesn't have to be like, it could be a percentage of contracts, but also maybe a percentage of dollars awarded by the city based on on gender and ethnicity. I know that that might be a step too far in terms of analysis. And if it is, you know, I get it. But if that data does come forward, I think it'd be really interesting and informative. And sorry to interrupt you. That's all right. I will take a look and see if that's even a possibility right now. That data is grouped into people to vendors who are self certified. So I don't believe on the certification itself that they drill down to that level of granularity, but I will certainly check. Thank you. And, you know, we can look into because Randall had some good ideas on how to make more robust our business tax certificates in order for it to be easier for us to be able to track things. So we're going to have other conversations about that. And then she had ideas on because it has to be self certified or self stated on how that looks in our our fees or whatever, whatever the the method is by which we receive proposals, I guess. So it's instigated a whole conversation on the the backup information that we need and how we might be able to get that. And then we'll start stepping through those things. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I think there's and then also I just have to say we want to loop in Sakura because she's looking at all of these policies from an equity standpoint within the city, as I understand it. And she tends to have a good idea of those kinds of questions. And I think we've found a number of those kinds of questions. Okay, so item four is I just want to give you an update on something that happened last night. Very quickly, we had the art and public places committee last night, it was a special meeting of the art and public places committee. And they were addressing the the unum sculpture, which if you recall is the public art sculpture that's going into the courthouse square on the four street side. And what they considered last night, were the words and the languages that are going to be shown on the sculpture. So the sculpture itself is a beautiful sort of poetic looking piece that has words on it in what will be 17 languages or 19 if we get technical on this, that were words that were chosen by the community. And it's beautiful, you'll start seeing this, but we're going to put out an update a little bit later on it. There were 18 words and 17 languages, I say 19, because there's two Chinese and two Persian languages. So we have Farsi and Farsi and Dari and then Mandarin and Cantonese. And then there were questions about why didn't we include certain other languages? There I think is a lot of chatter about some languages of cultural importance. And this has gone through a very public process. And our concern moving forward is how do you change on the slide without reopening the process for language? And how do we say one say, one language is more important than another language? Or this religion is more important than that religion, in terms of language. So it was a very good conversation last night. And again, the culmination of a long, robust public process. And based on that, and the recommendation of the committee, the Art and Public Places Committee decided to use the list of words and the languages that were recommended, as most commonly spoken in Santa Rosa now, in sort of a now and looking forward kind of perspective on language. So we will be giving you more updates on that as it goes along. But it was a great conversation on on another function area of the economic development division. And that Chair Sawyer is the end of the report. Well, I'm glad you finished with that. Because, you know, it just it goes to show, regardless of how hard people try to be comprehensive, and thoughtful, and intentional, that sometimes things fall off the the chart. And I'm so pleased that the community came together and looked at these recommendations, because it is a very elegant piece. It will be I'm very much looking forward to its production and installation. And I'm pleased that the people were watching and that people made that they noticed and made the recommendations. Because that's really what it's all about. It's it did nothing but improve the nature of that piece, which again is is is quite elegant. And I'm looking forward to it to it being something that we can all enjoy and that everyone can enjoy. So thank you for that. I think what I if there are no questions, any questions about item number four, because I'm I'm going to open it up to public comment. I lean, do we have any public comment on agenda item number four? Yeah, we have one public comment. And thank you. Apologies, I was on mute. Just one moment while we and Thomas, you have the ability to speak if you would please confirm your ability to see the timer. Yes, thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. Great. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. I did not believe that this would be an opportunity to comment on this particular item. At this time, I participated in the art and public places meeting on to just that we have art on the Elliott and Edwards over crossing pedestrian bridge to signify smart location. And that was the reason I was on there when they were speaking about this art piece, I was staying on to to respectfully hear what was going on in the meeting as I am at this time. And so they was languages and the two languages that are not going to be included are two languages that are under not just federal scrutiny, but under a lot of discrimination, community discrimination, not so much here. We don't see it so much here, but across the country. And those two are are Arabic and Russian. And I don't believe that those two were included. They were mentioned by the community, as Council Member Sawyer was alluding to his appreciation of that. But the way the vote was is that the the languages were determined by self representation to the census. And the Russians are not going to check that box because they don't want the government to know that they're speaking Russian. And it's the same with Arabic or Muslims, they're not going to self identify because they speak English perfectly well, most of them. And they don't even care if the government doesn't know that they don't speak English perfectly well. They would just assume check the box that that's their primary language. Because they don't want to be subject to this intense scrutiny, which there is. And deep, you know, since 9 11, very problematic issues, particularly for Muslim. Similarly for Russia, if what if we go to war against Russia. So when it didn't happen exactly the way you're saying, John, and I wish it did. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Thomas. Anyone else, Eileen? We have no additional hands raised at this time. Okay, thank you very much. Well, if there's that there are no other comments from from the panel, I want to thank Victoria and Eddie and Raisa and Alan and Jeff and Brandon and Eileen for this great meeting. I look forward to to March or whatever date is necessary to come forward with the with the with the product that I know will be comprehensive and well received by the by the the council. I know that they're looking forward to it as well. So at that point, I will bring the meeting to a close.